‘The last letter I had was posted in Tunisia. And who are you, may I ask?’
‘Forgive me, madame – I’m just an old army friend.’
‘Do you have a name?’
‘Let’s just leave it at that, shall we? You can tell him “an old army friend” was looking for him. Goodbye.’
Anna closes the door and locks it. She glances at me. I smile. She has done well. I turn to Louis. ‘They know I’m in Paris.’
Louis leaves soon afterwards, taking with him all my papers apart from the letter to the President, which he tells me to copy out twice. I stay up late after Jules and Anna have gone to bed, sitting at the kitchen table with pen and ink – the anarchist again, assembling his bomb. The trial of Dreyfus was handled in an unprecedentedly superficial manner, with the preconceived idea that Dreyfus was guilty, and with a disregard for due legal forms . . .
Louis returns the following day at the same time, late in the afternoon. Anna shows him into the sitting room. I embrace him and then go over to the window and peer down into the street. ‘Do you think you might have been followed?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
I crane my neck to look up and down the rue Cassette. ‘I can’t actually see anyone watching the house. But these people are good, unfortunately. I think it would be wise to assume that you were.’
‘I agree. Now, my dear friend, did you make those copies of your letter? Excellent.’ He takes them from me and puts them in his briefcase. ‘One copy can remain in my safe and the other can go to a safe deposit box in Geneva.’ He smiles at me. ‘Cheer up, my dear Georges! Now, even if they kill you and then go on to kill me, they’ll still have to invade Switzerland!’
But another day cooped up in my sister’s apartment has not put me in the mood for jokes. ‘I don’t know, Louis. I wonder if the safest course isn’t just to give everything to the newspapers and have done with it.’
‘Oh no, no, no!’ replies Louis in great alarm. ‘That would be fatal – both for yourself and for Dreyfus. I’ve been doing some hard thinking about the whole matter. This letter from Major Henry,’ he says, pulling it out, ‘is really very interesting, you know – very cunning, actually. They’ve obviously prepared contingency plans in case you make public what you know, but not only that – they want you to understand broadly what those contingency plans are.’
‘In order to frighten me off?’
‘Yes, it’s good logic, if you think about it. Their primary objective is that you should do nothing. Therefore they want to show you how unpleasant they are willing to make your life if you do try to do something.’ He studies the letter. ‘As I understand it, Major Henry is alleging here, in effect, that you conspired to frame Esterhazy: first by mounting an illegal operation against him, secondly by attempting to suborn from your associates false testimony about the incriminating evidence, and thirdly by leaking classified information to undermine the case against Dreyfus. Clearly, that will be their line of defence if you go to the newspapers: that you have been working for the Jews all along.’
‘Absurd!’
‘Absurd, I agree. But a great many people will be eager to believe it.’
I can see the truth of this. ‘Well then,’ I say, ‘if I don’t go openly to the newspapers, perhaps I should go privately to the Dreyfus family, and at least give them the name of Esterhazy?’
‘I have thought about that as well. Plainly the family are admirably loyal to their unfortunate captain. But I have to ask myself, as your lawyer, would they feel a similar loyalty to you? To have the name of Esterhazy would of course be immensely useful to their cause. But the real prize for them would be the fact that his name came to them from you – from the chief of the secret intelligence service himself.’
‘You think they would reveal me as their source?’
‘If their objective is to free their brother, they would be almost bound to. And I wouldn’t blame them if they did, would you? In any case, even if they didn’t release your name themselves, I’m sure it would leak within a day or two. You are being watched and so are they. And unfortunately, once your name is known, it will provide the General Staff with all the evidence they need to convince most people that you have been conspiring to free Dreyfus all along. That is why I say this letter of Henry’s is very cunning.’
‘So I’m trapped?’
‘Not entirely. We must think tactically. What do you soldiers call it when you go around the side of your opponent rather than charging him head-on?’
‘Outflanking?’
‘Outflanking – exactly – we need to outflank them. You should not talk to anyone: that only plays into their hands. You should leave all that to me. I shall take your information and give it not to the newspapers or to the Dreyfus camp, but to a public figure of unimpeachable integrity.’
