An Officer and a Spy

‘I was told I would be meeting the Minister of War over Christmas in Marseille, but he didn’t turn up. Instead I was ordered to sail directly for Algeria — that was at the end of last year — to reorganise intelligence. And then a month after I got to Algeria I was ordered to Tunisia. Once I was in Tunisia I was transferred out of my old regiment and into a native outfit. Suddenly it wasn’t an inspection trip any more: it was a permanent posting to the colonies.’

‘You must have complained, I assume?’

‘Of course. Gonse simply wrote back telling me to stop sending him so many letters: You just have to let things go and gain satisfaction from serving a regiment in Africa. Effectively, I’d been exiled.’

‘Did they give you a reason?’

‘They didn’t have to. I knew what it was. I was being punished.’

‘Punished for what?’

I take a breath. It still feels almost sacrilegious to say it aloud. ‘For having discovered that Captain Dreyfus is innocent.’

‘Ah.’ Louis looks at me, and for once even his mask of professional detachment seems to crack very slightly. ‘Ah, yes, I can see that would do it.’

I hand Louis the envelope that is to be delivered to the President in the event of my death. He pulls a face as he reads the inscription. I suppose he considers it melodramatic, the sort of device one might encounter in a railway ‘thriller’. I would have felt the same until a year ago. Now I have come to see that thrillers may sometimes contain more truths than all Monsieur Zola’s social realism put together.

I say, ‘Go ahead.’ I light a cigarette and watch his expression as he takes out the letter. He reads the opening paragraph aloud: ‘I, the undersigned Marie-Georges Picquart, Lieutenant Colonel with the 4th Colonial Infantrymen, formerly head of the secret intelligence service at the Ministry of War, certify on my honour the accuracy of the following information, which in the interests of truth and justice it is impossible to “stifle”, as has been attempted. .’ His voice trails off. He frowns, and then glances at me.

I say, ‘There’s still time to stop, if you don’t want to get involved. I wouldn’t blame you for a moment. But I warn you: if you continue beyond that paragraph, you will be in the same predicament I am.’

‘Well now you make it sound quite irresistible.’ He continues reading, but silently, his eyes moving rapidly back and forth as he scans the lines. When he’s finished, he blows out his cheeks in a sigh, then leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. ‘How many copies of this letter exist?’

‘Only that one.’

‘God! Only this? And you carried it all the way from Tunisia?’ He shakes his head in dismay. ‘Well, the first thing you’ll have to do is to copy it out at least twice more. We shall need three copies as an absolute minimum. What else do you have in that old suitcase of yours?’

‘There’s this,’ I say, giving him my original report to Boisdeffre: ‘Intelligence Service note on Major Esterhazy, 74th Infantry’. ‘And there are these’ — my earlier exchange of letters with Gonse, after I had been out to see him in the country, in which he urges me not to extend my enquiries from Esterhazy to Dreyfus. ‘There’s also this’ — the letter from Henry revealing the existence of an inquiry into my behaviour as chief of the Statistical Section.

Louis reads them quickly and with complete absorption. When he has finished, he sets them aside and looks at me with great seriousness. ‘The question I ask all my clients at the outset, Georges — and that is what you are now, by the way, although heaven knows how I’m ever going to be paid — the question I always ask my clients is: what do you want to achieve from this?’

‘I want to see justice done — that above all. I’m anxious that the army should emerge from this scandal with as little damage as possible: I still love the army. And on a selfish note, I’d like to have my career restored.’

‘Ha! Well, you might conceivably achieve one of those, or by a miracle two, but three is quite impossible! I assume there’s no one in the military hierarchy who would take up the struggle alongside you?’