The dark, malty smells from the thawed floor of the forest came through the car even stronger now. Dappled sunlight splashed on the window and disappeared as they rolled bumpily out toward the road.
“I didn’t realize that,” said Felix. “It’s okay if you change your mind.”
“Well now you tell me. But God has made me a magnet for scheisse, it seems. I have no doubt those two pricks will be asking me questions before the day is out.”
“Gebi, look”
“Shut up will you? You don’t know. There’s more here than your mess. All I’m saying is, if I had a brain, I’d be back at the post.”
“I don’t want you to get into scheisse. Look, I’ll go on my way.”
Gebhart sighed.
“Don’t underestimate the desire to get one back,” he said.
“Okay,” said Felix, uncertainly.
“‘Okay’? You haven’t a clue. You don’t need to know. So I never told you.”
“Told me what?”
Gebhart glanced over.
“I didn’t trust you,” he said. “To be frank.”
The car rolled into a lower spot and then a big bump shook the car.
“I know how those assholes work,” Gebhart went on, straining over the wheel to spot any more big dips and bumps. “I learned the hard way. They never believed me. They suspect their own mothers.”
Felix stared at him. Another bump shook creaks from the shocks and Gebhart swore as he righted himself.
“What the hell are you talking about, Gebi?”
“Forget it. It’s bullshit.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Didn’t I just tell you to forget it?”
“How can I? What’s with the freak-out here?”
“You want to know? Okay. I’ll tell you. You show up at the post, training for when Korschack heads off for his officer course. He won’t be back, that’s okay. The post is going to be closed anyway, in a year or two. It’s a soft number, a good place to train. Nothing happens in Stefansdorf, right?”
“But why are you mad at me now?”
“Ach! Listen. I won’t be repeating myself. You show up, I was saying. You screwed around in the Uni, making a crap job of it by the looks of things. Then you’re in the Gendarmerie, the Gendarmerie that’s headed for the amalgamation in a year, a new police force that you’ll automatically carry your job into? And you’ll move up by just turning up for duty, because you have your Matura, and a bit of Uni? Home free.”
“You’re like the others, Gebi. You’re suspicious of anyone who doesn’t talk soccer and drink Puntigamer, and trash people.”
“Have I finished? No I haven’t. So listen.”
Felix waited.
“Well? You think you know things? Let me tell you this, then.
Your father goes out and there’s a whisper about him yeah, I heard. And don’t look at me like that. You know part of why they’re getting rid of the Gendarmerie? Do you?”
“Money?” said Felix. “The EU?”
“No, and it’s not because they have to find jobs for the Customs guys now the Slovenians and the frigging Hungarians and the goddamned Czechs are EU. And it’s not just about saving money, or some asshole in Brussels or someplace, or 9/11 crap.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Do I have to spell it out for you? Deals corruption, whatever the fancy word is. Nobody admits it in public. But those guys know, they know how bad it is. It’s been going on awhile. There’s a wave of stuff coming through, since things went nuts in Yugoslavia.
It can’t fit under the carpet anymore, see? So, they suspect everybody, everything. Now, imagine how you look to that pair. A background like you have.”
“You’re serious, I think.”
“God, but you’re a depp sometimes. So frigging naive. It’s why I said that I didn’t trust you. And I still don’t. But not the way you think. I don’t think you’re bent, like some plan to get you to infiltrate the new police thing or rubbish like that. You’re not crook material. Believe me, I know. But I just don’t trust you. I don’t trust you not to land me in the crap with this stumbling around you’re at.
I lost both ways, see?”
“No.”
“For God’s sake… If I stay clear of you and your nonsense, and ignore those two puppet masters using you for bait or whatever they’re really doing up here well there’s my stupid conscience screwed. If you get done in, how the hell can I give those brilliant lectures to my kids about doing the right thing?”
The road came in sight. Gebhart slowed his car even more.
Felix felt it begin to sink a little, but Gebi kept it chugging steadily low in second gear.
“And if I get run over again… life has no improvement there, has it?”
“‘Run over?’ ‘Again’?”
“Yes, ‘again.’ They’re not going to do this again. Not to me.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Well,” said Gebhart, speaking now almost through clenched teeth. “So the moment of truth here arrives. Didn’t you ever wonder what the likes of me, a brilliant policeman, is doing behind the door in Stefansdorf?”
Felix saw that the anger had passed, and Gebhart’s sardonic tone had returned.
“Not really.”
“Well you should. I am a good policeman. It’s my career.”
“What do you want me to say?” Felix said. “I just thought, well Gebi, he has his security. Promotions happen. You like a quiet life maybe. ‘The landing strip,’ right?”
Gebhart brought the car to a slow stop near the entrance, checking for any sign of soft ground beneath. With the car idling, he rubbed at his nose and looked across at Felix.
“That’s what the old guys call it, sure. No. Me, I have other things, far more important. My kids, my family. You probably think that’s schmaltzy crap, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Bullshit. But anyway, I’ll tell you. Any other day I wouldn’t, but you are digging your own hole in the ground here. But when I’m done telling you, I don’t want to hear any questions, observations, comment. Got that?”
Felix nodded.
“Fifteen years ago, the Yugos started up again, right? It had been brewing. They have to murder one another every few years. I don’t care if that sounds bad. It’s true. It’s in their genes or something. But there’s shooting and killing and it only gets worse. You were still in diapers probably.”
“I was seven or eight, actually.”
“Seven,” said Gebhart, as through it were a joke. “Eight?
Anyway, I’m probably never going to talk to you, or to any cop, about this again.”
Felix looked up to the patches of sky between the conifers.
“Things move. Money, guns, drugs, any crime it all goes with war if you call that ‘war.’ And here we are, just in the EU. It’s only been a few years, but we’re next door to this crap. So a lot starts to happen. One thing leads to another. You see?”
“So far.”
“Here’s me then. I work with a guy, I won’t even say his name.
I’m friendly with him. I respect him. I socialize with him. You see the picture, what I am about to tell you?”
Felix shook his head.
“A policeman? A Gendarme? You guess the rest.”
Felix returned Gebhart’s gaze.
