An Officer and a Spy

I have never attended a public execution, have never tasted that particular atmosphere, but I imagine it must feel something like the École did that morning. The vastness of the cour Morland provided an appropriate stage for a grand spectacle. In the distance, beyond the railings, in the semicircle of the place de Fontenoy, a great murmuring sea of pink faces stirred behind a line of black-uniformed gendarmes. Every centimetre of space was filled. People were standing on benches and on the tops of carriages and omnibuses; they were sitting in the branches of the trees; one man had even managed to scale the pinnacle of the 1870 war memorial.

Mercier, drinking all this up, asks me, ‘So how many were present, would you estimate?’

‘The Préfecture of Police assured me twenty thousand.’

‘Really?’ The minister looks less impressed than I had expected. ‘You know that I originally wanted to hold the ceremony at Longchamps? The racetrack has a capacity of fifty thousand.’

Boisdeffre says flatteringly, ‘And you would have filled it, Minister, by the sound of it.’

‘Of course we would have filled it! But the Ministry of the Interior maintained there was risk of public disorder. Whereas I say: the greater the crowd, the stronger the lesson.’

Still, twenty thousand seemed plenty to me. The noise of the crowd was subdued but ominous, like the breathing of some powerful animal, temporarily quiescent but which could turn dangerous in an instant. Just before eight, an escort of cavalry appeared, trotting along the front of the crowd, and suddenly the beast began to stir, for between the riders could be glimpsed a black prison wagon drawn by four horses. A wave of jeers swelled and rolled over it. The cortège slowed, a gate was opened, and the vehicle and its guard clattered over the cobbles into the École.

As I watched it disappear into an inner courtyard, a man standing near to me said, ‘Observe, Major Picquart: the Romans fed Christians to the lions; we feed them Jews. That is progress, I suppose.’

He was swaddled in a greatcoat with the collar turned up, a grey muffler around his throat, his cap pulled low over his eyes. I recognised him by his voice at first, and then by the way his body shook uncontrollably.

I saluted. ‘Colonel Sandherr.’

Sandherr said, ‘Where will you stand to watch the show?’

‘I haven’t thought about it.’

‘You’re welcome to come and join me and my men.’

‘That would be an honour. But first I have to check that everything is proceeding in accordance with the minister’s instructions.’

‘We will be over there when you have finished your duties.’ He pointed across the cour Morland with a trembling hand. ‘You will have a good view.’

My duties! I wonder, looking back, if he wasn’t being sarcastic. I walked over to the garrison office, where the prisoner was in the custody of Captain Lebrun-Renault of the Republican Guard. I had no desire to see the condemned man again. Only two years earlier he had been a student of mine in this very building. Now I had nothing to say to him; I felt nothing for him; I wished he had never been born and I wanted him gone — from Paris, from France, from Europe. A trooper went and fetched Lebrun-Renault for me. He turned out to be a big, red-faced, horsey young man, rather like a policeman. He came out and reported: ‘The traitor is nervous but calm. I don’t think he will kick up any trouble. The threads of his clothing have been loosened and his sword has been scored half through to ensure it breaks easily. Nothing has been left to chance. If he tries to make a speech, General Darras will give a signal and the band will strike up a tune to drown him out.’

Mercier muses, ‘What kind of tune does one play to drown a man out, I wonder?’

Boisdeffre suggests, ‘A sea shanty, Minister?’

‘That’s good,’ says Mercier judiciously. But he doesn’t smile; he rarely smiles. He turns to me again. ‘So you watched the proceedings with Sandherr and his men. What do you make of them?’

Unsure how to answer — Sandherr is a colonel, after all — I say cautiously, ‘A dedicated group of patriots, doing invaluable work and receiving little or no recognition.’

It is a good answer. So good that perhaps my entire life — and with it the story I am about to tell — may have turned upon it. At any rate, Mercier, or the man behind the mask that is Mercier, gives me a searching look as if to check that I really mean what I say, and then nods in approval. ‘You’re right there, Picquart. France owes them a lot.’

All six of these paragons were present that morning to witness the culmination of their work: the euphemistically named ‘Statistical Section’ of the General Staff. I sought them out after I had finished talking with Lebrun-Renault. They stood slightly apart from everyone else in the south-west corner of the parade ground, in the lee of one of the low surrounding buildings. Sandherr had his hands in his pockets and his head down, and seemed entirely remote-