Tretjak (31 page)

Gritz had reached the village. It was snowing very hard. It was a small village, and despite the weather, Gritz could see the silhouettes of an idyllic setting all around him. Ponies in the meadows, to the left goats and sheep. Forests, the shadow of the mountains. A few pretty farmhouses. What a beautiful village, he thought. Maybe one day he should spend his summer holidays here.

Gritz asked a farmer's wife who was herding two cows in front of her how to get to the citadel. He had to leave the car behind and walk the last part of the way. After a few hundred metres, he was sinking into the snow which came up above the edge of his shoes. His feet were wet and freezing when he reached the citadel and the man who was loading logs onto a wheelbarrow in its yard. When Gritz came closer and recognised him, he knew that he wasn't going to able to complete the puzzle.

‘Good day,' Gritz said when he was almost standing in front of him.

The man had not seen him yet and turned around.

‘Good day,' said Joseph Lichtinger.

 

When Gritz left the yard of the citadel, he had to free his car from a thick blanket of snow. It had continued to snow, while they had sat together, the strange priest and the long, thin inspector. What could one believe, what should one believe? As he drove off, it started to get dark. Gritz turned on the lights. No, there had been no closure. Nothing was clear. Except one thing: it wasn't eagles who had chosen the citadel as their kind of flight hub. They were falcons. But they were so gigantic that one could bloody easily mistake them for eagles. In Celtic mythology, Gritz knew, falcons were messengers between this world and the next. And he knew another thing now, glancing at his navigation system:
traffic jam on the Brenner Pass – no alternative route possible.

   

THE END