An Officer and a Spy

by Robert Harris

  I pick up her jacket and help her on with it. ‘At least wait while I put on some clothes, and I’ll take you home.’

  ‘That would rather defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?’ She picks up her bag. Her brightness is terrible. ‘Goodbye, my darling,’ she says. ‘Write to me soon,’ and with the briefest of kisses she is out of the door and gone.

  I arrive at the office so early that I expect to have the building to myself. But Bachir, who is dozing in his chair, wakes when I shake him and says that Major Henry is already in his room. I walk upstairs, along the passage, knock briefly on his door and go straight in. My second-in-command is bent over his desk with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers; various documents are strewn in front of him. He looks up in surprise. The spectacles perched on the end of his snub nose make him look unexpectedly old and vulnerable. He seems to feel the same; at any rate he quickly takes them off as he gets to his feet.

  ‘Good morning, Colonel. You’re in bright and early.’

  ‘So are you, Major. I’m starting to think you live here! This needs to go back to the Colonial Ministry.’ I hand him the Dreyfus correspondence file. ‘I’ve finished with it.’

  ‘Thanks. What did you make of it?’

  ‘The degree of censorship is extraordinary. I’m not sure there’s any need to restrict their correspondence quite so drastically.’

  ‘Ah!’ Henry gives one of his smirks. ‘Perhaps you have a more tender heart than the rest of us, Colonel.’

  I refuse the bait. ‘Actually, it’s not that. If we were to allow Madame Dreyfus to tell her husband what she’s doing, it would save us the trouble of having to find out. And if he were permitted to say more about his case, he might make a mistake and reveal something we don’t know. In any case, if we’re going to eavesdrop, let’s at least encourage them to say something.’

  ‘I’ll pass that along.’

  ‘Do.’ I glance down at the desk. ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘Agent Auguste has made a fresh delivery.’

  ‘When did you pick it up?’

  ‘Two nights ago.’

  I examine a couple of the torn-up notes. ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  The letters have been ripped into fragments the size of a fingernail: the German military attaché, Colonel Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen, is obviously careful to shred his communications into unusually tiny pieces. But it is stupid of him not to realise that the only secure way to dispose of paper is to burn it. Henry and Lauth are adept at piecing the scraps back together using tiny strips of transparent adhesive paper to repair the tears. The extra layer imparts to the documents a mysterious texture and stiffness. I turn them over. These are in French rather than German, and filled with romantic touches: mon cher ami adoré . . . mon adorable lieutenant . . . mon pioupiou . . . mon Maxi . . . je suis à toi . . . toujours à toi . . . toute à toi, mille et mille tendresses . . . à toi toujours.

  ‘I take it these aren’t from the Kaiser. Or maybe they are.’

  Henry grins. ‘Our adorable “Colonel Maxi” is having an affair with a married woman, which is a very foolish thing for a man in his position to do.’

  For an instant I wonder if this is a barb aimed at me, but when I glance at Henry, he is not looking in my direction but at the letter, with an expression of lascivious satisfaction.

  I say, ‘I thought that Schwartzkoppen was homosexual?’

  ‘Wives or husbands, apparently it’s all the same to him.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘She signs herself Madame Cornet, which is a false name. She uses her sister’s address as a poste restante. But we’ve followed Schwartzkoppen five times now to their little assignations and we’ve identified her as the wife of the councillor of the Dutch legation. She’s called Hermance de Weede.’

  ‘A pretty name.’

  ‘For a pretty girl. Thirty-two. Three young kids. He certainly spreads his favours, the gallant colonel.’

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘Since January. We’ve observed them having lunch in a booth at la Tour d’Argent – they took a room in the hotel upstairs afterwards. We’ve also followed them strolling around the Champs de Mars. He’s careless.’

  ‘And why is it of such interest to us that we expend our resources following a man and a woman who are having an affair?’

  Henry regards me as if I am a halfwit. ‘Because it leaves him open to blackmail.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By us. By anyone. It’s hardly something he’d want known, is it?’

