An Officer and a Spy Read online

  Meanwhile the atmosphere inside the Statistical Section is as noxious as the drains. Several times when I step out of my office I hear doors close along the corridor. The whispering starts up again. On the fifteenth there is a small party in the waiting room to say goodbye to Bachir, who is retiring as concierge, and to welcome his successor, Capiaux. I say a few words of thanks: ‘The building will not be the same without the presence of our old comrade, Bachir,’ to which Henry remarks into his glass, just loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘Well why did you get rid of him then?’ Afterwards the others all go off to continue drinking at the Taverne Royale, a favourite bar nearby. I am not asked to go with them. Sitting alone at my desk with a bottle of cognac, I remember Henry’s remark on his return from Basel: Whoever he is, he was never very important and he’s no longer active. Have I caused all this ill feeling in pursuit of an agent who in any case was never much more than a chancer and a fantasist?

  On the 20th, Henry departs on a month’s leave to his family’s home on the Marne. Normally before he goes away he puts his head round my door to say goodbye. On this occasion, he slips away without a word. In his absence the building sinks even further into the August torpor.

  And then, on the 27th, a Thursday afternoon, I receive a message from Billot’s orderly, Captain Calmon-Maison, asking if he might have a word with me as soon as is convenient. I have cleared my in-tray so I decide I might as well walk over right away: through the garden and up the stairs and into the office of the minister’s secretariat. The windows are open. The room is light and airy. Three or four young officers are working together congenially. I feel a stab of envy: how much better to be here than across the street in my dank and rancorous warren! Calmon-Maison says, ‘I have something here that General Billot thinks you ought to see.’ He goes to a filing cabinet and takes out a letter. ‘It came in yesterday. It’s from Major Esterhazy.’

  The letter is handwritten, addressed to Calmon-Maison, dated Paris two days earlier. It is a request to be transferred to the General Staff. The implications of this hit me with a force that is almost physical. He’s trying to get into the ministry. He’s trying to get access to secret material he can sell . . .

  Calmon-Maison says, ‘My colleague Captain Thévenet has received a similar appeal.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  He gives me the second letter. It is couched in almost identical terms to the first: I am writing to request an immediate transfer from the headquarters of the 74th Infantry Regiment in Rouen . . . I believe I have demonstrated the qualities necessary for work on the General Staff . . . I have served in the Foreign Legion and in the intelligence department as a German translator . . . I would be most grateful if you could bring this request to the attention of the appropriate authority . . .

  ‘Have you replied?’

  ‘We’ve sent him a holding letter – “your request is being considered by the minister”.’

  ‘Can I borrow these?’

  Calmon-Maison responds as if reciting a legal formula: ‘The minister has asked me to tell you that he can see no objection to your making use of these letters as part of your inquiry.’

  Back in my office, I sit at my desk with the letters in front of me. The writing is neat, regular, well spaced. I am almost sure I have seen it before. At first I think it must be because the script is quite similar to that of Dreyfus, whose correspondence I have spent so many hours studying lately.

  And then I remember the bordereau – the covering note that was retrieved from Schwartzkoppen’s waste-paper basket and that convicted Dreyfus of treason.

  I look at the letters again.

  No, surely not . . .

  I rise from my seat like a man in a dream and take the few steps across the carpet to the safe. My hand shakes very slightly as I insert the key. The envelope containing the photograph of the bordereau is still there, where Sandherr left it: I have been meaning for months to take it upstairs to Gribelin so he can file it away in his archive.

  The bordereau, in facsimile, is a column of thirty narrow lines of handwriting – undated, unaddressed, unsigned:

  I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information . . .

  A note on the hydraulic brake of the 120 and how that part performed

  A note on covering troops (several modifications will be introduced by the new plan)

  A note on the change to artillery formations

  A note concerning Madagascar

  The draft Field Artillery Firing Manual (14 March 1894)

  The last paragraph explains that the Ministry of War will not permit individual officers to keep possession of the Field Artillery Firing Manual for very long, therefore if you would like to take from it what interests you and afterwards leave it at my disposal, I will collect it. Otherwise I can copy it verbatim and send you the copy. I am off to manoeuvres.

