An Officer and a Spy

by Robert Harris

  From the place de la Concorde comes the faint roar of thousands of voices cheering, and then gradually at first but increasing in volume, as in a symphony, an underlying percussion of horses’ hooves on cobbles. A shimmering line of light appears spread across the wide thoroughfare, and then more lines behind it, which gradually resolve into helmets and breastplates glinting in the bright sun – wave after wave of lancers and cuirassiers, bobbing up and down on their horses, banners streaming, twelve abreast, riding across the bridge. On and on they come, heading straight for us at a stiff trot, until it seems they will mount the steps and charge right through us. But then abruptly at the last moment they sweep round to our right, down the boulevard Saint-Germain. Behind them come the native cavalry – the Chasseurs d’Afrique, the Algerian Saphis, the Arab caids and chiefs, their horses shying at the racket of the crowd – and then after these is the procession of open state carriages – the President, the Russian ambassador, the leaders of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, and all the other prominent figures of the Republic, including General Billot. There is a particularly loud cheer for Boisdeffre in his plumed helmet, which he doffs from side to side: the gossip is that after this he could be Foreign Minister.

  There is a gap, and then the Russian state coach appears, surrounded by a mounted bodyguard. Pauline gasps and clutches my arm.

  After all the talk of alliances and armies, it is the smallness of the Imperial couple that makes the most impression on me. Tsar Nicholas II might be mistaken for a frightened fair-headed boy wearing a false beard and his father’s uniform. He salutes mechanically every few seconds, touching the edge of his astrakhan cap in rapid gestures – more nervous tic than acknowledgement of applause. Sitting by his side the Tsarina Alexandra appears even younger, a girl who has raided the dressing-up box. She wears a swansdown boa and clutches a white parasol in one hand and an immense bouquet in the other. She bows rapidly to right and left. I am close enough to see her clenched smile. They both look apprehensive. Their carriage swings sharply rightwards and they sway gently over to one side with the motion then disappear – sucked out of sight into a funnel of noise.

  Still holding my arm, Pauline turns to speak to me. I can’t quite hear her voice above the tumult. ‘What?’ She pulls me closer, her lips so close I can feel her breath in my ear, and as I strain to listen, I see Henry, Lauth and Gribelin all staring at us.

  Afterwards I follow the trio back to the office along the rue de l’Université. They are perhaps fifty metres ahead of me. The street is empty. Most people, including our womenfolk, have decided to stay where they are in order to catch a glimpse of the Imperial couple driving back across the bridge after lunch to the Russian Orthodox church. Something about the way Henry is gesturing with his hand and the other two are nodding tells me they are talking about me. I can’t resist quickening my step until I am right behind them. ‘Gentlemen!’ I say loudly. ‘I’m glad to see you’re not neglecting your duties!’

  I had expected guilty laughter, even embarrassment. But the three faces that turn to meet mine are surly and defiant. I have offended their bourgeois sensitivities even more than I realised. We complete the journey to the Statistical Section in silence and I keep to my office for the rest of the day.

  The sun sets over Paris shortly after seven. By eight it is too gloomy to read. I don’t switch on my lamp.

  The timbers of the old building shrink and creak as the day cools into evening. The birds in the minister’s garden fall silent. The shadows achieve a solid geometry. I sit at my desk, waiting. If ever there was a time for the ghosts of Voltaire and Montesquieu to materialise, this is it. At eight thirty when I open my door I half expect to see a periwig and velvet coat floating down the corridor. But the ancient house seems deserted. Everyone has gone off to watch the fireworks in the Trocadéro, even Capiaux. The front door will be locked. I have the place to myself.

  From my drawer I take the leather roll of lock-picking tools that Desvernine left behind months earlier. As I climb the stairs I am aware of the ludicrousness of my situation: the chief of the secret intelligence section obliged to break into the archives of his own department. But I have considered the problem rationally from every angle and I can see no better solution. At the very least, it is worth a try.

