An Officer and a Spy

by Robert Harris

  ‘The Dreyfus case is res judicata.’

  ‘Or the conspiracy within the General Staff to keep me in north Africa – or even to send me to my death – to prevent my exposing what had happened?’

  ‘That is outside the scope of this inquiry.’

  ‘Then if you will forgive me, General, I believe your inquiry to be a sham and that your conclusions were written before I even started to give my evidence, and I hereby withdraw my co-operation from this process.’

  And with that I stand, salute, turn on my heel and stride out of the room. I expect to hear Pellieux bellowing at me to stay where I am. But he says nothing, whether because he is too surprised to react or because he feels he has made his point and is happy to see the back of me I do not know and nor, at that moment, do I care. I retrieve my suitcase from the empty waiting room and descend the stairs. I pass a few officers, who give me sidelong looks. None tries to stop me. I go out through the cathedral-like door and into the place Vendôme. My exit is so unexpected that most of the journalists don’t notice me hurrying past them and I am almost at the corner before I hear them shouting – ‘There he goes!’ – and then the sound of their feet running over the cobbles after me. I put my head down and increase my pace, ignoring their questions. A couple scramble to get ahead of me and try to block my path, but I push them aside. On the rue de Rivoli I spot a taxi and flag it down. The reporters fan out along the street searching for cabs to follow me; one athletic fellow even tries to keep up with me on foot. But the driver cracks his whip, and when I look back he has given up the chase.

  The rue Yvon-Villarceau runs north to south between the rue Copernic and the rue Boissière. Directly opposite my apartment building, at the northern end, the foundations are being sunk for a new block. As we pass the entrance I scan the street for reporters and police, but all I can see are workmen. I tell the driver to pull up round the corner, then pay the fare and walk back.

  The double doors are glazed and barred. I cup my hands and peer through the dusty glass into the empty vestibule. At my feet, mud and rubble have turned the cobblestones into a country lane; the smell of freshly dug earth seasons the cold rain. I feel like a visitor returning after a long interval to the scene of an earlier life. I open the door and am halfway to the stairs when I hear the familiar faint click of a latch. But whereas before the concierge would always scuttle from her lair to engage me in conversation, now she keeps her distance, watching me through a crack in her doorway. I pretend not to notice and mount the steps, carrying my suitcase up to the fourth floor. On the landing there is no sign of forced entry: she must have given the authorities her key.

  The moment I open the door I am shocked by how thoroughly the place has been searched. The carpet has been rolled back. All my books have been removed from their shelves, shaken out and replaced in haphazard order; bookmarks litter the floor. The chest in which I keep my old letters has been forced and emptied; the drawers of the escritoire also forced; even my sheet music has been taken out of the piano stool and sifted for clues; the piano lid has been removed and propped against the wall. I switch on the desk lamp and pick up a photograph of my mother that has fallen to the floor; the glass is cracked. Suddenly I visualise Henry standing in this very spot – Colonel Henry, as I must now learn to call him – licking his clumsy butcher’s fingers as he turns the pages of my correspondence, reading aloud some intimate endearment for the amusement of the men from the Sûreté.

  The image is intolerable.

  A faint sound comes from the other room – a creak, a breath, a groan. Slowly I draw my revolver. I take a couple of steps across the bare boards and cautiously push open the door. Curled up on the bed, looking up at me through eyes bruised and swollen by crying, still wearing her coat, her hair dishevelled, her face white, as if she has fainted or suffered an accident, is Pauline.

  ‘They told Philippe,’ she says.

  She has been here all night. She read in the papers that I’d been brought back to Paris so she came round at midnight assuming I’d be here. She stayed, waiting. She didn’t know where else to go.

  I kneel beside the bed, holding her hand. ‘What exactly has happened?’

  ‘Philippe has thrown me out. He won’t let me see the girls.’

  I squeeze her fingers, momentarily speechless. ‘Have you slept?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At least take off your coat, my darling.’

  I stand and pick my way through the damage in the drawing room. In the kitchen I heat a saucepan on the gas ring and make her a drink of cognac, hot water and honey, all the while struggling to comprehend what is happening. Their methods stagger me – the ruthlessness, the speed. When I take the glass through to her, she has undressed to her shift and got into bed and is lying half raised on the pillows with the sheet drawn tight around her neck. She looks at me warily.

