A Prince Without a Kingdom Read online

  PART ONE

  AN ENCOUNTER IN THE SKY: VANGO AND ETHEL

  1. THE CORPSE IN THE BLUE COMET

  2. STORMY WEATHER ON THE TRACKS

  3. TWO TRAMPS IN THE SKY

  4. THE TROUBLE WITH DEER

  5. ON THE RIDGE OF A GLACIER

  6. LAST WORDS ON DEATH ROW

  7. SILVER GHOST

  8. A PRINCESS IN EXILE

  9. LA BOHÈME

  10. A GHOSTLY BEDROOM

  11. “THIS NOTEBOOK BELONGS TO LAURA VIAGGI”

  PART TWO

  12. THE CONSTELLATIONS

  13. GUARDIAN ANGELS

  14. THE RUINED GARDEN

  15. THE CITADEL OF WOMEN

  16. BACK TO EVERLAND

  17. BLOOD AND HONOR

  18. FOUR WORDS IN A TELEGRAM

  19. “WRITE TO TELL ME HE’S WELL”

  20. THE SMOKING ROOM OF THE HINDENBURG

  21. THE WHITE FLAG

  22. “WEEP FOR HUMANITY!”

  PART THREE

  AN ENCOUNTER BY THE SEA: WEEPING WILLOW

  STELLA

  23. THE CAPITAL OF SILENCE

  24. SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST

  25. THE LIST

  26. BEFORE THE STORM

  27. THE SAUCEPANS OF ETERNITY

  28. HORSES FOR SLAUGHTER

  29. MIDNIGHT

  30. BARBARY FIG TREES

  Italics denote real historical figures

  BORIS PETROVITCH ANTONOV murderous Soviet agent tasked with killing Vango

  EMILIE ATLAS girl who secretly prowls the rooftops of Paris; resistance name Marie; a.k.a. “the Cat”

  LIEUTENANT AUGUSTIN AVIGNON Boulard’s ambitious second-in-command

  ETHEL B. H. Scottish heiress and orphan; in love with Vango; lives with her brother, Paul, at Everland Castle

  PAUL B. H. Ethel’s older brother; Scottish heir and orphan; RAF pilot who fights in the Spanish Civil War and for the French Resistance

  DOCTOR BASILIO doctor on the island of Salina; hopes to see Mademoiselle again

  NINA BIENVENUE cabaret singer who achieved fame at La Lune Rousse in Montmartre, Paris

  SUPERINTENDENT AUGUSTE BOULARD eminent police detective at the Quai des Orfèvres (Criminal Investigations, Police HQ, Paris)

  MADAME MARIE-ANTOINETTE BOULARD Boulard’s mother

  CAESAR mysterious resistance leader for the Paradise Network

  GIOVANNI CAFARELLO murderous pirate who left Salina for New York with a stolen fortune; a.k.a. Gio

  DORGELES Voloy Viktor’s right-hand man, and a thug

  MADAME BLANCHE DUSSAC concierge for the Paris apartment block where Boulard lives; friend of Marie-Antoinette Boulard

  COMMANDER/DOKTOR HUGO ECKENER commander of the Graf Zeppelin; friend of Vango; member of Project Violette

  MOTHER ELISABETH leader of the Abbey of La Blanche on the island of Noirmoutier, off the coast of western France

  DOCTOR ESQUIROL Max Grund’s personal doctor; member of Project Violette

  CASIMIR FERMINI proprietor of La Belle Étoile restaurant in Paris

  MAX GRUND chief representative of the Gestapo in German-occupied Paris

  HEINRICH KUBIS headwaiter of the Graf Zeppelin

  CAPTAIN ERNST LEHMANN captain of the Graf Zeppelin; Hugo Eckener’s second-in-command

  MADEMOISELLE Vango’s childhood nurse; a.k.a. Tioten’ka; a.k.a. “the Bird-seller”

  WERNER MANN German World War I fighter pilot; member of Project Violette

  BROTHER MARCO cook at the invisible monastery on the island of Arkudah

  MARY housekeeper at Everland Castle; guardian of Ethel and Paul

  INSPECTOR BAPTISTE MOUCHET assistant to the superintendent at the Quai des Orfèvres (Criminal Investigations, Police HQ, Paris)

