John Brady - Poachers Road

“Well,” said Speckbauer. “Do I look like a pin-in-a-map cop?

Maybe I should be one then, so it wouldn’t upset your stereotype.

‘What you don’t know, won’t hurt you.’”

“Who knows what you’ll say next, that’s my take on it.”

“You’re not that stupid and that’s my take. And it would be a betrayal too. That doesn’t sit right with me.”

“But you want me to betray my own instead.”

Speckbauer glared back. After a few moments his eyes lost their focus.

“Okay,” he said. “I get it. I am a bit slow, but I finally get it. You win. Make your calls. And don’t worry — I’ll only say good things about all you’ve done on this. Really. We shouldn’t have taken you away from your holiday, Gendarme Kimmel. I’ll tell you what: I’ll put up signs. ‘Gendarme Kimmel doesn’t know anything.’ ‘And Gendarme Kimmel doesn’t want to find out either.’”

Felix stared at him. Speckbauer didn’t turn away from his long survey of the greens and the chill, spring brightness that was showering this part of Styria.

“He doesn’t want to know that his grandfather was a wannabe SS,” he went on. “That he did fine, thank you very much, in the hard times after the war.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“That his Opa Kimmel was the man to go to if you needed something, like petrol or parts or concrete, or even coffee and cigarettes?”

“Even if he did.”

Speckbauer turned away from the view.

“Is it still ‘ancient history’?” he snapped.

He glanced down at the phone in Felix’s hand.

“That grandfather of yours did his nod-and-wink routine for longer than just survival. Maybe you don’t want to know more.

Maybe you just want to carry on being very modern, a Unidropout-poser-MP3-European type of a guy. The new copper.”

Grim satisfaction leaked into Felix. He had drawn out the real Speckbauer at last.

“Been to Britain?” Speckbauer asked then, brightly. “England?”

“No.”

“A strange bunch, but fair, if you can forgive their beer. My point is, the British saw how capable your grandfather was. During the occupation? They were impressed. So they offered your Opa Kimmel a job. Where? In the Gendarmerie, of course.”

Speckbauer turned back toward the fields and woods. Again he seemed to be deriving satisfaction from his slow, steady survey. Felix sensed that Speckbauer was waiting for a signal from him. Still, he turned his phone over again in his hand, waited.

“Well?” Speckbauer said then.

“Go on,” said Felix. “I’m listening.”

“Thank you. At any rate, the British knew that there were Gendarmerie who shouldn’t be put under a magnifying glass — like your grandfather Kimmel, see? The Second Republic, the New Austria, woken up from its nightmare, needed experienced men in the places where, well, where the likes of your grandfather had experience.”

“Experience?”

“Smuggling. Maybe I should say trading. Okay: trading. Things were hard up here. The Russians came through here first. Christ, what didn’t they take? They weren’t alone in their visits. There were partisans, from up and down the Balkans. Slovenians, a lot of them.

A lot of them came through from the DP camps there in Judenburg, and Graz.”

Again, Felix thought of the maps he had pored over last night.

For a moment he almost believed that Speckbauer knew about them, and was just baiting him here.

“Well, once the pigs and petrol business was shall we say, normal, other activities went on. Can you imagine?”

Felix nodded.

“You had Eastern Europeans who knew their way around.

Sure, they’d gone home but home was what? Flattened houses? And if you were on the wrong side, the losing side…? So people had connections. Sure there were borders — ‘The Iron Curtain’ and all that. But this coming and going was nothing new here. ‘Business resumed.’ Your grandfather closed shop: good for him. He told his old contacts to get lost especially the ones up from Slovenia. Yes, he did his job. It says so right in his file.”

Speckbauer waited for some reaction, but it was one that Felix would not offer.

“It also says that your oma, your Oma Kimmel, was the one who seems to have calmed your Opa Kimmel’s fiery nature. She talked him down, sorted him out.”

Felix stared back into his eyes. They had regained their flat, expressionless look.

“She cushioned his fall again when he was asked about some goings-on later.”

“So now my grandmother was a crook?”

“Did I say that? Peter Kimmel was her husband, wasn’t he? In 1953, an informer said that Gendarme Kimmel, had not quite given up all of his ‘interests.’ That he looked the other way at the correct time, that there were things he didn’t want to know. Verstehst? A matter of not betraying those to whom he had loyalties.”

“Is was hardly a crime to want to feed your family, to take care of them.”

“Don’t get me wrong. Those two men turned up in the forest, and part of our job is to see if it’s connected with other events, present and past. Patterns, no?”

Felix took a few steps toward the side of the storehouse. What had his father known of this? Was that why he had kept those maps, with the paths marked in?

“Beautiful,” he heard Speckbauer say. “What views. I far preferred Geography to History. So much more definite. You were right or you were wrong. You?”

Felix turned back to him.

“Even if this were true, it’s all ancient.”

“You said that already. What I’m saying is that this kind of thing still goes on. And those connections and loyalties last over time.”

“You think my Opa Kimmel is wandering around the woods?

Be serious. He can’t even walk ten steps without a cane.”

“Normally I don’t dip into the sewer of pop psychology. But denial is big.”

“You really think he knows something about the dead men in the forest?”

Speckbauer hesitated before answering.

“How come you don’t speak Slovenian?”

“Because I’m Austrian.”

“Did your parents?”

“Same answer.”

“Your grandmother Kimmel’s family is Slovenian.”

“A hundred years ago, it was.”

“There’s always been Slovenian all along here. Hapsburgs, Nazis sure they got bumped about. But not many left, really. They cleared some from DP camps in forty-six, and Tito killed them. Viktring Camp was a big one. Anyway, your grandfather can speak it.”

“I never heard him speak it.”

“Ask him then. It says so in his Gendarmerie records: ‘Working knowledge.’ You think he lied, to impress his employer?”

“What employer would care?”

“The SS might,” said Speckbauer. “He was hoping, I imagine?”

Felix refused to give him any satisfaction. He said nothing.

“Ultimately unsuccessful,” Speckbauer resumed. “Not to be critical now, but by forty-four there was room in the SS ranks. But faking your age, a sixteen year old?”

Speckbauer rubbed at his nose, and drew his coat around him.

“Okay,” he said then. “Here is the end of this chapter. Your grandmother must have been one strong woman. Excuse me now if that sounds… impertinent. It was she who tried to put an end to all this ‘silliness.’ She made him clean up his act. He did settle down. I’m not saying she changed him or his opinions, or that. But she reintroduced him to civilian life, you could say. Normal life.”

This time Felix could not resist.

“You talk about all this like it’s some kind of play, or a movie or something. But your job is to lie and to con people, to get whatever you want, however you want.”

Speckbauer sighed.