A Prince Without a Kingdom

by Timothee de Fombelle

  Zefiro turned to take a look at the man, who held an illustrated newspaper in one hand.

  “I shouldn’t think so. The crossing takes three days.”

  “Were you the person who switched my lamp off?”

  “No. You should get some sleep.”

  “Where are we?” inquired the man, wandering over to the far end of the lounge.

  Zefiro let out a long sigh.

  Back in the smoking room, Ethel finally sat down.

  “Do you know anybody on board?” she asked Puppet.

  “Not really. Have you noticed those two men pretending not to look at you?”

  “No.”

  “Can’t you see that everybody’s staring at you in here?”

  “No.”

  “A woman in a smoking room is like a black man in a German airship. People stare.”

  Ethel was interested in Joseph Puppet. She listened carefully to what he had to say.

  “Those two over there, for example, the ones I just mentioned, who are staring at you even more closely than the rest, I’m slowly getting to know them.”

  “Well?” Ethel pressed him.

  “They say they’re Norwegian.”

  She shot a quick glance, while Puppet made progress with his cigar.

  “Have you ever been to Norway?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Me neither, more’s the pity. And nor have they.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t believe they’ve ever set foot there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re speaking Russian.”

  She shooed the smoke away with her fingers, as if she were turning the page of a book. Puppet had Ethel’s full attention now.

  “I made mincemeat of a Russian in 1919 in a boxing ring in Belgium. I swear he was speaking the same language as them.”

  “You made mincemeat of him?”

  “Well, steak tartare.”

  Zefiro tapped four times on the partition wall of the cabin. The door opened. Zefiro and Esquirol fell into each other’s arms.

  “You’re out of your mind,” said Esquirol. “You have no idea what you’re getting us into.”

  “You gave your word, just as I did.”

  Both of them remembered the pact they had made in the clearing at Falbas, and which had become Project Violette. A communal promise made in the midst of all the fighting. An Italian priest soldier, a German aviator, a French doctor, and an Ivorian infantryman.

  “Is Voloy Viktor here?”

  “Valpa is here,” Esquirol corrected him.

  “I don’t care what name he’s going by these days.” Zefiro shrugged.

  “He’s in his cabin, down below. His two men are taking turns guarding him. He doesn’t come out. His meals are brought to him.”

  “What about Eckener?”

  “I don’t think it went too badly. It was a crazy situation. Valpa shook his hand. That was the best we could do, seeing as you refused to explain your plans to Eckener.”

  “He wouldn’t have played our game.”

  “You never know, Zefiro.”

  “Is Viktor in the large cabin at the back?”

  “Yes. A family with three children was expecting to go in there. But I held firm. All the other cabins along the corridor are empty.”

  “And what about the cabin boy?”

  “He knows not to go into Valpa’s cabin or ours. We’ve come to an arrangement.”

  “Good.”

  “When will it be?” asked Esquirol, looking Zefiro straight in the eye.

  “The last night, before landing. Where is Joseph Puppet?”

  “It was rash of you to make him play the part of a heavy weapons investor. It’s madness.”

  “Did you have someone else in mind?”

  “Puppet is known far and wide for his pacifist appearances.”

  “Where is he?” asked Zefiro.

  “He was keeping an eye on the other bodyguard in the smoking room. Now that you’re safely out of the piano, I can liberate him from his duties.”

  Esquirol turned toward the door.

  “Bring me something to eat,” called Zefiro.

  The padre lay down on the floor and closed his eyes.

  “Don’t you want a bunk?”

  “I’m a monk, Esquirol. I sleep on hard floors or inside pianos.”

  When he saw Esquirol appear at the door to the smoking room, Joseph Puppet stood up.

  “I think someone’s come for me.”

  He took Ethel’s hand and bowed so low that his forehead touched it.

  “Good night, miss.”

  A few passengers eyed them disapprovingly.

