An Officer and a Spy Page 3
‘I’ve already explained all this to General Gonse.’
‘I’m sorry, Colonel. Would you mind explaining it to me?’
He sighs. ‘Captain Lebrun-Renault was detailed to keep an eye on Dreyfus in the guardroom until the ceremony started. He handed him over to the escort, and just as the degradation started he came over to where a group of us were standing and said something like “Well I’ll be damned, the scum just admitted everything.”’
I take out my notebook. ‘What did the captain say Dreyfus had told him?’
‘I don’t recall his actual words. The essence of it was that he’d handed over secrets to the Germans, but they weren’t very important, that the minister knew all about them, and that in a few years’ time the whole story would come out. Something like that. You need to talk to Lebrun-Renault.’
‘I do. Where can I find him?’
‘I’ve no idea. He’s off duty.’
‘Is he still in Paris?’
‘My dear Major, how would I know that?’
‘I don’t quite understand,’ I say. ‘Why would Dreyfus suddenly admit his guilt to a total stranger, at such a moment and with nothing to gain by it, after denying everything for three months?’
‘I can’t help you there.’ The colonel looks over his shoulder in the direction of his lunch.
‘And if he’d just confessed to Captain Lebrun-Renault, why did he then go out and repeatedly shout his innocence into a hostile crowd of tens of thousands?’
The colonel squares his shoulders. ‘Are you calling one of my officers a liar?’
‘Thank you, Colonel.’ I put away my notebook.
When I get back to the ministry, I go straight to Gonse’s office. He is labouring over a stack of files. He swings his boots up on to the desk and tilts back in his chair as he listens to my report. He says, ‘So you don’t think there’s anything in it?’
‘No, I do not. Not now I’ve heard the details. It’s much more likely this dim captain of the Guard got the wrong end of the stick. Either that or he embellished a tale to make himself look important to his comrades. Of course I am assuming,’ I add, ‘that Dreyfus wasn’t a double agent planted on the Germans.’
Gonse laughs and lights another cigarette. ‘If only!’
‘What would you like me to do, General?’
‘I don’t see there’s anything much you can do.’
I hesitate. ‘There is one way of getting a definite answer, of course.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We could ask Dreyfus.’
Gonse shakes his head. ‘Absolutely not. He’s now beyond communication. Besides, he’ll soon be shipped out of Paris.’ He lifts his feet from the desk and sets them on the floor. He pulls the stack of files towards him. Cigarette ash spills down the front of his tunic. ‘Just leave it with me. I’ll go and explain everything to the Chief of Staff and the minister.’ He opens a dossier and starts to scan it. He doesn’t look up. ‘Thank you, Major Picquart. You are dismissed.’
2
THAT EVENING, IN civilian clothes, I travel out to Versailles to see my mother. The draughty train sways through Paris suburbs weirdly etched by snow and gaslight. The journey takes the best part of an hour; I have the carriage to myself. I try to read a novel, The Adolescent by Dostoyevsky, but every time we cross a set of points the lights cut out and I lose my place. In the blue glow of the emergency illumination I stare out of the window and imagine Dreyfus in his cell in La Santé prison. Convicts are transported by rail in converted cattle trucks. I presume he will be sent west, to an Atlantic port, to await deportation. In this weather the journey will be a bitter hell. I close my eyes and try to doze.
My mother has a small apartment in a modern street near the Versailles railway station. She is seventy-seven and lives alone, a widow for almost thirty years. I take it in turns with my sister to spend time with her. Anna is older than I, and has children, which I do not: my watch always falls on a Saturday night, the only time I can be sure of getting away from the ministry.
It is well past dark by the time I arrive; the temperature must be minus ten. My mother shouts from behind the locked door: ‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s Georges, Maman.’
‘Who?’
‘Georges. Your son.’
It takes me a minute to persuade her to let me in. Sometimes she mistakes me for my older brother, Paul, who died five years ago; sometimes – and this is oddly worse – for my father, who died when I was eleven. (Another sister died before I was born, a brother when he was eleven days old; there is one thing to be said for senility – since her mind has gone, she does not lack for company.)
The bread and milk are frozen solid; the pipes are canisters of ice. I spend the first half-hour lighting fires to try to thaw the place out, the second on my back fixing a leak. We eat boeuf bourguignon, which the maid who comes in once a day has bought at the local traiteur. Maman rallies; she even seems to remember who I am. I tell her what I’ve been doing but I don’t mention Dreyfus or the degradation: she would struggle to understand what I am talking about. Later we sit at the piano, which occupies most of her tiny sitting room, and play a duet, the Chopin rondo. Her playing is faultless; the musical part of her brain remains quite intact; it will be the last thing to go. After she has put herself to bed, I sit on the stool and examine the photographs on top of the piano: the solemn family groups in Strasbourg, the garden of the house in Geudertheim, a miniature of my mother as a music student, a picnic in the woods of Neudorf – artefacts from a vanished world, the Atlantis we lost in the war.1
I was sixteen when the Germans shelled Strasbourg, thus kindly enabling me to witness at first hand an event that we teach at the École Supérieure de Guerre as ‘the first full-scale use of modern long-range artillery specifically to reduce a civilian population’. I watched the city’s art gallery and library burn to the ground, saw neighbourhoods blown to pieces, knelt beside friends as they died, helped dig strangers out of the rubble. After nine weeks the garrison surrendered. We were offered a choice between staying put and becoming German or giving up everything and moving to France. We arrived in Paris destitute and shorn of all illusions about the security of our civilised life.
