Vango

  Paris, the same evening

  Superintendent Boulard was sitting in a smoke-filled room with a large steak in front of him and a checked napkin tucked in at his neck while his troops stood around him. He had some choice words for the men who were watching him eat.

  “If my steak wasn’t up to scratch, I would ask for it to be taken away and I’d order a fresh one. But as for you, you bunch of spineless good-for-nothings, you’re breathing down my neck and I can’t trade you in. You’re putting me off my food. . . .”

  The superintendent was eating rather heartily, as it happened. In the course of his forty-three years on the job, he had learned how to keep his morale up when the going got tough.

  They were on the second floor of the Smoking Wild Boar, the famous brasserie in Les Halles.

  “He made fools of you! A kid managed to get away from you in front of two thousand people!”

  Boulard picked at a sautéed potato, stopped, rolled his eyes, and summed up the evidence: “You’re a bunch of incompetents!”

  Incredibly, not one of the strapping men would have dreamed of casting doubt on this declaration. When Boulard said something, it was always true. If he had said, “You’re a troupe of ballet dancers from the opera house!” they would all have gone up on tiptoes with their arms in the air.

  Superintendent Boulard was worshipped by his men. He let them cry on his shoulder when they were feeling low, he knew the names of all their children, he gave their wives flowers on their birthdays, but when he felt let down, when he felt really let down, he didn’t even recognize them in the street and deliberately avoided them as if they were stray dogs.

  The second floor of the Smoking Wild Boar had been closed to the public so that this meeting could take place. Only two lightbulbs had been left on, and they drew attention to a large wild boar’s head just above Boulard. The kitchen lay behind them. A stream of waiters came in and out, loaded up with plates.

  In a corner, some distance from the superintendent’s men, a kitchen porter, a boy, was sitting with his back to them at a lone table, peeling vegetables.

  Boulard preferred this atmosphere to the one at the police headquarters at the Quai des Orfèvres. He held his meetings here whenever he could. He loved the smell of the sauces and the flapping of the kitchen doors. He had been brought up in a small family-run hotel in the Aveyron.

  “And what about that zeppelin?” railed Boulard. “Does anybody know what it was doing there? Don’t tell me it was by chance!”

  Nobody answered.

  A man entered the room. He whispered something in the ear of the superintendent, who raised his eyebrows.

  “Who is it?”

  The man didn’t know.

  “All right. Tell her to come up.”

  The messenger disappeared.

  Boulard tore off a piece of bread to mop up what was left on his plate. He gestured vaguely toward the kitchen porter in the corner.

  “I want people like that,” he grumbled. “You ask him for something, he does it. As for you lot, there are twenty-five of you, but you let the kid escape. If that fellow was in this room right now, one of you would even open the window for him.”

  “Superintendent . . .”

  Boulard looked up to see who had dared answer him back. It was Augustin Avignon, his faithful lieutenant for twenty years. Boulard squinted at him, as if his face was vaguely familiar.

  “Superintendent, there’s no explanation for what happened. Even the bell ringer, all that way up, says he didn’t see him. That kid is the devil himself. I swear we did everything in our power.”

  Boulard gently rubbed his earlobe. Whenever he did this, you had to be on your guard.

  He answered Avignon slowly: “I’m sorry. . . . What are you doing here? Do I know you? At the end of the street, on the left, there is a snail seller who would be more competent at your job than you are.”

  Boulard dived back into his sauce. Avignon’s nose twitched a bit. His eyes were smarting. He turned away to wipe them with his sleeve. Luckily, nobody was looking.

  As if a trembling antelope had suddenly appeared on the second floor of the Smoking Wild Boar, the troops turned in one breath toward the young woman who had just emerged at the top of the stairs.

  It was the girl with green eyes.

  Boulard wiped his mouth with the corner of his napkin, gently pushed himself away from the table, and stood up.

  “Good evening, Mademoiselle.”