  The notion that we might try to blackmail the German military attaché for an adulterous liaison with the wife of a senior Dutch diplomat strikes me as far-fetched, but I keep my counsel.

  ‘And you say this batch came in two nights ago?’

  ‘Yes, I worked on it at home.’

  There is a pause while I weigh what I need to say. ‘My dear Henry,’ I begin carefully, ‘I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I really think that material as sensitive as this should come straight into the office the moment it’s collected. Imagine if the Germans found out what we’re doing!’

  ‘It never left my sight, Colonel, I assure you.’

  ‘That’s not the point. It’s sloppy procedure. In future I want all of the Auguste material to come direct to me. I’ll keep it in my safe, and I’ll decide what leads are followed and who handles it.’

  Henry’s face flushes. Astonishingly for such a big and hearty fellow, he seems to be close to tears. ‘Colonel Sandherr had no complaint about my methods.’

  ‘Colonel Sandherr isn’t here any more.’

  ‘With respect, Colonel, you’re new to this game—’

  I hold up my hand. ‘That is enough, Major.’ I know I have to stop him there. I can’t back down. If I don’t take control now, I never shall. ‘I have to remind you that this is a military unit and that your job is to obey my orders.’

  He jumps to attention like a wind-up toy soldier. ‘Yes, Colonel.’

  As in a cavalry charge, I make use of my momentum. ‘There are several other changes I’d like to make while we’re on the subject. I don’t want informers and other dubious characters hanging around downstairs. They should come in when we summon them, and leave immediately afterwards. We need to introduce a system of passes, and only authorised persons should be allowed upstairs. And Bachir is hopeless.’

  ‘You want to get rid of Bachir?’ A tone of disbelief.

  ‘No, not until we’ve found him some other billet. I believe in looking after old comrades. But let’s get an electric bell system fitted that will ring each time the front door is opened, so that if he’s asleep, as he was when I arrived, at least we’ll know someone’s entered the building.’

  ‘Yes, Colonel. Is that all?’

  ‘That’s all for now. Gather up the Auguste material and bring it to my office.’

  I turn on my heel and leave, without closing the door. That’s another thing I’d like to change, I think, as I march down the passage to my office: this damned culture of furtiveness, with every man skulking in his own room. I try to fling open the doors on either side of me, but they are locked. When I reach my desk I take out a sheet of paper, and write a stern memorandum, for circulation to all my officers, setting out the new rules. I also compose a note to General Gonse requesting that the Statistical Section be given a new set of offices within the main ministry building, or, at the very least, that the existing premises be redecorated. After I have finished, I feel better. It seems to me that finally I have assumed command.

  Later that morning, Henry comes to see me as requested, bringing the most recent delivery from Auguste. I am braced for further trouble and resolved not to give way. Despite the fact that his experience is vital to the smooth running of the section, if it comes to it I am even willing to have him transferred to another unit. But to my surprise he is as meek as the shorn lamb. He shows me how much he has already reconstructed an
d what remains to be done, and politely offers to teach me how the pieces are glued together. To humour him I have a try, but the work is too fiddly and time-consuming for me: besides, although Auguste may be our most important agent, I have the entire section to run. I repeat my position: all I want is to be the first to take a preliminary look at the material; the rest I am content to leave to him and Lauth.

  He thanks me for my frankness and in the months that follow there is peace between us. He is cheerful, wise, friendly and dedicated – at least to my face. Occasionally I step out from my office into the corridor and catch him with Lauth and Junck speaking quietly together; there is something about the speed with which they disperse that tells me they have been talking about me. One time I pause outside the door to Gribelin’s archive to rearrange some papers in a file I am returning, and I hear Henry’s voice distinctly from within: ‘It’s the way he thinks he’s so much cleverer than the rest of us that I can’t stand!’ But I don’t know for certain that he’s referring to me – and even if he is, I am willing to ignore it. What chief of any organisation is not complained about behind his back, especially if he is trying to run it with some discipline and efficiency?

