An Officer and a Spy

9

At five o’clock the following afternoon, the Swiss expedition assembles in the lobby, kitted out in stout walking boots, high socks, sports jackets and knapsacks. The cover story is that they are four friends on a hiking holiday in the Baselbiet. Henry’s jacket is of an unfortunate broad-check design; his felt hat sprouts a feather. He is red-faced and grumpy in the heat. It makes one wonder why he has schemed so hard to join the party.

“My dear Major Henry,” I laugh, “this is taking disguise too far—you look like a Tyrolean innkeeper!” Tomps and Vuillecard and even Lauth all join in the amusement, but Henry remains sullen. He likes teasing others but can’t abide to be teased himself. I say to Lauth, “Send me a telegram from Basel to let me know how the meeting goes, and what time you’ll be back—in coded terms, of course. Good luck, gentlemen. I must say, I wouldn’t let you into my country dressed like that, but then I’m not Swiss!”

I walk with them out of the door and see them into their cab. I wait until the landau is out of sight before setting off on foot towards my own rendezvous. I have plenty of time, enough to make the most of this perfect late summer afternoon, and so I stroll along the embankment, past the big construction site on the quai d’Orsay, where a new railway terminus and grand hotel are rising beside the river. The first great international event of the twentieth century will be held here in Paris in less than four years’ time—the Universal Exhibition of 1900—and the giant skeleton of the building swarms with workers. There is a definite energy in the air; there is even, dare one say it, optimism—not a quality that has been in wide supply in France over the past couple of decades. I amble along the Left Bank and on to the pont de Sully, where I stop and lean against the parapet, looking west along the Seine to Notre-Dame. I am still trying to work out how best to deal with the coming meeting.

Such are the vagaries of public life that General de Boisdeffre, firmly in Mercier’s shadow barely a year and a half ago, has now emerged as one of the most popular men in the country. Indeed, for the past three months it has scarcely been possible to open a newspaper without reading a story about him, whether as head of the French delegation at the coronation of the Tsar in Moscow, or relaying the President’s respects to the Tsarina while she vacationed on the Côte d’Azur, or watching the Grand Prix de Paris at Longchamps in the company of the Russian ambassador. Russia, Russia, Russia—that is all one hears, and Boisdeffre’s strategic alliance is considered the diplomatic triumph of the age, although privately I have reservations about fighting the Germans alongside an army of serfs.

Still, there is no denying Boisdeffre’s celebrity. His schedule has been printed in the newspapers, and when I arrive at the gare de Lyon, the first thing I encounter is a crowd of admirers waiting to catch a glimpse of their idol disembarking from the Vichy train. When at last it pulls into the platform, several dozen run along its entire length trying to spot him. Eventually he emerges and pauses in the doorway for the photographers. He is in civilian dress but unmistakable nonetheless, his tall and erect figure made even loftier by a beautiful silk top hat. He doffs it politely to the applauding throng, then descends to the platform, followed by Pauffin de Saint Morel and a couple of other orderlies. He progresses slowly towards the ticket barrier, like a great stately battleship passing in a naval review, raising his hat and smiling faintly at the cries of “Vive Boisdeffre!” and “Vive l’armée!,” until he sees me. His expression clouds briefly while he tries to remember why I am there, then he acknowledges my salute with a friendly nod. “Ride with me in my automobile, Picquart,” he says, “although I’m afraid I’m only going as far as the hôtel de Sens, so it will have to be brief.”

The automobile, a Panhard Levassor, has no roof. We sit up on the cushioned bench seat, the general and I, behind the driver, and trundle shakily over the cobblestones towards the rue de Lyon, watched by a small group of passengers queuing for taxis, who recognise the Chief of the General Staff and break into cheers.

Boisdeffre says, “I think that’s enough for them, don’t you?” He takes off his hat and places it in his lap, and runs his hand through his thinning white hair. “So what is all this about another 1894?”