‘And who might this paragon be?’
‘I spent a good part of last night thinking about exactly that, and this morning while I was shaving the answer came to me. With your permission, I shall go and see the Vice President of the Senate, Auguste Scheurer-Kestner.’
‘Why him?’
‘To begin with, he’s an old family friend – my father taught him mathematics – so I know him. He’s a man of Alsace, which is always reassuring. He’s rich, which gives him independence. But above all, he’s a patriot. He’s never done a sordid or selfish thing in his life. Let your friend Major Henry try to smear old Auguste as a traitor!’
I sit back and consider this. The other advantage of Scheurer-Kestner is that he is a member of the moderate left but with plenty of friends on the right. He is by temperament emollient but determined. ‘And what will the senator do with the information?’
‘That will be up to him. Knowing his instinct for compromise, I would guess he’ll approach the government to begin with, and try to sort it out that way. He’ll only go to the press if the authorities won’t listen. But one thing I’ll absolutely insist on beforehand is that your name is not to be mentioned as the source of the information. No doubt the General Staff will guess you’re behind it, but they’ll be hard pushed to prove it.’
‘And what about me? What shall I do during this process?’
‘Nothing. You will return to Tunisia and lead a blameless life – let them follow you all they want: they will observe nothing untoward. That alone will drive them mad. In short, my dear Georges, you just sit in the desert and wait for things to happen.’
On the final day of my leave, after Jules has gone to work and my suitcase is packed ready for the evening train, there is another knock on the door – but softer this time, and tentative. I put down my book and listen as Anna lets in the visitor. A moment later the sitting-room door opens and there is Pauline. She looks at me without speaking. Behind her, Anna is putting on her hat. ‘I have to go out for an hour,’ she says briskly, before adding, with a mixture of fondness and disapproval, ‘and only for an hour, mind you.’
We make love in the children’s bedroom, under the watchful eyes of a row of my nephew’s old toy soldiers. Afterwards, lying in my arms, she says, ‘You were really going to go back to Africa without trying to see me?’
‘Not by choice, my darling.’
‘Without even sending me a note?’
‘I’m worried I’m going to bring disaster down on you if we carry on like this.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘I promise you, you will care, because it won’t be just you who is damaged: it will be the girls as well.’
Suddenly she sits up straight. She is so angry she doesn’t bother to cover herself with a sheet in the way that she normally does. Her hair is tousled, loose, and for the first time I notice a few strands of grey among the blonde. Her skin is flushed rose pink. There is sweat between her breasts. She looks magnificent. ‘You have no right,’ she says, ‘after all these years, to make decisions that affect the two of us without even telling me what’s in your mind! And don’t you dare use the girls as an excuse!’
>
‘Darling, wait—’
‘No! Enough!’
She moves to get out of bed but I grasp her shoulders. She tries to shrug me off. I push her down and hold her. She gasps and struggles beneath me. But she is weaker than she looks, even in her anger, and I restrain her easily. ‘Listen, Pauline,’ I say quietly, ‘I’m not talking about gossip – we’re already common gossip among our circle. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out Philippe actually guessed about us years ago – even a man who works at the Foreign Ministry can’t be as blind to the obvious as all that.’
‘Don’t talk about him! You know nothing about him!’ Pinioned, she beats the back of her head against the pillow in helpless frustration.
I press on. ‘Gossip is one thing – if it’s just gossip, it can be ignored. But I’m talking about exposure and humiliation. I’m talking about the power of the state being used to crush us – to parade us through the newspapers and the courts, to invent things about us and pass them off as true. Nothing is going to withstand that. Do you think I’ve been away from home for the past seven months by choice? And that’s only a tiny foretaste of what they can do to us.’
I clamber off her and sit on the edge of the bed with my back to her. She doesn’t move. After a while she says, ‘It’s useless, I suppose, to ask what exactly it is that has brought this foulness into our lives?’