  Throughout the remainder of that summer and into the autumn and winter of 1895, I make it my business to get the measure of my job. I learn that whenever Agent Auguste has a consignment to drop off, she signals it by placing, first thing in the morning, a particular flowerpot on the balcony of her apartment in the rue Surcouf. This means that she will be at the basilica of Sainte-Clotilde at nine o’clock that evening. I see an opportunity to extend my experience. ‘I’d like to make the collection tonight,’ I announce to Henry one day in October. ‘Just to get a sense of how the process works.’

  I watch him literally swallow his objections. ‘Good idea,’ he says.

  In the evening I change into civilian clothes, pick up my briefcase and walk to the nearby basilica – that vast twin-spired mock-Gothic factory of superstition. I know it well from the days when César Franck was the organist and I used to attend his recitals. I arrive in plenty of time and follow Henry’s instructions. I go into the deserted side chapel, walk to the third row of chairs from the front, edge along it three places to the left of the aisle, kneel, take out the prayer book positioned there and insert between its pages two hundred francs. Then I retreat to the back row and wait. No one is around to see me, but if there was I would just look like a troubled civil servant on his way home from the office, stopping off to seek advice from his Maker.

  Yet although there is absolutely no danger in what I am doing, my heart pounds. Ridiculous! Perhaps it is the flickering candlelight and the smell of incense, or the echo of footsteps and whispered voices from the immense nave. Whatever it is, and even though I have long since lost my faith, I feel there is something sacrilegious about this whole transaction taking place on hallowed ground. I keep checking my watch: ten to nine, nine o’clock, five past nine, twenty past nine . . . Perhaps she isn’t coming? I can imagine Henry’s polite commiserations if I have to tell him tomorrow that she didn’t show up.

  But then, just before half past, the silence is broken by a clang as the door behind me opens. A squat female figure in a black skirt and shawl walks past. Halfway up the aisle she stops, makes the sign of the cross, curtseys to the altar, and then heads straight to the designated seat. I see her kneel. Less than a minute later she rises and strides back down the aisle towards me. I keep my eyes fixed on her, curious to see what she is like, this Madame Bastian, a commonplace cleaning woman, yet perhaps the most valuable secret agent in France, in Europe. She gives me a long, hard look as she passes – surprised, I suppose, not to see Major Henry in my place – and I note there is absolutely nothing commonplace in her fierce, almost masculine features, and the challenge of her stare. She is a bold one, maybe even reckless; but then she would have to be, to have smuggled secret documents out of the German Embassy for five years under the noses of the guards.

  The moment she has gone, I stand and walk to the place where I left the money. Henry impressed on me not to waste any time. Tucked beneath the chair is a cone-shaped paper sack. It rustles alarmingly as I tug it out and stuff it into my briefcase. I leave the basilica in a hurry, through the doors and down the steps, striding along the dark and empty streets that surround the ministry. Ten minutes after collecting the sack, euphoric with success, I am tipping the contents over the desk in my office.

  There is more than I expected: a cornucopia of trash – paper torn and crumpled and dusted with cigarette ash, paper white and grey, cream and blue, tissue and card, tiny pieces and large fragments, handwritten in pencil and ink, typewritten and printed, words in French and German and Italian, train tickets and theatre stubs, envelopes, invitations, restaurant bills and receipts from tailors and taxi cabs and bootmakers . . . I run my hands through it all, scoop it up and let it trickle through my fingers – mostly it will be rubbish, I know, but somewhere within it there may be gold. I experience a prospector’s thrill.

  I am beginning to enjoy this job.

  I write to Pauline twice, but guardedly, in case Philippe opens her letters. She does not reply and I don’t try to seek her out to discover if anything is wrong, principally because I don’t have the time. I have to devote my Saturday nights and Sundays to my mother, whose memory is worsening, and most evenings I am required to stay at the office late. There are so many things to keep an eye on. The Germans are laying telephone cables along the eastern frontier. There is a suspected spy at our embassy in Moscow. An English agent is said to be offering to sell a copy of our mobilisation plans to the highest bidder . . . I have to write my regular blancs. I am fully absorbed.

