Free Poachers Road by John Brady Page B

point, even?”
    “I don’t think so. If he did, I didn’t hear him. Did you?”
    Gebhart stared at some point beyond Felix’s head.
    “Huh,” he said. “I wonder if there was any sleep at Himmelfarbs’ last night.”
    He looked to Felix then for corroboration, but his eye was taken by whatever he saw through the blinds on the glass that opened out to the public office. A short man with Gandhi glasses and a Gandhi hairdo had stepped in.
    “Shit,” said Gebhart. “Already.”
    He walked to the doorway.
    “The Kontrolinspektor is on the phone,” he called out.
    Felix watched the man’s reaction. A smile, a glance at his wristwatch, a hand holding a small device.
    “Keep him waiting,” said Gebhart when he came back. “Do him good.”
    “Who is he?”
    “A scribbler, from the Kleine .”
    “A reporter? The Kleine . . . ?”
    “Correct. What, you don’t read the Kleine Zeitung ? Everyone else in the province does. But this one has got the foreign angle already, no doubt. Now you forget about that side of things, okay?
    That was yesterday.You’ve done your paperwork, and it’s moved on.
    And remember: don’t talk to any reporter or media type. Schroek does that stuff.”
    Felix nodded.
    “You’re set up for the morning anyway, okay?”
    “I think so.”
    “Bike safety video? Armbands?”
    “Got it, and the posters.”
    “Those new bookmarks with the ‘cool’ website? The T-shirt prize?”
    Felix almost grinned at how Gebhart did the air quotes for “cool.” Again, Felix nodded.
    “Well, bugger off then.”
    Gebhart yawned and sighed.
    “Didn’t you sleep?”
    “I slept like a Christian, in case you need to know. But in the Coliseum.”
    Felix waited until Gebhart looked up from the paper.
    “What is it? You have a question?”
    “Have you done stuff like that before? Yesterday, I mean.”
    “No.”
    “Nothing like this? Never?”
    Gebhart seemed to gather his thoughts by staring at his desk.
    “You mean scare-the-hell-out-of-yourself stuff, or just things you see? Car accidents? Factory accidents?”
    “I suppose.”
    “There was one thing comparable maybe,” Gebhart said. “But I was in the army.Yes, I was keen, after National Service even. I took five years in it. You’d learn things, you know? Straightened me out actually.The service, it bred fellowship, you know? No, I don’t mean mountain rescue camp or the trekking or the rest of it. Maybe we knew who the enemy was, then.”
    Felix zipped up the bag.
    “Ach, you wouldn’t want to hear it.”
    “What enemy, the Russians?”
    A look of irritation crossed Gebhart’s face.
    “What’s with all the Q & A today? Go do your duties.”
    “My dad said it was partly the whole Eastern Bloc thing, to be ready at least, if they came in. But that’s been gone for years.”
    “Oh, I get it. The sun rises in the west now? The official line is we need Uni boys, more computer jockeys, more foreign languages.
    Well let me tell you something. Maybe we were a bit rough around the edges, or we didn’t use the dictionary much, but, boy, you knew where you stood. Yes, we got things done. And no, that wasn’t ancient times.”
    “Was it in the army, or in the Gendarmerie?”
    “The thing that happened? It was the army. It was a winter exercise. Winterwerk, we used to call it. They gave us a lot of gear, and we had a hell of a lot of lugging to do. It was up high, you know, with a load of heavy snow. Anyway. A heavy machine gun went off on a guy. Seven or eight rounds, just like that. Everyone was bone tired, see? Sleeping in the goddamned snow. It was careless. But it was bad, I tell you.”
    He looked down at the nylon carry-all that they called the School Bag.
    “Four hit him. And that’s the nearest I’ve been in my life. It’s not like TV.”
    He stretched again.
    “I had nightmares, for a while, then.”
    Then Gebhart jerked his head up.
    “No more yammering,” he declared. “Scram, will you? You’ve got stuff to