An Officer and a Spy

by Robert Harris

  I feel as if I have walked into a mirrored room and glimpsed myself from an unfamiliar angle for the first time. Is that really what I look like? Is that who I am?

  Two months after Dreyfus’s arrest, in the middle of December 1894, General Mercier summoned me to see him. I was not told what it was about. I assumed it must be in connection with the Dreyfus affair and that others would be present. I was right on the first point, wrong on the second. This time Mercier received me alone.

  He was sitting behind his desk. A weak fire of brownish coal hissed in the grate. The bare facts of Dreyfus’s arrest had been leaked to the press six weeks earlier, at the beginning of November – High Treason. Arrest of the Jewish Officer A. Dreyfus – and people were agog to know what he was guilty of, and what the government planned to do about him; I was curious myself. Mercier told me to take a seat and then played his favourite trick of making me wait while he finished annotating whatever document he was bent over, giving me a long opportunity to study the top of his narrow, close-cropped, balding skull and speculate on what schemes and secrets it contained. Eventually he set down his pen and said, ‘Before I go any further, let me just be certain – you haven’t taken any part in the investigation of Captain Dreyfus since his arrest?’

  ‘None, Minister.’

  ‘And you haven’t spoken about the case to Colonel du Paty or Colonel Sandherr or Major Henry?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a pause while Mercier scrutinised me through his eye slits. ‘You have literary interests, I believe?’

  I hesitated. This was the sort of admission that could ruin one’s prospects of promotion. ‘To some degree; in private, General; yes, I take an interest in all the arts.’

  ‘There’s no need to be ashamed of it, Major. I simply want someone who can make a report for me that would contain more than just the bare facts. Do you think you can do that?’

  ‘I would hope so. Naturally, it would depend on what it’s about.’

  ‘Do you remember what you said in this office on the eve of Dreyfus’s arrest?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean, General.’

  ‘You asked Colonel du Paty: “What happens if Dreyfus doesn’t confess?” I made a note of it at the time. It was a good question. “What happens if he doesn’t confess?” Colonel du Paty assured us he would. But now it transpires he hasn’t, despite being held in prison for the past two months. In confidence, Major, I must tell you I feel let down.’

  ‘I can understand that.’ Poor old du Paty, I thought. I found it hard to keep a straight face.

  ‘Now Captain Dreyfus is going to stand trial next week in front of a military court, and the very same people who assured me he would confess are promising me with equal certainty that he will be found guilty. But I have learned to be more cautious, you understand?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘The government will be roasted alive if this trial goes wrong. You’ve seen the press already: “the case will be hushed up because the officer is a Jew . . .” So this is what I want you to do.’ He put his elbows on his desk and spoke very quietly and deliberately. ‘I want you, Major Picquart, to attend the court martial every day on my behalf and report back to me each evening on what you’ve seen. I don’t just want “He said this, he said that . . .” – any secretary with shorthand could give me that. I want the very nub of the thing.’ He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. ‘Describe it to me like a writer. Tell me how the prosecution sounds. Look at the judges, study the witnesses. I can’t attend the court myself. That would make the whole thing seem like a political trial. So you’ll have to be my eyes and ears. Can you do that for me?’

  ‘Yes, General,’ I said, ‘I would be honoured.’

  I withdrew from Mercier’s office maintaining a suitably solemn expression. But as soon as I reached the landing I tipped my cap to the painting of Napoleon. A personal assignment from the Minister of War! But not just that – I was to be his ‘eyes and ears’! I trotted down those marble steps with a broad smile on my face.

  Dreyfus’s court martial was scheduled to start on Wednesday 19 December in the military courthouse, a grim old building directly across the street from the Cherche-Midi prison, and to last three or four days. I very much hoped it would be over by Saturday night: I had tickets to the Salle d’Harcourt, to attend the first public performance of Monsieur Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune.

  I made sure to be at the court building early. It was not yet light when I made my way into the crowded vestibule. The first person I met was Major Henry: when he saw me, he jerked his head back in surprise.