  I still go to the de Comminges salons, but ‘your sweet Madame Monnier’, as Blanche likes to call her, is never there, even though Blanche insists she always makes a point of inviting her. After one concert I take Blanche out to dinner, to the Tour d’Argent, where we are given a table overlooking the river. Why do I choose this particular restaurant? For one thing it’s a convenient walk from the de Comminges house. But I am also curious to see where Colonel von Schwartzkoppen entertains his mistress. I look around the dining room; it is almost entirely filled with couples. The candlelit booths are made for intimacy – je suis à toi, toujours à toi, toute à toi . . . The latest police agent’s report describes Hermance as ‘early thirties, blonde, petite, in cream-coloured skirt and jacket trimmed in black’. ‘At times their hands were not visible above the table.’

  Blanche says, ‘What are you smiling at?’

  ‘I know a colonel who brings his mistress here. They take a room upstairs.’

  She stares at me, and in that instant the thing is settled. I have a word with the maître d’hôtel, who says, ‘My dear Colonel, of course there is a room available,’ and after we have eaten our dinner we are shown upstairs by an unsmiling young man who takes a large tip without acknowledgement.

  Later, Blanche asks, ‘Is it better to make love before dinner or after it, do you think?’

  ‘There’s a case for either. I think probably before.’ I kiss her and get out of bed.

  ‘I agree. Let’s do it before next time.’

  She is twenty-five. Whereas Pauline at forty undresses in the darkness and drapes herself languorously with a sheet or a towel, Blanche stretches naked on her back under the electric light, smoking a cigarette, her left knee raised, her right foot resting on it, examining her wriggling toes. She flings out her arm and flicks ash in the vague direction of the ashtray.

  ‘Surely,’ she says, ‘the correct answer is both.’

  ‘It can’t be both, my darling,’ I correct her, ever the tutor, ‘because that would be illogical.’ I am standing at the window with the curtain wrapped around me like a toga, looking across the embankment to the Île Saint-Louis. A boat glides past, ploughing a glossy furrow in the black river, its deck lit up as if for a party but deserted. I am trying to concentrate on this moment, to file it away in my memor
y, so that if anyone ever asks me, ‘When were you content?’ I can answer, ‘There was an evening with a girl at the Tour d’Argent . . .’

  ‘Is it true,’ asks Blanche suddenly from the bed behind me, ‘that Armand du Paty had some kind of hand in the Dreyfus business?’

  The moment freezes, vanishes. I don’t need to turn round. I can see her reflection in the window. Her right foot is still describing its ceaseless circle. ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘Oh, just something Aimery said tonight.’ She rolls over quickly and stabs out her cigarette. ‘In which case, it means of course that the poor Jew is bound to turn out to be innocent.’

  This is the first time anyone has suggested to me that Dreyfus might not be guilty. Her flippancy shocks me. ‘It’s not a subject to joke about, Blanche.’

  ‘Darling, I’m not! I’m absolutely serious!’ She thumps the pillow into shape and lies back with her hands clasped behind her head. ‘I thought it was odd at the time, the way he had his insignia torn off publicly and was marooned on a desert island – all a little too much, no? I should have guessed Armand du Paty was behind it! He may dress like an army officer, but beneath that tunic beats the heart of a romantic lady novelist.’

  I laugh. ‘Well, I must bow to your superior knowledge of what goes on beneath his tunic, my dear. But I happen to know more than you about the Dreyfus case, and believe me, there were many other officers involved in that inquiry apart from your former lover!’

  She pouts at me in the glass; she doesn’t like being reminded of the lapse of taste that was her affair with du Paty. ‘Georges, you look exactly like Jove standing there. Be a Good God and come back to bed . . .’

  The exchange with Blanche unsettles me very slightly. The tiniest speck of – no, I shall not call it doubt, exactly – let us say curiosity lodges in my mind, and not so much about Dreyfus’s guilt as his punishment. Why, I ask myself, do we persist in this absurd and expensive rigmarole of imprisonment, which requires four or five guards to be stranded with him in silence on his tiny island? What is our policy? How many hours of bureaucratic time – including mine – are to be tied up in the endless administration, surveillance and censorship his punishment entails?