  I kneel in the passage outside Gribelin’s door. My first discovery is that lock-picking is easier than it looks. Once I have the hang of which instrument to use I am able to find the notch in the underside of the bolt. All I have to do next is press. Then it is a matter of maintaining the pressure with the left hand while with the right I insert the pick and manipulate it to raise the tumblers. One rises, then a second, and finally the third; the racking stump slides forwards; there is a well-oiled click and the door opens.

  I turn on the electric light. It would take me hours to pick all the locks in Gribelin’s archive. But I remember he keeps his keys in the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk. After ten minutes of patient trial and error, it yields to my pick. I open the drawer. The keys are there.

  Suddenly there is a bang that makes my heart jump. I glance out of the window. Searchlights on top of the Eiffel Tower a kilometre away are shining across the Seine to the place de la Concorde. The beams are surrounded by bursting stars which pulse and flash in silence and then a second or two later come the explosions, loud enough to vibrate the glass panes in their ancient mouldings. I glance at my watch. Nine o’clock. They are running half an hour late. The fireworks are scheduled to last thirty minutes.

  I take Gribelin’s bunch of keys and start trying to open the nearest filing cabinet.

  Once I have worked out which key fits which lock, I open all the drawers. My first priority is to collect every scrap of Agent Auguste material I can find.

  The glued-together documents are already beginning to yellow with age. They rustle like dried leaves as I sort them into piles: letters and telegrams from Hauptmann Dame in Berlin, signed with his nom de guerre, ‘Dufour’; letters to Schwartzkoppen from the German ambassador, Count Münster, and to Panizzardi from the Italian ambassador, Signor Ressmann, and to the military attaché of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Colonel Schneider. There is an envelope full of cinders dated November 1890. There are letters to Schwartzkoppen from the Italian naval attaché, Rosselini, and the British military attaché, Colonel Talbot. Here are the forty or fifty love letters from Hermance de Weede – My dear adored friend . . . My Maxi . . . – and perhaps half that many from Panizzardi: My dear little one . . . My big cat . . . My dear big bugger . . .

  There was a time when I would have felt uncomfortable – grubby, even – handling such intimate material; no longer.

  Mixed in with all this is a cipher telegram from Panizzardi to the General Staff in Rome, dispatched at three o’clock on the morning of Friday 2 November 1894:

  Commando Stato Maggiore Roma

  913 44 7836 527 3 88 706 6458 71 18 0288 5715 3716 7567 7943 2107 0018 7606 4891 6165

  Panizzardi

  The decoded text is clipped to it, written out by General Gonse: Captain Dreyfus has been arrested. The Ministry of War has evidence of his dealings with Germany. We have taken all necessary precautions.

  I copy it down in my notebook. Beyond the window, the Eiffel Tower is a cascade of tumbling light. There is one last final thunderous explosion and slowly it fades into darkness. I hear a faint roar of applause. The display is over. I estimate it would take someone roughly thirty minutes to escape from the crowds in the Trocadéro gardens and get back to the section.

  I return my attention to the glued-together documents.

  Much of the material is incomplete or pointless, its sense tantalisingly out of reach. It suddenly strikes me as madness to try to read so much meaning into such detritus: that we are little better than the haruspices of the ancient world who decided public policy by scrutinising animal livers. My eyes feel gritty. I have been stuck in my office without food since noon. Perhaps that explains why, when I do come to the crucial docu
ment, I miss it at first, and move on to the next. But it nags at my mind, and then I go back and look at it again.

  It is a short note, in thin black ink, on squared white paper, torn into twenty pieces, a few of which are missing. The writer is offering to sell Schwartzkoppen ‘the secret of smokeless powder’. It is signed your devoted Dubois and dated 27 October 1894 – two weeks after Dreyfus’s arrest.

  I delve a little further into the file. Two days later, Dubois writes to the German attaché again: I can procure for you a cartridge from the Lebel rifle that will enable you to analyse the secret of the smokeless powder. Schwartzkoppen does not seem to have done anything about it. Why should he? The letter looks cranky and I guess he could go into almost any bar in any garrison town in France and pick up a Lebel cartridge for the price of a beer.

