A Prince Without a Kingdom (20 page)

Suddenly, between two aisles, he bumped into someone.

“Is that you, Avignon?” asked Boulard without bothering to stop. “Take this,” he said, picking up the box he had just dropped, “and follow me.”

“Superintendent.”

“Take the box. I’ve found what I was looking for.”

“But . . .”

“Leave the rest. This is the only thing that matters.”

“It’s eight o’clock; the staff are arriving.”

“What’s that got to do with me? Come on.”

Avignon grabbed the box.

“It’s all in there,” said Boulard.

“Superintendent, I think you’ve got . . .”

“You can think what you like, my boy. Let’s go to my office.”

He switched off the lights and pushed the door shut.

They headed down the corridor together: Avignon out in front, carrying the mound of paperwork, while the superintendent followed. People hugged the walls to let them pass.

Boulard was on full display in his snugly fitting underwear. With his head held high, and the body of someone who likes tucking into his food, the superintendent took no notice of the astonished looks he was getting. He nodded at an archivist, who covered her eyes.

Avignon was attempting to pave the way with apologetic glances. But Boulard was parading himself, with his belly thrust out. After shaking hands with the chief commissioner, who walked past with some of his advisers, he turned right and took the final corridor. When he reached the office marked
BOULARD
in gold letters, he ushered Avignon inside and shut the door.

“Give me that.”

The superintendent tipped the contents of the cardboard box onto his desk. Then he grabbed his trousers, which were hanging on the radiator.

A crowd of curious eavesdroppers had gathered behind the door.

“I may have found something, my boy.”

Boulard was trying to do up his trouser buttons.

“I don’t know where it’s going to lead us, but it’ll count for something.”

First of all, he took out the thick register from the bottom of the pile and opened it on the table.

“Does this date bring back any memories?”

Boulard was putting on his shirt now.

Avignon read the first line: “ ‘July 24, 1935.’ ”

He took a few seconds to think about it.

“No.” The lieutenant shook his head.

Boulard went over to his door and kicked it. The eavesdroppers could be heard beating a retreat.

“Now we can put our minds at rest,” he explained. “Right. Look at the twenty-seventh name on this page.”

The document listed everyone who had passed through security at police headquarters on that day.

“ ‘Ethel B. H.’ ”

“Quite so.”

“And now look at number forty-two.”

Avignon gave an almost imperceptible frown before reading, “‘Drat That Rat! Pest Control.’ That’s —”

“That’s Father Zefiro. Now, open this for me at the same date.”

He held out a file. Avignon leafed through it and began to read the daily depositions.

“Go straight to the end. Our dear Mademoiselle Darmon —”

“‘Mademoiselle Darmon, forty-nine years old (age as reckoned by the complainant herself ), retiring in two months, secretary to Superintendent Auguste Boulard, declares that she saw a young man, who arrived via the roof, and who presented her with a letter signed Vango Romano.’”

“Very good. Now go back to the previous page, first paragraph.”

“‘Alert raised. Premises sealed off. Interrogation of a high-security defendant in the basement. See confidential files for identity.’”

“That’s all, my boy.”

“What?”

“Ethel, Vango, Zefiro, and Voloy Viktor, on the same day in the same place: doesn’t that surprise you?”

Avignon gulped and shrugged.

“These things can happen.”

“Yes, you’re right. These things can and do happen. So, take a look at this for me.”

Boulard held out three stapled pages to his lieutenant, who began to read. It was an old statement on yellowed paper, dating from the early 1920s. A man who wished to remain anonymous, and who signed using the initials M. Z., gave the description of arms dealer Voloy Viktor, together with all the necessary information to capture him in a church at Faubourg Saint-Antoine in Paris.

The pages quivered between Avignon’s fingers. That day, in the parish of Saint Margaret, when the entire police force had believed the arms dealer was in their grasp at last, Avignon had betrayed Boulard for the first time by overseeing Viktor’s escape. And since that time, he had never stopped lying. It was he, Avignon, who thirteen years later had undone Viktor’s metal belt so that, with one head-butt, the dealer had been able to shine the light on Zefiro. And it was he who had made Viktor’s flight via Spain possible in a special train a few days later. For fifteen years he had filed weekly reports to this criminal, updating him on all the latest news from the French police.

Avignon had stopped reading. Boulard was staring at him.

“Are you going to go on?”

“Yes.”

In a flat voice, the deputy read the list of accusations made by this anonymous priest against Viktor. The litany was terrifying.

“Can I stop n-now?” stammered Avignon.

“No.”

He kept reading as Boulard paced to and fro in his office. Avignon had reached the end of the document. He fell silent.

The superintendent raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

“Well?”

“Well . . . I don’t understand,” spluttered Avignon.

“Well?” asked Boulard, beginning to lose his temper. “Aren’t you going to read the last line?”

The lieutenant dived back into the pile of papers. Zefiro, the author of the document, had added a few sentences at the bottom of the page.

“‘After the capture of Voloy Viktor, no contact is to be maintained with me. In the event of circumstances beyond my control, the sole point of contact should be: Commander Hugo Eckener, of the Zeppelin Company.’”

Superintendent Boulard looked serious.

“There it is.” He sighed. “That’s it: the missing star! The zeppelin! This final link leaves me convinced that the Vango affair is connected to the Viktor affair. As sure as my name’s Auguste Albert Cyprien Boulard.”

He tore the three pages out of his lieutenant’s hands.

“And that link is M. Z.”

“Who?”

“Vango knows Zefiro!”

