An Officer and a Spy

by Robert Harris

  ‘I appreciate that, General. But in the meantime do I have your permission to continue my investigation of Esterhazy?’

  The massive head nods slowly. ‘I should think so, my boy, yes.’

  ‘Wherever the investigation leads me?’

  Another heavy nod: ‘Yes.’

  Filled with renewed energy, that evening I meet Desvernine in our usual rendezvous at the gare Saint-Lazare. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since the middle of August. I am slightly late. He is already sitting waiting for me in a corner seat, reading Le Vélo. He has stopped drinking beer, I notice, and gone back to mineral water. As I slip into the chair opposite him, I nod to his newspaper. ‘I didn’t know you were a cyclist.’

  ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Colonel. I’ve had a machine for ten years.’ He folds the paper up small and stuffs it into his pocket. He seems to be in a bad mood.

  I say, ‘No notebook today?’

  He shrugs his shoulders. ‘There’s nothing to report. Benefactor’s still on leave at his wife’s place in the Ardennes. The embassy’s quiet, half shut up for the summer – no sign of either of our men for weeks. And your friend Monsieur Ducasse has had enough and gone to Brittany for a holiday. I tried to stop him but he said if he stayed in the rue de Lille much longer he’d go crazy. I can’t say I blame him.’

  ‘You sound frustrated.’

  ‘Well, Colonel, it’s been five months since I started investigating this bastard – if you’ll excuse me – and I don’t know what else we’re supposed to do. Either we pick him up and sweat him for a bit, see if we can make him admit something, or we suspend the operation: that would be my proposal. Either way, the weather’s turning colder and we ought to pull those speaking-tubes out within a day or two. If the Germans decide to light a fire, we’ll be in trouble.’

  ‘Well, for once let me show you something,’ I say, and pass the photographs of Esterhazy’s letters face-down across the table. ‘Benefactor is trying to get a position on the General Staff.’

  Desvernine looks at the letters and immediately his expression brightens. ‘The bastard!’ he repeats happily, under his breath. ‘He must owe more than we thought.’

  I wish I could tell him about the bordereau and Dreyfus and the secret file, but I daren’t, not yet – not until I have official clearance from Billot to broaden the scope of my inquiry.

  Desvernine says, ‘What do you propose to do about him, Colonel?’

  ‘I think we need to become much more active. I’m going to suggest to the minister that he actually agrees to Benefactor’s request and gives him a position on the General Staff, in a department where we can monitor him round the clock. We should let him believe he has access to secret material – something apparently valuable, but which we’ve forged – and then we should follow him and see what he does with it.’

  ‘That’s good. And I’ll tell you what else we could do, if we’re indulging in a little forgery. Why don’t we send him a fake message from the Germans inviting him to a meeting to discuss the future? If Benefactor turns up, that’s incriminating in itself. But if he turns up carrying secret material, we’ll have caught him red-handed.’

  I think this over. ‘Is there a forger we could use?’

  ‘I’d suggest Lemercier-Picard.’

  ‘Is he trustworthy?

  ‘He’s a forger, Colonel. He’s about as trustworthy as a snake. His real name is Moisés Lehmann. But he did a lot of work for the section when Colonel Sandherr was there, and he knows we’ll come looking for him if he tries to pull any tricks. I’ll find out where he is.’

  Desvernine leaves looking much happier than he did when I arrived. I stay to finish my drink, then take a taxi home.

  The next day it suddenly starts to feel like autumn – a threatening dark grey sky, windy, the first leaves blowing off the trees and chasing down the boulevards. Desvernine is right: we need to get those sound-tubes out of the apartment in the rue de Lille as soon as possible.

  I arrive at the office at my usual time and quickly scan the day’s papers laid out ready for me by Capiaux on my table. Le Figaro’s description of Dreyfus’s conditions on Devil’s Island has stirred up the sediment of opinion again, and everywhere Dreyfus is widely denounced: ‘Make him suffer even more’ seems to be the collective view. But it is a story in L’Éclair that brings me up short – an anonymous article headlined ‘The Traitor’ which alleges that Dreyfus’s guilt was proved beyond doubt by ‘a secret file of evidence’ passed to the judges at his court martial. The author calls on the army to publish the contents in order to put an end to the ‘inexplicable sense of pity’ surrounding the spy.

