A Prince Without a Kingdom (32 page)

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.

He thought of letting himself drop as well. For the second time in his life, he railed silently against the sky, against God. He had done this once at Verdun, during the Great War, when ten men had been blown up only two paces from him. And now he was doing it again, four hundred meters above sea level, on seeing evil triumph once more. Who would come to his aid?

Just then, very close to him, a voice called out.

“It’s over.”

Schiff’s head had appeared between the bars of the ladder.

“I’ve counted everything. All the way to a thousand.”

“Pull my legs, my boy,” said Zefiro, looking at him. “Pull me inside.”

Esquirol and Puppet were waiting. They had sat down next to the piano, which Kubis had covered with a black cloth to give his ears a rest. Both men were surveying the far end of the saloon.

Puppet saw him first.

“Look!”

Esquirol held his breath.

The man approaching them was Vincent Valpa’s bodyguard. He made his way over and stared at each of them in turn. Puppet was wearing a blue organza dressing gown, while Esquirol was dressed in a simple suede waistcoat and wide-legged trousers.

“Mr. Valpa didn’t want a glass of water.”

“No?” said Esquirol. “Are you sure?”

“Why did you ask me to take him some water?”

“I thought that with the dry weather . . . Can you feel the storm brewing?”

Valpa’s guard knocked over the glass and deliberately smashed it on the piano, before turning his back on them.

Puppet and Esquirol went to lock themselves in their cabin. What could have happened to Zefiro?

“We’re going to delay landing by a few hours,” Captain Pruss told the passengers the next day at breakfast. “There’s a storm above Lakehurst, and we’ve got enough fuel for a little sightseeing trip over the beaches of New Jersey. We should arrive in the afternoon.”

“My wife is waiting for me with our three children,” complained Joseph Spah.

“She will be informed.”

“She’d better make the most of her final moments without that mutt,” remarked a lady who hadn’t slept on account of the raucous barking from Spah’s dog.

A man explained that he hoped to be able to catch a glimpse of his house, which was farther up the coast.

“We’ll do our best, sir. I’ll send the navigation officer to have a word with you.”

There was barely a disgruntled murmur from the group. They were keen to arrive, but the bread was warm, the bacon was making the eggs bubble, and a delicious aroma was wafting out of the silver coffee pots. They couldn’t complain.

Only Ethel was devastated by this delay. She followed Pruss to the stairs.

“Are you sure we can’t land now?”

“Yes, I’m sure, miss. Is someone waiting for you as well?”

“Yes. It’s important.”

“Would you like us to let anyone know?”

“No.”

Just behind her, she noticed one of the Norwegians whom Puppet had claimed were Russian. It was the tall one with the beard. He looked like a textbook portrait of Rasputin. She had a sense that he had never let her out of his sight.

Ethel went into her cabin and slammed the door. She lay down on her bunk.

Meanwhile, two hunched figures remained deep in the hull of the zeppelin: Zefiro and Schiff were hiding between the hydrogen balloons.

“What are you going to do afterward?” asked Zefiro.

Schiff didn’t answer. He didn’t even seem to understand.

“I’d like to drift like you,” said Zefiro. “Drifting instead of swimming against the current. I’m tired.”

But when his eyes met Schiff’s, he realized his mistake. Schiff’s life had been just as much of a battle as his own. This boy wasn’t a piece of bark drifting along in the stream. He had been forced to learn to swim from very early on.

“If you like, I can take you back home with me.”

Schiff looked up.

“I live with some friends in the middle of the sea. I keep bees.”

Schiff smiled. And once again, Zefiro recalled Vango’s first days at the invisible monastery.

“I’ll take you there, and we’ll never have to move again.”

The monk removed a ball of blue silk embroidered with yellow thread from his pocket and wrapped it around his wrist. The
V
for Vango appeared in a fold of the handkerchief.

“And think of this, my boy: one day, I’ll introduce you to a friend of mine who’s rather like you.”

Lakehurst, New Jersey, two hours later, May 6, 1937

The airship was turning gently above the crowd.

At the edge of the landing field, a gray wooden hangar stretched for nearly thirty meters. The ground floor was cluttered with metalwork. Up above, the hay was stored when the field was mown once or twice a year. But since airships don’t eat hay, not even in winter, the stock increased year on year. No one knew what to do with it anymore. Bales of hay were stacked all the way to the roof.

Close to a small window, on the second floor that smelled of dust and dry grass, a space had been cleared. Voloy Viktor was watching the
Hindenburg
through a pair of binoculars. Next to him, a man had assembled the different pieces of a wide-ranging rifle. Down on the floor, he had opened up a double-bass case containing a complete arsenal.

“Watch out for the last window on the right flank. That’s where they’ll give the signal,” explained another man, who looked like an Argentine tango dancer.

Viktor lowered the binoculars and turned dismissively toward him. He knew about which side; he just wanted silence. Voloy Viktor had sent Dorgeles to Europe, under the name of Vincent Valpa, to bring back proof that the transaction was a bona fide venture. The Irishman also required proof. The latest news was that Dorgeles had received all the necessary confirmation during his trip. But he had yet to report on the meeting with Hugo Eckener, and this was the only valid guarantee in their eyes. If Commander Eckener had indeed welcomed Valpa, then Dorgeles was to raise a piece of white cloth at the window of his cabin. A scrap of red material, however, would mean Dorgeles had evidence that the deal was a hoax.

The elite marksman, who was counting his cartridges, was here for the second scenario. Several of his fingers were broken, but he needed only one to kill somebody. In the event of a red handkerchief, Viktor would have Mr. Puppet and his mysterious colleague destroyed the moment they set foot on American soil.

The
Hindenburg
continued its descent. It had performed one final large maneuver and was now presenting them with its nose and cockpit. At last, they would be able to see the right-hand side of the balloon.