  It is the name of the signatory that interests me. Dubois? I am sure I have just read that name. I go back to the pile of letters from Panizzardi to Schwartzkoppen. My beautiful little girl . . . My little green dog . . . Dear Top Bugger . . . Your devoted bugger 2nd class . . . And here it is: in a note of 1893, the Italian writes to Schwartzkoppen: I have seen M. Dubois.

  Attached to the letter is a cross-reference to a file. It takes me several minutes to work out Gribelin’s system and track it down. In a folder I find a brief report addressed to Colonel Sandherr by Major Henry dated April 1894 regarding the possible identity of the agent referred to as ‘D’ who has provided the Germans and Italians with ‘twelve master plans of Nice’. Henry’s conclusion is that he is one Jacques Dubois, a printer who works for a factory that handles Ministry of War contracts: it is he who has probably also provided the Germans with large-scale drawings of the fortifications at Toul, Reims, Langres, Neufchâteau, and the rest. When he sets the printing machine for a run, it is a simple matter for him to print off extra copies for his own use. I interviewed him yesterday, relates Henry, and found him to be a miserable fellow, a criminal fantasist with limited intelligence and no access to classified material. The plans he has handed over are publicly available. Recommendation: no further action necessary.

  So there it is. ‘D’ is not Dreyfus; he is Dubois.

  You order me to shoot a man and I’ll shoot him . . .

  I have made a careful note of where every document and folder originated and now I start the laborious process of putting each one back in its proper place. It takes me perhaps ten minutes to return it all exactly to where it was, to lock up the filing cabinets and wipe down the table surfaces. By the time I finish it is just after ten. I replace Gribelin’s keys in his desk drawer, kneel, and set about the tricky business of locking it again. I am conscious of the minutes passing as I try to manipulate the two thin metal tools. My hands are clumsy with tiredness and slippery with sweat. For some reason it seems much harder to close a lock than open one, but at last I manage it. I turn off the lights.

  My only remaining task is to relock the door to the archive. I am still on my knees in the corridor fiddling with the tumblers when I think I hear the front door slam downstairs. I pause, straining to hear. I can’t pick out any suspicious noises. I must be imagining things. I resume my frustrating efforts. But then comes the definite creak of a footstep on the first-floor landing and someone begins to mount the stairs to the archive. I am so close to shifting the final tumbler I am reluctant to abandon the attempt. Only when I hear a much louder creak do I realise I am out of time. I dart across the passage, try the nearest door – locked – and then the next one – open – and slip inside.

  I listen to the slow, deliberate tread of someone approaching along the corridor. Through the gap between the door and the jamb I see Gribelin come into view. My God, is there anything in this wretched man’s life apart from work? He stops outside the entrance to the archive and takes out his key. He inserts it in the lock and tries to turn it. I can’t see his face, but I see his shoulders stiffen. What is this? He tries the handle and opens the door cautiously. He doesn’t go in but stands on the threshold, listening. Then he throws the door wide open, turns on the light and moves inside. I can hear him checking his desk drawers. A moment later he returns to the corridor and glances up and down it. He ought to be an absurd little figure – a small dark-suited troll. But somehow he isn’t. There is a malevolence about him as he stands there, alert and suspicious – he is a danger to me, this man.

  Finally – satisfied presumably that he must have made a mistake in locking up – he goes back into the archive and closes the door. I wait another ten minutes. Then I take off my shoes and creep past his lair in my stockinged feet.

  On my walk back to my apartment I stop in the middle of the bridge and drop the roll of lock-picking tools into the Seine.

  Over the next few days the Tsar tours Notre-Dame, names a new bridge after his father, banquets in Versailles.

  While he goes about his business, I go about mine.

  I walk over the road to see Colonel Foucault, who has come back from the Berlin embassy to witness the Imperial visit. We exchange a few pleasantries and then I ask him, ‘Did you ever hear anything from Richard Cuers after that meeting we arranged in Basel?’

  ‘Yes, he came and complained about it bitterly. I gather you fellows decided to give him some rough treatment. Who on earth did you send?’