  This is the first time the existence of the secret file has been mentioned in the press. The coincidence that it should happen now, of all times, just as I have taken possession of the dossier, makes me uneasy. I march down the corridor to Lauth’s office and drop the newspaper on his desk. ‘Seen this?’

  Lauth reads it and looks up at me, alarmed. ‘Somebody must be talking.’

  ‘Find Guénée,’ I order him. ‘He’s supposed to be monitoring the Dreyfus family. Tell him to come over here now.’

  I walk back to my office, unlock my safe and take out the secret file. I sit at my desk and make a list of everyone who knows about it: Mercier, Boisdeffre, Gonse, Sandherr, du Paty, Henry, Lauth, Gribelin, Guénée; to these nine, thanks to my briefing yesterday, can now be added Billot – that’s ten; and then there are the seven judges, starting with Colonel Maurel – seventeen – and President Fauré, and the President’s doctor, Gibert – that’s nineteen – who was the man who told Mathieu Dreyfus – who makes twenty; and after that – who knows how many more Mathieu has told?

  There is no such thing as a secret – not really, not in the modern world, not with photography and telegraphy and railways and newspaper presses. The old days of an inner circle of like-minded souls communicating with parchment and quill pens are gone. Sooner or later most things will be revealed. That is what I have been attempting to make Gonse understand.

  I massage my temples, trying to think it through. The leak ought to vindicate my position. But I suspect it is more likely to make Gonse and Boisdeffre panic and strengthen their determination to limit the investigation.

  Guénée arrives in my office towards the end of the morning, jaundice-yellow as usual and smelling like the inside of an old tobacco pipe. He has brought with him the Dreyfus surveillance file. He looks around nervously. ‘Is Major Henry here?’

  ‘Henry’s still on leave. You’ll have to deal with me.’

  Guénée sits and opens his file. ‘It’s the Dreyfus family who are behind it, Colonel, almost certainly.’

  ‘Even though the tone of the L’Éclair article is hostile to Dreyfus?’

  ‘That’s just to cover their tracks. The editor, Sabatier, has been got at by them – we’ve monitored him meeting both Mathieu and Lucie. This is part of a pattern of increased activity by the family lately – you may have noticed. They’ve hired the Cook Detective Agency in London to dig for information.’

  ‘And have they got anywhere?’

  ‘Not that we know of, Colonel. That may be why they’ve changed their tactics and decided to become more public. It was a journalist employed by the detective agency who planted the false story that Dreyfus had escaped.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘I suppose, to get people talking about him again.’

  ‘Well then, I’d say they’ve succeeded, wouldn’t you?’

  Guénée lights a cigarette. His hands are shaking. He says, ‘You remember a year ago, I told you about a Jewish journalist the family were talking to – Bernard Lazare? Anarchist, socialist, Jewish activist?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He now seems to be writing a pamphlet in defence of Dreyfus.’

  He searches through the file and gives me a photograph of a heavyset, youngish man in pince-nez with a huge balding forehead and a heavy beard. Clip
ped to it is a selection of newspaper cuttings authored by Lazare: ‘The New Ghetto’, ‘Anti-Semitism and Anti-Semites’, a series of recent articles in La Voltaire attacking Drumont of La Libre Parole (you are not invulnerable, neither you nor your friends . . .).

  ‘Quite the polemicist,’ I say, flicking through it. ‘And now he’s working with Mathieu Dreyfus?’

  ‘No doubt of it.’

  ‘So he’s another who must know about the secret file?’

  Guénée hesitates. ‘Yes, presumably.’

  I add Lazare’s name to the list; that makes twenty-one; this is becoming hopeless. ‘Do we know when this pamphlet is likely to appear?’

  ‘We haven’t picked up anything from our sources in the French printing trade. They may be planning to publish abroad. We don’t know. They’ve become much more professional.’

  ‘What a mess!’ I toss the photograph of Lazare back across the desk towards Guénée. ‘This secret file is going to become a real embarrassment. You were involved in its compilation, isn’t that right?’

