“I don’t know,” answered Ethel. “I’m not Vango’s keeper. Isn’t he here?”
“No, he’s not here!” boomed the commander. “Nor will he ever be again. We’re leaving.”
“You’re not going to set off without Vango?” remonstrated the cook.
“He’s fired. That’s it. We’re off. . . .”
Eckener’s voice faltered. Ethel looked away. The orders rebounded all the way to the flight deck. Otto Manz collapsed against the partition.
“Vango? You can’t be serious!”
“Don’t I look serious?” roared Eckener, his eyebrows sticking up.
“At least try this sauce for me,” pleaded the cook, still with the wooden spoon in his hand.
But before the taste of truffles could reverse destiny, Eckener had disappeared.
Suddenly, the voice of Kubis, the headwaiter, could be heard calling out, “There he is!”
Ethel bounded into the corridor and made for the dining room; pushing aside the travelers who were gathered at the window, she scanned the airfield that was filled with soldiers and onlookers.
“There he is!” declared Kubis again, from the neighboring window.
And sure enough, Ethel could see, beyond the crowd, a man, running and waving his arms.
“It’s Mr. Antonov!”
Boris Petrovitch Antonov had also been missing from the roll call.
“He’s wounded.”
The Russian had wrapped a scarf around his knee and he was limping.
This time, the white wooden staircase was put back in place for him to embark. The latecomer explained that he had tripped on a foxhole while stepping back to take a photo.
His eyes were fixed on Ethel.
Boris Antonov had small wire-framed glasses and a waxen complexion. He was traveling with Doctor Kakline, a Russian scientist and Moscow’s official representative for escorting the Zeppelin over the Soviet Union. Two weeks earlier, Eckener had decided to bypass the north of Moscow, where tens of thousands of people waited to no avail. Doctor Kakline had demonstrated his Siberian temper, but it took more than that to make Hugo Eckener change his mind.
Kakline was now busy dealing with Antonov. But he didn’t even glance at the bloodstained bandage on his compatriot’s knee. Instead, he was grilling him with a barrage of hushed questions. Kakline seemed to be satisfied with the outcome of Antonov’s adventure. “Da, da, da,” he kept saying, pinching Antonov’s cheeks as if he were a good soldier.
The passengers felt the surge of takeoff. This was always the most emotional moment, as the flying ship pulled away from the shouts of the crowd and slowly rose to silent heights in the air.
Old Eckener was in his wooden chair on the starboard side, near the flight deck windows. His blue eyes were tinged with sadness. He was thinking about Vango, the fourteen-year-old boy who had just spent nearly a year on board the Graf Zeppelin. From very early on, he had imagined a mysterious destiny for the person he called Piccolo. But he couldn’t help becoming attached to him. From the outset, he had dreaded the day when Vango would disappear.
Eckener was gazing down at the corn. The balloon had already risen two hundred meters. The hive of activity in the hangars at Lakehurst had been left behind, and only the crop fields were in view now. But when he saw, down below, in the soft mist and expanse of yellow, a boy running through the ears of corn, Eckener rediscovered his smile. He stowed that sight in his memory, along with all the others: the Sahara hurling itself into the ocean from the cliff tops, the grid formation of the gardens at Hokkaido in Japan, the full moon over the dark forests of Siberia. Each moment was a miracle. It was as if the harvesting had been forgotten about, in order to make it possible for a young man to cut a furrow through the corn as he ran beneath the balloon.
Ethel was in her cabin. Her hands against the glass, she leaned into the window without ever taking her eyes off that tiny dot moving across the field below her. The crazy racing of the blue dot was slowly losing ground against the shadow of the balloon. Her heart pounding, Ethel leaned even farther so as not to let him out of her sight.
“Vango,” she whispered.
At exactly the same moment, behind the partition wall, Doctor Kakline dropped his champagne glass.
The crystal shattered against the corner of a table, making Comrade Antonov stand up.
“Are you quite sure about that?” muttered Kakline, pushing the window slightly ajar.
