Poachers Road by John Brady Page A

indeed. There was damage done there. The grafts cannot fix that apparently. And Franz has troubles putting out enough fluids there. Am I saying it right, Franzi?”
    “Most. Enough.”
    “I should practice more maybe. But the winter is hard on him, and the wind too.There are little bottles he applies quite often. I tell you all this Felix, so . . . ?”
    “So you can tell me something else, or ask me, afterwards?”
    Speckbauer made a gentle smile.
    “Sehr gut. Anyway. When they set Franz on fire they were hoping that that was the last of him. But they did not know our Franz.
    What’s the name of that fountain again, Franz?”
    “Mandusevac.”
    “And a filthy fountain it was. But right in a square, a main one too: they don’t care, you see. Jelacica, that’s the place, the square.
    We had a meeting there, didn’t we?”
    Franz nodded.
    “Well, Franz was out of the car and into that cesspool as fast as, well, as fast as Hermann Maier down that slalom. A hell of an achievement, I tell you. Better than any gold medal Klammer or any of those ski genius boys can pull off in Kitzbühel. The prize? Way better. Right, Franz?”
    Again Franz nodded.
    “He got to keep his eyesight. Well most of it.”
    “Which I guess makes it maybe a little ironic here,” Speckbauer went on. “He gets to see the face of the guy who did it to him.”
    “You mean yesterday?”
    “Franzi, you still think, you know?”
    “Hard to be sure,” said Franz. “Like the Chinaman said. You know?”
    “I don’t get it,” said Felix.
    “Right. It’s an old joke. A Chinese guy flies to Vienna. It’s his first time out of China, no? An ORF guy is there to interview him, you know: millions of tourists from China, billions of shillings what am I saying, Euro dancing in the brains of the Tourism Department. Are you with me?”
    “Sort of.”
    “Good enough. So the interviewer gets the camera on the Chinaman. He sticks a microphone under his nose oh, I didn’t tell you this Chinaman has been studying German since birth, did I? and asks the fateful question: ‘What are your first impressions of us Austrians?’ What do you think he said?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You’re thinking dirndl? Cowbells? Sacher torte, decent coffee?
    Strauss, maybe. Skiing? None of that Hitler crap, obviously. What do you think the guy said?”
    “I haven’t a clue.”
    “Really?”
    “Really.”
    “Well, this is what he said: ‘These Austrians, they all look the same to me.’”
    Speckbauer didn’t laugh. Nor did he smile. He remained intensely interested, it seemed to Felix, in a passing tractor that did not slow as it wheeled by the konditorei.
    After seconds passed with no response from Felix, Speckbauer leaned in.
    “What this means is that these two characters up in the woods could be any of them. ‘Them’? Well, we don’t really know ‘them.’
    ‘Them’ seems to start just southeast of here. Remember, before the Slovenes got into the EU club, when they had the border post?
    You rolled up to the border post and seeing all that Russianlooking alphabet starting just the far side of the barrier? The Cyrillic words . . . ?”
    He sat back and eyed Franz a moment.
    “But this much I do know. I want Franzi here to be able to use those eyes of his to see the face, or the faces of the men who sprayed the gasoline in the car and threw a match in on him. Verstehst? Got that?”
    “I think so.”
    “Good. And I don’t much care how we find them.”
    Speckbauer looked around the restaurant again, and stretched.
    Felix caught a glimpse of the pistol in its holster under Speckbauer’s arm as he arched.
    “More coffee?” he asked Felix.

TWELVE
    G IULIANA WAS MARKING SOMETHING WHEN HE GOT IN. F ELIX had driven back to the apartment by one of those freak journeys, a miracle where he couldn’t actually remember long stretches of the road. Nor could he remember what he had been thinking about. It unnerved him. It also made him aroused.
    “What the