  I don’t ask the question in an interrogatory way, but entirely casually. To my surprise Guénée frowns and shakes his head, as if making a great effort at memory. ‘Ah no, Colonel, not I.’

  The stupid lie puts me on immediate alert. ‘No? But surely you provided Major Henry with a statement from the Spanish military attaché? It was a central part of the case against Dreyfus.’

  ‘Did I?’ Suddenly he looks less sure.

  ‘Well, did you or didn’t you? Major Henry says you did.’

  ‘Then I must have.’

  ‘I have it here, in fact: what you said Val Carlos told you.’ I take the secret file from my desk drawer, open it and extract Henry’s deposition. Guénée’s eyes widen in amazement at the sight of it. ‘“Be sure to tell Major Henry on my behalf (and he may repeat it to the colonel)” – that’s Colonel Sandherr, I presume – “that there is reason to intensify surveillance at the Ministry of War, since it emerges from my last conversation with the German attachés that they have an officer on the General Staff who is keeping them admirably well informed. Find him, Guénée: if I knew his name, I would tell you!”’

  ‘Yes, that sounds about right.’

  ‘And he actually said this to you roughly six months before Dreyfus was arrested?’

  ‘Yes, Colonel – in March.’

  Something in his demeanour tells me he is still lying. I look again at the statement. It doesn’t sound much like a Spanish marquis to me; it reads more like a policeman making up evidence.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ I say. ‘Let me be clear about this. If I go to see the marquis de Val Carlos and say to him, “My dear Marquis, between you and I, is it true that you said these words to Monsieur Guénée that helped send Captain Dreyfus to Devil’s Island?” he will reply, “My dear Major Picquart, that’s absolutely correct”?’

  Panic flickers in Guénée’s face. ‘Well I don’t know about that, Colonel. Remember, he said that to me in confidence. Given all this stuff in the press about Dreyfus now – how can I swear to what he’d say today?’

  I stare at him. My God, I think. What in the name of heaven were they up to? If Val Carlos didn’t say it to Guénée, it stands to reason he didn’t say it to Henry either. Because it wasn’t just Guénée whom the Spaniard was supposed to have warned about a German spy on the General Staff: it was Henry. It was their alleged conversation that provided the basis for Henry’s theatrical testimony at the court martial: The traitor is that man!

  A long pause is ended by a knock at the door. Lauth thrusts his blond head into the room. I wonder how long he has been listening. ‘General Boisdeffre would like you to go over and see him straight away, Colonel.’

  ‘Thank you. Tell his office I’m on my way.’ Lauth withdraws. I say to Guénée, ‘We’ll talk about this some other time.’

  ‘Yes, Colonel.’ He leaves, looking – or so it seems to me – mightily relieved to have escaped without any further interrogation.

  Boisdeffre is seated behind his grand desk, his elegant hands palm-down on the surface; a copy of L’Éclair lies between them. He says, ‘I gather you saw the minister yesterday.’ His tone is one of a calmness that is only being maintained with great difficulty.

  ‘Yes, I see him most days, General.’

  Boisdeffre has left me standing to attention on the carpet, the first time this has happened.

  ‘And you showed him the secret file on Dreyfus?’

  ‘I felt he needed to be aware of the facts—’

  ‘I will not have it!’ He lifts one of his hands and brings it down hard on his desk. ‘I told you to speak to General Gonse and to no one else! Why do you think you can disobey my orders?’

  ‘I’m sorry, General, I wasn’t aware your order applied to the minister. If you remember, last month you gave me permission to brief General Billot about the Esterhazy investigation.’

  ‘About Esterhazy, yes! But not about Dreyfus! I thought it was made absolutely clear to you by General Gonse that you were to keep the two matters separate?’

  I continue to stare straight ahead, at a particularly hideous oil painting by Delacroix hanging just above the Chief of Staff’s scanty white hair. Only occasionally do I risk a brief glance at the general himself. He seems to be under tremendous stress. The Virginia creeper-like mottling on his cheeks has ripened from crimson to purple.

  ‘Frankly, I don’t believe it’s possible to keep the two matters separate, General.’

  ‘That may be your opinion, Colonel, but you have no business trying to create dissension in the high command.’ He picks up the newspaper and waves it at me. ‘And where did this come from?’