“Why?” inquired Boris Antonov.
“I’m the one asking the questions here,” insisted Kakline, as he glared at the floor.
“I . . . I didn’t have time to go right up to the body,” stammered Boris. “But —”
“What d’you mean?”
“But I saw him fall.”
“You didn’t check?”
“The zeppelin was about to take off without me. . . .”
The blue dot disappeared. Kakline gritted his teeth.
“You idiot.”
Exhausted, his legs having taken a thrashing from his race across the field, Vango stopped. He bent over and clasped his knees, unable to catch his breath. The purring of the engines was becoming fainter now. Slowly, Vango stood up. His eyes were fixed on the horizon until complete silence was restored.
Lakehurst, New Jersey, seven years later, May 1936
Rusty warehouses had been erected where the cornfields used to be, but Vango still recognized the black earth between his fingers. He crouched down at exactly the spot where he had watched Ethel disappear all those years ago.
It was here that his life on the run had begun.
Seven years later, he still didn’t know what his enemies looked like.
Day hadn’t broken yet. Vango had arrived in New York by boat the evening before, on a third-class ticket. He had made for Lakehurst, where the Hindenburg, the new flying monster from the house of Zeppelin, was due to land for the first time.
Vango wanted to have a word with Hugo Eckener.
There are some people whose schedules are advertised in block capitals at newspaper kiosks. To find out where they are, all you have to do is listen to the newspaper sellers in the street calling out, “Eckener in New York with his Hindenburg! Buy the Post!”
On their way back from Sicily, Vango and Ethel had traveled to France before boarding a boat to cross the Channel at Le Havre.
When they docked at Southampton, she had made her way back to Scotland. And Vango had set off for America.
Ethel couldn’t understand why he was deserting her on the dockside, when they had already been lost to each other for such a long time. He couldn’t even tell her what he planned to do. This time, he hadn’t made any promises. She was shivering in the cold. He had stood there, saying nothing, with the rain streaming through his hair. Ethel had walked away. The ship’s horn announced the end of the stopover.
No good-byes. Always the same scene being played out. He would never forget that look in Ethel’s eyes, beneath her hood: a sort of threat. She hadn’t made any promises either.
Night was clinging on in the west. The airship wouldn’t arrive until after midday. The air still felt cool, and in the distance, the landing field was empty. Vango lay down under a few lingering stars.
Through the window of a corrugated iron shack, a man dressed in black was spying on him.
Silent seagulls circled above Vango. On the bridge of the transatlantic liner Normandy, approaching the coast, small squadrons of gulls had been watching over him, as they would have followed a plowman or a trawling fisherman. Now they had found him again, despite the gloom, in the midst of these hangars far from the sea. Five or six gulls pretending to be nocturnal birds. Vango fell asleep, hypnotized by the flapping of white wings.
The man in black, clad in a bandit’s coat, waited a while before emerging from his hideout. He approached the boy and leaned over his sleeping face. Concerned, the birds kept a close eye on things. The man glanced up at the circle they made in the night sky, then untied Vango’s shoes. He p
ut them in his poacher’s pockets and headed off.
When daylight woke him, Vango sensed thunder in the offing, and through his half-open eyes, he glimpsed a stormy sky. But on heaving himself up with his elbows, he discovered that his shoes had disappeared. He searched the grass around him. Checking his belt, he could feel the cloth roll he was looking for, containing the precious stones. So his old shoes were the only things that had been stolen. Nothing else.
He tipped his head back to get the measure of the storm. A rumbling sound was coming from the gray sky, streaked with glints of mercury. But this particular sky was powered by four enormous engines and carried more than a hundred passengers: it was the Hindenburg airship arriving from Europe.
Vango stood up, feeling dazzled. When he had traveled on board the Graf Zeppelin with Ethel, back in 1929, he could never have imagined that one day Commander Eckener would succeed in making an infinitely bigger and heavier airship rise up into the skies, complete with a smoking room, a revolving door, and even an aluminum baby grand piano covered in yellow leather. But Eckener’s dreams could make mountains fly.