Before the humiliation of 1870 I might have become a professor of music or a surgeon; after it, any career other than the army seemed frivolous. The Ministry of War paid for my education; the army became my father, and no son ever strove harder to please a demanding papa. I compensated for a somewhat dreamy and artistic nature by ferocious discipline. Out of a class of 304 cadets at the military school at Saint-Cyr, I emerged fifth. I can speak German, Italian, English and Spanish. I have fought in the Aurès mountains in north Africa and won the Colonial Medal, on the Red River in Indochina and won the Star for bravery. I am a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. And today, after twenty-four years in uniform, I have been singled out for commendation by both the Minister of War and the Chief of the General Staff. As I lie in my mother’s spare bedroom in Versailles, and the fifth of January 1895 turns into the sixth, the voice in my head is not that of Alfred Dreyfus proclaiming his innocence, but Auguste Mercier’s hinting at my promotion: I have been impressed by the intelligence you have shown . . . It will not be forgotten . . .
The following morning, to the sound of bells, I take my mother’s fragile arm and escort her to the top of the icy road and around the corner to the cathedral of Saint-Louis – a particularly bombastic monument to state superstition, I always think; why couldn’t the Germans have blown up this? The worshippers are a monochrome congregation, black and white, nuns and widows. I withdraw my arm from hers at the door. ‘I’ll meet you here after Mass.’
‘Aren’t you coming in?’
‘I never come in, Maman. We have this conversation every week.’
She peers at me with moist grey eyes. Her voice quivers. ‘But what shall I tell God?’
‘Tell Him I’ll be in the Café du Commerce in the square over there.’
I sip my coffee and my gaze skims over the Journal’s sensational description of the ceremony until suddenly it hits this: ‘Dreyfus turned towards his escort and said: “If I did hand over documents, it was only to receive others of greater importance. In three years the truth will come out and the minister himself will reopen my case.” This half-confession is the first that the traitor has made since his arrest . . .’
Without taking my eyes from the newsprint, I slowly put down my cup and read the passage again. Then I pick up Le Figaro. No mention of any confession, half or otherwise, on the front page: a relief. But on the second is a late news item – ‘Here now is the account of a witness, received in the last hour . . .’ – and I find myself reading another version of the same story, only this time Lebrun-Renault is identified as the source by name, and this time there is no mistaking the authentic voice of Dreyfus. I can hear his desperation in every line, frantic to convince anyone, even the officer guarding him:
‘Look, Captain; listen. A letter was discovered in a cupboard in an embassy; it was a covering note for four other documents. This letter was shown to handwriting experts. Three said I had written it; two said I hadn’t. And it’s solely on the basis of this that I’ve been condemned! When I was eighteen, I entered the École Polytechnique. I had a brilliant military career ahead of me, a fortune of five hundred thousand francs and the prospect of an annual income of fifty thousand a year. I’ve never chased girls. I’ve never touched a playing card in my life. Therefore I had no need of money. So why would I commit treason? For money? No. So why?’
None of these details is supposed to be made public, and my first response is to curse Lebrun-Renault beneath my breath as a bloody young fool. Shooting one’s mouth off in front of journalists is unpardonable for an officer at any time – but on a matter as sensitive as this? He must have been drunk! It crosses my mind that I should return to Paris immediately and go straight to the War Ministry. But then I consider my mother, no doubt even at this moment down on her knees praying for my immortal soul, and decide that I am probably better off out of it.
And so I allow the day to proceed as planned. I retrieve my mother from the clutches of a pair of nuns, we walk back to the house, and at noon my cousin, Edmond Gast, sends his carriage to collect us for lunch at his home in the nearby village of Ville-d’Avray. It is a pleasant, easy gathering of family and friends: the sort of friends who have been around long enough to feel like family. Edmond, a couple of years my junior, is already the mayor of Ville-d’Avray, one of those lucky individuals with a gift for life. He farms, paints, hunts, makes money easily, spends it well, and loves his wife – and who can be surprised, since Jeanne is still as pretty as a girl by Renoir? I envy no man, but if I did it would be Edmond. Next to Jeanne in the dining room sits Louis Leblois, who was at school with me; beside me is his wife, Martha; opposite me is Pauline Romazzotti, who, despite her Italian surname, grew up with us near Strasbourg, and who is now married to an official at the Foreign Ministry, Philippe Monnier, a man eight or ten years older than the rest of us. She is wearing a plain grey dress trimmed with white which she knows I like because it reminds me of one she wore when she was eighteen.