  NICHOLAS son of Peter, the gardener at Everland Castle; Ethel’s ally

  ANDREI IVANOVITCH OULANOV violin player from Moscow studying in Paris; blackmailed into spying for Boris Petrovitch Antonov

  IVAN IVANOVITCH OULANOV father of Andrei; lives in Moscow

  KONSTANTIN & ZOYA IVANOVITCH OULANOV younger siblings of Andrei; they live in Moscow

  JOSEPH JACQUES PUPPET former soldier turned boxer from the Ivory Coast; now a barber based in Monaco; member of Project Violette; a.k.a. J. J. Puppet

  SIMON the bell ringer at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

  JOSEPH STALIN despotic ruler of the Soviet Union

  SVETLANA STALIN eight-year-old daughter of Stalin; a.k.a. Setanka; a.k.a. Setanotchka

  STELLA a girl from Chakva

  GIUSEPPINA TROISI Pippo Troisi’s abandoned wife; a.k.a. Pina

  PIPPO TROISI once a farmer from the island of Salina; now an “asylum seeker from marriage” at the invisible monastery on the island of Arkudah

  VANGO washed up on the island of Salina as a child; now a young man searching for his identity; a.k.a. Evangelisto; a.k.a. “the Bird”

  BARTOLOMEO VIAGGI pirate from the island of Salina; killed by Giovanni Cafarello

  LAURA VIAGGI daughter of the late Bartolomeo Viaggi; from the island of Salina

  VOLOY VIKTOR nefarious arms dealer; also goes by many other names, including Madame Victoria

  VLAD THE VULTURE Soviet agent; rival of Boris Petrovitch Antonov

  WEEPING WILLOW mysterious, sickly figure who is hidden away in a valley in the Caucasus Mountains

  PADRE ZEFIRO leader of the invisible monastery of Arkudah; mentor of Vango; member of Project Violette

  1918. At the age of three, Vango is washed up on a beach in the Aeolian Islands in Sicily, with Mademoiselle, his nurse, who claims to know nothing about their past. He grows up on the island of Salina, sheltered from the world, among the birds and climbing the cliffs.

  At the age of ten, he discovers the invisible monastery, which Padre Zefiro founded in order to protect a few dozen monks from the mafias that were after them. Vango is accepted by the community, and lives between his island and the monastery. But, four years later, when he announces to Zefiro that he wants to become a monk, the padre sends him away to find out about the world before making a final commitment.

  So Vango spends the year of 1929 as a crew member of the Graf Zeppelin airship, by the side of Commander Hugo Eckener. On board he meets an orphan called Ethel, who is traveling with her brother. But Vango is being pursued by unknown forces who want him dead, and three weeks after meeting Ethel, he is forced to leave her.

  A few years later, just as he is about to become a priest at the foot of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Vango is accused of a crime he hasn’t committed. The senseless witch hunt continues, and Superintendent Boulard and his men join the ranks of those already pursuing him. From now on, Vango leads the life of a fugitive across Europe, as he tries to discover why such hatred follows him.

  Padre Zefiro has now left his monastery and is fighting against the arms dealer Voloy Viktor in order to keep the promise he made to three friends, twenty years earlier, in the trenches of Verdun.

  In the middle of this whirlwind, Vango finally learns about his dramatic arrival in Sicily as a child: offshore from the islands, his parents were killed in their boat by three men, led by one Cafarello. Vango and his nurse escaped. Cafarello betrayed his co-pirates, sunk the boat, and disappeared with the lion’s share of the mysterious treasure that was on board.

  Vango sets off again into the unknown to find Cafarello and uncover the great secret of his life.

  Lakehurst, New Jersey, September 1, 1929

  The rectangle of crumpled corn was their hideout.

  They were lying next to each other, draped in the gold of the crop. All around them, fields stretched as far as the eye could see, proud and tall beneath the sun. Th
e airship on the ground was just visible, a few kilometers off, like a shimmer of silver in the grass.

  She was twelve perhaps, and he fourteen. She had run after him through the corn, which had closed up again behind them.

  “Go away!” he had called out.

  She had followed, without the faintest idea of where he was heading. Now they were huddled on the ground, face-to-face, and she was crying.

