An Officer and a Spy

‘I’m sorry, General. He is an affected young fellow, I admit, and quite silly in some respects. But he did his work well, and is perfectly trustworthy. It’s merely a joke.’

‘And “Cagliostro”?’

‘Another joke.’

‘Pardon me: I’m a simple family man, Colonel. I don’t understand these “jokes”.’

‘Cagliostro was an Italian occultist — Strauss wrote an operetta about him, Cagliostro in Vienna — and a man less likely to be susceptible to the occult than Desvernine you could not hope to find. Therein lies the irony. It’s all very harmless, General, I assure you. But obviously suspicious minds in the Statistical Section have used it to build a case against me. I do hope that at some point your inquiry will investigate these other forgeries which are obviously designed to blacken my name.’

‘On the contrary, I think you have blackened your own name, Colonel, by associating in the first place with this circle of neurotic homosexuals and table-turners! So I take it the “comtesse” referred to must be Mademoiselle Blanche de Comminges?’

‘Yes. She is not actually a comtesse but she can sometimes behave like one.’

‘And the “Demigod” and the “Good God”?’

‘They are nicknames invented by Mademoiselle de Comminges. A mutual friend of ours, Captain Lallemand, is the Demigod; I’m afraid to say that I am the Good God.’

Pellieux regards me contemptuously: to my other sins can now be added blasphemy. ‘And why is Captain Lallemand the Demigod?’

‘Because of his fondness for Wagner.’

‘And is he also part of a Jewish circle?’

‘Wagner? I very much doubt it.’

It is a mistake, of course. One should never attempt wit in these circumstances. I know it the moment the words leave my lips. The major and the captain and even the secretary smile. But Pellieux’s face sets rigid. ‘There is nothing in the least amusing about the situation you are in, Colonel. These letters and telegrams are highly incriminating.’ He flicks back to the beginning of his file. ‘Now, let us go over the discrepancies in your testimony once again. Why did you falsely claim to have taken possession of the petit bleu at the end of April last year when in fact it was pieced together at the beginning of March. .?’

The interrogation continues throughout the day — the same questions, again and again, designed to catch me in a lie. I am familiar with the technique; Pellieux is remorseless in deploying it. At the end of the afternoon session he consults an antique silver pocket watch and says, ‘We will resume tomorrow morning. In the meantime, Colonel, you are not to communicate with anyone, or to leave, for so much as a minute, the supervision of the officers appointed by this inquiry.’

I stand and salute.

Outside it is dusk. In the waiting room Mercier-Milon pulls back the edge of the curtain and peers down at the crowd of reporters in the place Vendôme. He says, ‘We should try to leave by a different route.’ We go downstairs to the cellar and cross a deserted kitchen to a rear door that opens on to a yard. It has started raining. In the gloom the piles of rubbish seem to move and rustle like living things, and as we pick our way past them I see the wet brown backs of rats slithering among the rotted food. Mercier-Milon finds a gate in the wall that leads to the garden at the back of the Ministry of Justice. We pass across a muddy lawn and out on to the rue Cambon. A couple of journalists, posted as pickets, see us emerge through the wall next to a street lamp and we have to sprint two hundred metres to the taxi rank in the rue Saint-Honoré, where we seize the only cab. We pull away just as our pursuers catch up with us.

The jolt of the horse throws us back in our seats, damp and breathless, and Mercier-Milon laughs. ‘My God, Georges, we’re certainly not young men any more!’ He pulls out a large white cotton handkerchief and mops his face and grins at me. For a moment he seems to forget that I am in his custody. He opens the window and shouts up to the driver, ‘Hôtel Terminus!’ then slams it shut.

He spends most of the short journey with his arms folded, staring out at the street. It is only as we pull into the rue Saint-Lazare that he suddenly says, without turning round, ‘You know, it’s funny, General Pellieux asked me yesterday why I’d testified in Dreyfus’s defence.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I said one could only speak as one found — that he was always a good soldier and loyal as far as I was concerned.’

‘And what did he say to that?’

‘He said he’d tried to keep an open mind on the subject himself. But last week when he was asked to lead this inquiry he was shown evidence at the ministry by General Gonse that absolutely proved beyond question that Dreyfus was a traitor. And from that moment on he’s had no doubt that your allegations about Esterhazy are false — the only question now as far as he’s concerned is whether you’ve been duped by a syndicate of Jews or paid by them.’ He turns to look at me at last. ‘I thought you ought to know.’