A Prince Without a Kingdom

  When the chauffeur opened the door, the bedroom was filled with laughter. Three or four people rushed in, led by Madame Atlas.

  “There he is, dear old Ferdinand. Look, he’s sulking!”

  The Cat’s father got up off his chair.

  “Ferdinand, these ladies wished to see our bedroom and the balcony.”

  The guests let out shrieks of amazement before trampling a tiger skin rug and rushing out onto the balcony.

  The Cat crouched on the roof. She watched her father calmly lift his wooden chair and raise it above his head. The merry shrieks stopped. He hurled the chair with all his might toward the bedroom: it went through the French windows, which shattered.

  “Ferdinand!” exclaimed his wife.

  But he had disappeared.

  Attracted by the noise, clusters of guests turned up and entered the bedroom. The Cat watched her father, down below, striding across the courtyard.

  After a few minutes of people walking around the bed and slipping on pieces of broken glass like tourists on a battlefield, the orchestra downstairs lured nearly everyone back onto the dance floor by playing “Tout va très bien Madame la Marquise,” a song that was all the rage in the open-air cafés and dance halls.

  The Cat thought she was on her own at last, but three men had stayed behind to smoke on the balcony.

  “There’s trouble ahead,” said one of them.

  “Let’s enjoy ourselves while we can. There won’t always be parties in this house.”

  It wasn’t possible to hear the third man, whose words were muffled. But someone answered him, “Yes, his name has been cited in the Chamber of Deputies by Monsieur Vallat or one of his friends. . . . There was a terribly witty pun about his extravagant business dealings; I can’t quite remember how it went.”

  “If they go for Atlas, they won’t leave him in peace.”

  The man with the muffled voice must have suddenly remembered the play on words, because he said something short and punchy that prompted his friends to burst out laughing. The only thing the Cat heard was the word “Jew”: the same word she had seen scrawled on the gate one morning, before it was painted black again, a word she had never heard spoken at home. She removed a piece of slate from the roof.

  Out on the balcony, they were talking about the paintings they had seen in the drawing room, about how charming Madame Atlas was despite everything, and about the quality of the champagne. Someone mentioned a debt of loyalty to their host, who had always been so hospitable. Indeed, he wished to discuss the matter with the deputy of the Ardèche region.

  “Loyal, yes, I’d defend him!”

  “At least until the champagne runs out!”

  The others pretended to be shocked. But they were tipsy, and it was hard to stop laughing.

  Just then, the three men saw a piece of slate appear out of the night sky, spinning in their direction. It decapitated a champagne glass and grazed the cheek of the man with the muffled voice. Then it splintered on the parquet floor of the bedroom. The Cat, who’d had enough, jumped onto the neighbor’s roof.

  The orchestras were enjoying a break, which meant that the slate could clearly be heard skidding over the wooden floor like a piece of ice hurled onto a frozen lake.

  The Cat was already running over the rooftops. No sooner had she thrown the slate than she noticed somebody rise up and begin to chase her. She had taken to the rooftops when she was seven. Usually, it was easy for her to throw someone off her trail. She outran the gutter cats and feared nobody on this terrain. The person following her, however, was cut from the same cloth. He didn’t exactly tread in her footsteps, but he followed her at the same speed, slightly to the right, as if he knew that a stampede on the rooftops meant that bits of metalwork or tiling might work loose, and the person behind in the race would risk slipping.

  The Cat couldn’t believe that one of the three men had managed to react so quickly. Luckily, a bit farther off, in a courtyard between the buildings, stood a chestnut tree in which she could shelter. There were just two more buildings to traverse: the first had a large roof terrace, while on the second there were three stacks of chimney pots that she had to climb one after the other. When the Cat turned around as she stood on the gutter opposite the tree, her pursuer was no longer behind her. The highest branches were below her now. She took a deep breath and jumped. While she was in midair, she saw a shadow burst from the other side of the courtyard and throw itself into the branches.