  ‘Major Picquart! What are you doing here?’

  ‘The minister has asked me to attend as his observer.’

  ‘Has he, by God?’ Henry pulled a face. ‘Aren’t we grand these days? So you’re to be his stool pigeon? We’ll have to watch what we say when you’re around!’ He tried to make it sound as if he was making a joke, but I could tell he was affronted, and from that moment on he was always wary of me. I wished him good luck and climbed the stone staircase to the courtroom on the first floor.

  The building was a former convent with low, thick arched doors and roughly plastered whitewashed walls that had little nooks built into them for icons. The chamber set aside for the hearing was barely larger than a classroom and already packed with reporters, gendarmes, soldiers and those peculiar members of the general public whose pastime is attending trials. At the far end, on a platform erected beneath a mural of the Crucifixion, was a long table for the judges, covered with green baize. Carpets had been nailed up over the windows – whether to shut out prying eyes or the December cold I never did discover, but the effect was claustrophobic and curiously sinister. There was a plain wooden chair facing the judges for the accused, a small desk behind it for his lawyer and another nearby for the prosecutor. A chair just to the side of and behind the judges was reserved for me. There was nowhere for the spectators to sit; they could only press themselves against the walls. I took out my notebook and pencil and sat down to wait. At one point du Paty pushed his way in briefly, followed by General Gonse. They surveyed the scene, then left.

  Soon afterwards the main players began to appear. There was Maître Edgar Demange, Dreyfus’s attorney, exotic in his black robes and cylindrical black cap but otherwise the epitome of a dull middle-aged farmer with a broad, clean-shaven face and straggling wispy sideburns. The prosecutor was Brisset, thin as a sabre, in the uniform of a major. And finally there came the seven military judges, also in uniform – a colonel, three majors and two captains, led by the president of the court, Colonel Émilien Maurel. He was a shrivelled and unhealthy-looking elderly figure: I learned later he was suffering from piles. He took his place in the centre of the long table and addressed the court in a peevish voice: ‘Bring in the accused!’

  All eyes went to the back of the court and the door opened and in he came. He was slightly bent from lack of exercise, grey from exhaustion and the darkness of his cell, thin from his poor diet: in ten weeks he had aged ten years. And yet, as he advanced into the room, escorted by a lieutenant of the Republican Guard, he held his head at a defiant angle. I even detected a hint of anticipation in his step. Perhaps Mercier was right to be worried. Quite the grand seigneur, I noted, & eager to begin. He halted in front of Colonel Maurel and saluted.

  Maurel coughed to clear his throat and said, ‘State your name.’

  ‘Alfred Dreyfus.’

  ‘Place of birth?’

  ‘Mulhouse.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Thirty-five.’

  ‘You may sit.’

  Dreyfus lowered himself into his place. He took off his cap and placed it under his seat. He adjusted his pince-nez and glanced around. I was in his direct line of sight. Almost at once his gaze settled on me. I must have held his stare for perhaps half a minute. What was in his expression? I couldn’t tell. But I sensed that to look away would be to concede that I had played a shabby
trick on him, and so I wouldn’t do it.

  In the end, it was the prosecutor, Brisset, who made us break our contest and look away at the same time. He rose and said, ‘Monsieur President, in view of the sensitive nature of this case, we would like to request that this hearing be held in private.’

  Demange immediately lumbered to his feet. ‘Monsieur President, we object strongly. My client has the right to be treated the same as anyone else who is accused.’

  ‘Monsieur President, under normal circumstances, nobody would argue with that. But the evidence against Captain Dreyfus necessarily includes important matters of national defence.’

  ‘With all due respect, the only actual evidence against my client consists of just one sheet of disputed writing . . .’

  A murmur of surprise went round the room. Maurel gavelled it away. ‘Maître Demange! Be silent, please! You are too experienced an advocate to be excused that type of trick. This court will stand adjourned while we retire to make our decision. Take the accused back to his cell.’