  ‘Here. Drink this.’

  ‘God, it’s disgusting. What is it?’

  ‘Cognac. The army cure for everything. Drink it.’

  I sit at the bottom of the bed and smoke a cigarette and wait until she is suffiently revived to start telling me what happened. On Friday afternoon she went out to tea with a friend: everything normal. When she returned home, Philippe was back from the office early. There was no sign of the girls. ‘He looked strange, mad . . . At that moment I guessed what had happened. I was almost sick with worry.’ She asked him calmly where they were. He said he had sent them away. ‘He said that I was not morally fit to be the mother of his children – that he wouldn’t tell me where they were, not unless I told him the truth about my affair with you. I had no choice. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are they safe?’

  She nods, cupping the glass between her hands for warmth. ‘They’re with his sister. But he won’t let me see them.’ She starts to cry. ‘He says he won’t let me have custody of them after the divorce.’

  ‘Well, that’s nonsense. Don’t worry. He can’t do that. He’ll calm down. He’s just shocked and angry to have found out you’ve been having an affair.’

  ‘Oh, he knew about that,’ she says bitterly. ‘He’s always suspected. He said he could tolerate it so long as no one else knew. It was being called in and told about it by his superiors – that’s what he can’t abide.’

  ‘And who told the Foreign Ministry, did he say?’

  ‘The army.’

  ‘Unbelievable!’

  ‘He said the army are convinced I’m this “veiled lady” the papers keep talking about. He said it will destroy his career to be married to a woman mixed up in it all. He says the girls . . .’ She starts to cry again.

  ‘My God, what a mess!’ I put my head in my hands. ‘I am so very sorry to have dragged you into this.’

  For a while neither of us says anything, and then, as ever, when faced with emotional turmoil, I try to take refuge in practicalities. ‘The first thing we need to do is find you a decent lawyer. I’m sure Louis will take it on, or at least he’ll know someone good who can. You’ll need a lawyer to deal with the army on your behalf, and to try to keep your name out of the papers. And to handle the divorce – Philippe will divorce you, you’re sure of that?’

  ‘Oh yes – if it’s a question of his career, I have no doubt.’

  Even this I try to put in a good light. ‘Well then at least it will be in his interests to keep it quiet. And perhaps you can use that to negotiate custody of the children . . .’ My voice trails off. I don’t know what else to say, except to repeat: ‘I am so very sorry . . .’

  She reaches out her arms to me. And so we cling to one another on my narrow bed, like survivors of a shipwreck, and that is when I vow to myself that I will have revenge.

  19

  A FEW DAYS later, just before midnight, a note is pushed under my door. By the time I step outside to check the landing, whoever has brought it has gone. The message reads: 11, rue de Grenelle – if you are sure.

  I hold it to the fire and watch as it catches light, then drop it in the g
rate. Later I take the poker and crush the cinders to powder. If my maid is an informant, as I strongly suspect, it really would be too rich a joke if she were to take my torn-up litter to the Statistical Section for them to piece it back together. I have tried to convince Louis of the need for these precautions. ‘Use intermediaries wherever possible,’ I tell him. ‘Pay a stranger to deliver your messages. Trust nothing to the postal services. Avoid regular patterns of behaviour. Plant false trails if you can – go and see people whose views might be considered suspect, purely in order to confuse your watchers. Take indirect routes. Switch taxis. Remember their resources are extensive but not inexhaustible: we can run them pretty ragged if we try . . .’

  When I go to bed, I am careful to keep my gun nearby.