  “Are we hiding? Why do we have to hide?”

  Vango put two fingers to Ethel’s lips.

  “Shhh. . . . He’s here. He’s following me.”

  Not even the ears of grain rustled. Complete silence, except for a sustained summer note, a deep note you might call the sound of the sun. Vango had a crazed look in his eyes.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Ethel whispered.

  The parched earth soaked up the traces of her tears.

  “There’s nobody here. I don’t recognize you anymore, Vango. What is the matter?”

  Ethel had only known Vango for three weeks, but it seemed to her as if their meeting was the beginning of everything and that in her entire life she had never really known anybody else. Three weeks had been like a small eternity together. Hadn’t they traveled all the way around the world?

  They had even forgotten about the other passengers on board the Graf Zeppelin, the crowds that gathered at each stop-off, the newspapers reporting on the great airship’s adventure, the magnesium flashes from the cameras falling over them like a shower of white rain.

  In their hearts, it had been just the two of them flying: from New York to Germany, and then nonstop to Japan. After five days let loose in Tokyo, they had crossed the Pacific in three days, flown over the bay of San Francisco at sunset as part of a flotilla of small aircraft, been given a standing ovation in Los Angeles and Chicago, and finally landed at Lakehurst, near New York.

  Enough for at least one lifetime. Or perhaps for two lives joining together?

  “Please,” she whispered, “tell me what you’re frightened of. Then I can help you.”

  Once again he put his hand over Ethel’s mouth. He had just heard a clicking sound, like a weapon being loaded.

  “He’s here.”

  “Who?”

  Ethel rolled over onto her back.

  Vango wasn’t the same person anymore.

  Three weeks earlier, they had been strangers. They had met in the skies above New York, on the first night of their voyage. Ethel wished she could be back there, reliving it all, second by second, beginning with the first words, “Don’t you ever speak?”

  She had said nothing, of course, which had been her response to every question for the past five years. She was leaning against the window, holding a glass of water. They were one hundred meters above the tallest skyscrapers. The vertical night sparkled below them. She wasn’t interested in the person who was talking to her.

  “I was watching you with your brother,” he had remarked. “You never say anything. But he’s very good at looking after you.”

  He had turned his head to discover a pair of green eyes staring at him.

  All the other passengers were asleep. She had left her cabin in search of a glass of water and had found this boy, sitting in the semidarkness, in the small kitchen of the airship. He was peeling potatoes. She supposed he was working as a kitchen hand.

  And then, as she headed for the door to return to her cabin, she had heard him say, “If you like, I’m here. If you can’t sleep, my name’s Vango.”

  These peculiar words had stopped Ethel in her tracks. She had repeated them to herself, before wondering, And if I can sleep, will he still be called Vango?

  Against her better judgment, she had glanced at him. She saw that he was peeling his potatoes as if they were precious stones, with eight perfect facets. Above all, she saw that he bore no resemblance to anything or anyone she had ever met before. She had walked out of the room. The Zeppelin was already some distance from the coast. Manhattan was just a shiny memory in the sky.

  When Ethel returned to the kitchen shortly afterward, Vango had admitted, “Like you, I’ve said very few words in my life. It’s your silence that’s making me so chatty.”

  It was her smile that betrayed her. She had sat down on a crate, as if she hadn’t seen him. He was singing something in a language she didn’t recognize.

  Vango could no longer recall what he had said to pass the time. But he hadn’t stopped talking until morning. Perhaps he had begun with the potato he was holding between his fingers. Boiled, sautéed, roasted, grated, stewed: the humble potato always astounded him. Sometimes, he would even cook it in a ball of clay, which he would smash afterward with a stone, as if it were an egg. From the potato, he would no doubt have gone on to talk about eggs, then chickens, then everything that lives in the farmyard, or that lends its scent to the vegetable garden or the spice shop, or that falls from the fruit trees with the sound of autumn. He had talked about chestnuts exploding, and the sizzle of mushrooms in the frying pan. She was listening. He had got her to smell the jar of vanilla pods, and he had heard the first sound to pass her lips as her face approached the jar to sniff it: like the sigh of a child turning over in her sleep.

  They had even looked at each other for a second in silence. She seemed surprised.

