An Officer and a Spy

‘That’s not the way the army works. Unfortunately, we are dealing with four of the most senior officers in the country — the Minister of War, the Chief of the General Staff, the Head of Military Intelligence and the Commander of the 4th Army Corps — that’s Mercier’s command these days — and all four of them are implicated in this affair to a greater or lesser extent, not to mention the entire secret intelligence section. Don’t misunderstand me, Louis. The army isn’t completely rotten. There are plenty of good and honourable men in the High Command. But if it came to it they would all put the interests of the army first. Certainly none of them is going to want to bring the temple crashing down around their ears, just for the sake of a — well. .’ I hesitate.

‘A Jew?’ suggests Louis. I make no response. ‘Well,’ he continues, ‘if we can’t approach someone in the army with the facts, then what else can we do?’

I am about to reply when there is a loud knocking at the door. Something about the force of it, the implied sense of entitlement, warns me this is official: police. Louis opens his mouth to speak, but I hold up a silencing hand. I walk quietly over to the sitting-room door, which is glass-paned with lace curtains, and peer round the edge, just as Anna, smoothing her skirts, walks down the passage from the kitchen. She catches my eye, nods to show she knows what she has to do, then opens the front door.

I can’t see who is standing there, but I can hear him — a heavy male voice: ‘Excuse me, madame, is Colonel Picquart here?’

‘No. Why would he be? This isn’t his apartment.’

‘Do you happen to know where he is?’

‘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.’