A Prince Without a Kingdom

by Timothee de Fombelle

  “Trust us. We’re here to protect you.”

  “Can you smell it, Dorgeles? The stench of sulfur?”

  She was hallucinating.

  “You’ve got to trust us. You’re putting yourself in danger by changing the timetable so often.”

  “Surely you can smell it, Dorgeles?”

  It had never been part of the plan for Voloy Viktor to travel on board the zeppelin. Nor on this train, for that matter. Suspicious to the point of being obsessive, he had suddenly demanded that his big purple car pull up in front of the station in order for him to catch the Blue Comet.

  “I could smell him,” whined Madame Victoria. “I could smell him behind me. He’s always there. Zefiro is after my skin.”

  “There was nothing to worry about in the car. He even missed you at the Plaza Hotel, back in May.”

  The blonde pointed a blue-painted nail at Dorgeles.

  “You’re the one who missed him at the Plaza! YOU!”

  The cat snarled. Dorgeles stared at the floor. He was recalling the evening in New York when he had been trussed up and bundled into the trunk of his own car before he’d had a chance to figure out what was happening.

  Next to him in the train compartment, big Bob Almond, from Chicago, who hadn’t been recruited for the quality of his conversation, was starting to butcher his hat.

  “You can rejoin the others,” Dorgeles told him.

  Bob stood up and banged his head on the ceiling. Then he made a small polite bow, hitting his neck against the luggage rack as he drew himself up to his full height.

  When he had finally made it out of the compartment, Madame Victoria rolled her eyes.

  “I wouldn’t even hire him to scrape the muck off my hunting boots. How do you select your primates?”

  They were both silent for a few minutes. Madame Victoria leaned against the window. Her eyes flitted over the countryside. How could anyone have recognized, in this swooning lady, the madness of Voloy Viktor, arms dealer and murderer?

  “I have some news that will interest you,” Dorgeles said softly, in a bid to regain lost ground.

  Madame Victoria didn’t respond.

  “Some news as of yesterday evening,” Dorgeles went on. “Did you know that Zefiro’s sidekick, the one we photographed him with, has been identified . . . ?”

  “His name is Vango Romano.” Madame Victoria sighed wearily as she rummaged in her makeup bag. “Don’t you have anything new to tell me, Dorgeles?”

  “He arrived in New York last night, by boat.”

  This time, there was a flicker of curiosity on Madame Victoria’s face. She looked at herself in a little mirror edged with mother-of-pearl.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve got one of my men stationed in customs at the port.”

  Madame Victoria snapped the mirror shut. She produced a square of leather from her blouse and took out two photos, which she held up against each other.

  “Now at last you’re saying something interesting. I’ve always thought we’d get to the old one via the young one.”

  Dorgeles didn’t even allow himself a satisfied smile.

  He was only too familiar with his boss’s mood swings.

  “Show this photo to each of our men.”

  Dorgeles nodded and settled comfortably into the back of his seat.

  “Now!” roared Madame Victoria. “Show them now! I want that little . . .”

  Dorgeles grabbed the photo, stood up, and left the compartment.

  Vango had only one carriage left to check. One last chance to find Zefiro. Suddenly, the shadow of the ticket inspector loomed before him. Vango pushed open the door to his right and disappeared inside before he was spotted. He found himself in the first-class lavatory. A curtain had been drawn across the window. It was almost pitch-black. Vango turned the lock. With his ear pressed to the door, he waited for the inspector to head off.

  When he tried to take a step backward, he nearly trod on something bulky and limp on the floor. He bent down in the gloom and put his hand out. Using his fist to stifle his cry, he pinned himself against the wall, tugging the curtain clean off its rail.

  There, curled up in front of him, between the basin and the toilet, was a lifeless body, almost naked, lying facedown.

  “Padre?”

  Vango lifted the head by its hair and turned it toward the light.