  The young woman stared at her feet before this regiment of police officers.

  “You wish to speak with me?” asked Boulard.

  He took a few steps in her direction, grabbed the hat from one of his lieutenants who had neglected to take it off, and thrust it discreetly into a half-empty soup tureen, which a waiter promptly cleared away. The hat headed off toward the kitchen.

  The young lady looked up. She seemed hesitant to talk in front of this gathering.

  “Just pretend they aren’t here,” Boulard reassured her. “As far as I’m concerned, they no longer exist.”

  “I was there this morning,” she said.

  Every man in the room gently drew himself up to his full height. She had a very faint accent, and there was a misty quality to her voice, which made everybody want to show off his best side. Even the boy with the vegetables finally stopped peeling, although he didn’t turn around.

  “I saw something,” she added.

  “You’re not the only one,” quipped Boulard. “These gentlemen put on a fine show for us.”

  “No, I saw something else, Officer.”

  There were a few smirks. She was addressing the renowned superintendent as if he were a low-ranking policeman.

  “I saw the man who opened fire.”

  The smiles vanished. Boulard clutched his table napkin in his fist.

  “He was at the window of the Hôtel-Dieu,” she went on. “I got there too late. He’d already gone. That’s all I know.”

  She held out a piece of paper that was folded in half. The superintendent opened it to reveal a portrait sketched in black pencil: a mustache and thin glasses.

  “That’s the man’s face,” she said. “Try to find him.”

  Boulard was struggling to hide his surprise. Now he had a lead. For him, the man who had opened fire counted as much as the boy who had gotten away. “Follow us, Mademoiselle,” he said. “I’d like to get some more details.”

  “There are no more details. It’s all there.”

  Then she walked over to the blackboard where the menu was chalked up and used her elbow to rub out the black pudding and the pig’s trotters. She wrote down an address instead, adding, “I’ve got to catch a boat that leaves from Calais tomorrow morning at five o’clock. I’ll be driving all night. My car is down in the street. But you can pay me a visit over there, if you really want to.”

  All the men had silly grins on their faces. They had sudden urges to go to sea.

  Superintendent Boulard looked at the address she had written in chalk. Above it, she had put her first name and the initials of her surname.

  Ethel B. H.

  Everland Castle

  Inverness

  For the first time in his life, Boulard was at a loss for words. And in front of his men, he felt embarrassed about being embarrassed.

  “Right,” he said. “England it is.”

  “No. Not at all. It’s not in England,” replied Ethel, tucking her brown hair into a leather helmet with large goggles on the front.

  “It’s . . .”

  “It’s in Scotland, Officer.”

  “Of course,” said Boulard briskly, instinctively imitating a bagpipe player with his elbows.

  He was toying with the idea of adding a few touristic touches to prove to the young lady that he was perfectly well aware of the existence of Scotland, its whiskey, and its kilts. But she got in there first with a question: “What’s Vango done for you to be hunting him down like this?”

  “I’m not at liberty to di
sclose,” replied Boulard, delighted to be able to exert his authority again. “Does he interest you?”

  “I like the idea of a priest who climbs cathedrals to escape the police.”

  “He hadn’t yet been ordained a priest,” Boulard pointed out.

  “Thank God.”

  She uttered these words even more mistily and mysteriously. The superintendent could hear their double meaning. Ethel intimated that she was reassured it wasn’t an ordained priest who had behaved in such an unorthodox way. But there was something else. . . . Boulard sensed her secret joy that this young man, this young man in particular, had not become a priest after all.

  “Did you know him?” inquired Boulard, taking a step toward her.

  “No.”

  This time, he noticed a hidden sadness in her voice. And Boulard, who couldn’t help analyzing everything, could tell that she wasn’t lying. She didn’t know this cathedral-climbing seminarian — she no longer recognized the Vango who had revealed himself that day — but Boulard guessed that she had certainly known him in the past.

