An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

lobby, and went into the banquet hall, where Koethe’s festive dinner for five hundred valued guests was taking shape.
    He spotted Lassman leaning close to a brunette at a table at the far end of the hall. Cohen found his name tag at the head of a table at which he was flanked on one side by a man who introduced himself as the owner of the largest bookstore in Switzerland, and on the other by an author who specialized in counterespionage.
    Tina came by his table before the speeches that preceded the dinner, to whisper to Cohen that she was making progress with a French publisher and hoped to have good news by the end of the fair. “But I’m still worried about TMC,” she said. “Maybe it will help that you’re on CNN.”
    “What?!” Cohen exclaimed.
    “Their item on the fair. The chancellor shook your hand.”
    “They couldn’t find anything else to use?”
    His question and its tone made Tina sigh. “I’ll never understand you,” she said. “I know authors who would cut off their right arms for a chance to be seen on CNN. Your friend Benny would, easy. Anyway, I’m hoping Herb Wang sees that, and realizes that you plan to be cooperative now.
    We’re seeing him tomorrow at five o’clock.” She paused, before adding, “You are, aren’t you?”
    “What?”
    “Going to cooperate?” she asked.
    “I’m trying,” he said half-heartedly, giving her a smile that calmed her enough to continue her tablehopping onward.
    But very quickly it became apparent that the Swiss bookstore owner wanted to talk about money and the German author wanted to talk about the Mossad. Cohen wanted to sleep, and excused himself after the soup, shocking the Swiss bookstore owner—though making his wife smile— and leaving the espionage expert convinced that Cohen indeed was an agent for the Israeli secret service.

4.
    “You missed an amazing night,” Lassman bragged the next morning when, bleary-eyed, the translator showed up at the Koethe pavilion. “After dinner we went to a discotheque, and then back to another hotel. Amazing scene.
    Agents, publishers, editors. Everyone getting drunk.
    And,” he paused for effect. “I got lucky.” “Good for you,” Cohen said, not meaning it.
    He had slept badly through most of the night, only finding sleep with a final cognac alone in his room near dawn, and then needing the wake-up call at nine in the morning. He spent the morning wandering around the fair on his own.
    Occasionally, he’d be stopped by a stranger, and asked for an autograph. Twice, a small crowd grew around him, strangers all, smiling, eager, wanting. It frightened him each time a little more. In Jerusalem, even the strangers were familiar to Cohen, who knew every alleyway and courtyard in the heart of the city, both east and west. For the first time in a long time, he felt himself fighting the feeling of being lost.
    He was twenty minutes late for the Koethe luncheon, arriving at their pavilion only to find a nervous Kristina Scheller waiting for him.
    “You are late,” she complained.
    “I’m sorry, I got lost.”
    She shook her head, as disappointed as the day before, when he turned down her advances. “Well, we can go join them, or go have lunch on our own,” she suggested.
    “I’m not very hungry,” he admitted. It was only partly true. He had fallen to the temptation of two different sausages sold at two different refreshment stands between the halls. And with each sausage and sauerkraut, he had a tall beer. He was full, for now, and secretly glad he had missed another heavy luncheon.
    “Well, what would you like to do?” she asked.
    “I like cookbooks,” he admitted.
    She beamed at him, and took his arm. For the rest of the afternoon, she led him from one pavilion to another, as he looked through the newest cookbooks the worldwide book industry had to offer that year. But at five, he was back at his hotel, waiting in the lobby for Tina and Lass man, Carey Mccloskey and Herbert Wang, the