Kingdom of Shadows by Alan Furst Read Free Book Online

you know the right rooming house, then they catch you and send you across the Austrian border. After a week or two in jail, the customs officers walk you back across the frontier, at night, in the woods, and the whole thing starts again. Here it’s a little better. If you stay out of trouble, the
flics
don’t care that much, unless you try to work.” He shook his head slowly, in sorrow.
    “How did you manage?”
    “Nansen. We were lucky. Because we were the first wave, we got the League of Nations passports, we got the work permits, we got the jobs the French didn’t want. That was 1920 or so. Revolution over, civil war winding down, then the Cheka comes around—‘We hear you were a friend of Ivanov.’ So, time to run. Next, when Mussolini’s boys got to work, came the Italians. Their luck was pretty much the same as ours—you used to be a professor of theoretical physics, now you’re a real waiter. Now,
thank God
you’re a waiter. Because, starting in ’33, here come the Germans. They have passports, most of them, but no work permits. They peddle, sell needles and thread from little suitcases on the boulevards, work the tourists, starve, beg, sit in the offices of the refugee organizations. It’s the same for the Spaniards, running from Franco, and now we’re getting the Austrians. No papers, no work permits, no money.”
    “This friend, Boris, has money.”
    The barman had known that all along. After a time he said, “You’re a detective, right?”
    “With my accent?”
    “Well, maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. Either way, I’m not the man you want. You have to go where the refugees are, to the Café Madine, the Grosse Marie, places like that.”
    “A question? Personal question?”
    “I’m an open book.”
    “Why did
you
run?”
    “Because they were chasing me,” he said, laughing again.
    Morath waited.
    “I was a poet. Also, to be honest, a criminal. When they came after me, I was never really sure which one it was.”
    The Café Madine was in the 11th Arrondissement, just off the place de la Republique, between a butcher that sold
halal
meat to Arabs and kosher meat to Jews, and a repair shop for musical instruments called Szczwerna. It was easy, maybe too easy, to make contact at Madine. He showed up in the late afternoon, stood at the counter, ordered a beer, stared out at the throbbing street life of the quarter. A man tried to sell him a ring, Morath looked it over—he was there to buy, let them see a buyer. A small, red stone set in gold, University of Heidelberg, 1922.
    “How much?”
    “Worth three hundred, more or less.”
    “I’ll think about it. Actually, I’m here because a friend of mine in Paris lost his passport.”
    “Go to
préfecture.
”
    From Morath a look,
if only one could.
“Or?”
    “Or nothing.”
    Back the next day. Ten in the morning, deserted, silent. A shaft of sunlight, a sleeping cat, the
patron
wore his glasses down on his nose. He took his time with Morath’s café au lait, there was no skin on the boiled milk, the coffee was powerful and fresh, and he sent his little boy off to the bakery to get fresh bread for a
tartine.
    The contact was a tough old bird, once upon a time a timber merchant in the Ukraine, though Morath had no way of knowing that. He tipped his hat, asked Morath to join him at a table. “You’re the fellow with the passport difficulties?”
    “Friend of mine.”
    “Naturally.”
    “What’s the market like, these days?”
    “Seller’s market, obviously.”
    “He needs the real thing.”
    “The real thing.” Maybe in other times he would have found it funny enough to laugh at. Morath got it, he thought.
Borders, papers, nations
—made-up stuff, politicians’ lies.
    “As much as possible.”
    “A man who buys the best.”
    Morath agreed.
    “Twenty-five hundred francs. A figure like that scares you, perhaps.”
    “No. For good value, you pay.”
    “Very reasonable, this gentleman.” He spoke to an invisible