  The superintendent also noticed that she had called Vango by his first name. He was almost sure about that. How did she know his first name? Boulard had only used it once in the crowd at the cathedral square. The evening newspapers hadn’t made any mention. He tried to delay her a little longer.

  “Why were you there this morning?”

  “I enjoy romantic ceremonies.”

  She pulled on a pair of gloves, which only emphasized the slenderness of her hands.

  Boulard found his manners again.

  “Shall I ask one of my men to drive you?”

  “I’m a perfectly good driver. Good night, Monsieur.”

  She ran down the stairs.

  Boulard saw his men rush over to the windows. They watched Ethel make her way over to a tiny mud-splattered Napier-Railton, an ultra-powerful gem of an automobile that the workshops of Thomson and Taylor had just created at Brooklands. It boasted a real airplane engine in tempered steel.

  She started the car, pulled down her goggles, and disappeared off into the night.

  The atmosphere in the dining room of the Smoking Wild Boar suddenly became much more relaxed. Everybody started laughing and patting one another on the back as if they’d just survived the aftershock of an earthquake.

  Boulard remained at the window. He was watching a boy in a claret-colored apron, alone under the street lamp. He had seen him go down to the street just as the automobile was pulling off, run for a moment in the same direction, then stop and lean against the gaslight.

  The exhaust fumes made it impossible to see his face. But when they cleared, Superintendent Boulard let out a roar and rushed downstairs.

  Five seconds later, the superintendent was on the opposite sidewalk.

  Nobody.

  Boulard gave the lamppost a kick and hobbled back toward the brasserie. He made his way up to the second floor, went into the kitchens, grabbed the chef by the collar, dragged him into the main room, and showed him the pile of perfectly peeled potatoes that had been left on the table.

  The chef straightened his toque, picked up a potato, which he held between his thumb and index finger, and examined it slowly but expertly, looking for something to complain about, but he could find nothing.

  “Impressive. Eight sides, the eight-sided peeled potato. You don’t get better than that. A true talent.”

  “Where is the person who produced that?” asked Boulard.

  “I . . . I don’t know. But I’d be happy to see him again. Don’t worry — he won’t go without being paid. You can tell him then what you think of his potatoes. . . .”

  Boulard forced a smile.

  “Oh, yes? And have you known this artist long?”

  “No. When it’s busy on Saturdays, we take day workers from Les Halles market, in front of Saint-Eustache. I got him at nine o’clock this evening. I don’t know his name.”

  Boulard knocked over the table and its precious pyramid of eight-sided potatoes.

  “I’ll tell you his name. His name is Vango Romano. And he killed a man last night.”

  Sochi, by the Black Sea, the same night, April 1934

  A small conservatory radiates light, like a crystal lantern, on the side of a large house. The rest is darkness. Armed guards, positioned on the roof and in the trees, are invisible. A sea breeze rises up from the valley.

  In the conservatory, three spirit lamps suspended between orchids shine down on a man. A gardener perhaps. He is pruning the potted orange trees.

  “Go to bed, Setanka, my Setanotchka.”

  He has a soft voice. Setanka pretends not to hear him. She is eight years old. Sitting on the floor in her nightie, she is making long seeds float in the water from a watering can: they look like miniature dugout canoes.

  Outside, a lamp sways. A worried face appears at the door. Someone raps on one of the thick glass panes.

  The gardener’s mustache twitches. He carries on pruning but doesn’t answer.

  The visitor enters and makes his way over to the orange trees.

  “There’s news from Paris,” he announces.

  The gardener hasn’t so much as glanced his way. The hint of a smile can be guessed at in the crease of his eyes.

  “It’s not good news,” the man adds.

  This time the gardener’s gaze meets his, and it is as blue as the ice of Lake Baikal.

  “The Bird,” announces the messenger, taking a step back. “The Bird has flown. Nobody can understand what’s happened.”

