An Officer and a Spy Page 20

  ‘How did you get hold of these?’

  ‘General Billot instructed his staff to give them to me.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Last Thursday.’ I pause to clear my throat. Here goes, I think. ‘I noticed almost immediately a striking similarity between Esterhazy’s two letters and the writing of the bordereau. You can see it for yourself. Naturally, I am no handwriting expert, so I took them the next day to Monsieur Bertillon. You remember . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Boisdeffre’s voice is suddenly faint, dazed. ‘Yes, of course I remember.’

  ‘He confirmed that the writing is identical. It then seemed to me, in the light of this, that I should review the rest of the evidence against Dreyfus. Accordingly, I consulted the secret file that was shown to the judges at the court martial—’

  ‘Just a moment, Colonel.’ Boisdeffre holds up his hand. ‘Wait. When you say you consulted the file, do you mean to tell me it still exists?’

  ‘Absolutely. This is it.’ I show him the envelope with ‘D’ written on it. I empty out the contents.

  Boisdeffre looks at me as if I have just vomited over his table. ‘My God, what have you got there?’

  ‘It’s the secret file from the court martial.’

  ‘Yes, yes – I can see what it is. But what is it doing here?’

  ‘I’m sorry, General? I don’t understand . . .’

  ‘It was supposed to have been dispersed.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yes, of course! The whole episode was highly irregular.’ He pokes gingerly at the pieced-together letters with a long, slim forefinger. ‘There was a meeting in the minister’s office soon after Dreyfus was convicted. I was present with Colonel Sandherr. General Mercier specifically ordered him to break up the file. The intercepted letters were to be returned to the archive, the commentaries destroyed – he was absolutely clear about it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what to say, General.’ Now I am the one who is bewildered. ‘Colonel Sandherr didn’t disperse it, as you can see. In fact he was the one who told me where to find it if I ever needed it. But if I may say so, perhaps the existence of the file is not the main issue we have to worry about.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Well, the bordereau – the handwriting – the fact that Dreyfus is innocent . . .’ My voice trails away.

  Boisdeffre blinks at me for a few moments. Then he starts gathering together all the papers and photographs that are spread across the table. ‘I think what you need to do, Colonel, is to go and see General Gonse. Don’t let us forget he is the head of the intelligence department. Really you should have gone to him rather than me. Ask his advice on what needs to be done.’

  ‘I shall do that, General, absolutely. But I do think we need to move quickly and decisively, for the army’s own sake . . .’

  ‘I know perfectly well what’s good for the army, Colonel,’ he says curtly. ‘You don’t need to worry on that account.’ He holds out the evidence. ‘Go and talk to General Gonse. He’s on leave at the moment, but he’s only just outside Paris.’

  I take the papers and open my briefcase. ‘May I at least leave my report with you?’ I search through the bundle. ‘It’s a summary of where matters stand at the moment.’

  Boisdeffre eyes it as if it’s a snake. ‘Very well,’ he says reluctantly. ‘Give me twenty-four hours to consider it.’ I stand and salute. When I am at the door he calls to me: ‘Do you remember what I told you when we were in my motor car, Colonel Picquart? I told you that I didn’t want another Dreyfus case.’

  ‘This isn’t another Dreyfus case, General,’ I reply. ‘It’s the same one.’

  The next morning I see Boisdeffre again briefly, when I go to retrieve my report. He hands it back to me without a word. There are dark semicircles under his eyes. He looks like a man who has been punched.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘to bring you a potential problem at a time when you have issues of such immense importance to deal with. I hope it isn’t too much of a distraction.’

  ‘What?’ The Chief of the General Staff lets out his breath in a gasp of exasperated disbelief. ‘Do you really think, after what you told me yesterday, that I got a moment’s sleep last night? Now go and talk to Gonse.’

  The Gonse family house lies just beyond the north-west edge of Paris, in Cormeilles-en-Parisis. I send a telegram to the general announcing that Boisdeffre would like me to brief him on an urgent matter. Gonse invites me to tea on Thursday.