  It was as if a pigeon fight had broken out in the leaves of the chestnut tree. The branches were shaking. The two opponents chased each other from one end of the tree to the other, and then everything went very still.

  “Are you going to stop?”

  Silence.

  “Who’s there?” asked the Cat eventually.

  “It’s me,” answered Vango.

  The Cat quickly climbed to the top of the tree and found herself face-to-face with Vango. They hadn’t seen each other for three years.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to the party hoping to find you.”

  “You were there?”

  Their hands didn’t touch. The Cat was trembling and out of breath.

  “You barricaded yourself in when I tried to come into your bedroom,” Vango told her.

  “I did?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was you?”

  “And when I climbed onto the roof, you ran away.”

  “I didn’t realize.” The Cat smiled. “It wasn’t because of you.”

  She was happy to see him. She grabbed hold of his sleeve, which was the most affectionate gesture she had ever made.

  “So, have you seen Ethel?” asked the Cat.

  “No. I’m on my way to her place; I just wanted —”

  The Cat pulled away.

  “But didn’t you see her today? Does she know you’re here?”

  “Don’t worry. I know she doesn’t want to see me anymore. . . .”

  “Vango . . .”

  “I must talk to her.”

  “Vango!” exclaimed the Cat, raising her voice. “She’s already gone.”

  “Who has?”

  “She received your message. She’s set off to find you.”

  Vango twisted the branch above him to let in some light. But it did little to shift the shadow over the Cat’s face.

  “Where is she?”

  “She’ll have left Paris this evening.”

  “But where has she gone?”

  “You wrote to her, telling her to join you.”

  “What are you talking about? She’d asked me not to write to her.”

  “She showed me the telegram. Four words in a telegram. You were asking for her help.”

  Vango felt his heart racing.

  “They’re going to follow her,” he said. “They’ll follow her in order to find me. Where is she?”

  “She mentioned an address that you gave a long time ago, an address on the corner of two streets, in a building under construction. Ethel has left for New York.”

  Vango immediately thought of Zefiro. Ethel would lead whoever was after him to Zefiro.

  And, just as happened every time, in a flash the Cat was alone in the branches. Without so much as a good-bye.

  Vango arrived to find an empty station. The last train to Cherbourg had just left. He woke the engineers, one of whom pointed to the end platform, where Vango jumped onto a goods truck bound for Caen.

  In a state of torment, Vango bedded down between some blue sacks. He didn’t sleep a wink. At dawn, in front of Caen Station, he climbed onto the roof of a truck, jumping off at Valognes, where he borrowed a bicycle for the last twenty kilometers or so.

  He entered the Port of Cherbourg and ran toward the dock. Too late.

  The Europa had set sail that night.

  Frankfurt, Germany, May 3, 1937

  Sleep, Hindy, sleep a while longer.

  Schiff was pushing a cart of empty gas bottles, while technicians whi
rled about the hangar. Above him, the Hindenburg had gobbled up its two hundred thousand cubic meters of hydrogen. Schiff couldn’t take his eyes off it. The balloon’s belly was full to bursting. It was a giant, as long as twelve tennis courts end to end, and appeared dust colored in its lair. Schiff talked to it from morning until night, moving his lips soundlessly. He called it Hindy, as if it were a friend.

  Sleep until this evening. . . .

  Hugo Eckener had asked Schiff to talk inside his head, and the boy was doing his best to obey him. He worked hard, and that way people forgot about him. It took hundreds of gas bottles to satisfy Hindy’s hunger. Schiff transported them one by one, day in and day out.

  The Zeppelin Company workers were doing the final checks. Two or three of these men were still suspended from the arches.

  The Hindenburg’s departure for America was set for that same evening. It had already made several crossings to Brazil at the start of the season. But this was its first flight to New York in 1937. A dozen cabins had been added over the winter. It wasn’t fully booked on the outbound journey, but every cabin was already reserved for the return leg from New York. The Hindenburg zeppelin could now digest seventy-two passengers and nearly as many crew members. It was an ogre.