Vango started to sprint barefoot toward the landing field.
The crowd was packed in tightly around the barriers. Ranks of curious people kept arriving. As he passed among them, Vango missed the sense of genuine exultation he had noticed on previous occasions. Something seemed to have tarnished the crazy, childish joy he had always witnessed toward the Zeppelin. There was a surprising silence all around him, making the orders being given to the airmen — who were preparing to grab hold of the balloon’s mooring ropes — ring out even more loudly.
Vango knew what had changed.
A few weeks earlier, there had been a lot of talk about the propaganda dropped over Germany from the new Hindenburg balloon. Every province was showered with leaflets depicting Hitler, while loudspeakers blared Nazi songs: this terrifying spectacle had sullied the airship’s image, even in America. And now, despite the spray from the crossing, the circle around the swastika on the zeppelin’s flank glistened the color of blood.
The balloon had come to a stop. The footbridge was brought out from its underbelly. Vango recognized Captain Lehmann, posted at the entrance to greet those about to disembark the airship. When they appeared at the top of the steps, the passengers cast victorious eyes over the crowd. There wasn’t a single crease in their white shirts, or a hair out of place, and their shoes glistened. Still, they looked different from the rest of humanity, as if they had returned from another world.
Such was the magic spell cast by this flying machine.
Vango decided to let the passengers disperse before approaching Hugo Eckener.
A blond woman was making her way down the steps. She was flanked by two young men, who looked like hotel bellboys, carrying her suitcases and furs. Vango stared at her. At a thousand dollars a ticket, it was rare to travel onboard the zeppelin with staff. Usually, they would follow separately in the hold of a cargo ship, accompanying the parrot cage and the twelve suitcases of clothes.
Another passenger quickly stole the blonde’s top billing, attracting the photographers’ attention. His name was on everyone’s lips. He was a famous singer returning from a European tour. His lips were fixed in a publicity-shot smile. Vango was carried along by the crowd without even realizing it. Caught up in the whirlwind of journalists and curious bystanders, he felt himself almost being lifted off the ground. There was a police cordon to protect the star, but the scrum trampled the cordon and threatened to turn violent.
Vango bobbed along like a cork in this human tide. In the middle of the fighting that had broken out, a face rose up and immediately disappeared again.
Stunned, Vango just had time to recognize it. He tried to elbow his way against the current. The face was perfectly etched in his memory.
The man had trimmed his mustache into fangs, while sideburns hid part of his cheeks, and he wore a brown trilby pulled low over his eyes. But it was him.
Zefiro.
Vango had spotted his friend Padre Zefiro, abbot of the invisible monastery on the island of Arkudah, who, some months earlier, had mysteriously abandoned his monks without giving any indication of his whereabouts.
“Padre!” whispered Vango.
He received two blows to the head and slid to the ground.
Over to the west, in Indiana, an engineer called John W. Chamberlain, emancipator of housewives, had just finished building the first fully automatic washing machine, which relied on a force known as the centrifuge. And it was this same centrifugal force that sent Vango spinning slowly in an outward direction until he rolled on the grass, whiter than a sheet.
On opening his eyes, he spotted a coat disappearing behind a car. Vango recognized the trilby and went after it.
Zefiro . . . He couldn’t let him disappear again.
Chevrolet buses were filling up with passengers as Vango drew nearer. He saw Zefiro chasing a handsome purple open-top car before jumping on board one of the buses. Vango climbed into the next one. The convoy was slowed by the flow of pedestrians. Horns tooted, and the yellow buses lurched over the bumpy grass before rediscovering the delights of pavement.
The man sitting next to Vango on the bus eyed his neighbor’s shoeless feet suspiciously. He kept his hands tightly pressed against his pockets, for fear of having his fob watch stolen. The last thing the passenger could have imagined was that Vango, the barefoot beggar, had sewn into his belt a pouch of rubies valuable enough to buy up all the shoe factories on the East Coast.