Everyone around the table apart from Monnier is an exile from Alsace and nobody has a good word to say for our fellow Alsatian, Dreyfus, not even Edmond, whose politics are radical republican. We all have tales of Jews, especially from Mulhouse, whose loyalties, when it came to the crunch and they were offered their choice of citizenship after the war, turned out to be to German rather than French.
‘They shift with the wind, according to who has power,’ pronounces Monnier, waving his wine glass back and forth. ‘That is how their race has survived for two thousand years. You can’t blame them, really.’
Only Leblois ventures a scintilla of doubt. ‘Mind you, speaking as a lawyer, I’m against secret trials in principle, and I must admit I wonder if a Christian officer would have been denied the normal judicial process in the same way – especially as according to Le Figaro the evidence against him sounds so thin.’
I say coldly, ‘He was “denied the normal judicial process”, as you put it, Louis, because the case involved matters of national security that simply couldn’t have been aired in open court, whoever was the defendant. And there was plenty of evidence against him: I can give you my absolute assurance of that!’
Pauline frowns at me and I realise I have raised my voice. There is a silence. Louis adjusts his napkin but says nothing more. He doesn’t want to spoil the meal, and Pauline, ever the diplomat’s wife, seizes the chance to move the conversation on to a more congenial topic.
‘Did I tell you that Philippe and I have discovered the most wonderful new Alsatian restaurant on the rue Marbeuf . . .’
It is five by the time I arrive home. My apartment is in the sixteenth arrondissement, close to the place Victor Hugo. The address makes me sound much smarter than I am. In truth, I have just two small rooms on the fourth floor, and I struggle to afford even these on a major’s pay. I am no Dreyfus, with a private income ten times my salary. But it has always been my temperament to prefer a tiny amount of the excellent to a plenitude of the mediocre; I get by, just about.
I let myself in from the street and have barely taken a couple of paces towards the stairs when I hear the concierge’s voice behind me – ‘Major Picquart!’ – and turn to discover Madame Guerault brandishing a visiting card. ‘An officer came to call on you,’ she announces, advancing towards me. ‘A general!’
I take the card: ‘General Charles-Arthur Gonse, Ministry of War’. On the reverse he has written his home address.
His place is close to the avenue du Bois de Boulogne; I can walk to it easily. Within five minutes I am ringing his bell. The door is opened by a very different figure from the relaxed fellow I left on Saturday afternoon. He is unshaven; the pouches beneath his eyes are dark and heavy with exhaustion. His tunic is open to the waist, revealing a slightly grubby undershirt. He holds a glass of cognac.
‘Picquart. Good of you to come.’
‘My apologies that I’m not in uniform, General.’
‘No matter. It’s a Sunday, after all.’
I follow him through the darkened apartment – ‘My wife is in the country,’ he explains over his shoulder – and into what seems to be his study. Above the window is a pair of crossed spears – mementos of his service in North Africa, I assume – and on the chimney-piece a photograph of him taken a quarter of a century ago, as a junior staff officer in the 13th Army Corps. He refreshes his drink from a decanter and pours one for me, then flops down on to the couch with a groan and lights a cigarette.
‘This damned Dreyfus affair,’ he says. ‘It will be the death of us all.’
I make some light reply – ‘Really? I would have preferred mine to be slightly more heroic!’ – but Gonse fixes me with a look of great seriousness.
‘My dear Picquart, you don’t seem to realise: we have just come very close to war. I have been up since one o’clock this morning, and all because of that damned fool Lebrun-Renault!’
‘My God!’ Taken aback, I set down my untasted glass
of cognac.
‘I know it’s hard to believe,’ he says, ‘that such a catastrophe might have resulted from one idiot’s gossip, but it’s true.’
He tells me how, an hour after midnight, he was woken by a messenger from the Minister of War. Summoned to the hôtel de Brienne, he found Mercier in his dressing gown with a private secretary from the Élysée Palace who had with him copies of the first editions of the Paris newspapers. The private secretary then repeated to Gonse what he had just told Mercier: that the President was appalled – appalled! scandalised! – by what he had just read. How could it be that an officer of the Republican Guard could spread such stories – in particular, that a document had been stolen by the French government from the German Embassy, and that the whole episode was some kind of espionage trap for the Germans? Was the Minister of War aware that the German ambassador was coming to the Élysée that very afternoon to present a formal note of protest from Berlin? That the German emperor was threatening to withdraw his ambassador from Paris unless the French government stated once and for all that it accepted the German government’s assurances that it had never had any dealings with Captain Alfred Dreyfus? Find him, the President demanded! Find this Captain Lebrun-Renault and shut him up!
And so General Arthur Gonse, the Chief of French Military Intelligence, at the age of fifty-six, found himself in the humiliating position of taking a carriage and going from door to door – to regimental headquarters, to Lebrun-Renault’s lodgings, to the fleshpots of Pigalle – until finally, just before dawn, he had run his quarry to earth in the Moulin Rouge, where the young captain was still holding forth to an audience of reporters and prostitutes!