  Puppet was reveling in the attention. He knew that, the previous summer, after beating Joe Louis — a black American from Alabama — in the twelfth round, the great German boxer Max Schmeling had caught this same Hindenburg back to Germany. For the Nazis, his triumphant return had been symbolic of the superiority of the German race.

  With a smile on his lips, Puppet gave a little bow to the assembled company and left.

  Ethel stayed behind only a few minutes longer, but she took the time to observe the two Norwegians. They had openly turned their backs on her now. She noticed that they had brought their own metal flasks with them, which appeared to contain something strong, because with each swig the men winced.

  One of them was tall, strapping, and bearded. He had a shaved head and he didn’t speak. The other was a small nervous man who chain-smoked cigarettes. He rolled them on his knees using mild tobacco. He muttered things to his colleague, who nodded every time he paused for breath.

  Walking past them on her way out, Ethel noticed, on the neck of their flasks, the outline of a snarling bear.

  A northwesterly wind rose with the day. Captain Pruss had chosen to steer a course that took them toward the North Atlantic, with the result that the airship was now in a headwind. It was difficult to navigate. Not that the passengers even realized. The Hindenburg was remarkably stable in all weather conditions. But the crew could tell that Captain Pruss was preoccupied. He didn’t linger at the table, and spent most of his time in the cockpit. The airship was running late. Pruss knew that among the numerous passengers on the return flight were many English travelers who wished to embark in New York in order to return to Europe in time for the coronation of King George VI the following week. They couldn’t afford to be late.

  The piano being out of order didn’t improve matters. A little music might have created a more relaxing atmosphere. A few months earlier, Captain Lehman had made the passengers forget all about a thunderstorm thanks to his piano recital, which had lasted an hour and a half.

  Just before the second night, Esquirol went to knock on Vincent Valpa’s cabin door. The cabin was situated at the end of a long corridor in the keel of the balloon. It was one of the few cabins with an external window, and the only cabin large enough to accommodate four bunks.

  “Who’s there?” someone called out through the closed door.

  “It’s me,” said Esquirol.

  One of the two guards nudged the door ajar.

  “What do you want?”

  “I should like to invite Mr. Valpa to a glass of something in the dining room.”

  What Esquirol really wanted was to empty the cabin for a few minutes, in order to scope out the premises prior to Zefiro’s operation.

  “No,” muttered Valpa without putting in an appearance. “I’m not thirsty.”

  “He doesn’t want to come out,” relayed the henchman.

  “There’s a bottle of champagne that Commander Eckener has left for us.”

  “Drink it.”

  The door closed again.

  Esquirol found Zefiro waiting with Puppet on the banquette in the cabin.

  “He won’t come out.”

  Zefiro was already in black combat dress.

  “Well, in that case I’ll get him in his hidey-hole. You need to make sure that all three of them
are in there.”

  “I thought you only wanted Viktor.”

  “Nobody must raise the alert before the zeppelin lands in Lakehurst.”

  In front of him, Zefiro laid down a Luger Parabellum loaded for three shots.

  At one o’clock in the morning, on the sixth of May 1937, an inexplicable phenomenon occurred high above the North Atlantic.

  Ethel was lying on her bunk, but her eyes were wide open. She hadn’t been able to sleep since that first evening. Boulard had warned her that one day Vango would ask for help, and it would be too late. Her stomach was in knots, and she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

  Suddenly, she heard the sound of the piano. Someone was playing a Bach fugue, and the notes were pitch-perfect.

  She sat up in bed and listened attentively. Then she got up, put a coat on over her nightdress, and went out into the corridor, where she saw many of her fellow passengers surging past. Captain Lehman’s hands were roaming over the keyboard.

  An idle traveler must have pressed down on one of the ivory keys before going to bed, only to discover that the piano worked perfectly.

  What could have happened? How had such a turnaround occurred? Nobody guessed that the piano had been relieved of eighty kilos in body weight. Someone swore they had found an olive-wood rosary among the strings. This story had the makings of a miracle.

