The Red Collar by Jean-Christophe Rufin, Adriana Hunter Page A

opinion.”
    â€œDid the officers keep an eye on him?”
    â€œThere weren’t many. And I got the feeling all the Russians in that part of the world must have been pretty much like him. They held meetings together and talked politics for hours. At the beginning of 1917 they were more and more wound up. When they heard about the February Revolution, they went crazy. They danced all night, until our officers intervened because they were worried the enemy would take the opportunity to attack. The Tsar’s abdication made them almost delirious. They couldn’t stand still. You’d have thought they were going to head home straightaway.”
    â€œHow did they hear this news?” Lantier asked. “You said you were cut off from the world.”
    â€œWe were, but not them. And that’s exactly the point. You know, we were up against the Bulgarians, and they speak pretty similar languages. They understand each other. They were all at it; the Austrians, the Turks and the Bulgarians were getting news from Russia on a daily basis because their headquarters thought Russia’s difficulties were good for their troops’ morale. They promised them that once the Tsar had gone it wouldn’t be long before the Russians stopped fighting the war.”
    â€œSo there was contact between the Russians and the Bulgarians, when they were pitted against each other in their trenches?”
    â€œThat’s what I gathered and that’s what set the whole thing off . . . ”

C HAPTER VII
    T he river was low and where the current caught on stones it produced trails of foam that whitened almost the entire surface. Willow branches that in the springtime trailed down into the water now hung in the air, still holding clods of dirty waterweeds.
    The young man was crouching in the middle of the river. He’d hopped from stone to stone and now stood motionless over the flowing water, barefoot on the moss-covered rocks. His eye was steady as a hawk’s, trained on the pool of water beneath him. In this small natural basin a trout snaked between the dancing bright patches the sun created on the sandy riverbed. The man slowly raised a stick sharpened to a point at one end. He waited a long while and then, in one swift action, thrust the thin lance down, skewering the fish. He drew the stick out of the water. His prey writhed around the shaft that pierced through its body. The fisherman stood up but suddenly froze like a dog pointing. He’d spotted the dark silhouette watching him on the bank.
    â€œDon’t try to make a run for it, Louis! I’ll always know where to find you. Come over here.”
    Gabarre barely raised his voice. The river was flowing so weakly that it made little noise and the police officer’s words resonated clearly in the quiet of the forest, particularly to ears practiced at picking up the least sound.
    Stepping fluently from stone to stone, Louis made his way to the bank. When he reached the police sergeant he lowered his head and put his hands behind his back, trying clumsily to hide his catch. He was about twenty years old, with black eyebrows that almost met and curly hair set low on his forehead. He stood with his back stooped and a frightened look on his face whenever he met another human being. In the woods, though, his eye had all the acuity of an animal’s. He lived on what he hunted and fished. His mother had died when he was ten years old, and no one really knew who his father was. He’d been sent to an orphanage and ran away twice, both times heading back to the house where he’d been born on the edge of the woods. In the end they left him there. Gabarre kept an eye on him. He knew the boy was pretty harmless but he also knew about his temptations and about his weak spot.
    â€œStill just as agile, from what I see. Let’s have a look.”
    The trout had stopped moving, resigned to its fate or already dead. It was a handsome fish