‘I can’t speak of it to anyone, apart from Louis. And I’ve only talked to him because he’s my lawyer. If anything happens, he’s the one you should go to. He’s wise.’
‘And how long is this going to continue – for the rest of our lives?’
‘No, a few more weeks – perhaps a couple of months. And then the storm will break, and you will be able at last to see what it has all been about.’
She is silent for a while, and then she says, ‘Can we still write to one another, at least?’
‘Yes, but we need to take precautions.’ I rise from the bed and walk naked into the sitting room to fetch a pencil and paper. It is a relief to be doing something practical. When I return, she is sitting up with her arms wrapped around her knees. ‘I’ve arranged with Louis to set up a poste restante with a friend in the avenue de la Motte-Picquet – here’s the address. I’ll send my letters to you there: have someone else pick them up on your behalf. I won’t put your name on the envelope or use it in the letter itself, and I won’t add a signature. And you shouldn’t sign your letters to me, or put anything in them that would give anyone a clue as to who you are.’
‘Are people in the government really going to read our letters?’
‘Yes, almost certainly: many people – ministers, army officers, policemen. There’s one precaution you can take, although it may mean the letter doesn’t get through. Use a double envelope; the inner one you should cover entirely with glue, so that when you insert it into the outer envelope it sticks to it. That way it can’t be opened and then resealed. So if they do tamper with it they’ll have to keep it and they may not want to be as blatant as that. I don’t know – it’s worth a try.’
She tilts her head to one side and looks at me in a kind of puzzled wonder, as if seeing me properly for the first time. ‘How do you come to know all this?’
I put my arms around her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It was my job.’
17
FOUR MONTHS PASS.
The Sousse Military Club still looks out from behind its screen of dusty palms across the unpaved square to the sea. The glare off the Mediterranean remains as fiercely metallic as ever. The same boy in long brown robes still passes at the same time in the middle of the afternoon, leading a goat on a length of rope. The only difference these days is that the boy gives me a wave and I wave back, for I have become a familiar sight. As usual when lunch is over I am seated alone beside the window while my brother officers continue to play cards or doze or read the four-day-old French newspapers. Nobody approaches me.
It is Friday 29 October 1897, and I have checked those stale newspapers every day since my return from Paris, without once coming across the word ‘Dreyfus’. I am beginning to worry that something may have happened to Louis.
In time-honoured fashion, at about three o’clock, through the high glass-panelled door comes a young orderly carrying the afternoon’s post. It is no longer Savignaud – he has gone, arrested for immoral conduct with a local olive oil trader, sentenced to nine days’ detention and shipped off to God knows where. His replacement is an Arab, Jemel, and if he is a spy, as I assume he must be, he is too good for me to catch him out; in consequence, I rather miss Savignaud and his familiar, clumsy ways.
Jemel glides to a stop alongside my chair and salutes. ‘You have a telegram, Colonel.’
It is from army headquarters in Tunis: The Ministry of War today orders Colonel Picquart to proceed immediately to El-Ouatia to investigate and if possible verify reports of hostile Bedouin cavalry massing in the vicinity of Tripoli. Please report to me to discuss the implications of your mission before your departure. Cordially yours, Leclerc.
Jemel says, ‘Will there be a reply, Colonel?’
For a moment I am too surprised to speak. I read the telegram again, just to make sure I am not hallucinating.
‘Yes,’ I say eventually. ‘Will you please telegraph General Leclerc and tell him that I shall report to him tomorrow?’
‘Of course, Colonel.’
After Jemel has shimmied off into the afternoon heat, I study the telegram again. El-Ouatia?
The following morning I catch the train to Tunis. In my briefcase I have a file: ‘Intelligence report on the assassination of the marquis de Morès’. I know it well: I wrote it – one of the few real accomplishments of my time in Africa.
Morès, a fanatical anti-Semite and the most celebrated duellist of the day, came to Tunisia two years ago with a madcap plan to lead an Arab revolt against the British Empire, starting with a trek across the Tunisian Sahara – an area beyond law and civilisation, where Bedouin caravans still occasionally pass trailing columns of Negro slaves chained at the neck. Nevertheless, ignoring all warnings, he set off with a party of thirty, following the coast before heading south from Gabes into the desert.