  The concierge brings me the morning’s newspapers; she leaves them outside the door. I wait until she’s gone before I fetch them in, and then I read them in bed, wearing my dressing gown. I have nothing else to do. As usual, the Dreyfus affair is the dominant story. It unfolds each day like a serial, peopled by an exotic cast of characters I scarcely recognise, including me (the forty-three-year-old high-flying bachelor spymaster who has betrayed his former chiefs). Among the latest plot twists are the letters Esterhazy sent to his then mistress, Madame de Boulancy, thirteen years ago, which have ended up in Le Figaro (If this evening I were told that I am to be killed tomorrow like an Uhlan captain while running my sword through the French, I would certainly be perfectly happy. I wouldn’t harm a little dog, but I would have a hundred thousand Frenchmen killed with pleasure). Esterhazy has denounced these as Jewish forgeries and demanded, through his lawyer, a full court martial to clear his name – a request to which the army has agreed. Émile Zola has written another of his passionate evocations of Dreyfus’s plight: a being cut off from everyone else, isolated not only by the ocean but by eleven guards who surround him night and day like a human wall . . . Meanwhile, in the Chamber of Deputies there has been a full-scale debate on the affair, opened by the Prime Minister, who took shelter behind the ramparts of res judicata: ‘Let me be clear at the outset. There is no Dreyfus case! [Applause] There is not and cannot be a Dreyfus case! [Prolonged applause]’ And for the avoidance of any doubt on the matter, General Billot, summoned to the tribune from the Ministry of War, has restated the government’s position even more strongly: ‘Dreyfus has been rightly judged and unanimously condemned. On my soul and conscience, as a soldier and the head of the army, I hold that verdict truly delivered and Dreyfus guilty.’

  I lay aside the papers. Really, it is beyond hypocrisy; it is beyond even lying: it has become a psychosis.

  My uniform hangs in my wardrobe, like the sloughed-off skin of some former life. I have not been formally discharged from the army. Technically I am on indefinite leave pending the verdict of Pellieux’s inquiry and the minister’s response. But I prefer to dress in civilian clothes in order not to draw attention to myself. Just before noon I put on a good stout overcoat and a bowler hat, take my umbrella from the stand and go out into the day.

  Outwardly, I hope, I wear my usual mask of detachment, even irony, for there has never been a situation, however dire, even this one, that did not strike me as containing at least some element of the human comedy. But then I think of Pauline, of how when I discovered her on my bed she could only keep repeating the same phrase, over and over: ‘He won’t let me see the girls . . .’ She has given a deposition to Pellieux and has fled the press and gone to stay with her brother, a naval officer, and her sister-in-law near Toulon. Louis has agreed to handle her legal affairs. He has advised us not to have any contact until the divorce is finalised. We said goodbye in a rainstorm in the Bois de Bolougne, watched by an agent of the Sûreté. And it is for what they have done to her, more even than what they have done to Dreyfus, that I cannot forgive the General Staff. For the first time in my life I carry hatred inside me. It is an almost physical thing, like a concealed knife. Sometimes, when I am alone, I like to take it out and run my thumb along its cold, sharp blade.

  My watcher is there as usual, on the opposite side of the street, leaning against the wooden fence surrounding the building site, smoking a cigarette; no doubt he will have a partner somewhere. This particular fellow I have registered before – scrawny, red-bearded, in a thick brown jacket and flat cap. He has given up even pretending to be anything other than a police agent. He flicks away his cigarette and slouches after me, about twenty paces behind, his hands in his pockets. Like a company commander in a bad mood I decide this sluggard could do with a thorough workout, and I quicken my speed until I am almost running – across the avenue Montaigne and along to the place de la Concorde and over the river to the boulevard Saint-Germain. I glance back. I am sweating despite the December cold, but I am not suffering half as much as my tail is, to judge by the look of him: his face is now as red as his hair.

  What I need is a guardian of the peace, and I know exactly where to find one: close to the police commissary of Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin, patrolling on the corner of the boulevard Raspail. ‘Monsieur!’ I call to him, drawing closer. ‘I am a colonel in the French army and this man is following me. I request that you arrest him and take us both to your commanding officer so that I can lay a formal complaint.’

  He moves with gratifying alacrity. ‘You mean this gentleman, Colonel?’ He takes the elbow of the breathless agent.

  The red-bearded man gasps, ‘Let . . . go of me, you . . . idiot!’

  Seeing what is happening, the second Sûreté agent, this one dressed as a travelling salesman with a cardboard briefcase, breaks cover to cross the street and argue on behalf of his partner. He too is perspiring and frustrated and also makes an insulting remark about the general intelligence of uniformed policemen, at which the guardian of the peace loses his temper and within a minute they are both in custody.

