Read Online The Bookseller by Mark Pryor - Free Book Online Page B

thing going on here?”
    â€œAnd here's where I make a joke about your little thing.”
    â€œWouldn't be the first time. Anyway, you near your CIA gadgetry?”
    â€œHappens I am. It's the only way I can access global porn. The classy Malaysian stuff.”
    â€œNaturally,” said Hugo. “I need some information about someone, but I don't have much to go on.”
    â€œHang on.” Hugo heard the clink of glasses, or perhaps bottles, being moved. “You've tried your local databases I assume?”
    â€œYes, Tom, I managed to think of that.”
    â€œGood man. So what can you tell me?”
    â€œMax is the first name; I'd thought his last name was Cloche but I ran it, and every other name beginning with those first two letters, and came up empty.”
    â€œWhat else?”
    â€œNo date of birth, I'd guess he's in his late sixties. He's a bouquiniste.”
    â€œOK. Anything else?”
    Hugo searched his mind for more clues, for some deeply buried memory that might point to Max's identity. “If I think of something I'll let you know.”
    â€œOK,” Tom said. Hugo could hear his friend's fingers working a keyboard, then Tom's voice, talking himself softly through the process. “Max and all its variations, in Paris, bookseller. Probably a union member, being a frog.”
    â€œYes. And the bouquinistes have a union–”
    â€œI know,” Tom interrupted. “The SBP, I found it already. In his sixties, you say?”
    â€œYes.” Early in the friendship Hugo had asked Max his age. The old man's response had been so colorful that Hugo had understood the meaning without recognizing many of the words themselves.
    â€œLet's see,” said Tom. “I have two candidates but I'd guess…crotchety looking fellow, with a rubbery nose?”
    â€œYou found him?” Hugo sat up. “I'm at my computer, can you send me a picture?”
    â€œJust did. That him?”
    Hugo opened his e-mail account and clicked on the attachment to Tom's message. “You're a genius, Tom. That's him. Can you send whatever you have?”
    â€œActually, not allowed to. The CIA retired me, I can't have them firing me, too. But you can take notes while I talk.”
    â€œThen talk.”
    â€œMaximilian Ivan Koche. German or Dutch I'd guess. Has an apartment on Rue Condorcet. Know it?”
    Koche. Dammit . Hugo got up. “Hang on,” he said, walking over to the large map on his wall. He found it just west of the Gare du Nord, the station that served routes to the north and to the United Kingdom. Just above Rue Condorcet was the Pigalle district, home to the famous Moulin Rouge cabaret and a multitude of sex shops. It was also hometo many of the city's prostitutes, women and men who plied their trade in the winding side streets that led up to the tourist-heavy Montmartre district. “Near Pigalle,” he told Tom. “What else?”
    â€œAccording to this, he was born in 1938, which makes him over seventy years old.” Tom hummed as he clicked several times. “I was right. Again. Your buddy Max is German, born of a Hungarian mother and a German father, both Jews, in Dortmund. Looks like they lived there for a few years, until 1942, when their house was raided by those Nazi bastards. The whole family was arrested and sent to an internment camp at Le Vernet, in southern France.”
    â€œI've heard of it,” said Hugo. “Where the hell are you getting this stuff?”
    â€œCan't tell you that,” Tom said. “But you'll see in a minute why someone kept a file on him.”
    â€œGood. Go on.”
    â€œOK, so they were at Le Vernet for two years, alive and together, but in July of 1944 they were loaded onto a train and shipped east to Dachau.” Tom's tone changed, and Hugo knew that even his world-weary and flippant friend felt the weight of that period of history. “According to this, Max was the only one