  For a split second, he had thought it was Zefiro. His sense of relief was almost shameful. Slowly, he bent over the body. The man was wearing underpants and an undershirt. His ribs rose and fell: he was still breathing. Vango knelt down next to him. There were no clues as to who he was. The man merely seemed to be asleep, his right hand closed around something. Vango leaned over him a bit more. In his clenched fingers, the man was holding what looked like a small pair of metal pliers.

  Is that some kind of tooth extractor? wondered Vango.

  He picked up the object to see if there were any bloodstains on it. Nothing. The fewer clues there are, the more the imagination runs riot. Vango started fantasizing about a patient’s revenge against his dentist, and other macabre scenarios. Above all, he was conscious that he didn’t want to be accused of another crime that he hadn’t committed. He splashed some cold water on his face, undid the lock, and took a deep breath.

  Vango pushed the door open.

  Right there, waiting to come in, loomed the figure of Bob Almond, Madame Victoria’s henchman. Vango turned very pale, and his eyes bulged.

  Bob was squirming in front of him. Not even his huge body was exempt from the calls of nature.

  “I need to go in,” he said.

  Vango didn’t budge, having shut the door firmly behind him. Bob stooped down to his level.

  “Sick?” he asked, staring at the boy’s pallid face.

  “That’s right,” said Vango. “I’m feeling sick.”

  Bob sniffed, as if he wanted proof.

  “Very sick,” repeated Vango.

  Bob Almond took a step backward to avert disaster. Vango seized the opportunity to lock himself inside the first-class lavatory again.

  “Come back in five minutes, please,” he called out from the other side of the door, between explicit retching noises.

  He heard Bob walking away down the corridor.

  Vango was at the back of his tiny hideout, shivering with fear. But he didn’t really start feeling sick until, down by his feet, in that clammy air, the body of the tooth snatcher started moving.

  When Bob Almond went to sit back down in the compartment, along with his three colleagues and the two bellboys, he was shocked at how patient he had been. He stared into space and thought about what he’d just done. Next time, as sure as his name was Bob, he would make that guy deal with his problems on the tracks.

  “Dorgeles came by,” mentioned one of his colleagues. “He wanted to know where you were.”

  Bob didn’t answer.

  “The boss says we’ve got to find that.”

  Bob didn’t even glance at the square of shiny paper being held out to him. He was too busy staving off the call of nature. He got out his watch to calculate when he could try his luck again with the first-class lavatory.

  “He’s the new target,” the other man continued.

  Without paying it much attention, Bob took the photo of Vango Romano.

  “I’m warning you — Madame Victoria wants him alive,” his neighbor specified.

  “Don’t ask too much of Bob,” joked one of the men, who appeared to be dozing under his hat. Everyone guffawed.

  During this brief exchange of words, Bob Almond had begun to stare at the photo. The picture did the rounds of his left brain three or four times before it vaguely began to remind him of someone.

  Then it came to him in a flash. He stood up, banging his head on the ceiling again.

  “Crapola!”

  A travel bag came crashing down from the rack.

  Bob rushed out of the compartment, ran down the corridor, and arrived in f
ront of the lavatory door. One kick of his boot was all it took to wrench the door off its hinges.

  In the gloom, he could make out the whites of two petrified eyes. Bob smiled. He had him.

  The men arrived one after another to witness Bob Almond looming ahead of them, dragging some wretched creature along by the hair.

  “Here he is,” declared Bob, who was bursting with pride. “Get Dorgeles! I’ve found his man.”

  But the person Bob was holding by the hair didn’t look anything like the photo of Vango. This victim wore only a faded undershirt and underpants, and his teeth chattered while words dribbled down his chin.

  Seeing the bewildered expression on his friends’ faces, Bob Almond raised his catch to eye level.

  “Crapola!” he bellowed.

  He threw the man to the ground and returned to search the lavatory.

  “Where is he? I swear, I saw him.”

  Just then, Dorgeles appeared.

  “We’ve got to search the other carriages. He’s on board!” boomed Bob.

  “Who?”

  “Him!”

