An Officer and a Spy

Billot interjects a number of shrewd questions. How valuable is this material? Why didn’t Esterhazy’s commanding officer notice something strange about him? Are we sure he’s operating alone? He keeps returning to the image of Esterhazy emerging empty-handed from the embassy. At the end he says, ‘Perhaps we should try to do something clever with the scum? Rather than simply lock him up, couldn’t we use him to feed false information to Berlin?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. The trouble is, the Germans are already suspicious of him. It’s unlikely they’d simply swallow whatever he told them without checking it for themselves. And of course-’

Billot finishes my argument for me. ‘And of course, to get him to play along, we’d have to give him immunity from prosecution, whereas the only place for the likes of Esterhazy is behind bars. No, you’ve done well, Colonel.’ He shuts the file and hands it back to me. ‘Keep on with the investigation until we’ve nailed him once and for all.’

‘You’d be willing to take it all the way to a court martial?’

‘Absolutely! What’s the alternative? To allow him to retire on half-pay?’

‘General Boisdeffre would prefer it if there were no scandal. .’

‘I’m sure he would. I don’t relish one myself. But if we allowed him to get away with it — that really would be a scandal!’

I return to my office well satisfied. I have the approval of the two most powerful men in the army to continue my investigation. Effectively Gonse has been cut out of the chain of command. All I can do now is to wait for news from Basel.

The day drags on with routine work. The drains stink more than usual in the heat. I find it hard to concentrate. At half past five, I ask Captain Junck to book a telephone call to the Schweizerhof hotel for seven o’clock. At the appointed time I stand by the receiver in the upstairs corridor, smoking a cigarette, and when the bell sounds I snatch the instrument from its cradle. I know the Schweizerhof: a big, modern place overlooking a city square crossed by tramlines. I give Lauth’s cover name to the front desk and ask to speak to him. There is a long wait while the undermanager goes off to check. When he returns, he announces that the gentleman has just checked out and has left no forwarding address. I hang up, wondering what I should read into this. It may be that they are continuing the debriefing into a second day and have taken the precaution of changing hotels, or it could be that the meeting is over and they are rushing to catch the overnight train back to Paris. I hang around for another hour in the hope of receiving a telegram, then decide to leave for the evening.

I would welcome some company to distract me, but everyone seems to be away for August. The de Commingeses have closed up their house and decamped to their summer estate. Pauline is on holiday in Biarritz with Philippe and her daughters. Louis Leblois has gone home to Alsace to be with his gravely ill father. I am suffering from a pretty bad dose of what the gentlemen in the rue de Lille would call Weltschmerz: I am world weary. In the end, I dine alone in a restaurant near the ministry and return to my apartment intending to read Zola’s new novel. But its subject, the Roman Catholic Church, bores me, and it also runs to seven hundred and fifty pages. I am willing to accept such prolixity from Tolstoy but not from Zola. I set it aside long before the end.

I am at my desk early the next morning, but no telegrams have come in overnight and it isn’t until early in the afternoon that I hear Henry and Lauth coming upstairs. I rise from my seat and stride across my office. Flinging open the door, I am surprised to find them both wearing uniform. ‘Gentlemen,’ I say with sarcasm, ‘you have actually been to Switzerland, I take it?’

The two officers salute, Lauth with a certain nervousness it seems to me, but Henry with a nonchalance that borders on insolence. He says, ‘I’m sorry, Colonel. We stopped off at home to change.’

‘And how was your trip?’

‘I should say it was a pretty good waste of time and money, wouldn’t you agree, Lauth?’

‘It proved to be disappointing, I’m afraid, yes.’

I look from one to the other. ‘Well, that’s unexpectedly depressing news. You’d better come in and tell me what happened.’

I sit behind my desk with my arms folded and listen while they relate their story. Henry does most of the talking. According to him, he and Lauth went directly from the railway station to the hotel for breakfast, then upstairs to the room, where they waited until nine thirty, when Inspector Vuillecard brought in Cuers. ‘He was pretty shifty from the start — nervous, couldn’t sit still. Kept going over to the window and checking the big square in front of the station. Mostly what he wanted to talk about was him — could we guarantee the Germans would never find out what he’d done for us?’

‘And what could he tell you about the Germans’ agent?’