Part of Avignon was relieved, but the other part was panicking. He had been worried that he’d been found out, which wasn’t the case. This should have reassured him. But Boulard’s discovery was problematic. Thanks to Viktor, Avignon had been aware for over a year now that Zefiro and Vango were close. He was convinced that the superintendent would make the most of this finding, which meant that Voloy Viktor’s file risked being reopened.

More serious still, Boulard was going to hunt down Zefiro. And Zefiro had already discovered Avignon’s betrayal. A telegram denouncing the lieutenant had been sent from New York to Paris, although Avignon had managed to intercept it before it reached Boulard.

“Superintendent . . . I’m not clear about what you want to do here.”

Boulard picked up a piece of chalk from the blotter in front of him. He turned to the blackboard and tore off the papers that were stuck to it. Then, launching himself at the board, he drew a large white cross.

“There you go. These are our options: the four routes to finding Vango,” he declared, adding an arrow at each extremity of the cross before chalking up their initials: “Viktor, Ethel, Eckener, and Zefiro.”

“Viktor to the west. Twice we’ve heard about him being in America. Ethel to the north. Eckener to the east. And Zefiro . . .”

Avignon was hanging on every word.

“Zefiro to the south.”

For four years, Avignon had been trying to find out where Zefiro’s base camp was situated. It was something that obsessed Voloy Viktor, who knew about the existence of the invisible monastery but had never been able to locate it.

“We’ll have to set off in all four directions,” the superintendent concluded.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!”

“Superintendent, your candidates are waiting for you in the blue room, sir.”

“Is it today?”

“It’s every Thursday, Superintendent.”

“I’ll be down,” groaned Boulard.

“And the chief commissioner would like to have a word with you.”

“What about?”

“The incident, I believe.”

“What incident?”

“This morning’s incident, sir.”

Boulard didn’t understand. Avignon, who was standing next to him, ventured a guess.

“Your attire in the corridors, perhaps, sir?”

“What about my attire?”

“Your . . .”

Avignon pointed vaguely at his boss’s nether regions.

“Your . . . your underpants.”

“What about them? Does the commissioner want to choose the color himself?”

The embarrassed envoy was shuffling from foot to foot.

“Right,” Boulard continued. “I’m off to see my candidates. Avignon, you can handle this sartorial matter.”

Superintendent Boulard arrived in the blue room in a cloud of dust.

For two years, he had been interviewing candidates to replace his secretary, Mademoiselle Darmon, who had retired to spend more time in her garden in Bagnolet. But he had suffered so badly during the Darmon years that he didn’t dare pick a replacement. And so Boulard would interview four young candidates every Thursday, always in the hope that he wouldn’t have to choose any of them.

On this particular Thursday there were five young ladies.They were sitting on chairs, legs crossed, in the middle of the small waiting room.

“I’m warning you right away: I’m impossible to get along with,” Boulard declared as he strode in.

He pulled out a chair for himself and sat down in front of them. He asked the first girl, a brunette in full evening dress and glasses, what she was reading at the moment.

She stammered, disappeared inside her handbag, and finally got out a big navy-blue book, which she offered up with trembling hands: the Police Code.

“You’re reading that?”

She bit her lip.

“Is it any good?” he inquired, leafing through with a degree of curiosity.

He asked the second candidate how many fingers she typed with. He got the third one to do a mental arithmetic exercise and then recite the fable of “The Wolf and the Lamb.” The fourth girl didn’t feel well and had turned a shade of purple. She had to leave before it came to her turn.

So Boulard turned to the youngest candidate, sitting on his right. She was wearing a rather severe chignon, but it wasn’t enough to make her look any older.

“Don’t you have school on Thursdays?”

“No.”

Her response was trenchant and insolent.

“Is your mother waiting for you downstairs?” inquired Boulard patronizingly.

“And what about your mother?” the young woman replied in the same tone of voice. “Where is she?”

Boulard rubbed his ear gently. The other candidates looked down at the floor.

“You do realize, young lady, that you are on police premises, and there is no guarantee you will leave here this evening.”

“I won’t be the only one staying late.”

She was staring at him, but Boulard didn’t react.

“How old are you?”

“Younger than you,” answered the Cat.

“How did you get through the selection process?”

“Via the window.”

This time, the superintendent stood up brusquely.

He didn’t call out.

Boulard would have felt ridiculous calling for reinforcements against a girl who weighed a fraction of what he did. He stood up and paced around her, trying to think of a more professional question that would calm the atmosphere.

“How do you envisage your role here?”

“Delivering the mail.”

“And then?”

“That’s all,” said the Cat. “After that, I’d go back home. I’ve got other business to attend to.”

There were two knocks at the door. Avignon entered and whispered something in Boulard’s ear.

“Ladies,” said the superintendent, “you may go now. We’ll be writing to you.”

He turned toward the Cat.

“Not you, young lady. Wait for me here.”

The other three filed past the superintendent, who duly left with Avignon. The Cat was staring at the patch of sky through the window. Once outside the interview room, Boulard turned the key twice in the lock.

“Who was that?” asked Avignon.

“A candidate I’m interested in.”

“Are you worried that she’s going to fly away?”

“Quite so. What did you want to talk to me about? Hurry up.”

Avignon glanced around before lowering his voice.

“I’ve just been thinking about what you told me.”

“Is that a reason to interrupt me?”

“Hear me out. I’m the only person here — apart from you — to have seen Padre Zefiro, on the day when he came to identify Viktor.”

“And?”

“I could set out to find him. I’m ready to leave right away.”

“Now? Are you in need of a vacation, Avignon?”

“I’m trying to be useful. If you tell me the whereabouts of his refuge . . .”

Boulard pinched his ear. This was a state secret, and he had already jeopardized it one time too many.