  ‘My deputy, Major Henry; another of my officers, Captain Lauth; and a couple of policemen. Why? What did Cuers say?’

  ‘He said he’d made the journey in good faith, to reveal what he knew about the German agent in France, but when he got to Switzerland he felt he was treated as if he was a liar and a fantasist. There was one French officer in particular – fat, red-faced – who merely bullied him: interrupted him all the time; made it clear he didn’t believe a word of what he was saying. That was a deliberate tactic, I assume?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of; not at all.’

  Foucault looks at me in consternation. ‘Well, whether it was intentional or not, you won’t be hearing from Cuers again.’

  I go to see Tomps at the headquarters of the Sûreté. I tell him, ‘It’s about your trip to Basel.’ Immediately he looks anxious. He doesn’t want to land anyone in any trouble. But it’s clear the episode has been preying on his mind.

  ‘I won’t quote you,’ I promise him. ‘Just tell me what happened.’

  He doesn’t take much prompting. He seems to be relieved to get it off his chest.

  ‘Well, Colonel,’ he says, ‘you remember our original plan? It worked to the letter. I followed Cuers from the German railway station to the cathedral, saw him make contact with my colleague Vuillecard then followed the pair of them to the Schweizerhof, where Major Henry and Captain Lauth were ready for him upstairs. After that I went back to the bar at the station to wait. I guess it must have been about three hours later that Henry suddenly came in and ordered a drink. I asked him how it was going and he said, “I’ve had enough of this bastard” – you know how he talks – “there’s nothing we can learn from him, I’ll bet a month’s salary on it.” I said, “Well, what are you doing back here so early?” And he said, “Oh, I played Mr Big, pretended to get angry and finally walked out of there. I left him with Lauth: let the young fellow have a try!” Obviously I was disappointed with the sound of how this was going, so I said, “You know I’m an old acquaintance of Cuers? You know he likes a lot of absinthe? He really loves a drink. That might have been a better approach. If Captain Lauth can’t get anywhere, do you want me to have a try?”’

  ‘And what did Major Henry say to that?’

  Tomps continues his passable impersonation of Henry. ‘“No,” he says, “it’s not worth the trouble. Forget it.” Then at six, when Captain Lauth had finished his session and turned up at the station, I asked Henry again: “Listen, I know Cuers well. Why don’t you let me take him out for a drink?” But he just repeated what he’d said before: “No, it’s useless. We’re wasting our time here.” So we caught the night train to Paris and that was that.’

  Back in my offic
e, I open a file on Henry. That Henry is the man who framed Dreyfus I have no doubt.

  Code-breaking isn’t the province of the Statistical Section, or even the Ministry of War. It is run out of the Foreign Ministry by a seven-man team whose presiding genius is Major Étienne Bazeries. The major is famous in the newspapers for having broken the Great Cipher of Louis XIV and revealed the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask. He conforms to every cliché of the eccentric prodigy – unkempt, abrupt, forgetful – and is not an easy man to get to see. Twice I visit the quai d’Orsay on the pretext of other business and try to find him, only to be told by his staff that no one knows where he is. It is not until the end of the month that I track him to his office. He is in his shirtsleeves, bent over his desk with a screwdriver and a cylindrical enciphering device which lies all around him in pieces. In theory I am his superior officer, but Bazeries doesn’t salute or even stand; he has never believed in rank, just as he doesn’t believe in haircuts or shaving or even, to judge by the atmosphere in his office, washing.

  ‘The Dreyfus affair,’ I say to him. ‘The telegram from the Italian military attaché, Major Panizzardi, sent to the General Staff in Rome on the second of November 1894.’

  He squints up at me through greasy spectacles. ‘What about it?’

  ‘You broke it?’

  ‘I did. It took me nine days.’ He resumes tinkering with his machine.

  I take out my notebook and open it to a double page. On one side is the coded text that I copied down from the file in the archive, on the other the solution as written out by Gonse: Captain Dreyfus has been arrested. The Ministry of War has evidence of his dealings with Germany. We have taken all necessary precautions. I offer it to Bazeries. ‘Is this your solution?’