An Officer and a Spy

If Desvernine finds this last request surprising, he is too professional to show it. We must make an odd couple: I in my bowler and frock coat, apparently reading the guidebook and holding forth; he in a shabby brown suit, taking down my dictation. But nobody is looking at us. We move along to the next exhibit. The guidebook lists it as Boy extracting a thorn from his foot.

Desvernine says, ‘We should meet somewhere different next time, just as a precaution.’

‘What about the restaurant at the gare Saint-Lazare?’ I suggest, remembering my trip to Rouen. ‘That’s on your patch.’

‘I know it well.’

‘Next Thursday, at seven in the evening?’

‘Agreed.’ He writes it down then puts away his notebook and stares at the bronze sculpture. He scratches his head. ‘You really think this stuff is good, Colonel?’

‘No, I didn’t say that. As so often in life, it’s just better than the alternative.’

Not all my time is devoted to investigating Esterhazy. I have other things to worry about — not least, the treasonable activity of homing pigeons.

Gribelin brings me the file. It has been sent over from the rue Saint-Dominique, and as he hands it to me I detect at last a faint gleam of malicious pleasure in those dull eyes. It seems that pigeon-fanciers in England are in the habit of transporting their birds to Cherbourg and releasing them to fly back across the Channel. Some nine thousand are set loose each year: a harmless if unappealing pastime which Colonel Sandherr, in the final phase of his illness, decided might pose a threat to national security and should be banned, for what if the birds were used to carry secret messages? This piece of madness has been grinding its way through the Ministry of the Interior for the best part of a year, and a law has been prepared. Now General Boisdeffre insists that I, as chief of the Statistical Section, must prepare the Ministry of War’s opinion on the draft legislation.

Needless to say, I have no opinion. After Gribelin has gone I sit at my desk, reviewing the file. It might as well be written in Sanskrit for all the sense I can make of it, and it occurs to me that what I need is a lawyer. It further occurs to me that the best lawyer I know is my oldest friend, Louis Leblois, who by a curious coincidence lives along the rue de l’Université. I send him a bleu asking if he could call round to see me on his way home to discuss a matter of business, and at the end of the afternoon I hear the electric bell ring to signal that someone has entered. I am halfway down the staircase when I meet Bachir coming up, carrying Louis’s card.

‘It’s all right, Bachir. He’s known to me. He can come to my office.’

Two minutes later, I am standing at my window with Louis, showing him the minister’s garden.

‘Georges,’ he says, ‘this is a most remarkable building. I’ve often passed it and wondered who it belonged to. You do appreciate what it used to be, don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Before the revolution it was the hôtel d’Aiguillon, where the old duchess, Anne-Charlotte de Crussol Florensac, used to have her literary salon. Montesquieu and Voltaire probably sat in this very room!’ He wafts his hand back and forth in front of his nose. ‘Are their corpses in the cellar, by any chance? What on earth do you do here all day?’

‘I can’t tell you that, although it might have amused Voltaire. However, I can put some work your way, if you’re interested.’ I thrust the carrier pigeon file into his hands. ‘Tell me if you can make head or tail of this.’

‘You want me to look at it now?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind: it can’t leave the building, I’m afraid.’

‘Why? Is it secret?’

‘No, otherwise I wouldn’t be showing it to you. But I have to keep it here.’ Louis hesitates. ‘I’ll pay you,’ I add, ‘whatever it is you would normally charge.’

‘Well, if I’m actually going to extract some money from you for once in my life,’ he laughs, ‘then naturally I’ll do it,’ and he sits at my table, opens his briefcase, takes out a sheaf of paper and starts reading the file while I return to my desk. ‘Neat’ is the word for Louis: a dapper figure, exactly my age, with neatly trimmed beard and neat little hands that move rapidly across the page as he sets down his neatly ordered thoughts. I watch him fondly. He works with utter absorption, exactly as he did when we were classmates together at the lycée in Strasbourg. We had both lost a parent at the age of eleven, I my father and he his mother, and that made us a club of two, even though what bound us was never spoken of, then or now.

I take out my own pen and begin composing a report. For an hour we work in companionable silence until there is a knock at my door. I shout, ‘Come!’ and Henry enters, carrying a folder. His expression on seeing Louis could not have been more startled if he had caught me naked with one of the street girls of Rouen.