An Officer and a Spy

‘Inspect and report on security procedures. Recommend improvements. Important work.’

‘How long will I be away from Paris?’

‘Oh, just a few days. Perhaps a week or two.’

‘But who will run the section?’

‘I’ll take it over myself.’ He laughs and claps my shoulder. ‘If you’ll trust me with the responsibility!’

On Sunday, I see Pauline at the Gasts’: the first time I have set eyes on her in weeks. She wears another dress she knows I like, plain yellow with white lace cuffs and collar. Philippe is with her and so are their two little girls, Germaine and Marianne. Usually I can cope perfectly well seeing the family all together, but on this day it is agony. The weather is cold and wet. We are confined indoors. So there is no escaping the sight of her immersed in her other life — her real life.

After a couple of hours I can’t keep up the pretence any longer. I go out on to the veranda at the back of the house to smoke a cigar. The rain is coming down cold and hard and mixed with hail like a northern European monsoon, stripping the few remaining leaves from the trees. The hailstones bounce off the saturated lawn. I think of Dreyfus’s descriptions of the incessant tropical downpours.

There is a soft chafing of silk behind me, a scent of perfume, and then Pauline is at my side. She doesn’t look at me but stands gazing out across the gloomy garden. I have my cigar in my right hand, my left hangs loosely. The back of her right hand barely brushes against it. It feels as if only the hairs are touching. To anyone coming up behind us we are just two old friends watching the storm together. But her proximity is almost overwhelming. Neither of us speaks. And then the door to the passage bangs open and Monnier’s voice booms out: ‘Let’s hope it’s not like this next week for their Imperial Majesties!’

Pauline casually moves her hand up to her forehead to brush away a stray hair. ‘Are you very much involved in it, Georges?’

‘Not much.’

‘He’s being modest, as usual,’ cuts in Monnier. ‘I know the part you fellows have played to make the whole thing secure.’

Pauline says, ‘Will you actually have an opportunity to meet the Tsar?’

‘I’m afraid you have to be at least a general for that.’

Monnier says, ‘But surely you could watch the parade, couldn’t you, Picquart?’

I puff hard on my cigar, wishing he would go away. ‘I could, if I could be bothered. The Minister of War has allocated places for my officers and their wives at the Bourbon Palace.’

‘And you’re not going!’ cries Pauline, pretending to punch my arm. ‘You miserable republican!’

‘I don’t have a wife.’

‘That’s no problem,’ says Monnier. ‘You can borrow mine.’

And so on Tuesday morning, Pauline and I edge along the steps of the Bourbon Palace to our allotted places, whereupon I discover that every officer of the Statistical Section has accepted the minister’s invitation and has brought his wife — or in Gribelin’s case his mother. They make no attempt to hide their curiosity when we appear and I realise, too late, how we must look in their eyes — the bachelor chief with his married mistress on his arm. I introduce Pauline very formally, emphasising her social position as the wife of my good friend Monsieur Monnier of the quai d’Orsay. That only makes it sound more suspicious. And although Henry bows briefly and Lauth nods and clicks his heels, I notice that Berthe Henry, the innkeeper’s daughter, with her parvenu’s snobbery, is reluctant even to take Pauline’s hand, while Madame Lauth, her mouth tightly crimped in disapproval, actually turns away.

Not that Pauline seems to care. We have a perfect view, looking straight down the bridge, across the Seine, half a kilometre to the obelisk in the place de la Concorde. The weather is sunny but windy. The vast tricolours hanging off the buildings — the red, white and blue stripes vertical for France, horizontal for Russia — snap and billow against their moorings. The crowds on the bridge are ten or twelve deep and have been waiting since dawn. It is reported to be the same all across the city. According to the Préfecture of Police, one and a half million spectators are lining the route.