Although this is hardly the kind of interview I had rehearsed, there is at least no danger of our being overheard: he has to turn and shout his question into my ear and I respond in a similar way. “We believe we’ve found a traitor in the army, General, passing information to the Germans!”

“Not another! What sort of information?”

“So far it seems to be mainly about our artillery.”

“Important information?”

“Not particularly, but there might be other matters we don’t know about.”

“Who is he?”

“A so-called ‘Count Walsin Esterhazy,’ a major with the Seven-four.”

Boisdeffre makes a visible effort of memory, then shakes his head. “Not a name I would have forgotten if I’d met him. How did we get onto him?”

“The same way we did with Dreyfus, though our agent in the German Embassy.”

“My God, I only wish my wife could find a cleaner half as thorough as that woman!” He laughs at his own joke. He seems remarkably relaxed; perhaps it is the effects of his hydrotherapy. “What does General Gonse say?”

“I haven’t told him yet.”

“Why not?”

“I thought it best to talk to you first. With your permission, I’d like to brief the minister next. I hope to know more about Esterhazy in a day or two. Until then, I would prefer not to tell General Gonse.”

“As you wish.”

He pats his pockets until he finds his snuff box, and offers it to me. I refuse. He takes a couple of pinches. We round the place de la Bastille. In a minute or two we’ll be at our destination and I need a decision.

“So do I have your permission,” I ask, “to notify the minister?”

“Yes, I think you should, don’t you? However, I would dearly love,” he adds, tapping my knee to emphasise each word, “to avoid another public scandal! One Dreyfus is quite enough for a generation. Let us try to deal with this case more discreetly.”

I am spared the need to reply by our arrival at the hôtel de Sens. For once, that gloomy medieval pile is a scene of activity. An official reception of some sort is in progress. People are arriving in evening dress. And there, waiting on the doorstep, smoking a cigarette, I see none other than Gonse. Our automobile pulls up a few metres away. Gonse drops his cigarette and heads towards us, just as the driver jumps out to lower the steps for Boisdeffre. Gonse halts and salutes—“Welcome back to Paris, General!”—then looks at me with undisguised suspicion. “And Colonel Picquart?” The statement is delivered as a question.

I say quickly, “General Boisdeffre was kind enough to give me a ride from the station.” It is neither a blatant lie nor the full truth, but hopefully it is enough to cover my exit. I salute and wish them a good evening. When I reach the street corner I risk a look back, but the two men have gone inside.

I don’t want to tell Gonse about Esterhazy yet, for three reasons: first, because I know that once that consummate old bureaucrat gets his hands on the case he will want to take control of it and information will start to leak; second, because I know how the army works and I wouldn’t put it past him to go behind my back to Henry; and third, and above all, because if I can armour myself with the prior backing of the Chief of the General Staff and the Minister of War, then Gonse will be unable to interfere and I shall be free to follow the trail wherever it leads me. I am not entirely without cunning: how else did I become the youngest colonel in the French army?

Accordingly, on Thursday morning, at the same time as the team in Basel should be making its first contact with the double agent, Cuers, I take the Benefactor file and my private key—the token of my privileged access—and let myself through the wooden door into the garden of the hôtel de Brienne. The grounds, which appeared so magical to me under snow on the day of Dreyfus’s degradation, have a different kind of charm in August. The foliage on the big trees is so thick that the ministry might not exist; the distant sounds of Paris are as drowsy as the drone of bees; the only other person around is an elderly gardener watering a flower bed. As I cross the scorched brown turf I promise myself that if I am ever minister, I shall move my desk out here in the summer, and run the army from under a tree, as Caesar did in Gaul.

