An Officer and a Spy Read online

  I say, ‘I don’t see any change halfway through . . .’

  ‘Yes, there is, it’s obvious. Here.’ Gribelin leans across and taps the letter. He sounds exasperated. ‘Exactly here, where the colonel made him write the hydraulic brake of the 120 millimetre cannon – that was when he understood what was happening. You can see the way his writing suddenly gets larger and less regular.’

  I look again. I still don’t see it. ‘Perhaps, if you say so . . .’

  ‘Believe me, Colonel, we all noticed the change in his demeanour. His foot began to tremble. Colonel du Paty accused him of changing his style. Dreyfus denied it. When the dictation was finished, the colonel told him he was under arrest for treason.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Superintendent Cochefort and his assistant seized him and searched him. Dreyfus continued to deny it. Colonel du Paty showed him the revolver and offered him the honourable course.’

  ‘What did Dreyfus say to that?’

  ‘He said, “Shoot me if you want to, but I am innocent!” He was like a character in a play. At that moment Colonel du Paty called out for Major Henry, who was hidden behind the screen, and Major Henry took him away to prison.’

  I start to turn the pages of the file. To my astonishment, every sheet is a copy of the bordereau. I open it at the midpoint. I flick to the end. ‘My God,’ I murmur, ‘how many times did you make him write it out?’

  ‘Oh, a hundred or more. But that was over the course of several weeks. You’ll see they’re labelled: “Left hand”, “right hand”, “standing up”, “sitting down”, “lying down” . . .’

  ‘You made him do this in his cell, presumably?’

  ‘Yes. Monsieur Bertillon, the handwriting expert from the Préfecture of Police, wanted as large a sample as possible so that he could demonstrate how he managed to disguise his writing. Colonel du Paty and I would visit Dreyfus at Cherche-Midi, usually around midnight, and interrogate him throughout the night. The colonel had the idea of surprising him while he was asleep – springing in and shining a powerful lantern in his face.’

  ‘And what was his mental state during all this?’

  Gribelin looks shifty. ‘It was rather fragile, to be frank with you, Colonel. He was held in solitary confinement. He was not allowed any letters or visitors. He was often quite tearful, asking after his family and so forth. I remember he had some abrasions on his face.’ Gribelin touches his temple lightly. ‘Around here. The warders told us he used to hit his head against the wall.’

  ‘And he denied any involvement in espionage?’

  ‘Absolutely. It was quite a performance, Colonel. Whoever trained him taught him very well.’

  I continue to leaf through the file. I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information . . . I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information . . . I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information . . . The writing deteriorates as the days pass. It is like a record from a madhouse. I start to feel my own head reeling. I close the file and push it back across the table.

  ‘That’s fascinating, Gribelin. Thank you for your time.’

  ‘Is there anything else I can assist you with, Colonel?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no. Not just at the moment.’

  He cradles the file tenderly in his arms and takes it over to the filing cabinet. I pause at the door and look back at him. ‘Do you have any children, Monsieur Gribelin?’

  ‘No, Colonel.’

  ‘Are you married, even?’

  ‘No, Colonel. It never fitted with my work.’

  ‘I understand. I’m the same. Good night, then.’

  ‘Good night, Colonel.’

  I trot down the stairs to the first floor, picking up speed as I go, past the corridor to my office, down the stairs to the ground floor, across the lobby and out into the sunshine, where I fill my lungs with reviving draughts of clean fresh air.

  11

  I SLEEP VERY little that night. I sweat and turn and twist on my narrow bed, corrugating the sheets until it feels as if I am lying on stones. The windows are open to try to circulate some air, but all they admit is the noise of the city. In my insomnia I end up counting the distant chimes of the church clocks every hour from midnight until six. Finally I drop off to sleep, only to be woken thirty minutes later by the hoarse horn blasts of the early morning tramway cars. I dress and go downstairs and walk up the street to the bar on the corner of the rue Copernic. I have no appetite for anything more substantial than black coffee and a cigarette. I look at Le Figaro. An area of high pressure off the south-west coast of Ireland is moving across the British Isles, the Netherlands and Germany. The details of the Tsar’s forthcoming visit to Paris have yet to be announced. General Billot, the Minister of War, is attending the cavalry manoeuvres in Gâtinais. In other words, in these dog days of August, there is no news.

  By the time I reach the Statistical Section, Lauth is already in his office. He wears a leather apron. He has produced four prints of each of the two Esterhazy letters: damp and glistening, they still reek of chemical fixer. He has done his usual excellent job. The addresses and signatures have been blocked out but the lines of handwriting are sharp and easily legible.

  ‘Good work,’ I say. ‘I’ll take them with me – and the original letters, too, if you don’t mind.’

  He puts them all in an envelope and hands it to me. ‘Here you are, Colonel. I hope they lead you somewhere interesting.’ There is an imploring spaniel’s look in his pale blue eyes. But he has already asked me once what I want with them, and I have refused to answer. He dare not ask again.

  I take great pleasure in ignoring the implied question and wishing him a jaunty ‘Good day, Lauth,’ before strolling back to my office. I remove one print of each of the letters and slip them into my briefcase; all the rest go into my safe. I lock my office door behind me. In the lobby I tell the new concierge, Capiaux, that I’m not sure when I’ll be back. He’s an ex-trooper in his late forties. Henry dredged him up from somewhere and I’m not entirely sure I trust him: to me he has the glassy-eyed, broken-veined look of one of Henry’s drinking companions.

  It takes me twenty minutes to walk to the Île de la Cité, to the headquarters of the Préfecture of Police, a gloomy fortress rising over the embankment beside the pont Saint-Michel. The building is the old municipal barracks, as dark and ugly inside as out. I give my visiting card to the porter – Lt Col. Georges Picquart, Ministry of War – and tell him I wish to see Monsieur Alphonse Bertillon. The man is immediately respectful. He asks me to come with him. He unlocks a door and ushers me through it, then locks it behind us. We climb a narrow, winding stone staircase, floor after floor of steps so steep I am bent half double. At one point we have to stop and press ourselves against the wall to let past a dozen prisoners descending in single file. They trail a stench of sweat and despair in their wake. ‘Monsieur Bertillon has been measuring them,’ explains my guide, as if they have been to visit their tailor. We resume our ascent. Finally he unlocks yet another door and we emerge on to a hot and sunny corridor with a bare wooden floor. ‘If you wait in here, Colonel,’ he says, ‘I’ll find him.’

  We are at the very top of the building, looking west. It swelters like a greenhouse with the trapped heat. Beyond the windows of Bertillon’s laboratory, past the chimneypots of the Préfecture, the massive roofs of the Palace of Justice rise and plunge, a blue slate sea, pierced by the dainty gold and black spire of the Sainte-Chapelle. The lab’s walls are papered with hundreds of photographs of criminals, full-face and profile. Anthropometry – or ‘Bertillonage’, as our leading practitioner modestly calls it – holds that all human beings can be infallibly identified by a combination of ten different measurements. In one corner is a bench with a metal ruler set into it and an adjustable gauge for measuring the length of forearms and fingers; in another, a wooden frame like a large easel, for recording height, both seated (torso length) and standing; in a
third, a device with bronze calipers for taking cranial statistics. There is a huge camera, and a bench with a microscope and a magnifying glass mounted on a bracket, and a set of filing cabinets.

  I wander around examining the photographs. It reminds me of a vast natural science collection – of butterflies, perhaps, or beetles, pinned and mounted. The expressions on the prisoners’ faces are variously frightened, shamed, defiant, disinterested; some look badly beaten up, half starved or crazy; no one smiles. Amid this dismal array of desperate humanity I suddenly come across Alfred Dreyfus. His bland accountant’s face stares out at me from above his torn uniform. Without his habitual spectacles or pince-nez his face looks naked. His eyes bore into mine. There is a caption: Dreyfus 5.1.95.

  A voice says, ‘Colonel Picquart?’ and I turn to find Bertillon holding my card. He is a squat, pale figure in his early forties with a thick pelt of black hair. His stiff beard is cut square, like the blade of an axe: I feel that if I ran my finger along the edge, it would draw blood.

  ‘Good day, Monsieur Bertillon. I was just noticing that you have Captain Dreyfus here among your specimens.’

  ‘Ah yes, I recorded him myself,’ replies Bertillon. He comes over to stand beside me. ‘I photographed him when he arrived at La Santé prison, straight from his degradation.’

  ‘He looks different to how I remember him.’

  ‘The man was in a trance – a somnambulist.’

  ‘How else could one endure such an experience?’ I open my briefcase. ‘Dreyfus in fact is the reason for my visit. I’ve replaced Colonel Sandherr as chief of the Statistical Section.’

  ‘Yes, Colonel, I remember you from the court martial. What new is there to say about Dreyfus?’

  ‘Would you be so good as to examine these?’ I hand him the photographs of the two Esterhazy letters. ‘And tell me what you think.’

  ‘You know that I never give instant judgements?’

  ‘You might want to in this case.’

  He looks as if he might refuse. But then curiosity overcomes him. He goes to the window and holds up the letters to the light, one in either hand, and inspects them. He frowns and gives me a puzzled look. He returns his attention to the photographs. ‘Well,’ he says; and then again: ‘Well, well . . .!’

  He crosses to a filing cabinet, slides open a drawer and takes out a thick green folder bound with black ribbon. He carries it over to his bench. He unties it, and pulls out a photograph of the bordereau and various sheets and charts. He lays the bordereau and the letters in a row. Then he takes three identical sheets of squared transparent paper and lays one over each of the three documents. He switches on a lamp and pulls the magnifying glass into position and starts to examine them. ‘A-ha,’ he mutters to himself, ‘a-ha, yes, yes, a-ha . . .’ He makes a series of rapid notes. ‘A-ha, a-ha, yes, yes, a-ha . . .’

  I watch him for several minutes. Eventually I can’t stop myself. ‘Well? Are they the same?’

  ‘Identical,’ he says. He shakes his head in wonder. He turns to me. ‘Absolutely identical!’

  I can scarcely believe he can be so certain so quickly. The main prop in the case against Dreyfus has just vanished: kicked away by the very expert who put it there in the first place. ‘Would you be willing to sign an affidavit to that effect?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Absolutely? The photographs of the criminals on the walls seem to whirl around me. ‘What if I told you that those letters weren’t written by Dreyfus at all, but here in France this very summer?’

  Bertillon shrugs, unconcerned. ‘Then I would say that obviously the Jews have managed to train someone else to write using the Dreyfus system.’

  I head back from the Île de la Cité to the Left Bank. I try to track down Armand du Paty at the Ministry of War. I am told he is not expected in that day, but he may be found at home. A junior staff officer gives me his address: 17, avenue Bosquet.

  I set off yet again on foot. At some point I seem to have ceased to be an army officer and become a detective. I pound pavements. I interview witnesses. I collect evidence. If and when this is all over, perhaps I should apply to join the Sûreté.

  The avenue Bosquet is pleasant and prosperous, close to the Seine, sun-dappled beneath its trees. Du Paty’s apartment is on the second floor. I knock several times without receiving a reply, and I am on the point of leaving when I notice a shadow shifting slightly in the gap below the door. I knock again. ‘Colonel du Paty? It’s Georges Picquart.’

  There is a silence, and then a muffled command: ‘A moment, if you please!’ Bolts are drawn back, a lock turns, and the door opens a crack. A distorted eye blinks at me through a monocle. ‘Picquart? Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘True.’ The door opens fully to reveal du Paty dressed in a long red silk dressing gown covered in Chinese dragons; on his feet are pale blue Moroccan slippers; on his head a crimson Turkish fez. He is unshaven. ‘I was working on my novel,’ he explains. ‘Come in.’

  The apartment smells of incense and cigar smoke. Dirty plates are piled beside a chaise longue. Manuscript pages are stacked on an escritoire and strewn across the rug. Above the fireplace hangs a painting of a naked slave girl in a harem; on the table is a photograph of du Paty and his aristocratic new wife, Marie de Champlouis. He married her just before the Dreyfus affair began. In the picture she holds a baby in its christening robes.

  ‘So you have become a father again? Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you. Yes, the boy is one year old.1 He’s with his mother on her family’s estate for the summer. I’ve stayed behind in Paris to write.’

  ‘What are you writing?’

  ‘It’s a mystery.’

  Whether he is referring to the genre of his composition or its current state I am not sure. He seems to be in a hurry to get back to it: at any rate he doesn’t invite me to sit. I say, ‘Well, here is another mystery for you.’ I open my briefcase and give him one of the Esterhazy letters. ‘You’ll recognise the handwriting, perhaps.’

  He does, immediately – I can tell by the way he flinches, and then by the effort he makes to conceal his confusion. ‘I don’t know,’ he mutters. ‘Perhaps it could be familiar. Who is the author?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you it definitely wasn’t our friend on Devil’s Island, because it was written in the last month.’

  He thrusts it back at me: it’s clear he doesn’t want any part of it. ‘You should show this to Bertillon. He’s the graphologist.’

  ‘I already have. He says it’s identical to the bordereau – “identical”, that was his word.’

  There is an awkward silence, which du Paty tries to cover by breathing on both sides of his monocle, polishing it on the sleeve of his dressing gown, screwing it back into his eye and staring at me. ‘What exactly are you about here, Georges?’

  ‘I’m just about doing my duty, Armand. It’s my responsibility to investigate potential spies and I seem to have found another – a traitor who somehow escaped detection when you were leading the Dreyfus investigation two years ago.’

  Du Paty folds his arms defensively inside the wide sleeves of his robe. He looks absurd, like a wizard in a cabaret at Le Chat Noir. ‘I’m not infallible,’ he says. ‘I’ve never pretended otherwise. It’s possible there were others involved. Sandherr always believed Dreyfus had at least one accomplice.’

  ‘Did you have any names?’

  ‘Personally I suspected that brother of his, Mathieu. So did Sandherr, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘But Mathieu wasn’t in the army at the time. He wasn’t even in Paris.’

  ‘No,’ replies du Paty with great significance, ‘but he was in Germany. And he’s a Jew.’

  I have no desire to be drawn into any of du Paty’s crazy theories. It is like becoming lost in a maze with no exits. I say, ‘I must allow you to get back to your work.’ I rest my briefcase on the escritoire for a moment so that I can put away the photog
raph. As I do so, my eye falls unavoidably on a page of du Paty’s novel. ‘You shall not deceive me with your beauty for a second time, mademoiselle,’ cried the duc d’Argentin, with a flourish of his poisoned dagger . . .

  Du Paty watches me. He says, ‘The bordereau wasn’t the only evidence against Dreyfus, you know. It was the intelligence we had that actually convicted him. The secret file. As you remember.’ There is a definite threat in this last remark.

  ‘I do remember.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Are you trying to imply something?’

  ‘No. Or at least only that I hope you don’t forget, as you pursue your investigations, that you were part of the whole prosecution as well. Let me show you out.’

  At the door I say, ‘Actually, that’s not entirely accurate, if you’ll allow me to correct you. You and Sandherr and Henry and Gribelin were the prosecuting authority. I was never anything more than an observer.’

  Du Paty emits a whinny of laughter. His face is close enough to mine for me to smell his breath: there’s a whiff of decay about it that seems to come from deep within him and reminds me of the drains beneath the Statistical Section. ‘Oh, is that what you think? An observer! Come, my dear Georges, you sat through the entire court martial! You were Mercier’s errand boy throughout the whole thing! You advised him on his tactics! You can’t turn round now and say it was nothing to do with you! Why else do you think you’ve ended up chief of the Statistical Section?’ He opens the door. ‘Will you give my regards to Blanche, by the way?’ he calls after me. ‘She’s still not married, I believe? Tell her I would call upon her, but you know how it is: my wife wouldn’t approve.’

  I am too angry to think of a reply, and so I leave him with the satisfaction of the last word, imagining himself a wit: smiling after me insufferably from his doorstep in his dressing gown and slippers and fez.

  I walk back towards the office slowly, thinking over what I have just been told.

  Is this what people say about me – that I was Mercier’s errand boy? That I only got my present job because I knew how to tell him the things he wanted to hear?