Riding a camel, escorted by six Tuareg whom he saw as the nucleus of his private army, Morès struck camp on the morning of 8 June last year. He was a mile ahead of the rest of his followers when Bedouin fighters began to appear all around him. At that instant his escort fell upon him and attempted to seize his Winchester rifle and revolver. Morès shot two of his assailants dead with his revolver, mortally wounded a third and then ran forty metres to a nearby tree, shooting two more of the pursuing Tuareg. Dropping to his knees, he reloaded and awaited rescue from the remainder of his expedition. But they, too frightened or treacherous to move, had halted a kilometre away. The heat of the day grew fierce. One Tuareg went forward to pretend to parley with the marquis; in reality he wanted to find out how many bullets he had left. Desperate, Morès seized him round the throat as a hostage. Soon afterwards the man broke free, whereupon Morès shot him dead. But the distraction had lasted long enough for his assassins to get closer. The marquis was hit by a rifle bullet in the back of the neck. His money belt was cut open and a hundred and eighty gold pieces were stolen. His corpse was stripped and mutilated.
The Second Department wanted to know if the British secret service had organised the murder. I was able to assure them that was not the case. Instead, the real lesson of the episode was clear: to venture so far south with anything less than a full infantry brigade plus cavalry and artillery would be suicidal. The name of the place where Morès died was El-Ouatia.
The train pulls into Tunis in the middle of the afternoon. As usual I have to push through the crowd on the platform to reach the taxi rank; as usual there is a boy beside it selling La Dépêche tunisienne. I give him five centimes and settle back in the cab, and suddenly I catch my breath, for there it is – the explanation for my suicidal mission – in the middle of the front page. I s
hould have guessed it:
DREYFUS CASE. Paris, 8h 35m. Vice President of the Senate M. Scheurer-Kestner last night created a sensation by informing L’Agence Nationale: ‘I am firmly convinced of Captain Dreyfus’s innocence and I will do everything to prove it, not only by obtaining a verdict of acquittal at the revision of his trial, but by doing him full justice and rehabilitating him completely.’ 10h 15m. Le Matin reports further comments of M. Scheurer-Kestner: ‘What methods will I use to reveal the truth? And at what time will I use them? For now that remains my secret. I have not passed the file which is in my possession to anyone, not even, as has been suggested, the President of the Republic.’
A single paragraph, that is all. Last night created a sensation . . . It is like catching the faint shock wave of some immense but distant explosion. As the taxi clip-clops along the avenue de France I stare out at the facades of the official buildings and the apartment blocks gleaming white and ochre in the afternoon sun, and I am amazed that they look so normal. I cannot absorb what has happened. I feel a great sense of dislocation from my surroundings, as if I am in a dream.
At army headquarters, Leclerc’s aide-de-camp comes to fetch me. I follow him down a wide corridor past an office where a sergeant sits bent over a typewriter, picking out the letters with excruciating slowness. Leclerc himself appears equally oblivious to the enormity of what has occurred in Paris. Evidently he doesn’t read La Dépêche – or if he does, he hasn’t associated the story with me. But then why should he?
He greets me cheerfully. I hand him my report on the murder of Morès. He glances through it quickly, eyebrows raised. ‘Well don’t worry, Picquart,’ he says, handing it back to me, ‘I’ll make sure you have a perfectly decent funeral. You can choose the hymns before you go.’
‘Thank you, General. I appreciate that.’
He goes over to the map of the French protectorate hanging on his office wall. ‘It’s a hell of a trek, I must say. Don’t they keep any charts these days in Paris?’ He traces the route from Tunis in the north due south, past Sousse, Sfax and Gabès, all the way down into the vast desert area towards Tripoli where the map is blank of roads or settlements. ‘That must be eight hundred kilometres. And at the end of it: a whole region swarming with hostile Bedouin.’
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