An Officer and a Spy

‘On the contrary, this is where we made our original error. If you look at the bordereau again, you’ll see it always talks about notes being handed over: a note on the hydraulic brake. . a note on covering troops. . a note on artillery formations. . a note on Madagascar. .’ I point out what I mean on the photograph. ‘In other words, these aren’t the original documents. The only document that was actually handed over — the firing manual — we know that Esterhazy acquired by going on a gunnery course. Therefore I’m afraid the bordereau indicates precisely the opposite of what we thought it did. The traitor wasn’t on the General Staff. He didn’t have access to secrets. He was an outsider, a confidence trickster if you like, picking up gossip, compiling notes and trying to sell them for money. It was Esterhazy.’

Gonse settles back in his chair. ‘May I make a suggestion, dear Picquart?’

‘Yes please, General.’

‘Forget about the bordereau.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Forget about the bordereau. Investigate Esterhazy if you like, but don’t bring the bordereau into it.’

I take my time responding. I know he is dim, but this is absurd. ‘With respect, General, the bordereau — the fact that it’s in Esterhazy’s handwriting, and the fact that we know he took an interest in artillery — the bordereau is the main evidence against Esterhazy.’

‘Well you’ll have to find something else.’

‘But the bordereau-’ I bite my tongue. ‘Might I ask why?’

‘I should have thought that was obvious. A court martial has already decided who wrote the bordereau. That case is closed. I believe it’s what the lawyers call res judicata: “a matter already judged”.’ He smiles at me through his cigarette smoke, pleased to have remembered this piece of schoolroom Latin.

‘But if we discover Esterhazy was the traitor and Dreyfus wasn’t. .?’

‘Well we won’t discover that, will we? That’s the point. Because, as I have just explained to you, the Dreyfus case is over. The court has pronounced its verdict and that is the end of that.’

I gape at him. I swallow. Somehow I need to convey to him, in the words of the cynical expression, that what he is suggesting is worse than a crime: it is a blunder. ‘Well,’ I begin carefully, ‘we may wish it to be over, General, and our lawyers may indeed tell us that it is over. But the Dreyfus family feel differently. And putting aside any other considerations, I am worried, frankly, about the damage to the army’s reputation if it were to emerge one day that we knew his conviction was unsafe and we did nothing about it.’

‘Then it had better not emerge, had it?’ he says cheerfully. He is smiling, but there is a threat in his eyes. ‘So there we are. I’ve said all I have to say on the matter.’ The arms of the wicker chair squeak in protest as he pushes himself to his feet. ‘Leave Dreyfus out of it, Colonel. That’s an order.’

On the train back to Paris I sit with my briefcase clutched tightly in my lap. I stare out bleakly at the rear balconies and washing lines of the northern suburbs, and the soot-caked stations — Colombes, Asnières, Clichy. I can hardly believe what has just occurred. I keep going over the conversation in my mind. Did I make some mistake in my presentation? Should I have laid it out more clearly — told him in plain terms that the so-called ‘evidence’ in the secret file crumbles into the mere dust of conjecture compared to what we know for sure about Esterhazy? But the more I think of it, the more certain I am that such frankness would have been a grave error. Gonse is utterly intransigent: nothing I can say will shift his opinion; there is no way on earth, as far as he’s concerned, that Dreyfus will be brought back for a retrial. To have pushed it even further would only have led to a complete breakdown in our relations.

I don’t return to the office: I cannot face it. Instead I go back to my apartment and lie on my bed and smoke cigarette after cigarette with a relentlessness that would impress Gonse, even if nothing else about me does.

The thing is, I have no wish to destroy my career. Twenty-four years it has taken me to get this far. Yet my career will be pointless to me — will lose the very elements of honour and pride that make it worth having — if the price of keeping it is to become merely one of the Gonses of this world.

Res judicata!

By the time it is dark and I get up to turn on the lamps, I have concluded that there is only one course open to me. I shall bypass Boisdeffre and Gonse and exercise my privilege of unrestricted access to the hôtel de Brienne: I shall lay the case personally before the Minister of War.

Things are starting to stir now — cracks in the glacier; a trembling under the earth — faint warning signs that great forces are on the move.