I reach the edge of the lawn, cross the gravel, and trot up the shallow pale stone steps that lead to the glass doors of the minister’s residence. I let myself in and ascend the same marble staircase that I climbed at the beginning of my story, pass the same suits of armour and the bombastic painting of Napoleon. I put my head around the door of the minister’s private office and ask one of his orderlies, Captain Robert Calmon-Maison, if it would be convenient for me to have a word with the minister. Calmon-Maison knows better than to ask what it is about, for I am the keeper of his master’s secrets. He goes off to check and returns to tell me that I can be seen immediately.

How quickly one accommodates to power! Not many months ago, I would have been awed at finding myself in the minister’s inner sanctum; now it is just a place of work, and the minister himself merely another soldier-bureaucrat passing through the revolving door of government. The present occupant, Jean-Baptiste Billot, is nudging seventy, and is on his second stint in the office, having held it fourteen years before. He is married to a wealthy and sophisticated woman and his politics are left-radical, yet he looks like an idiot general out of a comic opera—all barrel chest and bristling white moustaches and outraged bulging eyes: naturally, the cartoonists adore him. There’s one other detail about him I know, and is of interest: he dislikes his predecessor, General Mercier, and has done ever since the grand army manoeuvres of 1893, when the younger man commanded the opposing corps and defeated him—a humiliation he has never forgiven.

As I enter, he is standing at the window with his broad back to the room. Without turning round he says, “When I watched you coming across that lawn just now, Picquart, I thought to myself: well, here he comes, that bright young colonel with another damn problem! And then I asked myself: why do I need such tribulations at my age? I should be at my country place on a day like this, playing with my grandchildren, not wasting it by talking to you!”

“We both know, Minister, that you would be bored to death within five minutes, and complaining that we were ruining the country in your absence.”

The massive shoulders shrug. “That’s true enough, I suppose. Someone sane must oversee this madhouse.” He pivots on his heel and waddles across the carpet towards me: an alarming sight for those not used to it, like a charging bull walrus. “Well, well, what is it? You look very tense. Sit down, my boy. Do you want a drink?”

“No, thank you.” I occupy the same chair that I did when I described the degradation ceremony to Mercier and Boisdeffre. Billot settles himself opposite me and regards me with a piercing eye. The old buffer routine is all an act: he is as sharp and ambitious as a man of half his age. I open the Benefactor file. “I’m afraid we appear to have discovered a German spy operating in the army …”

“Oh God!”

Yet again I describe Esterhazy’s activities and the operation we have mounted to watch him. I give Billot a few more details than I did Boisdeffre; in particular I tell him about the debriefing mission that is under way in Basel. I show him the petit bleu and the surveillance photographs. But I don’t mention Dreyfus: I know that if I did, it would blot out everything else.

Billot interjects a number of shrewd questions. How valuable is this material? Why didn’t Esterhazy’s commanding officer notice something strange about him? Are we sure he’s operating alone? He keeps returning to the image of Esterhazy emerging empty-handed from the embassy. At the end he says, “Perhaps we should try to do something clever with the scum? Rather than simply lock him up, couldn’t we use him to feed false information to Berlin?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. The trouble is, the Germans are already suspicious of him. It’s unlikely they’d simply swallow whatever he told them without checking it for themselves. And of course—”

Billot finishes my argument for me. “And of course, to get him to play along, we’d have to give him immunity from prosecution, whereas the only place for the likes of Esterhazy is behind bars. No, you’ve done well, Colonel.” He shuts the file and hands it back to me. “Keep on with the investigation until we’ve nailed him once and for all.”

“You’d be willing to take it all the way to a court-martial?”

“Absolutely! What’s the alternative? To allow him to retire on half pay?”

“General Boisdeffre would prefer it if there were no scandal …”

“I’m sure he would. I don’t relish one myself. But if we allowed him to get away with it—that really would be a scandal!”

I return to my office well satisfied. I have the approval of the two most powerful men in the army to continue my investigation. Effectively Gonse has been cut out of the chain of command. All I can do now is to wait for news from Basel.