  Vango had continued. Later, he noticed the small bundle of vanilla pods bringing tears to the girl’s eyes; even the acrid smell of yeast on the chopping board seemed to make memories rise up for her.He watched her beginning to thaw.

  The next day, as they passed the thirty-fifth meridian, Ethel had uttered her first word, “Whale.”

  And sure enough, below them was a drifting white island, which not even the pilots of the Zeppelin had spotted. A white island that turned gray when it rose up out of the foam.

  After that word came the word “toast,” then the word “Vango,” and then other words too: sounds that filled the eyes and mouth. This lasted for nearly two weeks. Ethel could feel life returning, the way a blind person recovers their sight. Her brother, Paul, sitting at the table with the other guests, had watched her getting better before his eyes. He hadn’t heard the deep timbre of her voice since the death of their parents.

  But just before leaving Japan, on the twenty-first of August, she had seen something crack in Vango’s gaze. What had happened that evening of their world tour?

  Ethel suddenly remembered that all dreams have to come to an end.

  Now, here they were, lying in their den of corn and sunshine. They should have felt so close, the two of them, on this particular morning, now that they were far away from the others at last. But instead she noticed the way Vango’s hand was trembling as she valiantly brought hers close to it.

  “The balloon’s about to depart. You must go,” whispered Vango.

  “But what about you?”

  “I’ll catch up.”

  “I’m staying here with you.”

  “Go.”

  She stood up. Vango tugged her back down again.

  “Stay low and walk as far as the last row of corn, over there. Then run to the Zeppelin.”

  Something fell to the ground, behind Vango.

  “What’s that?” Ethel wanted to know.

  Vango picked it up and tucked it inside his belt, in the small of his back. It was a revolver.

  “You’re losing your mind,” said Ethel.

  Vango wished that were the case. He wished that he had made everything up. That the invisible enemy who had tried to kill him three times in one week had never existed, and that Ethel’s hair could sweep away the shadows lying in ambush all around him.

  Ethel let go of his hands.

  “You made me a promise,” she added, after taking a few steps. “Will you remember?”

  He nodded, his eyes no longer able to focus.

  She vanished into the corn.

  After she had been walking for ten minutes, with her matted hair stuck to her cheeks and eyes, Ethel heard two gunshots being fired in the distanc
e behind her. She turned around. The pool of gold lay still, as if at low tide. Ethel could no longer tell where she had set out from, or where the sound had come from.

  The blaring of the airship’s horn was summoning her. Ethel turned full circle, unable to decide what to do; then, remembering Vango’s pleading look, she continued walking toward the Zeppelin.

  Commander Eckener’s booming voice was making the kitchen window vibrate.

  “Where’s my Piccolo? What have you done with him?”

  Otto Manz, the chef, shrugged, causing all his chins to disappear into his collar.

  “He was here at midnight making a sauce for me. Try this!”

  Otto held out a steaming wooden spoon, which Hugo Eckener pushed aside.

  “I’m not here to discuss your sauces! I’m asking you where Vango is.”

  The kitchen was at the front of the airship. The canvas giant tugged at its mooring ropes, preparing to leave America. In its hull, ten of Christopher Columbus’s sailing ships could have been lined up end to end.

  A pilot officer appeared at the door.

  “We’re also missing two passengers.”

  “Who?” bellowed Eckener.

  “My little sister, Ethel,” announced a twenty-year-old man who had entered behind the officer.

  “This isn’t a summer camp! This is the first round-the-world trip by air! And we’re running an hour late. Where are these kids?”

  “Over there!” exclaimed the cook, looking out the window.

  Ethel had just cleared a path through the crowd surrounding the balloon. Her brother, Paul, rushed toward the window. She was alone.

  “Get her on board!” ordered the commander.

  They reached out to haul her up; the steps had already been taken in. Paul greeted her on the threshold.

  “Where were you?”

  Ethel thrust her fists into her pockets. She was staring at her brother. She sensed that she was teetering on a narrow causeway. She could either dive back into the silence she had inhabited before Vango, or she could set out alone on a new journey.

  Paul sensed his sister’s vertigo, and he watched her with trepidation, as if she were a cat on a glass roof.

  “I went for a walk,” said Ethel.

  Eckener appeared next to them.

  “What about Vango?”