The Linz Tattoo by Nicholas Guild

Author:Nicholas Guild
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 'world war ii, chemical weapons'
Publisher: Nicholas Guild

“See the first violins?” he asked, pointing to the top line of the string section. “Just like I remembered, an octave lower than the oboe. And there I was down in the basement, scraping out the tonic. Do you believe me now?”

They both looked at Merizzi, who had probably been disturbed by the sound of Christiansen’s voice. He was coming awake again.

“I believe you, but where does it bring us? What does it mean?’

In answer, Christiansen closed the score. The cover read:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

SINFONIE IN C

(LINZER SINFONIE)

He rolled up the score and put it under his arm. It was time to leave.

Thank you, Herr Merizzi. Our apologies to your wife.” He took out his wallet and counted two ten-dollar bills into the man’s hand. Merizzi gazed up at him, blinking uncomprehendingly. “I’ll keep this if I may. Please go back to bed now, and forget any of this ever happened.”

They managed to get four blocks without hearing any police sirens, so apparently that was precisely what he did do.

“Does the curfew apply in the International Zone?”

Mordecai shook his head. “No, I don’t believe so.”

“Good—then let’s take the long way home. I need a drink.”

The place they found was in a basement, not fifty yards from the Burgtheater; it was like a hundred little joints Christiansen knew in the New York theater district where actors and musicians got together after the shows closed, too keyed up even to think about sleep. It had just that atmosphere—the party that has gone on just a little too long. They were shown to a table by the stairway—the waiter, one gathered, had sized them up as tourists and therefore best kept out of everybody’s way—and Christiansen ordered a brandy and hot water. He could use the anesthetic.

“Just coffee for me.” Mordecai said. When he had the cup in front of him, he consented to take one of Christiansen s cigarettes.

“So. Now we know where to look. From the whole world we have narrowed our focus to the city of Linz—and all because Mozart wrote a symphony there. Von Goltz went to all that trouble just to tell us that one thing.”

“He’s telling us more than that.” Christiansen took the cigarette out of his mouth and set it in the huge glass ashtray that took up so much of their tiny table. He unrolled the score and opened it to the place he had marked, putting it beside Mordecai’s right hand. “You see how the section is marked? ‘Trio.’ Why pick that section unless he wanted us to know we should be looking for three things instead of just one?”

“Three things?”

Mordecai took a pen from his breast pocket and, at the top of the score, directly over the nine notes Christiansen had circled, wrote out the number from Esther Rosensaft’s arm: G4/3454641.

“What is the significance, do you suppose, of the line?” he asked finally. As if to emphasize the question, he wrote out the number a second time.

“It’s a bar line—look at the score. G, C, then the rest follows in the next measure.

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