The journey didn’t take long. At quarter past seven that morning, the yellow Chevrolets pulled up in front of Lakehurst station. A few passengers got out. Spotting the trilby and the coat among them, Vango set off on their trail. The purple car was parked under the station clock.
Zefiro quickened his step and examined the car. It was empty. He entered the ticket hall, inspected the waiting room, and headed out onto the platform. Whistles shrilled across the station. The Blue Comet was on platform one. It pulled out, shrouded in steam.
It was a magnificent blue train — as handsome as a toy, with pale yellow lacquered windows. Vango made it onto the platform just in time to see the padre board the moving train. Pushing aside the stationmaster who was blocking his way, Vango began to sprint barefoot. Two other railway workers crossed the tracks in a bid to stop him.
“You shouldn’t attempt to board a moving train, sir!”
The last carriage was a long way ahead of him, and layers of smoke prevented him from seeing where the platform ended. Vango put on a final spurt and jumped onto the back buffer of the locomotive. Just in time. The platform had disappeared beneath his feet.
At that very instant, the gleaming purple car exploded under the clock. The explosion was so powerful that it shattered all the windows in the station.
Vango clung to the train, leaving behind him the racket of shouts and whistle blows. All he could see was black smoke rising up beyond the platforms.
Vango didn’t understand what was going on. Ever since he was fourteen, there had always been dangers and dramas trailing in his wake. The world exploded when he passed by. Ashes were all he left behind.
Recently, on the ocean liner to America, he had spent three hours in the rain one night, on the deserted bridge, his arms outstretched to the sky, hoping to wash away this curse. Two old ladies had scooped him up the next morning. They were Danish traveling companions, and they scolded him before lending him their cabin for the whole day so he could warm up.
“You silly boy! How irresponsible of you!”
They made him drink tea until he was full to bursting and they rubbed mustard poultices into his back.
“Were you out of your mind?”
Being on the receiving end of someone else’s anger had never done Vango so much good.
The Blue Comet was a luxurious train offering a high-speed connection to New York. After its hour of glory, the Great Depression of 1929 had restricted its timetable. But this mo
rning, all the seats were taken. Vango made his way through the carriages, one after another. He was wearing a gray velvet cap and had taken off his jacket, which he carried over one arm. There was nothing remarkable about him, provided you didn’t look at his feet.
Nobody on board had noticed the explosion. The passengers were reading quietly or else dozing, propped against the windows.
Vango was looking for Padre Zefiro. The last time he had seen him, on the main concourse at Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris, the padre hadn’t even recognized him. From that day on, there had been no further sightings of Zefiro: he was reported missing, believed dead.
Close by, in the front carriage, a lady was lounging on a first-class seat. She had exclusive use of the two end compartments and had stationed an armed guard in the corridor. Even the ticket inspector had received a wad of dollars to guarantee that she wouldn’t be disturbed. She wore an angora stole over one shoulder, and from time to time, she rubbed her ear sensuously against it.
It was the blonde with the bellboys. She had left them in the adjacent compartment, along with the men in suits who acted as her bodyguards. On the seat opposite her, two other burly fellows in matching uniforms were waiting, hats on knees.
“I’m away for two weeks,” she complained, “and no progress has been made?”
Neither of the men responded.
“Answer me, Dorgeles!”
No reply came from the man called Dorgeles, but his enormous neighbor opened his mouth.
The blonde made a violent sssssshhh! noise. This in turn made the stole on her shoulder ripple, and out of it leaped two blue eyes. It was a cat. The woman slowly lowered her head again, so that it would go back to sleep.
Dorgeles knew what the person hidden beneath this feminine disguise was capable of. He knew how urgent it was to placate the man behind the makeup: Voloy Viktor.
“We’ll find him for you, Madame Victoria. We know he’s after you. He’ll come to us.”
The blonde waved her hand, as if Dorgeles’s voice still risked waking the cat.
“I can’t sleep for a single second,” she hissed. “I know that Zefiro is following me. I can smell him.”