  Dreyfus was led away again. The judges filed out after him. Demange looked content with this first exchange. As I later warned Mercier, whatever happened, he had smuggled out to the public a message about the thinness of the prosecution’s case.

  Fifteen minutes later the judges returned. Maurel ordered that Dreyfus should be retrieved from his cell. He was conducted back to his place, apparently as unperturbed as ever. Maurel said, ‘We have considered the matter carefully. This case is highly unusual in that it touches on the gravest and most sensitive issues of national security. In these matters one simply cannot be too careful. Our ruling therefore is that all spectators should be excluded immediately and that these hearings should proceed in private.’ A great groan of complaint and disappointment arose. Demange tried to object, but Maurel brought down his gavel. ‘No, no! I have made my decision, Maître Demange! I shall not debate it with you. Clerk, clear the court!’

  Demange slumped back. Now he looked grim. It took barely two minutes for the press and public to be ushered out by the gendarmes. When the clerk closed the door, the atmosphere was completely altered. The room was hushed. The carpeted windows seemed to seal us off from the outside world. Only thirteen remained: Dreyfus and his defender and prosecutor, the seven judges, the clerk, Vallecalle, a police official and me.

  ‘Good,’ said Maurel. ‘Now we can begin to consider the evidence. Would the prisoner please stand? Monsieur Vallecalle, read the indictment . . .’

  For the next three afternoons, at the end of each day’s session, I would hurry down the stairs, past the waiting journalists – whose questions I would ignore – stride out into the winter dusk, and pace along the icy pavements for seven hundred and twenty metres exactly – I counted them each time – from the rue du Cherche-Midi to the hôtel de Brienne.

  ‘Major Picquart to see the Minister of War . . .’

  My briefings of the minister always followed the same pattern. Mercier would listen with close attention. He would ask a few terse and pertinent questions. Afterwards he would send me off to Boisdeffre to repeat what I had just said. Boisdeffre, only recently returned from the funeral of Tsar Alexander III in Moscow, his noble head no doubt stuffed full of matters Russian, would hear me through to the end courteously and mostly without comment. From Boisdeffre I would be taken in a War Ministry carriage to the Élysée Palace. There I would brief the President of the Republic himself, the lugubrious Jean Casimir-Perier – an uncomfortable assignment, as the President had long suspected his Minister of War of scheming behind his back. In fact Casimir-Perier was by this time something of a prisoner himself – cut off in his gilded apartments, ignored by his ministers, reduced to a purely ceremonial role. He made clear his contempt for the army by not once inviting me to sit. His response to my narrative was to punctuate it throughout with sarcastic remarks and snorts of disbelief: ‘It sounds like the plot of a comic opera!’

  Privately I shared his misgivings, and they grew as the week progressed. On the first day the witnesses were the six key men who had put together the case against Dreyfus: Gonse, Fabre and d’Aboville, Henry, Gribelin and du Paty. Gonse explained how easily Dreyfus could have got access to the secret documents handed over with the bordereau. Fabre and d’Aboville described his suspicious behaviour while serving in the Fourth Department. Henry testified to the genuineness of the bordereau as evidence retrieved from the German Embassy. Gribelin – drawing on police reports compiled by Guénée – painted a picture of Dreyfus as a womaniser and gambler, which I found frankly unbelievable. But du Paty insisted Dreyfus was driven by ‘animal urges’ and that he was canaille – lowlife – despite his rather prim appearance (Dreyfus simply shook his head at this). Du Paty also alleged the accused had made conscious changes to disguise his handwriting during dictation – an accusation gravely undermined when Demange showed him samples of Dreyfus’s hand, asked him to point out where these transitions occurred, and du Paty was unable to do so.

  Taken together, it was not impressive.

  At the end of my first report, when Mercier asked me how I thought the prosecution case was looking, I hummed and hawed. ‘Now then, Major,’ he said softly, ‘your honest opinion, please. That’s why I put you in there.’

  ‘Well, Minister, in my honest view, it’s all very circumstantial. We have shown beyond doubt that the traitor could have been Dreyfus; we have not proved definitely that it was him.’