  That afternoon I take the train from the gare Saint-Lazare. Half an hour later I alight in a village so rural I might be two hundred kilometres from the centre of Paris rather than twenty. The departing train dwindles down the track into the distance and I am left entirely alone on the empty platform. Nothing disturbs the silence except birdsong and the distant clip-clop of a carthorse pulling a wagon with a squeaking wheel. I walk over to the porter and ask for directions to the rue de Franconville. ‘Ah,’ he says, taking in my uniform and briefcase, ‘you’ll be wanting the general.’

  I follow his instructions along a country lane out of the village and up a hill, through wooded country, then down a drive to a spacious eighteenth-century farmhouse. Gonse is working in the garden in his shirtsleeves, wearing a battered straw hat. An old retriever lopes across the lawn towards me. The general straightens and leans on his rake. With his tubby stomach and short legs he makes a more plausible gardener than he does a general.

  ‘My dear Picquart,’ he says, ‘welcome to the sticks.’

  ‘General.’ I salute. ‘My apologies for interrupting your vacation.’

  ‘Think nothing of it, dear fellow. Come and have some tea.’ He takes my arm and leads me into the house. The interior is crammed with Japanese artefacts of the highest quality – antique silkscreens, masks, bowls, vases. Gonse notices my surprise. ‘My brother’s a collector,’ he explains. ‘This is his place for most of the year.’

  Tea has been laid out in a garden room full of wicker furniture: petits fours on the low table, a samovar on the sideboard. Gonse pours me a cup of lapsang souchong. The cane seat squeaks as he sits down. He lights a cigarette. ‘Well then. Go ahead.’

  Like a commercial traveller, I unlock my briefcase and lay out my wares among the porcelain. It is an awkward moment for me: this is the first time I have even mentioned my investigation of Esterhazy to Gonse, the Chief of Intelligence. I show him the petit bleu, and in an attempt to make it seem less of an insult, I pretend that it arrived in late April rather than early March. Then I repeat the presentation I made to Boisdeffre. As I hand him the documents, Gonse studies each in turn, in his usual methodical manner. He spills cigarette ash on to the surveillance photographs, makes a joke of it – ‘Covering up the crime!’ – and blows it away calmly. Even when I produce the secret file he looks unperturbed.

  I suspect Boisdeffre must have warned him beforehand of what I was planning to tell him.

  ‘In conclusion,’ I say, ‘I had hoped to find something in the file that would establish Dreyfus’s guilt beyond doubt. But I’m afraid there’s nothing. It wouldn’t withstand ten minutes’ cross-examination by a halfway decent attorney.’

  I lay down the last of the documents and sip my tea, which is now stone cold. Gonse lights another cigarette. After a pause he says, ‘So we got the wrong man?’

  He says it matter-of-factly, as one might say, ‘So we took the wrong turning?’ or ‘So I wore the wrong hat?’

  ‘I’m afraid it looks like it.’

  Gonse plays with a match as he considers this, flicking it around and between his fingers with great dexterity, then snaps it. ‘And yet how do you explain the contents of the bordereau? None of this changes our original hypothesis, does it? It must have been written by an artillery officer who had some experience of all four departments of the General Staff. And that’s not Esterhazy. That’s Dreyfus.’

  ‘On the contrary, this is where we made our original error. If you look at the bordereau a
gain, you’ll see it always talks about notes being handed over: a note on the hydraulic brake . . . a note on covering troops . . . a note on artillery formations . . . a note on Madagascar . . .’ I point out what I mean on the photograph. ‘In other words, these aren’t the original documents. The only document that was actually handed over – the firing manual – we know that Esterhazy acquired by going on a gunnery course. Therefore I’m afraid the bordereau indicates precisely the opposite of what we thought it did. The traitor wasn’t on the General Staff. He didn’t have access to secrets. He was an outsider, a confidence trickster if you like, picking up gossip, compiling notes and trying to sell them for money. It was Esterhazy.’

  Gonse settles back in his chair. ‘May I make a suggestion, dear Picquart?’

