A Prince Without a Kingdom

by Timothee de Fombelle

  “Do you remember?” he asked the Cat.

  She knew that he was picturing the chestnut tree above the park fence of the Jardin du Luxembourg, which had so often stooped to let them down into the deserted park at night.

  The garden inside the abbey grounds was enormous. During the summer, the nuns even grew wheat and corn there. The enclosure wall continued farther than the eye could see. They took a path that flanked the wall. Despite being in the depths of a wartime winter, the garden was far from austere. Fragments of broken seashells glinted in the furrows of perfectly turned earth.

  The Cat breathed in the smell of the algae as she followed Vango. The abbey buildings were behind them now, and after a few minutes’ walk, they reached a greenhouse that was at an angle to the enclosure wall, propped up against a tiny house.

  Ducking inside, the Cat was relieved to discover that the greenhouse was lukewarm. Crates of onions had been placed on the trestle tables. They closed the door behind them and entered the tiny house itself: this was where Vango lived.

  “Tell me your news,” he said.

  The Cat went to sit close to a wood-burning stove, in which the fire had almost gone out.

  “Mouchet’s got a radio instructor who needs to be parachuted in on Christmas Eve night.”

  “Where?”

  “Close to Chartres, I think. He’s coming to train three men. It can’t happen in Paris.”

  “And it can’t happen here. The Germans have cars to help detect radio transmissions now. There was an alert with the last batch of Englishmen.”

  “This time they’re French.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference. I don’t want the nuns in any danger.”

  Vango refused to negotiate. He had managed to break the curse that had seemingly condemned all those around him to death. He only took risks for himself now.

  “When your last batch of Englishmen was here, the Germans wanted to search the abbey. On one occasion, Mother Elisabeth had to keep them at bay with a hunting gun. She won’t get away with it a second time.”

  The Cat fell quiet. The abbess hadn’t mentioned this to her. Vango put some more wood in the stove, and the kettle started whistling.

  “You want to protect people,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “But they’re all dying from being protected.”

  “Who?”

  Vango was staring at her.

  “The whole country,” she said, “and beyond.”

  “Who?”

  “Ethel.”

  He looked away.

  “She’s dying because you don’t want her to suffer,” the Cat continued. “She’s dying of sadness.”

  Vango went outside. The Cat stayed on her own for several minutes by the fire before joining him. He was sitting on the stone wall of a cistern.

  “You know what you’re saying isn’t true,” he insisted. “Some people were saved by my death. Count them! And then count all the deaths in my life!”

  The Cat knew all about this: Boulard and Andrei had been spared. If Vango hadn’t disappeared, Ethel would doubtless have been eliminated, just like Father Jean before her, and Zefiro, and perhaps Mademoiselle. Could Vango keep leaving a graveyard behind him?

  “Ethel has lost everything,” said the Cat. “All she has left is her brother, Paul.”

  “Is he better?” Vango wanted to know.

  “Yes. He’s serving as a pilot again for the British Air Force.”

  They looked at each other and smiled. By tallying up their friends like this, they counted a stubborn bunch — each individual keener and more headstrong than the next — and they found this comforting. They remained there together, out in the cold. They could smell the smoke from the fire, which the wind from the west blew back toward them.

  Vango rubbed a pear against his jacket before giving it to the Cat. It was a Z pear, the variety that Zefiro had created by crossing the best strains in the orchard.

  The Cat glanced at Vango’s clothes: woolen vest, trousers with knees that had been mended a thousand times. The sisters fought among themselves to darn his clothes and stitch on patches like flags. Saint John was their convent’s secret.

  “Stay here until tomorrow,” said Vango. “I’ll have a think about your request for the parachutist.”

  The Angelus bell calling the nuns to prayer tolled above the chapel.

  “What about your violin player?” added Vango. “Still nothing?”

  The Cat shook her head. No news on that front.

  Vango was cautious about asking the next question:

  “And your parents?”