  Mercier grunted but made no further comment. However, the next day when I turned up at the court building for the start of the second day’s evidence, Henry was waiting for me.

  He said in an accusing tone, ‘I hear you’ve told the minister our case is looking thin.’

  ‘Well, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Now, Major Henry, don’t look so offended. Will you join me?’ I offered him a cigarette, which he took grudgingly. I struck a match and lit his first. ‘I didn’t say it was thin, exactly, just not specific enough.’

  ‘My God,’ replied Henry, exhaling a jet of smoke in a sigh of frustration, ‘it’s easy enough for you to say that. If only you knew how much specific evidence we have against that swine. We even have a letter from a foreign intelligence officer in which he’s identified as the traitor – can you believe it?’

  ‘Then use it.’

  ‘How can we? It would betray our most secret sources. It would do more damage than Dreyfus has caused already.’

  ‘Even with the hearing behind closed doors?’

  ‘Don’t be naïve, Picquart! Every word uttered in that room will leak one day.’

  ‘Well, then I don’t know what to suggest.’

  Henry drew deeply on his cigarette. ‘How would it be,’ he asked, glancing around to check he was not being overheard, ‘if I came back into court and described some of the evidence we have on file?’

  ‘But you’ve already given your evidence.’

  ‘Couldn’t I be recalled?’

  ‘On what pretext?’

  ‘Couldn’t you have a word with Colonel Maurel and suggest it?’

  ‘What reason could I give him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sure we could come up with something.’

  ‘My dear Henry, I’m here to observe the court martial, not interfere in it.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Henry bitterly. He took a last drag from his cigarette then dropped it on to the flagstone floor and ground it out with the toe of his boot. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

  That second morning was devoted to a parade of officers from the General Staff. They queued up to denigrate their former comrade, to his face. They described a man who snooped around their desks, refused to fraternise with them and always acted as if he was their intellectual superior. One claimed Dreyfus had told him he didn’t care if Alsace was under German occupation because he was a Jew, and Jews, having no country of their own, were indifferent to changes of frontier. Throughout all this, Dreyfus’s expression betrayed no emotion
. One might have thought him stone deaf or wilfully not listening. But every so often he would raise his hand to signal he wished to speak. Then he would calmly correct a point of fact in his toneless voice: this piece of testimony was wrong because he had not been in the department then; that statement was an error because he had never met the gentleman concerned. He seemed to have no anger in him. He was an automaton. Several officers did say a word or two in his defence. My old friend Mercier-Milon called him ‘a faithful and scrupulous soldier’. Captain Tocanne, who had attended my topography classes with Dreyfus, said he was ‘incapable of a crime’.

  And then, at the start of the afternoon session, one of the judges, Major Gallet, announced he had an important issue to bring to the court’s attention. It was his understanding, he said gravely, that there had been an earlier inquiry into a suspected traitor on the General Staff, even before the investigation into Dreyfus began in October. If true, he regretted that this fact had been withheld from the court. He suggested that the matter should be cleared up right away. Colonel Maurel agreed, and told the clerk to recall Major Henry. A few minutes later, Henry appeared, apparently embarrassed and buttoning his tunic, as if he had been dragged from a bar. I made a note of the time: 2.35.

  Demange could have objected to Henry’s recall. But Henry was putting on such a virtuoso performance of being a reluctant witness – standing bareheaded before the judges, fidgeting nervously with his cap – he must have gambled that whatever was coming might work to Dreyfus’s advantage.

  ‘Major Henry,’ said Maurel severely, ‘the court has received information that your evidence yesterday was less than frank, and that you neglected to tell us about an earlier inquiry you made into the existence of a spy on the General Staff. Is that correct?’

  Henry mumbled, ‘It is true, Monsieur President.’

  ‘Speak up, Major! We can’t hear you!’

  ‘Yes, it’s true,’ replied Henry, loudly. He glanced along the row of judges with a look of defiant apology. ‘I wished to avoid revealing any more secret information than was necessary.’