“Yes. And the bouquinistes have a union—”
“I know,” Tom interrupted. “The SBP, I found it already. In his sixties, you say?”
“Yes.” 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.
“Let's see,” said Tom. “I have two candidates but I'd guess…crotchety looking fellow, with a rubbery nose?”
“You found him?” Hugo sat up. “I'm at my computer, can you send me a picture?”
“Just 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?”
“Actually, not allowed to. The CIA retired me, I can't have them firing me, too. But you can take notes while I talk.”
“Then talk.”
“Maximilian 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 home to 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?”
“According 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.”
“I've heard of it,” said Hugo. “Where the hell are you getting this stuff?”
“Can't tell you that,” Tom said. “But you'll see in a minute why someone kept a file on him.”
“Good. Go on.”
“OK, 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 to survive and was liberated from Dachau in 1945. He was adopted by a French colonel and his wife and raised in a suburb of Paris.” Which explained why Hugo had never detected a foreign accent. “But then more shitty luck,” Tom went on. “When Max was twelve, in May of 1950, his adoptive father and mother were killed in a car accident while the family was on vacation in Brittany. Max was the only one to survive.”
Hugo shook his head. So much about the old man he hadn't known. “Go on. I'm still curious why you guys have a file on him.”
Tom chuckled. “Not technically our file, but we're coming to the interesting part. In 1963 Max attended the marriage of lawyer Serge Klarsfeld to his wife, Beate. Those names ring a bell?”
“Yes, but I can't place them.”
“Two of France's most famous Nazi-hunters.”
“And the reason that file exists,” said Hugo.
“Right. Moving on. Max spent the '60s with the Klarsfelds chasing Nazis, including those responsible for wiping out his family. According to this, French authorities suspected that Max helped the Klarsfelds abduct former Gestapo chief Kurt Lischka in 1971. No proof, although when the couple was arrested for the kidnap, Max led the campaign to free them from jail. That happened pretty quickly, a lot of people joined the campaign, and they went back to work once they were released, Max helping the couple with more Nazi captures, including Klaus Barbie and Jean Leguay.”
“Nice work,” Hugo said.
“Yeah, until Leguay was let go without facing trial. This says Max lost heart after that.”
“Who was Leguay?” Hugo asked.
“A high-ranking police official in the Vichy government, and one of the most senior collaborators with the Nazis during their World War II occupation of France. A second set of charges was filed against him in 1986, but he was let go before trial. Again.”
“Amazing,” Hugo said. “I had no idea.”
“This Max guy is a friend?” Tom asked. “He in trouble?”
“Yeah. Most definitely.”
“Anything else I can do to help?”
“Not right now. But I'll let you know if that changes.”
They hung up, and Hugo sat with his elbows on his desk, staring into his now-cold coffee.
Rarely did a human being surprise him. Twenty-plus years in law enforcement saw to that, and with his behavioral training and experience in the field he usually found himself able to predict most people's odd behavior, or spot someone with a colorful history. But not this time. What stories the old man must have. And Hugo found himself pleased, somehow, that in a manner of speaking they were in the same line of work: catching bad guys. He'd failed his friend, let him be kidnapped, and that was reason enough to track Max down. But now the old man's compelling history added to Hugo's already fierce determination to find his friend.
Not to mention, of course, Hugo owed him a pair of cowboy boots.
Chapter Eight
That night, Hugo walked along the left bank of the Seine. It was almost eight o'clock and the green metal boxes attached to the stone walls were closed and locked tight, the sellers all gone. The air sat heavy and cold around him as he walked, and once he slipped on a patch of black ice on the sidewalk. He'd already paid a visit to Max's home, getting there by taxi an hour after talking to Tom. No one was there, either in Max's apartment or in any of the other four in the building. He'd brought his tools and could have picked the lock, but there were too many people still around, it was too early for that kind of clandestine activity. Reluctantly he'd left the place, knowing he'd return with a plan, a definite way to get through the front door. Now, he avoided Max's stall by cutting down the narrow Rue de Nevers. It made no sense, but he didn't feel ready to see it again. He felt as if it were a crime scene and, by returning to it full of questions rather than answers, the metal boxes might become contaminated and never give up their secrets.
He turned left again, making his way onto Rue Dauphine, heading toward his apartment. He wasn't ready to call it a night, though; he was restless and needed to be around people. Even if that meant sitting alone in a bar. He slowed, gazing into the windows of the tiny stores that made up these narrow streets, one-room boutiques that sold not much to hardly anyone. There were dozens of them in this arrondissement, and he often wondered how they paid the rent.
He found an empty table under a heating lamp at a café on Rue Andre Mazet. It was busy for a Monday night, but it pleased him to be out in a crowd. He ordered a scotch, and when the waiter returned he opened his wallet and took out a ten Euro note. The woman at the small table next to him stared at his wallet. She tried to be subtle about it but the edge of her table touched Hugo's, and their chairs were just inches apart. And, Hugo would have to admit, her presence had already attracted his attention, the moment she walked into the café. He sipped his drink and took the opportunity to look at her a little more closely. She was a few years younger than him, maybe mid-thirties, with light brown hair that she wore short, an almost-bob. Stylish and pretty, but with a hardness to the face that almost certainly dissuaded strange men from making conversation.
As he put his glass down, she caught him looking. He was about to apologize, when she did.