An Officer and a Spy

I lie awake that night with my door locked and my revolver under my pillow, listening to the pre-dawn call to prayer from the nearby minaret. I entertain myself by picturing the crisis meetings in Billot’s office: the minister raging, Gonse nervously spilling cigarette ash down his tunic, Boisdeffre frozen, Henry drunk; I think of Gribelin scuttling back and forth between his files in an effort to fish up new scraps of evidence against Dreyfus, and Lauth steaming open my letters and trying to decipher the hidden code by which I am somehow controlling events. I exult in this imagined confounding of my enemies.

And then my enemies begin returning fire.

The opening shot is a telegram. Jemel brings it to my office first thing. It was dispatched from the Bourse post office in Paris the previous day: We have proof that the bleu was forged by Georges. Blanche.

Blanche?

It is like a threat whispered by a stranger in a crowd who has melted away before one has time to look round. I am conscious of Jemel studying my reaction. The thing is meaningless and yet sinister, especially the use of Blanche’s name. ‘I can’t make sense of this,’ I tell him. ‘Perhaps it’s been garbled in transmission. Would you mind going back to the telegraph office and asking them to repeat it?’

He returns later in the morning. ‘There is no doubt, Colonel,’ he says. ‘They checked in Paris: the text is accurate. Also, this has just arrived for you, redirected from Tunis.’ He gives me a letter. On the envelope, which is marked ‘urgent’, my name is misspelt ‘Piquart’. I vaguely recognise the handwriting. Here it comes: the second shot.

‘Thank you, Jemel.’

I wait until he has gone before I open it.

Colonel,

I have received an anonymous letter informing me that you have organised an abominable plot to substitute me for Dreyfus. The letter alleges, among other things, that you have bribed junior officers to obtain samples of my handwriting; I know this to be true. It is also alleged that you took from the Ministry of War documents entrusted to you in good faith in order to compose a secret dossier which you have passed to friends of the traitor. This I also know to be true, as I have today been given a document from this file.

Despite the evidence I still hesitate to believe that a senior officer in the French army could be party to such a monstrous conspiracy against one of his comrades.

It is unthinkable that you will not provide me with a frank and clear explanation.

Esterhazy

A letter of complaint from the traitor, in the same hand in which he wrote the bordereau — one almost has to admire the impudence of the fellow! And then the questions start to assail me. How does he know my name? Or that I am in Tunis? Or that I have obtained samples of his handwriting? Presumably from the author of this alleged ‘anonymous letter’. And who could be the author of such a letter? Henry? Is this where the logic of the General Staff’s position has led them — actually to helping the guilty man evade justice as the only means of keeping the innocent man imprisoned? I fetch out the telegram. We have proof that the bleu was forged by Georges. Blanche. What are they up to?

The next day Jemel brings me another telegram, another menacing riddle: Stop the Demigod. Everything is discovered. Extremely serious matter. Speranza. This message was sent from the rue la Fayette post office in Paris, and actually on the same day as the Blanche telegram, but it has taken an extra twenty-four hours to reach me because, like Esterhazy’s letter, it was wrongly addressed to me in Tunis.

I have never met anyone called Speranza — I know it only as the Italian word for ‘hope’ — but ‘the Demigod’ is Blanche’s nickname for our mutual friend and fellow Wagnerian Captain William Lallemand. And the only person connected to the Statistical Section who is likely to know that obscure fact from our circle is Blanche’s former lover, du Paty.