A Prince Without a Kingdom (41 page)

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.

In one single crime, O’Cafarell had gotten rid of the girl who knew too much and ensured that his own past had been dissolved officially and before witnesses. It was a masterstroke.

Boulard wanted to meet with a New York judge in order to give him the results of his investigation, but war was grinding into action back in Europe, and he had returned hastily to Paris.

On seeing how shaken up Vango was, the Cat read the twenty lines of Mouchet’s message, then glanced back at the postcard and at the name
O’CAFARELL
spelled out in giant metal letters on top of the tower with four spires. She blinked and read the message again.

“I slept under the letters of his name,” groaned Vango. “And I didn’t recognize it. I slept under the letters of his name.”

The Cat would have liked to console her friend. But the truth was she didn’t understand a word of what he was saying. Not a single word.

“I’m coming with you to Paris,” said Vango.

He took a deep breath and almost smiled.

He was rediscovering feelings he thought had been buried. A seagull called out to him as it passed by. He looked up. For one last time, Vango was about to renounce his pledge to abandon the world and its violence forever.

London, December 24, 1942, midnight

She was wearing a gray coat that came down to her feet. The bells of Saint Paul’s and all the churches around had begun to ring out, at the same time as the warning sirens had gone off. Planes were flying over the blacked-out city. All the inhabitants had disappeared into cellars, but the sound of lone footsteps could still be heard in the street. The churches had been abruptly emptied on this Christmas Eve, and now the strains of carols floated up through the small basement windows. It was enough to rally the armies of mice in the basements of London with the Christmas message.

Ethel had been wandering around for hours. Having no desire to go to bed, she had visited various spots where people were dancing. At seven o’clock in the evening, she had passed by the hotel where she was staying and noticed that her own window was lit up on the second floor. It was raining. She had stood on the sidewalk outside, trying to recognize the shadow behind the window. It was bound to be her brother, keen to lecture her again about returning to Everland instead of remaining at the mercy of the bombs.

Ethel had been stopped during an alert the night before. She was found walking in the middle of an icy road in a summer dress. The police must have informed Paul. His air base was in Cambridge, but he had friends in London.

And so, seeing her window lit up, Ethel had fled. She didn’t want to listen to any more reproaches from Mary or Paul, let alone from people she barely knew. The night porter at the hotel checked his watch and tutted when she came back late, and the garage mechanics had complained about the state of her car after she had reached speeds of nearly one hundred miles an hour traveling down from the north.

“That’s no way to behave on the road. And look at the mud in your hair.”

Hearing the mechanic give her a telling-off about her hair had put Ethel in such a temper that she had skidded twice as she sped off in the new Railton.

Ethel often reflected on what Joseph Puppet had said in the zeppelin about the way people looked at women. She had appreciated Puppet’s freedom, his lightness of spirit. But the boxer had been killed when the airship went up in flames. What was left on this earth to keep her going?

Men pursued her with their best intentions. For a while, there had been attempts to introduce her to serious-minded young suitors. The previous summer, against her better judgment, she had agreed to attend Thomas Cameron’s wedding. The results had been catastrophic: Ethel had looked sublime and the bride had made a scene, exploding at Thomas about the girl in the emerald-colored Indian outfit with little silver bells at her heels. That evening at the ball, two Cameron cousins had courted Ethel. After a dance or two, the first one began crying on his mother’s shoulder over by the cloakrooms. The second had more luck. Ethel gave him her arm, led him into the woods, and lost him. He didn’t return until noon the next day, by which time Ethel was already in Glasgow watching an air show.

Only a few realized that her arrogance, intensity, effrontery, and silence weren’t simply part of her allure. Paul, Mary, and the Cat knew about her despair. Ethel’s life had been in free fall for six years now.

On several occasions, Paul had tried talking to her about Vango’s death. One evening, when he was looking for her, he had come across in his sister’s bathroom the blue handkerchief that she had taken from the charred body on the grass at Lakehurst. She could only smile coldly in the mirror and shake her head, as if her brother were incapable of understanding the first thing about such a dreadful story, about a feeling of such complete emptiness. All grief is contemptuous, unassailable, perched at heights that nobody can reach. Perhaps we’re too afraid of any comfort erasing what is left of the memories.

And yet this night spent roaming the streets of London was not the worst Christmas Eve of Ethel’s life. She had collected a great many of them since her parents had died. No, this Christmas Eve was fine by her. Ethel was playing at dodging the groups of soldiers who were on duty because of the alerts. She wasn’t afraid of the bombings. The few nights she had spent in air-raid shelters at the beginning of the war were happy memories. People shared stories, finally sitting next to neighbors they never greeted in the stairwell, as bottles of wine were dug out from the cellars. Ethel enjoyed these brittle moments. Her life was being protected. But one day she realized that she had nothing left to protect. She had tried to explain this to Paul with an odd question: “Do we bring the sand from the rivers indoors when it starts to rain?” And that was why she had made the decision to stay outside when the air-raid siren was sounded.

Suddenly, Ethel came out into a dead-end street and saw three soldiers behind the sandbags. She recognized one of them and deflected her gaze.

“Ethel!”

It was Philip, a friend of her brother’s. She turned her back on them and headed off, flanking a brick wall. Philip had jumped over the barricades.

“People are looking for you, Ethel!”