  Captain Pruss walked past Schiff, who stopped his cart to gawk at the four golden stripes on the sleeves of the captain’s jacket. Pruss was accompanied by an assistant, who was running through a list of problems still outstanding. The captain was used to this kind of inventory: the kitchen generator had broken down; the cabin boys didn’t know how to make the beds; the thousands of tons of water were taking too long to load; the chief engineer’s wife was about to give birth. . . .

  “What d’you want me to say? Get another engineer, or else bring his wife along too!”

  The assistant was taking notes.

  “Just tell me there isn’t a storm forecast,” growled Pruss.

  “Not tonight, no. But the piano —”

  “What’s wrong with the piano?” asked the captain irritatedly.

  An aluminum baby grand piano covered in yellow leather had been installed in the starboard saloon of the airship, on the upper deck. Schubert could be played over Cape Verde or Ellis Island.

  “The piano tuner is by the door. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to him. You’ve asked him —”

  “I haven’t asked him anything!” protested Pruss. “Don’t you think I’ve got better things to do? Does it sound out of tune?”

  “I’m not an expert, sir, but when I . . .”

  The man sung a nocturne very badly while tinkling his fingers over an imaginary keyboard.

  “All right, all right,” interrupted Pruss. “Have him tune it.”

  Schiff’s lips were still moving as he stared at the captain’s four stripes.

  “Is he still here?” asked Pruss, noticing the boy.

  “The commander wants to keep him.”

  “Heil Hitler!” fired off Schiff, raising his right arm.

  Pruss continued on his way.

  “Apparently Commander Eckener is in his office.”

  “Apparently so, Captain.”

  “I thought he was supposed to be in Austria for some meetings.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  The two of them headed off. And Schiff pushed his cart toward the exit.

  At eight o’clock that evening, at the far end of an airfield in the middle of nowhere, two cars arrived from opposite directions. The first was a black German car with a Swiss license plate. The second was a big shiny red Bugatti, which flattened the grass with its fenders.

  The cars came to a stop at a respectable distance from each other. Once their engines were switched off, silence descended again.

  Then two men got out of the first car, keeping their right hands under the left armpits inside their jackets and their eyes trained on the other vehicle. They were ready to pull out their weapons at any moment. The airship was already outside the hangar, gleaming in the evening sun less than a kilometer away.

  The doors of the red car remained shut for another minute. Over on the other side, the two men were waiting. From time to time they said something to the person inside the black car. They didn’t want to betray their anxiety. Suddenly, three doors of the red Bugatti opened simultaneously. The driver stepped out first. He was an old man in white leather gloves and a chauffeur’s uniform. He looked as if he had spent the last couple of hours shining his shoes, which were such a dazzling black they almost looked white. His face was dignified and expressionless. You could tell he had an English accent before he even opened his mouth.

  Behind him, another man appeared. It was Esquirol, looking more elegant than ever. He wore a long jacket over a pair of striped wild silk trousers. He was fiddling with his hat, which boasted a claret-colored ribbon. His black hair was turning gray at the temples, and he had slicked it down with a subtle eau de parfum.

  Doctor Esquirol was leaning on the car door, his hand raised slightly to protect himself from the sun. Even the small flies in the evening light were getting on with their business in silence. All that could be heard was an occasional creaking from a cylinder cooling down.

  Finally, the third person appeared: a short black man with broad shoulders, which he squeezed through the open door one at a time. He was dressed like an Andalusian prince. He wore an emerald-green jacket with a purple collar, a pearl waistcoat, a wide black tie that was almost undone, and trousers with a braided trim. Perhaps Joseph Puppet had gone a little over the top. But he had been told not to skimp, and he had followed his orders to the letter.