  Ten minutes later I am able to leave my name and address with the duty sergeant in the commissary and slip away unescorted.

  The rue de Grenelle is only just round the corner. Number 11 is an imposing ancient property. I check along the street to make sure I am unobserved and then ring the bell. Almost at once the front door opens and a maid lets me in. Behind her, Louis waits anxiously in the hallway. He glances past my shoulder. ‘Are you being followed?’

  ‘Not any more.’ I give the maid my umbrella and hat. From behind a closed door comes a drone of male voices.

  Louis helps me off with my coat. ‘Are you really sure you want to do this?’

  ‘Where are they? Through there?’

  I open the door myself. Six middle-aged men in morning coats standing around a blazing fire cease talking and turn to look at me: I am reminded of a group portrait by Fantin-Latour – Homage to Delacroix, perhaps. Louis says, ‘Gentlemen, this is Colonel Picquart.’

  There is a moment of silence and then one of the men – bald-headed and with a heavy drooping moustache, whom I recognise as Georges Clemenceau, the left-wing politician and editor of the radical newspaper L’Aurore – starts a round of clapping in which everyone joins. As Louis ushers me into the room, another man, dapper and attractive, calls out cheerfully, ‘Bravo Picquart! Vive Picquart!’ and I recognise him too, from the surveillance photographs that used to cross my desk, as Mathieu Dreyfus. Indeed, as I go round shaking their hands, I find I know all these men by sight or by reputation: the publisher Georges Charpentier, whose house this is; the heavily bearded senator for the Seine, Arthur Ranc, the oldest man in the room; Joseph Reinach, a left-wing Jewish member of the Chamber of Deputies; and of course the pudgy figure in pince-nez to whom I am introduced last, Émile Zola.

  A fine lunch is served in the dining room, but I spend too much time talking to eat very much. I tell my fellow guests that I need to say my piece and leave; that every minute we spend together increases the chances that our meeting will be discovered. ‘Monsieur Charpentier may believe his servants are above acting as informants for the Sûreté, but regrettably experience has taught me otherwise.’
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  ‘It has certainly taught me,’ adds Mathieu Dreyfus.

  I bow to him. ‘My apologies for that.’

  Opposite my place hangs a large portrait of Charpentier’s wife and children by Renoir, and from time to time as I recount my story my gaze wanders up to it and I experience that strange feeling of disconnection that can sometimes afflict me when I talk to a group of people. I tell them that they ought to take a look at a certain Colonel Armand du Paty de Clam, who was the officer who first interrogated Dreyfus and whose lurid imagination has shaped so much of the affair. I describe the methods of interrogation he used, which amounted almost to torture. And then there was my predecessor, Colonel Sandherr, a sick man who became convinced, wrongly, that the spy must be on the General Staff. I say that the greatest public misconception is that what was handed over to the Germans was of crucial military importance, whereas really it was the merest trivia. Yet the treatment of Dreyfus – the secret trial, the degradation, the imprisonment on Devil’s Island – has been so extreme the world has somehow become convinced that the very existence of France must have been at stake. ‘People say to one another, “There has to be more to it than meets the eye,” when the truth is there is less. And the longer this scandal goes on, the more colossal and absurd becomes the discrepancy in size between the original crime and the monumental efforts to cover up the judicial error.’

  At the far end of the table I see Zola taking notes. I pause for a sip of wine. One of the children in the Renoir is sitting on a large dog. The pattern of the dog’s fur echoes the colouring of Madame Charpentier’s dress, and thus what seems a natural pose is actually artfully contrived.

  I go on. Without revealing classified information, I tell them how I discovered the real traitor, Esterhazy, more than twenty months ago, and how Boisdeffre and especially Billot were initially supportive of my inquiry, but then how completely they changed their view when they realised it would mean reopening the Dreyfus case. I recount my exile to Tunisia, the General Staff’s attempt to send me on a suicide mission, and the way they are using the forgeries and false testimony presented to General Pellieux’s inquiry to frame me just as they framed Dreyfus. ‘We have arrived at the ludicrous position, gentlemen, of the army being so determined to keep an innocent man imprisoned that they are actively helping the guilty man to evade punishment, and are perfectly willing to put me out of the way too – for good, if necessary.’