  The leading handwriting expert in Paris swore that this was written by Dreyfus. I carry the photograph over to my desk and place it between the two letters from Esterhazy. I stoop for a closer look.

  The writing is identical.

  10

  FOR SEVERAL MINUTES I sit motionless, holding the photograph. I might be made of marble, a sculpture by Rodin: The Reader. What really freezes me, even more than the matching handwriting, is the content – the obsession with artillery, the offer to have a manual copied out verbatim, the obsequious salesman’s tone – it is Esterhazy to the life. Briefly, just as I did when the petit bleu came in, I consider marching over to the minister’s office and laying the evidence in front of him. But again I know that would be folly. My four golden principles are more important now than ever: take it one step at a time; approach the matter dispassionately; avoid a rush to judgement; confide in nobody until there is hard evidence.

  I pick up the two letters, straighten my tunic and walk along the corridor to Lauth’s office. For a moment I hesitate outside his door, then I knock and go straight in.

  The captain of dragoons is leaning back in his chair, long legs outstretched, eyes closed. There is something quite angelic about that blond head in repose. No doubt he is a success with women, although he has a young wife, I believe; I wonder if he has affairs. I am on the point of leaving when suddenly he opens his blue eyes and sees me. And in that unguarded instant something flickers in them that is beyond surprise: it is alarm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’ll come back when you’re ready.’

  ‘No, no.’ Embarrassed, Lauth scrambles to his feet. ‘Pardon me, Colonel, it’s just so infernally hot, and I’ve been indoors all day . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry, my dear Lauth, I know precisely how you feel. This really is no life for a soldier, to be trapped in an office day after day. Sit, please. I insist. Do you mind if I join you?’ And without waiting for a reply I pull up a chair on the other side of his desk. ‘I wonder: could you do something for me?’ I push the two letters towards him. ‘I’d like to have these both photographed, but with the signature and the name of the addressee blocked out.’

  Lauth examines the letters then glances at me in shock. ‘Esterhazy!’

  ‘Yes, it seems our minor spy has ambitions to become a major one. But thank goodness,’ I can’t resist adding, ‘we had our eye on him, otherwise who knows what damage he might have done.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Lauth gives a reluctant nod and shifts in his seat uncomfortably. ‘Might I ask, Colonel, why you need photographs of the letters?’

  ‘Just photograph them, if you don’t mind, Captain.’ I stand and smile at him. ‘Shall we say four prints of each by first thing tomorrow? And just for once let’s try to keep this strictly between ourselves.’

  Upstairs, Gribelin has only recently returned from his annual leave – not that you would think it to look at him. His face is pallid; his eyes, beneath a green celluloid eyeshade, carry dark pouches of exhaustion. His only concession to the summer heat is shirtsleeves rolled back to his bony elbows, exposing arms
as thin and white as tubers. He is bent over a file as I enter, and quickly closes it. He takes off his eyeshade.

  ‘I didn’t hear you coming up the stairs, Colonel.’

  I hand him the photograph of the bordereau. ‘I think you should be in charge of this.’

  He blinks at it in surprise. ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘Colonel Sandherr had it in his safe.’

  ‘Ah yes, well, he was very proud of it.’ Gribelin holds the photograph at arm’s length to admire it. His tongue moistens his top lip as if he’s studying a pornographic print. ‘He told me he would have had it framed, and hung it on his wall, if regulations had allowed.’

  ‘A hunting trophy?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Gribelin unlocks the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk and fishes out his immense bunch of keys. He carries the bordereau across to a heavy old fireproof filing cabinet, which he opens. I look around. I hardly ever venture up here. Two large tables are pushed together in the centre of the room. Laid out across the scuffed brown leather surfaces are half a dozen stacks of files, a blotting pad, a strong electric lamp, a rack of rubber stamps, a brass inkstand, a hole-puncher and a row of pens – all precisely aligned. Around the walls are the locked cabinets and safes that contain the section’s secrets. There is a map of France, showing the départements. The three windows are narrow, barred and dusty, their sills encrusted with the excrement of the pigeons I can hear cooing on the roof.

  ‘I wonder,’ I say casually, ‘do you keep the original bordereau up here?’

  Gribelin does not turn round. ‘I do.’

  ‘I’d like to see it.’

  He glances over his shoulder at me. ‘Why?’

  I shrug. ‘I’m interested.’

  There is nothing he can do. He unlocks another drawer in the cabinet and retrieves one of his ubiquitous manila files. He opens it, and with some reverence retrieves from it the bordereau. It is not at all what I expected. It weighs almost nothing. The paper is flimsy onion-skin, semi-transparent, written on both sides, so that the ink from one bleeds through and shows on the other. The most substantial thing about it is the adhesive tape holding together the six torn pieces.

  I say, ‘You’d never guess it looked like this from the photograph.’

  ‘No, it was quite a process.’ Gribelin’s normally astringent tone is softened by a touch of professional pride. ‘We had to photograph both sides and then retouch them, and then stick them together and finally re-photograph the whole image. So it came out looking like a continuous sheet of writing.’

  ‘How many prints did you make?’

  ‘Twelve. It was necessary to disguise its original state so that we could circulate it around the ministry.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I remember.’ I turn the bordereau back and forth, marvelling once again at Lauth’s skill. ‘I remember it very well.’

  It was the first week of October 1894 when word began to spread that there might be a traitor in the Ministry. All four chiefs of department were required to check the handwriting of every officer in their section, to see if anyone’s matched the photograph. They were sworn to secrecy, allowed only to tell their deputies. Colonel Boucher devolved the job to me.

  Despite the restricted circle, it was inevitable that news would leak, and soon a miasma of unease infiltrated the rue Saint-Dominique. The problem lay in that five-point list of the documents betrayed, which set us all chasing our own tails. A ‘note on the hydraulic brake of the 120’ and the ‘draft Field Artillery Firing Manual’ suggested the spy must be in the artillery. But the ‘new plan’ mentioned in point two was the very phrase we used in the Third Department for the revised mobilisation schedule. Of course, the ‘new plan’ was also being studied by the railway timetable experts in the Fourth, so the spy could work there perhaps. But then the ‘note on the change to artillery formations’ was most likely to have come from the First. Whereas the plan to occupy Madagascar had been worked on by the intelligence officers in the Second . . .

  Everyone suspected everyone else. Old incidents were dredged up and picked over, ancient rumours and feuds revived. The ministry was paralysed by suspicion. I went through the handwriting of every officer on our list, even Boucher’s; even mine. I found no match.

  And then someone – it was Colonel d’Aboville, deputy chief of the Fourth – had a flash of inspiration. If the traitor could draw on current knowledge of all four departments, wasn’t it reasonable to assume that he had recently worked in all four? And unlikely as it seemed, there was a group of officers on the General Staff of whom that was true: the stagiaires from the École Supérieure de Guerre – men who were relative strangers to their long-serving comrades. Suddenly it was obvious: the traitor was a stagiaire with a background in artillery.

  Eight captains of artillery on the stagiaire programme fitted that particular bill, but only one of them was a Jew: a Jew moreover who spoke French with a German accent, whose family lived in the Kaiser’s Reich and who always had money to throw around.

  Gribelin, watching me, says, ‘I’m sure you remember the bordereau, Colonel.’ He gives one of his rare smiles. ‘Just as I remember that you were the one who provided us with the sample of Dreyfus’s handwriting that matched it.’

