An Officer and a Spy

‘Just a few bits and scraps. He reckoned he’d personally seen four documents that had come in via Schwartzkoppen — one about a gun and another about a rifle. Then there was something about the layout of the army camp at Toul, and the fortifications at Nancy.’

I ask, ‘What were these? Handwritten documents?’

‘Yes.’

‘In French?’

‘That’s it.’

‘But he didn’t have a name for this agent, or any other clue to his identity?’

‘No, just that the German General Staff decided he wasn’t to be trusted and ordered Schwartzkoppen to break off relations with him. Whoever he is, he was never very important and he’s no longer active.’

I turn to Lauth. ‘Were you talking in French or German?’

He flushes. ‘French to start with, in the morning, then we switched to German in the afternoon.’

‘I told you to encourage Cuers to speak in German.’

‘With respect, Colonel,’ cuts in Henry, ‘there wasn’t much point in my being there unless I had a chance to talk to him myself. I take responsibility for that. I stuck it for about three hours then I left it to Captain Lauth.’

‘And how long did you talk to him in German, Lauth?’

‘For another six hours, Colonel.’

‘And did he say anything else of interest?’

Lauth meets my gaze and holds it. ‘No. We just went over the same old ground again and again. He left at six to catch the train back to Berlin.’

‘He left at six?’ I can no longer suppress my exasperation. ‘You see, gentlemen, this just doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would a man risk travelling seven hundred kilometres to a foreign city to meet intelligence officers from a foreign power in order to say almost nothing? In fact to say less than he’d already told us in Berlin?’

Henry says, ‘It’s obvious, surely? He must have changed his mind. Or he was lying in the first place. What a fellow blurts out when he’s drunk at home at night with someone he knows is different to what he might say in the cold light of day to strangers.’

‘Well why didn’t you take him out and get him drunk then?’ I bang my fist down on the desk. ‘Why didn’t you make some effort to get to know him better?’ Neither man answers. Lauth looks at the floor, Henry stares straight ahead. ‘It seems to me that you both couldn’t wait to get back on that train to Paris.’ They start to protest but I cut them off. ‘Save your excuses for your report. That will be all, gentlemen. Thank you. You may leave.’

Henry halts at the door and says, with quivering and affronted dignity, ‘No one has ever questioned my professional competence before.’

‘Well I’m very surprised to hear it.’

After they have gone, I lean forward and put my head in my hands. I know that a decisive moment has just been reached, in terms of both my relationship with Henry and my command of the section. Are they telling the truth? For all I know, they might be. Perhaps Cuers really did clam up when he got into their hotel room. Of one thing I am sure, however: that Henry went to Switzerland determined to wreck that meeting, and succeeded, and that if Cuers told them nothing it was because Henry willed it to be so.

Among the files demanding my attention that day is the latest batch of censored correspondence of Alfred Dreyfus, sent over as usual by the Colonial Ministry. The minister wishes to know if I have any observations to make ‘from an intelligence perspective’. I untie the ribbon and flick open the cover and begin to read:

A gloomy day with ceaseless rain. The air full of tangible darkness. The sky black as ink. A real day of death and burial. How often there comes to my mind that exclamation of Schopenhauer at the thought of human iniquity: ‘If God created the world, I would not care to be God.’ The mail from Cayenne has come, it seems, but has not brought my letters! Nothing to read, no avenue of escape from my thoughts. Neither books nor magazines come to me any more. I walk in the daytime until my strength is exhausted, to calm my brain and quiet my nerves. .

The quotation from Schopenhauer leaps out at me from the file. I know it; I have used it often. It never occurred to me that Dreyfus might read philosophy, let alone harbour a blasphemous thought. Schopenhauer! It is as if someone who has been trying to attract my attention for a long while has finally succeeded. Other passages catch my eye: