An Officer and a Spy

Sandherr straightened and slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘I should have known! How many times have I seen him loitering round, asking questions?’

Fabre said, ‘I predicted exactly this in my report on him, do you remember, Major Picquart?’ He pointed at me. ‘“An incomplete officer, lacking the qualities of character necessary for employment on the General Staff. .” Were those not my very words?’

‘They were, Colonel,’ I agreed.

Gonse said to me, ‘Where is Dreyfus exactly?’

‘He’s at infantry camp outside Paris until the end of next week.’

‘Good.’ Sandherr nodded. ‘Excellent. That gives us some time. We need to get all this to a handwriting expert.’

Gonse said: ‘So you really think it’s him?’

‘Well, if not him — who?’

No one responded. That was the nub of it. If the traitor wasn’t Dreyfus, then who was it? You? Me? Your comrade? Mine? Whereas if it was Dreyfus, this debilitating hunt for an enemy within would come to an end. Without saying it, or even thinking it, collectively we willed it to be so.

Gonse sighed and said, ‘I’d better go and tell General Mercier. He may have to speak to the Prime Minister.’ He glanced at me, as if I were the one responsible for introducing this contagion into the ministry, and said to Boucher, ‘I don’t think we need detain Major Picquart any longer, do you, Colonel?’

Boucher said, ‘No, I don’t believe so. Thank you, Picquart.’

‘Thank you, General.’

I saluted and left.

I have been silent for a while. Suddenly I am aware of Gribelin, still staring at me.

‘Strange,’ I say, flourishing the bordereau. ‘Curious how it brings it all back.’

‘Yes, I can imagine.’

And that might well have been the end of it, as far as my own involvement was concerned. But then to my surprise, a week later I received a telegram at my apartment summoning me to a meeting in the office of the Minister of War at six o’clock on the evening of Sunday 14 October.

I presented myself at the hôtel de Brienne at the appointed time. I could hear voices as I climbed the stairs, and when I reached the first floor I discovered a small group waiting in the corridor to go in: General Boisdeffre, General Gonse, Colonel Sandherr and a couple of men I didn’t recognise — a corpulent, claret-faced major who, like me, wore the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and a superintendent from the Sûreté. There was one other officer. He was standing further along the passage next to the window, rather self-importantly wearing a monocle and flicking through a file, and I realised it was Colonel du Paty de Clam, Blanche’s former lover. He saw me looking at him, closed his file, removed his monocle, and strutted towards me.

‘Picquart,’ he said, returning my salute. ‘What an appalling business this is.’

‘I didn’t know you were involved in it, Colonel.’

‘Involved!’ Du Paty laughed and shook his head. ‘My dear Major, I’ve been put in charge of the entire investigation! I’m the reason you’re here!’

I always found something disconcerting about du Paty. It was as if he were acting the central part in a play for which no one else had been shown the script. He might laugh abruptly, or tap his nose and adopt an air of great mystery, or disappear from a room in the middle of a conversation without explanation. He fancied himself a detective in the modern scientific manner and had made a study of graphology, anthropometry, cryptography and secret inks. I wondered what role in his drama he had chosen for me to play.

I said, ‘May I ask how the investigation is going?’

‘You are about to hear.’ He patted the file and nodded to the minister’s door, which at that moment was being opened by one of his staff officers.

Inside, Mercier was seated at his desk, signing a pile of correspondence. ‘Please, gentlemen,’ he said in that quiet voice of his without looking up, ‘take a seat. I shan’t be a moment.’

We arranged ourselves around the conference table in order of rank, leaving the place at the head free for Mercier, with Boisdeffre to the right and Gonse to the left, then Sandherr and du Paty facing one another, and finally we three junior officers at the far end.

‘Henry,’ said the burly officer, leaning across the table to extend his hand to me.

‘Picquart,’ I replied.

The commissioner from the Sûreté also introduced himself: ‘Armand Cochefort.’

For a minute we sat in awkward silence while the minister finished signing his papers, then gave them to his aide, who saluted and left.

‘So,’ said Mercier, taking his seat at the table, and placing a sheet of paper in front of him, ‘I have informed the President and the Prime Minister of where things stand, and this is the warrant for Dreyfus’s arrest; all it needs is my signature. Have we received the results of the handwriting expert? I gather the first man, from the Banque de France, concluded that the writing wasn’t Dreyfus’s after all.’