  ‘Yes please, General.’

  ‘Forget about the bordereau.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Forget about the bordereau. Investigate Esterhazy if you like, but don’t bring the bordereau into it.’

  I take my time responding. I know he is dim, but this is absurd. ‘With respect, General, the bordereau – the fact that it’s in Esterhazy’s handwriting, and the fact that we know he took an interest in artillery – the bordereau is the main evidence against Esterhazy.’

  ‘Well you’ll have to find something else.’

  ‘But the bordereau—’ I bite my tongue. ‘Might I ask why?’

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious. A court martial has already decided who wrote the bordereau. That case is closed. I believe it’s what the lawyers call res judicata: “a matter already judged”.’ He smiles at me through his cigarette smoke, pleased to have remembered this piece of schoolroom Latin.

  ‘But if we discover Esterhazy was the traitor and Dreyfus wasn’t . . .?’

  ‘Well we won’t discover that, will we? That’s the point. Because, as I have just explained to you, the Dreyfus case is over. The court has pronounced its verdict and that is the end of that.’

  I gape at him. I swallow. Somehow I need to convey to him, in the words of the cynical expression, that what he is suggesting is worse than a crime: it is a blunder. ‘Well,’ I begin carefully, ‘we may wish it to be over, General, and our lawyers may indeed tell us that it is over. But the Dreyfus family feel differently. And putting aside any other considerations, I am worried, frankly, about the damage to the army’s reputation if it were to emerge one day that we knew his conviction was unsafe and we did nothing about it.’

  ‘Then it had better not emerge, had it?’ he says cheerfully. He is smiling, but there is a threat in his eyes. ‘So there we are. I’ve said all I have to say on the matter.’ The arms of the wicker chair squeak in protest as he pushes himself to his feet. ‘Leave Dreyfus out of it, Colonel. That’s an order.’

  On the train back to Paris I sit with my briefcase clutched tightly in my lap. I stare out bleakly at the rear balconies and washing lines of the northern suburbs, and the soot-caked stations – Colombes, Asnières, Clichy. I can hardly believe what has just occurred. I keep going over the conversation in my mind. Did I make some mistake in my presentation? Should I have laid it out more clearly – told him in plain terms that the so-called ‘evidence’ in the secret file crumbles into the mere dust of conjecture compared to what we know for sure about Esterhazy? But the more I think of it, the more certain I am that such frankness would have been a grave error. Gonse is utterly intransigent: nothing I can say will shift his opinion; there is no way on earth, as far as he’s concerned, that Dreyfus will be brought back for a retrial. To have pushed it even further would only have led to a complete breakdown in our relations.

  I don’t return to the office: I cannot face it. Instead I go back to my apartment and lie on my bed and smoke cigarette after cigarette with a relentlessness that would impress Gonse, even if nothing else about me does.

  The thing is, I have no wish to destroy my career. Twenty-four years it has taken me to get this far. Yet my career will be pointless to me – will lose the very elements of honour and pride that make it worth having – if the price of keeping it is to become merely one of the Gonses of this world.

  Res judicata!

  By the time it is dark and I get up to turn on the lamps, I have concluded that there is only one course open to me. I shall bypass Boisdeffre and Gonse and exercise my privilege of unrestricted access to the hôtel de Brienne: I shall lay the case personally before the Minister of War.

  Things are starting to stir now – cracks in the glacier; a trembling under the earth – faint warning signs that great forces are on the move.

  For months there has been nothing in the press about Dreyfus. But on the day after my visit to Gonse, the Colonial Ministry is obliged to deny a wild rumour in the London press that he has escaped from Devil’s Island. At the time I think nothing of it: it’s just journalism, and English journalism at that.

  Then on the Tuesday Le Figaro appears with its lead story, ‘The Captivity of Dreyfus’, spread across the first two and a half columns of the front page. The report is an accurate, well-informed and sympathetic account of what Dreyfus is enduring on Devil’s Island (‘forty to fifty thousand francs a year to keep alive a French officer who, since the day of his public degradation, has endured a death worse than death’). I presume the information has come from the Dreyfus family.