  This time, the Cat turned her back on him and began to remove the dry thistles that had stuck to the bottom of her coat. Vango noticed her head rocking, and then he spotted some round blotches appearing on the stone. He had never seen her cry before.

  “Where are they?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  “Surely we can find out.”

  “No.”

  Her shoulders had stopped shaking.

  “Mouchet has given me some mail that I haven’t looked at yet,” she added.

  Vango gently reached for the envelope and opened it. He was silent as he scanned the bundle of papers and photos.

  “This isn’t about your parents,” said Vango. “He’s made a mistake.”

  The Cat was taken aback.

  “In that case, I’m the one who’s made the mistake. I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait. . . .”

  “I must’ve muddled up the packets. I was supposed to give one to Caesar.”

  In the middle of the bundle, Vango had paused on a photo.

  “Look, it’s New York.”

  The postcard was of the heart of Manhattan, as seen from the sky. The tops of the towers rose up out of a sea of clouds. Vango leaned over to get a better view, just as he would have done from the window of the Graf Zeppelin.

  Once again, he was walking at a height over the familiar sights of the city.

  And, gently, the card with its serrated edge started moving. Vango couldn’t keep it still in front of him.

  “Put it all back in the envelope,” the Cat told him.

  “No. Wait!”

  She held out her hand.

  “Wait,” repeated Vango.

  A hand-drawn mark indicated the top of the Empire State Building. Above this mark was scribbled 1937, in the same handwriting. But one single detail attracted his attention.

  “What’s wrong, Vango? Look at me!”

  He wouldn’t let go of the card.

  “You’re trembling, Vango.”

  When he finally turned to face her, the Cat scarcely recognized him.

  Paris, December 22, 1942

  In the large brown envelope, which had traveled in the Cat’s belt, were two days’ worth of investigation by Inspector Baptiste Mouchet. The results had been sufficiently interesting for him to inform Caesar, the leader of their resistance network, before officially handing his findings to Superintendent Avignon.

  Returning from his clandestine meeting at the station, Mouchet had set to work. At the Quai des Orfèvres, his police colleagues had sniggered as they inquired about his vacation. He hadn’t taken any leave for six months now. In order for him to remain beyond suspicion, his work record had to be spotless. So he concentrated on Superintendent Avignon’s orders. He needed to find the list of guests to Max Grund’s New Year’s Eve party. Mouchet was glum about this assignment, which summed up the workload at headquarters: the police force divided its time between drawing room etiquette and crimes of state.

  And so, on this particular morning, Mouchet was tasked with establishing the guest list as if he were the personal secretary of a marchioness.

  He began by telephoning the restaurant.

  La Belle Étoile was the rising star of Parisian restaurants: a small bistro in the Temple district that had become a force to be reckoned with in less than five years. The war hadn’t interrupted its burgeoning success, eve
n if the restaurant made no concessions to the occupying forces.

  Mouchet got the brush-off when he called.

  “Don’t talk to me about that dinner!” roared the restaurant owner on the phone. “It’s blackmail!”

  And he had hung up so angrily that the inspector’s ear was still ringing for several seconds afterward. Mouchet was about to try again when he noticed a line on the New Year’s Eve invitation about the evening taking the form of a musical celebration. The singer’s name was famous. He dialed the operator again.

  “Put me through to La Lune Rousse in Montmartre.”

  Seconds later, he was connected to a weary-sounding trumpet player in the cabaret. The man, who was still sleeping off the previous night’s show, told him to call a hotel on the rue de Rivoli.

  “She should be there.” He yawned. “But if you want her to show any interest,” he added, “I’d advise you to put on a German accent.”

  The trumpeter burst out laughing and must have knocked himself out with the receiver, because a dull thud could be heard, followed by snoring.

  Calmly, Mouchet telephoned the hotel. His call was transferred to room number twenty-two. It rang several times before a voice finally answered, “Allô?”

  “Mademoiselle Bienvenue?”