  While everybody was gathered around the piano, Esquirol went to warn Zefiro, who was still hidden in his cabin.

  The monk immediately removed the square he had cut out of the plywood ceiling and hoisted himself up into the forest of metal. Zefiro could hear the piano below him: the music of Bach filled the air as he made his way through the dark on the ceiling of the upper deck. He was trying to follow the girders so as not to lose his way or put his foot through the ceiling and land in a cabin. Zefiro counted the rows as he went. He must be above the staircase by now. Taking a left turn, he began to slide down an aluminum pole with holes punched in it. The piano was just on the other side of the partition.

  Zefiro was now walking above the new cabins on the lower deck. He knew that the tenth one belonged to Voloy Viktor, but the padre stopped just before it. He checked the weapon on his back and removed a razor-sharp blade from his belt before cutting a hole and lowering himself down through it. Viktor and his men should be just there, in the next-door cabin. A small amount of light seeped through a narrow window to the side: this was the beam from the zeppelin’s headlights as it traveled into the black clouds ahead.

  The cabin was as noisy as Zefiro had hoped, because it was so close to the engines. He would be able to go about his business undetected. By gluing his ear to the partition, and despite all the noise, he could just make out the sound of people moving about. Somebody was definitely in Viktor’s cabin.

  Zefiro checked his watch. It was twenty past one in the morning. Esquirol and Puppet knew that the operation was planned for half past one. It was their job to make sure the two bodyguards had rejoined their boss by that time.

  Zefiro had ten minutes in which to prepare his lightning attack. He needed to cut through the partition under the bottom bunk. This hole just above the floor would remain invisible. All he had to do was push the wall at the last moment. At half past one, he would finally be able to enter. He had rehearsed every movement. He knew which firing angles he should adopt to avoid a stray bullet damaging the hydrogen balloons of the great airship.

  The operation he was about to perform was as delicate as if he were removing a tumor wrapped around a vital organ. The zeppelin was a bomb ready to explode. But Zefiro had waited more than eighteen years to reach this point, and he felt capable of anything. He lowered himself into the gloom and disappeared under the bunk.

  Just as his palm made contact with the floor, a damp hand grabbed his wrist. The padre almost screamed when he felt someone’s nails digging into his forearm. His aggressor rose up from under the bunk and trapped Zefiro with his legs, squeezing with all his might as if he wanted to choke the monk. Zefiro was trying to resist, but he couldn’t reach his knife or his pistol. The two of them rolled over as far as the basin on the other side of the cabin. Not a sound had been made; there were just the stifled movements of the struggle. Finally, Zefiro managed to free one of his arms, but he was now on his back and his weapons were out of reach. Grabbing hold of the curtain that hung across the wardrobe, he tugged it off. Then, in a single movement, he passed the curtain around his enemy’s neck like a rope. In seconds, Zefiro had seized control of the situation. The other person stopped putting up any resistance when he felt the curtain tightening around his neck.

  Zefiro had assumed he was dealing with one of Viktor’s guards, but when he turned his aggressor’s face toward the window, he saw a young man who couldn’t have been older than twenty and who stared at him with imploring eyes.

  “Who are you?” whispered Zefiro.

  “Heil Hitler!” said the other person.

  Zefiro put his hand over the young man’s mouth. When he took it away again, the boy was muttering a jumble of words from which could dimly be distinguished “Reich,” “race,” and “blood.”

  “Your name?” asked Zefiro.

  “Schiff.”

  The padre had let go of the curtain, and the young man was no longer putting up any resistance.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Hindy ate me.”

  “Who’s Hindy?”

  “The balloon. Hindy.”

  Schiff’s eyes flitted around the room, terrified. Zefiro couldn’t catch his gaze.

  A stowaway.

  He must have been hidden in this hole for three days. Zefiro released his grip and sat down on the bunk, where he took out his watch. He no longer had enough time to get through the gap in the partition: the three targets wouldn’t stay together in the cabin for long.

  “Hindy ate me,” Schiff said again.

