John Brady - Poachers Road

“They believed him?” Felix asked. “I can’t see that.”

“Did it matter whether they did or not? Whether they believed him or not, those guys want to protect their operation and their rep too. So whether he’s screwing them around or not, this Fuchs character knows a bit too much about them by now anyway.”

“But they had taken a pretty big chance on him,” said Felix.

“Had they really?” said Speckbauer. “They were keeping a tight hold on this. That’s why the other one, the runner, came to meet the mule coming down from Holland. Let’s say he was told to offer Fuchs some kind of a side deal when he showed. That was just to test his loyalty. But they also wanted to see how much Fuchs might have found out about them too.”

“You think they only planned to run one operation this way?”

“An experiment, probably, yes. Maybe they had found out about Fuchs’ drug hobby. That was enough. Or maybe they didn’t care. My bet is they never trusted him, but they knew right away when he contacted them, name-dropping from what he’d heard from the old guys, well, they knew they’d probably have to do something about him.”

“You think Fuchs realized any of this?”

“Well who was conning who, that night? I don’t know. I just don’t. Maybe Fuchs was just greedy. Me, I say his brain was fried.

But it looks like we all underestimated him that night anyway.”

Speckbauer stopped strolling. He faced Felix directly.

“So there’s Fuchs that night, in my mind. He just steps out of the car, leans over the roof maybe with a flashlight to sight the guy surprise. Poof: Mr. Diamond, the mule, gets one in the head before you know it. Then he has the second guy down, the runner, in no time. With your grandfather’s Luger.”

“Not his,” Felix felt obliged to say. “He got it from someone’s brother years ago, a war thing.”

“But so very well taken care of,” Speckbauer went on. “In fine condition.”

“He’d forgotten about it being in the house. Fuchs just went about taking stuff.”

Speckbauer’s skeptical expression left his face more slowly than it had come.

“There’s a charge on him for that, I know,” he said. “But they’ll slap that away when it comes up. On account of his, what do you want to call it, his marksmanship.”

“I don’t think he cares,” said Felix.

Edelbacher and Felix’s mother, and Schroek, had reached the entrance to the Gendarmerie kommando.

“Look,” said Speckbauer. “Time’s up. You’re in line for a pat on the head.”

“What about you and Franzi?”

“Macht nichts,” he said. “Who cares. It’s probably me they want, I would say.”

With that he shrugged, and turned back to the others. Felix watched him for a few moments. Then he nodded at Franzi. He received no gesture in return. There was a cursory, tight-lipped nod from the man with the briefcase who was waiting for Speckbauer.

“Really,” he heard Edelbacher say then, beside him. “Those guys.”

Felix’s mother and Schroek continued talking with deceptive earnestness about some home-made remedy for arthritis one could find up in the mountains.

Edelbacher slipped over to walk beside him.

“Felix, you’ve got to learn,” he said. “There are rules, you know, important rules.”

“Thanks,” Felix said, and did nothing to conceal the acid tone.

“But my father told me that many times in the past. So I know.”

Felix imagined little shockwaves rippling out from his sarcasm.

He didn’t care that his mother had picked up on it too.

The Gendarme at the barrier was already waiting for them, but before presenting his photocard, Felix glanced back. Franzi still looked like a robot awaiting a push. The man with the briefcase was making some emphatic point to Speckbauer.

It might have had something to do with Speckbauer’s vacant gaze, Felix thought. It seemed to be on something faraway, aimed perhaps at the trees so sharply defined now by the July morning’s sunshine.

Felix remembered then that the weather was forecast to continue as it had for several days now, to boil the pavements here in Graz, as the saying went, and also glare down on the rest of a large area that stretched far to the south, and to the east.