Free A Prince Without a Kingdom by Timothee de Fombelle Page A

God: perhaps he was the angel referred to in the line from Revelation painted in bloodred letters. The workers revolted again.
    Access to the work site was forbidden, pending further orders. Above all, the architects wanted to avoid anyone ransacking the building. So the workers were kept at a distance.
    One morning, the owner of the tower paid a visit.
    He took the freight elevator up to the top floors, with his female assistant and the architects following at his heels. Everybody called him the Irishman. In less than a quarter of a century, he had established a sprawling bank with business interests on both sides of the Atlantic. The rumor was that he had even ended up buying the small hotel where he had arrived as a young migrant.
    Now, aged fifty, here he was walking along the scaffolding of his own tower. His many rings glinted as he held on to the girders. There were still at least another three months to go before the great tower would be finished. Staring out through a window frame with no glass in it, the Irishman ate a banana. Opposite, rising up as if to taunt him, was the Empire State Building, which he had vowed in all the newspapers that his new tower would outstrip. The Irishman gave his banana skin to his assistant. He started laughing loudly when the architect promised to bring all the problems to a speedy resolution. He walked over to him and pretended to push the architect over the edge.
    As he was about to leave, the Irishman noticed a pile of damp ashes in a corner.
    “Do you have fires here?”
    “Never,” replied the foreman.
    The Irishman bent down to dip his finger in the damp charcoal.
    “So what’s this?”
    He drew a black cross on the foreman’s forehead.
    “Finish the tower on time.”
    Then he headed back down again.
    His visit did nothing to change the workers’ minds.
    The first stage of Zefiro’s plan could be heralded as a success. His theatrical flourishes had produced the desired results.
    That August, Zefiro and Vango were able to set up their equipment at the top of the tower. They had positioned a high-precision telescope on a tripod, pointing at Voloy Viktor’s windows. They were equipped with three typewriters, new clothes, and a makeshift office at altitude that was well stocked with rubber stamps, seals, and paper of all kinds. They had sold a ruby to pay for everything.
    Tom Jackson, a young beggar from Thirty-Fourth Street, had been recruited for ground missions.
    From their observatory, they followed every event in Viktor’s daily routine. They noted the comings and goings in minute detail. Their aerial view of the different rooms of the eighty-fifth floor enabled them to keep a log of the times at which the guards were replaced, the regular visitors to the fortified tower, and the frequency of their visits.
    Every evening, for example, most of the curtains were drawn, and the last visitor was always an elegant man whom Zefiro referred to as the lawyer. He appeared to address everyone as if he were master of the household. He would settle in the study. The closed curtains prevented them from seeing Voloy Viktor, who must have been dictating his last correspondences of the day to him from his bed. Then the lawyer would leave. But he was the first to return the following morning, at dawn, in time for Madame Victoria getting up. He would not be seen for the rest of the day.
    At the end of the month, the first letter left Zefiro’s scaffolding and crossed the road, care of Tom Jackson, who was unrecognizable in his attire as a young gentleman. The secret operation had begun.
    So as not to be recognized, Tom kept his left hand (on which were tattooed the words
“
God Bless You”) hidden in his pocket: the tattoo contributed to his notoriety across a patch of five streets and three avenues. He crossed the lobby of the Plaza Hotel as if he were thoroughly at home. He had never set foot on the marble floor before, but had spent his life staring at it through the glass.
    Tom