  “Put the small dog in the bath. I’m coming.”

  “I’m sorry?” said Mouchet.

  “With bubble bath.”

  “Mademoiselle —”

  “I was talking to the chambermaid.”

  “This is Inspector Mouchet speaking.”

  He was surprised at how cooperative Nina Bienvenue was. Despite all the commotion in the bathroom, despite the chambermaid shouting at the dog, despite the noise of the shower and Archibald’s yapping, she didn’t have to be asked twice to dictate the guest list for him. There were only twelve guests. She explained that she always requested the names of the guests, in order to prepare her songs.

  “For example, does Offizier Grund appreciate ‘Where Are All My Lovers?’ Are you familiar with that song, Inspector?”

  And she started humming into the receiver with her beautiful voice, which made Archibald bark for all he was worth. The chambermaid screeched in concert (she must have been bitten by the dog), but Nina Bienvenue sang on in heartrending tones.

  Mouchet noted everything down and thanked her.

  He put the list on his desk. Avignon had asked for very specific information, as a result of which the inspector had to research each individual guest. The first five names posed no difficulty: they were high-ranking German officials, including Max Grund and the chief of the Gestapo. The next four guests were French, and Mouchet was familiar with them. They were the Occupier’s best friends in Paris, and they reported to the Vichy government every week. The Paradise Network had been keeping them under surveillance for two years.

  The tenth guest on the list was one Augustin Avignon.

  Mouchet began to wonder what his boss was doing in the thick of this rabble. Yes, Avignon had seized every opportunity to advance his career, and he referred to members of the resistance as “terrorists,” but he didn’t belong to the same species as the other individuals on the list. Mouchet had even, on occasion, found himself defending Avignon to his friends by explaining that his boss was only doing what most French people did: trying to get by while limiting the damage.

  But from now on, in the police force, this sort of arrangement was becoming impossible. You had to choose. Six months earlier, thousands of police officers had organized a terrifying roundup. For Mouchet, the arrest of thirteen thousand Jews, from one Thursday morning to the following afternoon, had been an earthquake. And it was because of Caesar’s rigid orders that he had agreed to stay at the Quai des Orfèvres after this nightmare, as a double agent.

  Mouchet stared at the two last names on the list. The first was the Baron de Valloire. The second was a friend of the baron’s, a foreign banker whose name Nina Bienvenue didn’t know.

  Mouchet began by researching Valloire. He couldn’t find anything about the subject in his files. He simply opened an old Paris telephone directory for 1938 and found a Valloire (Virgile Amédee de), on the rue d’Anjou. Out of curiosity, he picked up the telephone directory for the following year. Valloire had disappeared.

  He spent his lunch hour visiting the rue d’Anjou. The building gave onto a handsome paved courtyard. The concierge explained that the Baron de Valloire still owned the building but no longer lived there himself. She had never seen him. He rented the premises to the sales department of a cheese maker.

  That afternoon, back at the Quai des Orfèvres, Mouchet cast another eye around the archives room. By pursuing his investigation in this way, he was no longer merely working for the satisfaction of Avignon. He was convinced that this meeting of Nazi officers and collaborators might interest Caesar. In the archives, under the letter V, he could find nothing for the name of Valloire, apart from three lines about an incident involving the theft of a goat in the commune of Valloire, in the department of the Savoie.

  He was about to abandon his research when he noticed a short man in a gray shirt rummaging around in the boxes. It was André Rémi, a former inspector who had been demoted to his current job because he had effectively become deaf in 1940 during the Phoney War.

  “What’s in those boxes?” Mouchet called out loudly.

  “Are you looking for something?” asked Rémi, turning around.

  Mouchet wrote “Valloire” on his hand.

  “Valloire? No, don’t know that name. But take a look at the Boulard boxes before we throw them out.”

  “Boulard boxes?”

  “No, I said: the Boulard boxes.”

  Rémi pointed to the pyramid of boxes he was stacking.