  It was Colonel Boucher who brought me the request from the Statistical Section. Normally he was loud and cheerfully red-faced, but on this occasion he was sombre, even grey. It was a Saturday morning, two days after we had started hunting for the traitor. He closed the door behind him and said, ‘It looks like we might be getting close to the bastard’

  ‘Really? That’s quick.’

  ‘General Gonse wants to see some handwriting belonging to Captain Dreyfus.’

  ‘Dreyfus?’ I repeated, surprised.

  Boucher explained d’Aboville’s theory. ‘And so,’ he concluded, ‘they’ve decided the traitor must be one of your stagiaires.’

  ‘One of my stagiaires?’ I did not like the sound of that!

  I had skimmed through Dreyfus’s file the previous day and eliminated him as a suspect. Now I pulled it out again and compared the handwriting of a couple of his letters to the bordereau. And on second glance, looking at them more closely, perhaps there were similarities: the same small lettering; the same slope to the right; similar spacing between both words and lines . . . A terrible feeling of certainty began to seize hold of me. ‘I don’t know, Colonel,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’ I showed the letters to Boucher.

  ‘Well, I’m no expert either, but they look pretty much alike to me. You’d better bring them along.’

  Ten minutes earlier, Dreyfus had been no more of a suspect to me than anyone else. But the power of suggestion is insidious. As the colonel and I walked together along the corridors of the ministry, my imagination began to fill with thoughts of Dreyfus – of his family still living in Germany, of his solitariness and cleverness and arrogance, of his ambition to enter the General Staff and his careful cultivation of senior officers – so much so that by the time we reached General Gonse’s office I had all but convinced myself: Of course he would betray us, because he hates us; he has hated us all along because he isn’t like us, and knows he never will be, for all his money; he is just . . .

  A regular Jew!

  Waiting for us, along with Gonse himself, were Colonel d’Aboville, Colonel Fabre, the chief of the Fourth Department, Colonel Lefort, head of the First, and Colonel Sandherr. I laid Dreyfus’s letters out on Gonse’s desk and stepped back while my superiors crowded around to look. And from that huddle of uniformed backs arose a growing exclamation of shock and conviction: ‘Look how he forms the capital “s” there, and the “j” . . . And the small “m” and the “r”, do you see? And the gap between the words is exactly the same . . . I’m no expert, but . . . No, I’m no expert either, but . . . I’d say they’re identical . . .’

  Sandherr straightened and slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘I should have known! How many times have I seen him lo
itering round, asking questions?’

  Fabre said, ‘I predicted exactly this in my report on him, do you remember, Major Picquart?’ He pointed at me. ‘“An incomplete officer, lacking the qualities of character necessary for employment on the General Staff . . .” Were those not my very words?’

  ‘They were, Colonel,’ I agreed.

  Gonse said to me, ‘Where is Dreyfus exactly?’

  ‘He’s at infantry camp outside Paris until the end of next week.’

  ‘Good.’ Sandherr nodded. ‘Excellent. That gives us some time. We need to get all this to a handwriting expert.’

  Gonse said: ‘So you really think it’s him?’

  ‘Well, if not him – who?’

  No one responded. That was the nub of it. If the traitor wasn’t Dreyfus, then who was it? You? Me? Your comrade? Mine? Whereas if it was Dreyfus, this debilitating hunt for an enemy within would come to an end. Without saying it, or even thinking it, collectively we willed it to be so.

  Gonse sighed and said, ‘I’d better go and tell General Mercier. He may have to speak to the Prime Minister.’ He glanced at me, as if I were the one responsible for introducing this contagion into the ministry, and said to Boucher, ‘I don’t think we need detain Major Picquart any longer, do you, Colonel?’

  Boucher said, ‘No, I don’t believe so. Thank you, Picquart.’

  ‘Thank you, General.’

  I saluted and left.

  I have been silent for a while. Suddenly I am aware of Gribelin, still staring at me.