  The gardener sucks his finger, which is bleeding a little. He has just snagged the skin with his copper scissors.

  At his feet, the little girl has stopped playing. She is listening.

  She’s heard mention of the Bird for several years now.

  Out of all the unfathomable conversations she’s heard between her father and people who come to talk to him, this mention of the Bird is the only thing that has ever attracted her attention.

  She’s even made up stories about him. In the evenings, she dreams that he’s flying in her bedroom; she hides him in her hands, or in her sheets.

  “Boris fired but just missed the target,” the man explains. “But Boris says he’ll find him again. Otherwise, the French police will take matters into their own hands. . . .”

  The messenger stands there in silence. He can feel the cold air on his back. When the gardener finally turns away, the messenger makes to leave, looking very pale. Carefully, he closes the glass door behind him and heads off.

  The lamp disappears into the night.

  “What bird was he talking about?” asks a small voice.

  Still the gardener doesn’t move.

  “Go to bed, Setanka.”

  This time, she stands up and kisses her father’s thick mustache just as she does every evening. She whispers something in his ear.

  Setanka wanders off in her white nightgown, spreading her arms like wings. The gardener slams his scissors into the table. He has already forgotten what his daughter has just told him.

  “You should never shoot birds.”

  That’s what she said.

  If she only knew.

  Paris, at exactly the same time

  Vango is walking on the rooftops of Paris. He knows the aerial path between the Jardin du Luxembourg and the Carmelites by heart. He barely needs to touch the ground when he’s making this journey. He’s aware that the police are stationed in front of the seminary and that they’re waiting for him.

  Vango crosses the stretches of zinc, slides over the slates, and leaps between chimneys. He knows where to find the cables to cross the streets. He doesn’t even disturb the romantic April pigeons cooing in the gutters. He flies over the attic dwellers: the students, maids, and artists. He doesn’t wake the cats, and he doesn’t so much as brush against the laundry hanging out to dry on the terraces. Occasionally, at an open window, a woman wrapped in a blanket is breathing in the springtime night air.

&nbsp
; Jumping from roof to roof, he passes just above them all, without a sound.

  A few days earlier, Vango had taken this route in the opposite direction, to escape from the seminary in the middle of the night in order to reach the snow-covered park.

  From the last gutter, he had leaped into an old chestnut tree that straddled the park fence with its spikes, before sliding down the tree trunk.

  It had snowed during the first few days of April. Vango had kept walking until dawn, making his way through the snow, across lawns and deserted pathways. He had stared at the ice in the lakes. Then, again by way of the rooftops, he had returned to the Carmelite Chapel for morning mass.

  Father Jean had given him a mild telling-off for being a few seconds late.

  “You sleep too much, little one.”

  He had said this while looking at Vango’s shoes, which were soaked through with snow and mud. There was no hiding anything from Father Jean.

  But this time, as he walked over the rooftops of Paris, Vango knew what would be waiting for him at the seminary, and it wouldn’t be the gentle reproaches of Father Jean, or even the fury of old Bastide, the canon, who ran the house like an army barracks.

  What was waiting for him was the police, handcuffs, and perhaps prison.

  Why had he fled, that same morning, from Notre Dame? Why had he run away, if he had nothing to reproach himself for? Doing so meant that the finger was now firmly pointed at him. But then again, for reasons that he didn’t quite understand, Vango always felt compelled to be suspicious of everything, with the result that he believed himself to be a target for all sorts of enemies.

  Vango firmly believed he was under threat. Since the age of fourteen, he had been told he suffered from something that a psychiatrist had written in capital letters on his file: PARANOIA. Because of those eight letters, he had nearly been thrown out of the seminary. Father Jean had done everything in his power to defend him. He had personally undertaken to guarantee Vango’s mental well-being.

  “You’re taking risks,” Canon Bastide had told Father Jean. “You’ll regret it.”

  Father Jean took risks every day, and he never regretted them.

  This time, however, he was worried.