  His eyes were hidden by dark tortoiseshell glasses, he sported three rings on each hand, and he carried a walking stick with a carved knob depicting a sparrow. He wore no socks inside his Italian shoes, which had been made from a single piece of leather. On his wrist was the lace from the left glove of his final boxing match, in which he had knocked out an American in the Buffalo Stadium at Montrouge before calling an end to his career. J. J. Puppet looked like a prince, but a sophisticated, fashionable prince. On his other hand, he wore a slim wristwatch that could have belonged to a lady. There was brocade on his elbows and a pair of rosewood buttons at each cuff; and the ivory clip on his black suspenders appeared beneath his waistcoat when he leaned on the car hood.

  Doctor Esquirol took a few steps toward the black car. He was approached by one of the two armed men. Esquirol raised both arms. He was frisked carefully.

  “And the others!” ordered the man.

  Puppet and the English chauffeur stepped forward. They were frisked in turn.

  The bodyguard went back to the car and opened the passenger door.

  A man stepped out. He strode across the grass toward Esquirol and Puppet, clad in a dull suit that couldn’t have contrasted more sharply with their fashionable attire. He looked tense.

  “Where is Mr. Eckener?”

  “Mr. Valpa, there’s a problem with Commander Eckener. He’s not with us.”

  “I am here to speak with Eckener,” insisted Valpa.

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t able to let you know in time, but Commander Eckener won’t be on board the Hindenburg with us tonight.”

  Vincent Valpa took a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his mouth.

  “You’ve made me . . . come from Geneva for nothing?”

  “Certainly not,” said Esquirol. “Have you heard of Joseph Jacques Puppet, the boxer?”

  “Yes, I think so,” said Valpa, staring at the Andalusian prince.

  “He’s here for the same reason as you. He is part of the great contract. He is suspicious, and wishes to meet Eckener before signing.”

  “I’m not suspicious, Doctor.” Puppet smiled. “You are overstating the case. But I’ve only seen Eckener’s name at the bottom of the page. I need to feel his hand in mine before I can believe him. I am investing a great deal of gold in this contract, equivalent to the combined weight of your two bodyguards, Mr. Valpa. And, li
ke you, I want to be sure of what I’m doing.”

  Valpa turned to assess how heavy his bodyguards were. It would appear that this man’s investment amounted to three hundred kilos of gold. He looked at Puppet with rather more respect.

  Puppet smiled, because he knew that the only gold he possessed on this earth was the tiny ray of sunshine that had just come to rest on his patent leather shoes. He didn’t even own a pair of scissors in the hair salon where he worked in Monaco.

  But he had been asked to play the role of a wealthy retired boxer who invested his money in arms trafficking. And Puppet was proving to be an excellent actor.

  “You’re about to meet Commander Eckener, gentlemen,” said Esquirol. “He’s not able to fly to New York with us, but he is waiting for you in his office.”

  After a few seconds, Vincent Valpa folded his handkerchief. Puppet tucked the sparrow head of his walking stick under his arm. Each of them returned to their cars, which proceeded to crawl toward the Hindenburg as if part of a funeral convoy.

  In the first car, Esquirol leaned toward the chauffeur.

  “Harry, drop us here and return to Monte Carlo.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Please thank Madame Solange again.”

  Madame Solange, who was a customer at Joseph Puppet’s salon, was married to an ambassador. She had lent her husband’s red Bugatti and his chauffeur, Harry, in exchange for twenty free wash-and-dries.

  Esquirol was taking the most insane risk he could possibly imagine. Hugo Eckener had no idea about any of this. They were going to have to improvise.

  There was a slight fuss at the foot of the airship. A lady traveler who had arrived from Italy had just found out that she would have to pay five marks for every fifteen kilos of excess baggage. She hadn’t been informed of this until now, she complained. Air hostess Imhof, the only female member of the zeppelin’s crew, was trying to calm her down. But the lady kept insisting that she weighed at least twenty kilos less than most of the passengers, and she pointed at Madame Kleeman a little farther off, the wife of an important motorcycle manufacturer.

  Inside the zeppelin, Kubis the headwaiter was striding through the lounges to check that everything was in order. It was almost quarter past eight, and the passengers would be appearing in a few moments.