  ‘The Sûreté believe the story may have originated with the Dreyfus family.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘It’s impossible to say. A considerable number of people have knowledge of the file.’ I pull out my list. ‘I count twenty-one so far.’

  ‘Let me see that.’ Boisdeffre holds out his hand. He runs his eye down the column of names. ‘So you are saying that one of these must be behind the leak?’

  ‘I can’t see where else it could have come from.’

  ‘I notice you haven’t put your own name on it.’

  ‘I know that I’m not a suspect.’

  ‘You might know that, but I don’t. A casual observer might find it a curious coincidence that just as you begin agitating for a reopening of the Dreyfus case, revelations about it start to appear in the press.’

  There is a loud crack from somewhere beyond the tall windows. It sounds as though a tree has blown down. Rain slashes against the glass. Boisdeffre, still staring at me, doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘I deny that insinuation absolutely, General. These stories do nothing to help my investigation, as you have just made clear. They only make it more difficult.’

  ‘That’s one view. Another is that you are seeking every possible means to reopen the Dreyfus case, whether by going to the minister behind my back, or fomenting an agitation in the press. Did you know that a member of the Chamber of Deputies has announced he is seeking to question the government about the whole affair?’

  ‘I give you my word I had nothing to do with this.’

  The general bestows on me a look of deep suspicion. ‘Let us hope this is the end of these disclosures. It’s bad enough for the press to report the existence of the file. If they were to describe its actual contents, it would become much more serious. I’ll keep this list, if I may.’

  ‘Of course.’ I bow my head in a way that I hope indicates contrition, even though I don’t feel it.

  ‘Very well, Colonel.’ He flicks his fingers, as if dismissing a waiter at the Jockey Club. ‘You may go.’

  I step out into the rue Saint-Dominique to find a hurricane blowing: a freak system that moves across Paris between noon and three. I have to clutch on to the railings to prevent myself being knocked off my feet; by the time I reach our building I am drenched to the skin. The w
ind takes roofs off the Opéra-Comique and the Préfecture of Police. It blows out the windows on one side of the Palace of Justice. Riverboats are torn from their moorings and dashed against the quays. Some of the laundrywomen on the banks of the Seine are blown into the water and have to be rescued. The stalls in the flower market in the place Saint-Sulpice are entirely whisked away. Walking home that evening I pass through streets that lie ankle-deep in shredded vegetation and broken tiles. The havoc is terrible, but privately I am relieved: the press will have other things to talk about for the next few days apart from Captain Dreyfus.

  14

  THE RESPITE IS brief. On Monday, L’Éclair publishes a second and longer article. Its headline couldn’t be worse from my point of view: ‘The Traitor: The Guilt of Dreyfus Demonstrated by the Dossier’.

  Feeling sick, I carry it over to my desk. The story is grossly inaccurate but it includes some telling details: that the secret dossier was passed to the judges in the room where they were deliberating; that the dossier contained confidential letters between the German and Italian military attachés; and that one of these letters referred specifically to ‘that animal Dreyfus’ – not exactly ‘that lowlife D’ but close enough. ‘It was this irrefutable proof,’ concludes the article, ‘that determined the verdict of the judges.’

  I drum my fingers. Who is revealing all this detail? Guénée says it is the Dreyfus family. I’m not so sure. Who stands to gain from the leaks? From where I sit, the most obvious beneficiaries are those who want to create a siege mentality within the Ministry of War and curtail my inquiry into Esterhazy. It is the phrase ‘that animal Dreyfus’ that strikes a chord in my memory. Isn’t that what du Paty always claimed about Dreyfus: that he had ‘animal urges’?

  I take a pair of scissors from my desk and carefully cut out the article. Then I write a letter to Gonse, who is still on leave: Recently I took the liberty of telling you that in my opinion we were going to have a major problem on our hands if we did not take the initiative. The attached article in L’Éclair unfortunately confirms me in my opinion. I feel obliged to repeat that in my view it is imperative to act without delay. If we wait any longer, we will be overwhelmed, locked into an inextricable position, and unable either to defend ourselves or ascertain the real truth.