An Officer and a Spy

‘What, this?’ He looks at it and flexes it, as if checking it works. ‘This is fine.’ He turns and stares at me. The weight that has fallen from his cheeks and jowls seems to have stripped away the padding of his defences and left him lined with age; his dark hair is flecked with grey. ‘And you?’

‘I am well enough.’

‘Do you sleep?’

The question surprises me. ‘Yes. Do you?’

He coughs to clear his throat. ‘Not so well, Colonel — monsieur, I should say. I’m not sleeping much. I’m sick and tired of this whole damned business, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘We can agree on that much at least!’

‘Is prison bad?’

‘Let’s say it smells even worse than our old offices.’

‘Ha!’ He leans in closer to me, and confides, ‘To be honest, I’ve asked to be relieved of my duties in intelligence. I’d like to get back to a healthier life with my regiment.’

‘Yes, I can see that. And your wife, and your little boy — how are they?’

He opens his mouth to reply, but then stops and gulps, and to my amazement his eyes suddenly fill with tears and he has to look away, just as Fabre comes back into the room.

‘So, gentlemen,’ he says, ‘the secret file. .’

It is after lights-out, about two weeks later. I am lying on my thin prison mattress, no longer able to read, waiting for the cacophony of the night to begin, when there is a sound of bolts being drawn back and keys turned. A strong light is shone in my face.

‘Prisoner, follow me.’

La Santé is built according to the latest scientific principles on a hub-and-spoke design — the prisoners’ cells form the spokes, the governor and his staff occupy the hub. I follow the warder all the way down the long corridor towards the administrative block at the centre. He unlocks a door then conducts me around a curving passage to a small windowless visitors’ room with a steel grille set in the wall. He stays outside but leaves the door open.

From behind the grille a voice says, ‘Picquart?’

The light is dim. It’s hard for me to make him out at first. ‘Labori? What’s going on?’

‘Henry has been arrested.’

‘My God. For what?’

‘The government has just put out a statement. Listen: “Today in the office of the Minister of War, Colonel Henry admitted that he was the author of the document of 1896 in which Dreyfus was named. The Minister of War immediately ordered his arrest and he was taken to the fortress of Mont-Valérien.”’ He pauses for my reaction. ‘Picquart? Did you hear that?’

It takes me a moment to absorb it. ‘What made him confess?’

‘Nobody knows yet. This only happened a few hours ago. All we have is the statement.’

‘And what about the others? Boisdeffre, Gonse — do we know anything about them?’

‘No, but all of them are finished. They staked everything on that letter.’ Labori leans in very close to the grille. Through the thick mesh I can see his blue eyes bright with excitement. ‘Henry would never have forged it purely on his own initiative, would he?’

‘It’s unimaginable. If they didn’t directly order it, then at the very least they must have known what he was up to.’

‘Exactly! You do realise now we’ll be able to call him as a witness? Just let me get him on the stand! What a prospect! I’ll make him sing about that and everything else he knows — all the way back to the original court martial.’

‘I would love to know what made him admit it after all this time.’

‘No doubt we’ll discover in the morning. Anyway, there it is — wonderful news for you to sleep on. I’ll come back again tomorrow. Good night, Picquart.’

‘Thank you. Good night.’

I am taken back to my cell.

The animal noises are particularly loud that night, but it isn’t those that keep me awake — it is the thought of Henry in Mont-Valérien.

The next day is the worst I have ever spent in prison. For once I cannot even concentrate to read. I prowl up and down my tiny cell in frustration, my mind constructing and discarding scenarios of what might have happened, what is happening and what could happen next.

The hours crawl past. The evening meal is served. The daylight begins to retreat. At around nine o’clock the warder unlocks my door again and tells me to follow him. How long that walk is! And the curious thing is, right at the very end of it, when I am in the visiting room, and Labori turns his face to the grille, I know exactly what he is going to say, even before I have registered his expression.

He says, ‘Henry’s dead.’

I stare at him, allowing the fact to settle. ‘How did it happen?’

‘They found him this afternoon in his cell at Mont-Valérien with his throat cut. Naturally they’re saying he killed himself. Strange how that seems to keep happening.’ He says anxiously, ‘Are you all right, Picquart?’

I have to turn away from him. I am not sure why I am weeping — out of tiredness, perhaps, or strain; or perhaps it is for Henry, whom I never could bring myself to hate entirely, despite everything, understanding him too well for that.

I think of Henry often. I have little else to do.