  “Superintendent Boulard’s paperwork amounts to our only legitimate archives. And it’s being cleared out on Avignon’s orders. Did you know Boulard, my boy?”

  “No, I’m sorry to say. I arrived here from Marseille at the beginning of the year.”

  Rémi was becoming misty eyed.

  “So, just like me, you know what a great man he was.”

  “No, unfortunately . . .”

  “Please. The pleasure is all mine.”

  And he shook Mouchet warmly by the hand.

  Mouchet found the name of de Valloire on a thick spiral-bound notebook. His last name was followed by a number. And this number led to a file. The file turned out to be a locked box, which he carried to his office. The box must once have contained some decent red wine, but it was now full of papers. Mouchet opened it and discovered these three strange words on the first document he came across:

  Just below, among the forty-seven names Voloy Viktor sometimes went by, could be seen: Baron Virgile de Valloire.

  The Viktor file had been definitively closed by Augustin Avignon in February 1942, on the same day that he had been appointed superintendent, but Mouchet was familiar with the arms dealer’s name.

  Boulard had continued doggedly with his investigation until the bitter end. He had kept track of Viktor from town to town, continent to continent, even during the war. In the box was a photo of one of Viktor’s houses in Italy, and a postcard from New York with an arrow over his base for the year of 1937. There were lists of his contacts in each country, his associates, his friends . . . As for the foreign banker who would accompany Viktor on the evening of the thirty-first of December, Mouchet could make a reasonably informed guess as to who that might be.

  The inspector put the most important photos and papers in an envelope. Then he encoded the guest list provided by the singer.

  La Blanche Abbey

  At the bottom of the garden at La Blanche Abbey, the Cat stared at the spot Vango’s finger was pointing to on the postcard. The skyscraper was brand-new, with four spires covered in gold. It was taller than the Empire State Building and all the other towers.

  “I spent months up there with Zefiro, spying on Viktor,” said Vango.

  The Cat couldn�
�t understand what had come over her friend.

  “I lived and slept in that tower, before it was completed,” he went on. “One day, I even glimpsed the man who commissioned it to be built.”

  The Cat raised her eyebrows questioningly. She had never seen Vango in this state.

  “Explain,” she said.

  “Finish what you’re doing first.”

  She was decoding Mouchet’s list.

  “I shouldn’t be doing this,” protested the Cat. “This is a personal message for Caesar.”

  “Don’t worry. I swear that it’s for me too. You’ll take it to him afterward.”

  When she had finished, she held out the piece of paper.

  Vango took it and ran his eyes over it, before putting it back on the table.

  The letter merely stated the information that Mouchet had pieced together: the party organized by Max Grund at La Belle Étoile restaurant on the thirty-first of December at nine o’clock. And at the end, in eleventh and twelfth places, were the two guests of honor: Voloy Viktor and a financier friend.

  Mouchet’s examination of Boulard’s boxes had led to the conclusion that the financier in question was probably the man who had become Viktor’s associate toward the summer of 1937, for industrial projects in Nazi Germany: the businessman known by everyone as the Irishman, and who signed by the name of Johnny Valence O’Cafarell.

  Johnny Valence O’Cafarell.

  Boulard had gone to investigate him in New York during the summer of 1939. It was the first time the superintendent had taken advantage of a novel idea that was now three years old: paid vacation. During his two weeks on the other side of the Atlantic, he had found out a lot more than the New York cops ever had. The Irish associate was every bit as much to be feared as Viktor.

  Boulard had even heard a story that spoke volumes about the Irishman’s reputation. According to one of his former chauffeurs, O’Cafarell had led a previous life in Europe, before arriving in America and making his fortune there. Learning that a young woman from his native country was looking for him and risked unmasking him, the Irishman had paid some poor worker from his ranch in New Mexico to assume his old name. He had eliminated the girl, and then had the man who now bore his name accused of the crime. The ranch worker was sentenced to death.