  Bob flashed the photo.

  “Check the whole train!” Dorgeles instructed coldly. “And find the inspector for me. I want to talk to the inspector.”

  The men all made a dash for the second carriage.

  Meanwhile, the victim was still writhing on the floor in his underpants.

  Vango was walking between the rows of passengers. He didn’t want anyone to notice him, but kept checking nervously behind him all the same. When he saw the inspector’s uniform, ten paces away, he threw caution to the wind and tore down the aisle. The train tilted as it took a wide bend, and people were shouting all around him. He dashed from one carriage to the next, leaping over the screeching rails, pushing aside anyone who got in his way. A girl landed on the knees of an elderly rabbi, and a man with a pair of pigeons sat on their cage, crushing the bars and freeing the birds.

  In a flurry of feathers, the inspector passed through the aviary, shielding himself with his arms. He tripped on a suitcase but managed to get up again. He appeared to be limping now, and held his cap in his hand. Never had so much energy been expended by a railway worker to catch a fare dodger.

  The tornado had barely blown through before another followed, and this one was much more ferocious. Madame Victoria’s men destroyed the debris left by those who had gone before them. Nobody could make any sense of the chaos.

  Vango had now reached the last carriage. The inspector, who was just behind him, was losing ground to the gangsters, but he kept on going, dragging his injured ankle behind him.

  Dorgeles remained in the first-class carriage, at the other end of the train. He kept his hand firmly on his gun. He was the only person left, along with the two porters, to guarantee Madame Victoria’s protection.

  “I bribed the inspector to seal off the carriage! Where is that moron?”

  He tossed two guns to the young bellboys, so that they could mount guard with him.

  Vango had arrived at the end of the train. In front of him, three doors opened directly onto the tracks. Dead end. There was nothing else for it. He knew he would be blamed for attacking the dentist. He was used to such accusations. The train was approaching New York, as it traveled along an embankment between vegetable patches and gray sheds. The poplar trees quivered when the Blue Comet sped past.

  A cry. He didn’t even have time to turn around. He saw the shadow of the inspector suddenly rise up, grab hold of him, and stagger with him toward one of the doors. Vango tried to break free while, with one jab of his shoulder, the inspector forced open the door. Vango let out a scream. The din was terrifying. The tracks flashed past like lightning. They were both about to fall.

  Three men had just appeared behind them. The biggest held a Colt in his left hand.

  “Don’t move!”

  The inspector didn’t waver for a second. He gripped Vango even more tightly and leaped with him into thin air.

  The three gangsters saw them roll and disappear behind a mound of earth.

  Bob Almond fired seven shots from his Colt blindly into the bushes, shouting “Crapola!” several times as a point of principle. Then he trod on a railway worker’s helmet emblazoned with blue stars.

  A few carriages away, Dorgeles was still shouting himself hoarse.

  “Where’s the inspector? WHERE IS THE INSPECTOR?”

  He stopped. A weak voice was answering him. Dorgeles looked down.

  “Here I am. . . . I’m the inspector!”

  Down on the ground, the man in his underwear held out his hand. He was writhing like a worm on the corridor floor.

  Vango opened his eyes. He was lying in the middle of flowering strawberry plants. His roll down from the high tracks had left a large rectangle of flattened vegetation. He must have blacked out for several minutes. The sun was beating down hard.

  He heard a man behind him.

  “I’d do well to smash your face in, little one.”

  The little one turned his head.

  There, with barely a crease in his tight inspector’s uniform, sat the dark and handsome Padre Zefiro. He was perched on an upturned bucket and tucking into a tomato that was still green. Next to him, on the ground, lay a small bundle.

  “Because of you, I missed my chance!”

  He spat out the tomato skin.

  “Seventeen years spent following him! A lifetime!”

  Zefiro had never sounded so frosty.

  “A whole life! And the lives of dozens of others, over there, in the invisible monastery, all in mortal danger because of you. Bravo, little one.”

  Vango didn’t move or say a word. He was frightened of making things worse, of turning other people into victims simply by saying the wrong thing. Of starting a tidal wave by raising his little finger.

  “Did I ask you to meddle in my affairs?” asked Zefiro. “He was finally in my grasp!”

  “Who?” asked Vango weakly.

  “Voloy Viktor.”

  Vango felt desolate.

  “I . . . I’m sorry. But you shouldn’t have meddled in my affairs either.”

  “They’re the ones who were going to meddle with you, Vango. They’re after you as well! They want to pin you to their wall.”

  “Me?”

  As usual, Vango could no longer tell whether he was the victim or the guilty party.

  They sat there together, listening to the silence.

  “Padre . . .”

  Zefiro didn’t answer.

  “Padre . . . you saved my life.”

  “And I’m already sorry I did. It was a foolish act of compassion.”

  Vango hung his head. The padre was watching him out of the corner of his eye.

  “They want you because of me,” admitted Zefiro, after letting a few seconds go by. “Because they saw you with me in Paris. So it’s my fault too.”

  Vango stood up. His body had been given a drubbing by the tumble he had just taken.

  “Was the man in the first-class lavatory another of Voloy Viktor’s dirty tricks?” he asked.

  “No. I needed a disguise to get to Viktor. You do whatever it takes.” Zefiro shrugged. “But I’d forgotten to pick up the ticket puncher. I was heading back to find it when I saw you.”

  “Padre . . . did you batter the ticket inspector?”

  “He was corrupt. Viktor had bribed him. I’m not looking for excuses. I take full responsibility for everything I’ve done. I tried to booby-trap two of Viktor’s homes last month. And this morning I fitted a time bomb inside his car. . . .”

  Vango thought back to the explosion and the black cloud when the train had pulled out of the station.

  “As long as Viktor is alive,” Zefiro explained, “my fellow monks are in danger on their island. He will track down our monastery to the bitter end.”

  The padre held a grasshopper between his fingers as he acknowledged his friend’s confusion.

  “You’re not sure if you still recognize me, Vango.
But there is only one Padre Zefiro. The same man who built the Monastery of Arkudah with his bare hands, who sings God’s glory before a tomato plant, who raises a clutch of monks in the middle of the sea, and who is determined to track down Voloy Viktor. They’re all the same man, Vango. And I’m doing this in order to remain that man.”

  He contemplated the grasshopper in the palm of his hand.

  “And now,” he said, “I’m faced with the same question that’s been there since day one. What am I going to do with you?”

  Vango closed his eyes. He was thinking of the hanging monastery at the top of the island.

  “Back there, they’re all wondering what you’re up to. They think you’ve gone mad.”

  Zefiro let the grasshopper escape before picking up his bundle and standing up.

  “I have to destroy Viktor before I can return home.”

  It was Vango’s turn to stand up.

  “Where are we going?”

  Padre Zefiro was already striding ahead. Then they both stopped and looked down at Vango’s bare feet.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “They stole my shoes.”

  “Stole?”

  “Yes, while I was asleep.”

  “You can’t trust anyone these days.”

  Zefiro started walking again, past the vegetable gardens with their flowers.

  “You’re in luck!” he called out. And, from some way ahead, he tossed his bag to Vango.

  “What’s this?”

  Vango opened the small bundle. There, wrapped in some clothes, was a pair of shoes. Vango couldn’t wait to put them on.

  “Thank you, Padre!”

  “I hope they fit.”

  “I mean, what kind of person goes around stealing shoes?” muttered Vango to himself.

  “Possibly someone who wanted to shake you off their trail,” answered Zefiro under his breath. “Someone who didn’t want you demolishing everything they’ve achieved.”

  Vango stopped in his tracks. He looked up and then down again, to examine the shoes properly, before staring at Zefiro in the midst of the cosmos flowers. Yes, the shoes fitted Vango. They fitted him like a glove, because they were his shoes.

  Zefiro was laughing.

  “Padre . . .” whispered Vango.