She took the first road on the left. She knew that people were looking for her; that was why she was on the run. But it was hard to disappear in the deserted streets. Philip had spotted her turning the corner. When an airplane flew very low over the rooftops, Ethel couldn’t hear Philip calling out anymore. She climbed a few steps, made her way between two buildings, and emerged into another street, only to spot that both ends were guarded: there was nothing she could do. Philip’s voice wasn’t far behind her. She advanced hesitantly, before a new siren sounded. In a matter of seconds, the doors of buildings were flung open and lights switched on. It was the end of the alert.

Men and women streamed out onto the pavement in their dozens. Ethel joined one of these groups. She saw poor Philip, who was puce in the face, going around in circles looking for her. She had known him in the old days, when he had studied in college with Paul. But now he was a family man with three or four children, or so she had heard, and he seemed very old as far as she was concerned.

She set off again in the direction of the hotel.

Two shadows could be seen moving behind the curtains in her room. She dug her heels into the cobblestones and tucked her fingers inside her sleeves. She was tired, and it was beginning to snow.

She wanted to be left in peace.

Paris, in a tower of Notre Dame, two hours later

Beneath the bell, Vango watched Simon the bell ringer toasting bread over the coals in the stove. His thick fingers were unafraid of the glowing embers, which he flicked away so the toast wouldn’t burn.

“Whenever I see you, it always marks a big occasion.” Simon smiled. “You should come more often.”

He stirred two earthenware bowls filled with broth that were waiting by the corner of the fire.

“Do you remember the first time?”

“Yes,” said Vango, recalling his ascent of the facade of Notre Dame, with the crowd at his feet.

“Well, a week later, I married Clara,” said Simon. “It took the bishop five minutes to bless us in the sacristy.”

The bell ringer held out a warm bowl and a piece of toast.

“The second time,” he went on, “you looked just as lost to me. It was before the war, in thirty-seven. And my daughter was born eight days later.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You spent at least two nights here. You said you were trying to find someone. . . .”

“The Cat.”

“That’s it. And you were going to disappear forever.”

Simon slurped a mouthful of broth.

“And now here you are again.”

“I’m not very reliable.”

“I had a sense you’d be coming back, because I thought of you yesterday.”

Vango seemed surprised.

“The reason my wife can’t be with us,” Simon announced proudly, “is that she’s expecting in January.”

“Really?”

“Our second child. Clara is with her mother in La Bourboule.”

“Bravo!”

“Each time you appear, a child is born a week later!”

Vango smiled.

“I’m relaxed about it,” said Simon. “It could be another girl. They’ve installed a motor for the bell. There won’t be another bell ringer after me. So two girls would be fine. . . .”

He dunked his toast in the broth before adding, “And anyway, they don’t make so much mess.”

Vango nodded absentmindedly. A small gust of wind had crept inside the tower at Notre Dame.

“I won’t ask what you’re doing in Paris. . . .”

“No,” said Vango.

“You can stay for as long as you like. I’d be delighted.”

They watched the flames die down as Simon’s eyes lit up.

“D’you remember how I hid you in the spire up there?”

“Yes.”

“The police don’t know it’s hollow.”

They each wrapped themselves in a blanket, on either side of the stove. They could barely discern the bell in the gloom above them.

“I’ll stay until the last night of December, if that suits you,” said Vango. “There are some things I need to get ready. The Cat will pass by from time to time. After that, I really will go away.”

“Really? Forever?” asked Simon.

Vango didn’t answer.

“Luckily, I wasn’t planning on having a big family,” the bell ringer muttered to himself.

From time to time, in the darkness, the beating of pigeon wings could be heard. Each sound resonated inside the bronze bell.

Vango was thinking about the days that remained before New Year’s Eve.

He slept very little. At half past four in the morning, the Cat arrived from the top of the south tower and woke him gently.

“Vango . . .”

“Emilie?”

“Yes, it’s me. Is he asleep?”

“Listen!”

They could hear slow breathing. Simon was sound asleep.

“What have you got?” Vango wanted to know.

“I went to give the documents back to Caesar. There was a message for us in the shutter. The French agent has been successfully parachuted in from London. His code name is Charlot.”

“Has he reached La Blanche?”

“No. He called Caesar from a village.”

Nobody telephoned Caesar. Nobody ever met him. Nobody knew who he really was. He led a public life that couldn’t be compromised.

“Charlot managed to jump in time, but the plane was hit just afterward by the German antiaircraft fleet. He saw it fall.”

Vango stiffened.

“The pilot has been reported missing. The plane plunged into a forest toward Mornes.”

“Is there any chance of him making it out of there?”

“Very little. Caesar says we shouldn’t do anything. The Germans will start looking for him there. And it’s marshy too, so even if he’s alive, he’ll have a hard time shaking them off.”

Vango was remembering the English aviators he had hidden. They were very difficult to transfer out secretly. The English were spoils of war for the Nazis.

“Charlot is coming to Paris tomorrow morning,” said the Cat, lowering her voice. “He has a package for the network. We need to give him instructions for La Blanche. Nobody knows that you’re not there waiting for him.”

They fell quiet. Simon mumbled something and Vango strained an ear. The bell ringer was singing “Frère Jacques” in his sleep.

“Eight o’clock tomorrow morning in the cathedral, the chapel of the holy Virgin,” ordered the Cat. “You’ll be given the parcel. I’ll collect it tomorrow evening.”

“Wait!”

But the Cat had gone.