An Officer and a Spy

One day towards the end of September, I climb the stairs to my office at the start of the morning and see Major Henry standing further along the corridor, deep in conversation with Lauth and Gribelin. His back is to me, but those broad and fleshy shoulders and that wide neck are as recognisable as his face. Lauth glances past him, notices me and darts him a warning look. Henry stops talking and turns round. All three officers salute.

‘Gentlemen,’ I say. ‘Major Henry, welcome back. How was your leave?’

He is different. He has caught the sun — like everyone else apart from me — but he has also changed his haircut to a short fringe so that he looks less like a sly farmer and more like a crafty monk. And there’s something else: a new energy in him, as if all the negative forces that have been swirling around our little unit — the suspicion and disaffection and anxiety — have coalesced in his capacious frame and charged him with a kind of electricity. He is their leader. My jeopardy is his opportunity. He is a danger to me. All this passes through my mind in the few seconds it takes him to salute, grin and say, ‘My leave was good, Colonel, thank you.’

‘I need to brief you on what’s been happening.’

‘Whenever you wish, Colonel.’

I am on the point of inviting him into my office, and then I change my mind. ‘I tell you what, why don’t we have a drink together at the end of the day?’

‘A drink?’

‘You look surprised.’

‘Only because we’ve never had a drink before.’

‘Well, that is a poor state of affairs, is it not? Let us rectify it. Shall we walk somewhere together? Let us say at five o’clock?’

Accordingly at five he knocks on my door, I pick up my cap and we go out into the street. He asks, ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Wherever you like. I don’t frequent the bars round here very often.’

‘The Royale, then. It saves us from having to think.’

The Taverne Royale is the favourite bar of the General Staff. I haven’t been in it for years. The place is quiet at this hour: just a couple of captains drinking near the door, the barman reading a paper, a waiter wiping down the tables. On the walls are regimental photographs; on the bare wooden floor, sawdust; the colours are all brown and brass and sepia. Henry is very much at home. We take a table in the corner and he orders a cognac. For want of a better idea I do the same. ‘Leave us the bottle,’ Henry tells the waiter. He offers me a cigarette. I refuse. He lights one for himself and suddenly I realise that an odd part of me has actually missed the old devil, just as one occasionally grows fond of something familiar and even ugly. Henry is the army, in a way that I, or Lauth, or Boisdeffre will never be. When soldiers break ranks and want to run away on the battlefield, it is the Henrys of this world who can persuade them to come back and keep fighting.

‘Well,’ he says, raising his glass, ‘what shall we drink to?’

‘How about something we both love? The army.’

‘Very well,’ he agrees. We touch glasses: ‘The army!’

He downs his tumbler in one, tops up mine then refills his own. He sips it, staring at me over the rim. His small eyes are a muddy colour, and opaque: I can’t read them. ‘So — things seem to be in a bit of a mess back at the office, Colonel, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘I’ll have that cigarette after all, if I may.’ He pushes his cigarette case across the table towards me. ‘And whose fault is that, do you think?’

‘I point no fingers. I’m just saying, that’s all.’

I light my cigarette and toy with my glass, moving it around the table as if it is a chess piece. I feel a curious desire to unburden myself. ‘Man to man, I never wanted to be chief of the section, did you know that? I had a horror of spies. I only achieved the position by accident. If I hadn’t known Dreyfus, I wouldn’t have been involved in his arrest, and then I wouldn’t have attended the court martial and the degradation. Unfortunately, I think our masters have got the entirely wrong idea about me.’

‘And what would the right idea be?’

Henry’s cigarettes are very strong, Turkish. The back of my nose feels as if it’s on fire. ‘I’ve been having another look at Dreyfus.’

‘Yes, Gribelin told me you’d taken the file. You seem to have stirred things up.’

‘General Boisdeffre was convinced the dossier no longer existed. He said that General Mercier ordered Colonel Sandherr to get rid of it.’

‘I didn’t know that. The colonel just told me to keep it nice and safe.’

‘Why did Sandherr disobey, do you think?’

‘You’d have to ask him that.’

‘Perhaps I shall.’

‘You can ask him all you want, my Colonel, but you won’t get much of an answer.’ Henry taps the side of his head. ‘He’s under lock and key in Montauban. I went all the way down to visit him. It was pitiful.’ He looks mournful. He suddenly raises his glass. ‘To Colonel Sandherr: one of the best!’

‘To Sandherr,’ I respond, and pretend to drink his health. ‘But why did he retain the file, do you think?’