  Zefiro clenched his fists. The previous year, in New York, he had missed Viktor because of Vango. And now this boy, who was barely twenty years old and looked so much like Vango, was going to pull the same trick on him.

  “Do you know how to count to a thousand?”

  “One, two, three, four . . .”

  “I want you to count all the way to a thousand without moving.”

  “Five, six . . .”

  “Stop! You’re going to start counting when I tell you to.”

  Schiff stared at the padre.

  “If you move, Hindy won’t be happy. Understood?”

  Schiff nodded.

  “Go back into your hiding place and count.”

  The boy did as he was told.

  “One, two —”

  “Quieter.”

  “Three, four —”

  “Quieter!”

  Upstairs, in the great lounge, the piano had stopped.

  Zefiro approached the window, bandaging the curtain fabric around his fist before smashing the glass. He waited. No reaction next door. A freezing wind blew in through the broken window. The previous evening, the passengers had glimpsed chunks of iceberg floating on the sea. Zefiro smashed three more windows and then removed the strips of wood separating them.

  “Seventy-six, seventy-seven . . .” Schiff rattled off behind him.

  Zefiro laid the aluminum ladder down on the floor in front of the window. He removed his weapon from his belt and held it in his hand. Leaning out of the hole he’d made in the window, he was hit by the extreme cold. Despite the wind, the balloon was traveling at a hundred kilometers an hour, so Zefiro had put his legs through the ladder to stop himself from falling out.

  He pushed his body outside all the way to the waist. The ladder was now jammed against the window. Slowly, he raised himself up to take a look at the neighboring cabin. The wind was whistling in his ears.

  To begin with, he couldn’t see anyone through the windowpane. Then suddenly, twisting a little farther, he saw him, from behind, standing in front of the window. Where were the other two? Zefiro wanted
to fire without waiting. He hadn’t got this close to Viktor in a very long time. But he was mindful of Esquirol and Puppet, who were also risking their lives. Just then, to the left, he spotted the foot of one of the two guards sticking out from under the blanket on the bed. He was asleep. So there was only one missing.

  In the smoking room, Esquirol had just approached Valpa’s second man.

  “Mr. Valpa is asking for you.”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Valpa,” Esquirol repeated.

  “What does he want?”

  “Your colleague informed me that Mr. Valpa is asking for a glass of water.”

  The man stared at him for a moment, incredulous, then headed for the door. It was twenty-nine minutes past one. Esquirol glanced at Puppet, who was staring at the anthracite clouds through the window.

  “They’re forecasting bad weather,” he told Max, the barman.

  “Mr. Spah’s dog is howling in the hold. He gave her the bones from the beef with morel mushrooms yesterday, but that hasn’t calmed her.”

  “She doesn’t like the storm,” said Puppet.

  “Captain Pruss says we’ll wait above the coast for it to pass.”

  Still hanging out his window, Zefiro saw Valpa’s door open. The second of his henchmen entered with a glass of water and said something. The padre couldn’t hear a word. Valpa closed the door. Zefiro was trying to flex his frozen fingers. He had to fire three shots. His index finger would need to press down three times on the release mechanism. The other guard had gotten up from his bunk. All three of them were standing in the cabin. Voloy Viktor still had his back to him, and Zefiro had yet to see his face. He was waiting. The engine was growling a few dozen meters in front of him.

  As one of the two men passed in front of Viktor, the arms dealer turned around and was visible in the electric light of the cabin.

  Frozen tears appeared around Zefiro’s eyes. Valpa was staring at the glass of water he had just been given. But he wasn’t Voloy Viktor.

  Dorgeles! thought Zefiro.

  Vincent Valpa had never been Voloy Viktor. Viktor’s right-hand man had replaced him for this European trip. So they had all been duped. Viktor’s instinctive distrust had deceived them once again.

  Zefiro was weeping in the wind. He could feel his legs losing their strength. He let go of the pistol, which hurtled into the abyss.