  It is against this background that the next day I go to brief the minister.

  I unlock the garden gate and make my way, unseen by any curious eyes in the ministry, across the lawn and into the rear of his official residence.

  The old boy has been on leave for a week. This is his first day back. He seems to be in good spirits. His bulbous nose and the top of his bald head are peeling from exposure to the sun. He sits up straight in his chair, stroking his vast white moustaches, watching with amusement as yet again I bring out all the paperwork associated with the case. ‘Good God! I’m an old man, Picquart. Time is precious. How long is all this going to take?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s partly your fault, Minister.’

  ‘Ah, do you hear him? The cheek of the young! My fault? And pray how is that?’

  ‘You very kindly authorised your staff to show me these letters from the suspected traitor, Esterhazy,’ I say, passing them over, ‘and then I’m afraid I noticed their distinct similarity to this.’ I give him the photograph of the bordereau.

  Once again I am surprised by how quick on the uptake he is. Ancient he may be – a captain of infantry before I was even born – yet he looks from one to the other and grasps the implications immediately. ‘Well I’ll be blessed!’ He makes a clicking sound with his tongue. ‘You’ve had the handwriting checked, I presume?’

  ‘By the original police expert, Bertillon, yes. He says it is identical. Naturally I’d like to get other opinions.’

  ‘Have you shown this to General Boisdeffre?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s his opinion?’

  ‘He referred me to General Gonse.’

  ‘And Gonse?’

  ‘He wants me to abandon my investigation.’

  ‘Does he, indeed? Why’s that?’

  ‘Because he believes, as do I, that it would almost certainly set in train a process that would lead to an official revision of the Dreyfus affair.’

  ‘Heavens! That would be an earthquake!’

  ‘It would, Minister, especially as we would have to reveal the existence of this . . .’

  I hand him the secret file. He squints at it. ‘“D”? What the hell is this?’ He has never even heard of it. I have to explain. I show him the contents, item by item. Once again he goes straight to the heart of the matter. He extracts the letter referring to ‘that lowlife D’ and holds it close to his face. His lips move as he reads. The backs of his hands are flaking like his scalp, and mottled with liver spots: an old lizard who has survived more summers than anyone could believe possible.

  When he gets to the end he says, ‘Who’s “Alexandrine”?’

&nb
sp; ‘That’s von Schwartzkoppen. He and the Italian military attaché call one another by women’s names.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Because they are buggers, Minister.’

  ‘Good God!’ Billot pulls a face. He holds the letter gingerly between finger and thumb and passes it back to me. ‘You have a pretty tawdry job, Picquart.’

  ‘I know that, General. I didn’t ask for it. But now I have it, it seems to me I must do it properly.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘And in my view, that means investigating Esterhazy thoroughly for the crimes he’s committed. And if it transpires that we have to fetch Dreyfus back from Devil’s Island – well, I say it’s better for us in the army to rectify our own mistake rather than be forced to do it by outside pressure later.’

  Billot stares into the middle distance, his right thumb and forefinger smoothing down his moustaches. He grunts as he thinks. ‘This secret file,’ he says after a while. ‘Surely it’s against the law to pass evidence to the judges without letting the defence have a chance to challenge it first?’

  ‘It is. I regret having been a party to it.’

  ‘So whose decision was it?’

  ‘Ultimately, it was General Mercier’s, as Minister of War.’

  ‘Ha! Mercier? Really? I suppose I might have guessed he’d be in there somewhere!’ The staring and the moustache-smoothing and the grunting resume. Eventually he gives a long sigh. ‘I don’t know, Picquart. It’s a devil of a problem. You’re going to have to let me think about it. Obviously, there would be consequences if it turned out we had locked up the wrong man for all this time, especially having made such a public spectacle out of doing it – profound consequences, for both the army and the country. I’d have to talk to the Prime Minister. And I can’t do that for at least a week – I’ve got the annual manoeuvres in Rouillac starting on Monday.’