An Officer and a Spy

After Lauth has gone I stand at my window and look across the garden to the minister’s residence. I can see the light burning in his office. It would be an easy matter to walk over and alert him to what we have discovered. Or at least I could go and see General Gonse, who is supposed to be my immediate superior. But I know that if I do that I will have lost control of the investigation before it has even started: I shall not be able to make a move without clearing it with them first. And then there is the risk of a leak. Our suspect may be a humble major with an unfashionable regiment in a garrison town, but Esterhazy is a grand name in central Europe: perhaps someone on the General Staff might feel it his duty to alert the family. I decide that for now it would be wiser to play this one close to my chest.

I replace the petit bleu in its folder and lock it in my safe.

The next day, Lauth comes to see me again. He has worked late into the night and pieced together another draft letter. Unfortunately, as often happens, Auguste has not managed to retrieve every scrap of paper: words, maybe even half-sentences, are missing. Lauth watches me as I read.

To be delivered by the concierge

Sir,

I regret not speaking personally. . about a matter which. . My father has just the. . funds necessary to continue. . in the conditions which were stipulated. . I will explain to you his reasons, but I must begin by telling you straight away. . your conditions too harsh for me and. . the results that. . of the trip. He proposes to me. . tour concerning which we might. . the relations I have. . for him up until now out of proportion. . I have spent on the trips. The point is. . to speak to you as soon as possible.

I am returning to you with this the sketches you gave me the other day; they are not the last.

C

I reread the document several times. Even with its gaps, the sense is clear. Esterhazy has been handing over information to the Germans, including sketches, for which he has been paid by Schwartzkoppen; now the German attaché’s ‘father’, presumably a euphemism for some general in Berlin, is objecting that the price is too high for the value of the intelligence they are getting.

Lauth says, ‘It could be a trap, of course.’

‘Yes.’ I have already thought of this. ‘If Schwartzkoppen has discovered we’re reading his rubbish, he might well decide to use that knowledge against us. He could easily plant material in his own waste basket to send us off on a false trail.’

I close my eyes and try to put myself in his shoes. It seems unlikely somehow that a man so reckless in his love affairs, so slapdash in his handling of documents, would suddenly become that devious.

‘Does it really make sense for him to go to those lengths,’ I muse aloud, ‘if one recalls how violently the Germans reacted when we exposed them employing Dreyfus? Why would Schwartzkoppen want to risk another embarrassing espionage scandal?’

‘Of course, none of this is evidence, Colonel,’ says Lauth. ‘We could never use this document or the petit bleu as a pretext to arrest Esterhazy, because neither was ever sent to him.’

‘That’s true.’ I open the safe and take out the manila folder. I put the draft letter inside, along with the petit bleu. On the file I write ‘Esterhazy’. Here, I reflect, is the paradox of the spy’s world. These are significant documents only if one knows where they come from. And as the very fact of where they come from can never be revealed, because that would blow our agent’s cover, legally they are worthless. I am reluctant to show them even to the Minister of War or the Chief of the General Staff in case one of their junior officers should see them and start gossiping: they are so obviously reconstructed rubbish. ‘Is there any way,’ I ask Lauth, taking out the petit bleu again, ‘that you could photograph this and somehow cover up the tear marks so that it looks as if we just intercepted it in the mail, as you did with the Dreyfus document?’

‘Perhaps,’ he says doubtfully. ‘But that was only in six pieces, whereas this is in about forty. And even if I could, the side with the address, which is the most vital part of the evidence, isn’t franked, so anyone examining it for half a minute would know it had never been delivered.’

‘Maybe we could get it franked?’ I suggest.