The day drags on with routine work. The drains stink more than usual in the heat. I find it hard to concentrate. At half past five, I ask Captain Junck to book a telephone call to the Schweizerhof hotel for seven o’clock. At the appointed time I stand by the receiver in the upstairs corridor, smoking a cigarette, and when the bell sounds I snatch the instrument from its cradle. I know the Schweizerhof: a big, modern place overlooking a city square crossed by tramlines. I give Lauth’s cover name to the front desk and ask to speak to him. There is a long wait while the undermanager goes off to check. When he returns, he announces that the gentleman has just checked out and has left no forwarding address. I hang up, wondering what I should read into this. It may be that they are continuing the debriefing into a second day and have taken the precaution of changing hotels, or it could be that the meeting is over and they are rushing to catch the overnight train back to Paris. I hang around for another hour in the hope of receiving a telegram, then decide to leave for the evening.

I would welcome some company to distract me, but everyone seems to be away for August. The de Commingeses have closed up their house and decamped to their summer estate. Pauline is on holiday in Biarritz with Philippe and her daughters. Louis Leblois has gone home to Alsace to be with his gravely ill father. I am suffering from a pretty bad dose of what the gentlemen in the rue de Lille would call Weltschmerz: I am world weary. In the end, I dine alone in a restaurant near the ministry and return to my apartment intending to read Zola’s new novel. But its subject, the Roman Catholic Church, bores me, and it also runs to seven hundred and fifty pages. I am willing to accept such prolixity from Tolstoy but not from Zola. I set it aside long before the end.

I am at my desk early the next morning, but no telegrams have come in overnight and it isn’t until early in the afternoon that I hear Henry and Lauth coming upstairs. I rise from my seat and stride across my office. Flinging open the door, I am surprised to find them both wearing uniform. “Gentlemen,” I say with sarcasm, “you have actually been to Switzerland, I take it?”

The two officers salute, Lauth with a certain nervousness it seems to me, but Henry with a nonchalance that borders on insolence. He says, “I’m sorry, Colonel. We stopped off at home to change.”

“And how was your trip?”

“I should say it was a pretty good waste of time and money, wouldn’t you agree, Lauth?”

“It proved to be disappointing, I’m afraid, yes.”

I look from one to the other. “Well, that’s unexpectedly depressing news. You’d better come in and tell me what happened.”

I sit behind my desk with my arms folded and listen while they relate their story. Henry does most of the talking. According to him, he and Lauth went directly from the railway station to the hotel for breakfast, then upstairs to the room, where they waited until nine-thirty, when Inspector Vuillecard brought in Cuers. “He was pretty shifty from the start—nervous, couldn’t sit still. Kept going over to the window and checking the big square in front of the station. Mostly what he wanted to talk about was him—could we guarantee the Germans would never find out what he’d done for us?”

“And what could he tell you about the Germans’ agent?”

“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 anymore. 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:

Days, nights, are all alike. I never open my mouth. I no longer ask for anything. My speech used to be limited to asking if my mail had come or not. But I am now forbidden to ask even that, or at least, which is the same thing, the guards are forbidden to answer even such commonplace questions. I wish to live until the day of the discovery of the truth, that I may cry aloud my grief at the torture they inflict on me …

And again:

That they should take all possible precautions to prevent escape, I understand; it is the right, I will even say the strict duty, of the administration. But that they bury me alive in a tomb, prevent all communication with my family, even via open letters—this is against all justice. One would readily believe one is thrown back several centuries …

And on the back of one intercepted and retained letter, written out several times as if he is trying to commit it to memory, is a quotation from Shakespeare’s Othello:

Who steals my purse steals trash. ’Tis something, nothing:

’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands.

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed.

As I turn the pages, I feel as if I am reading a novel by Dostoyevsky. The walls of my office seem to melt; I hear the ceaseless crash and roar of the sea on the rocks beneath his prison hut, the strange cries of the birds, the deep silence of the tropical night broken by the endless clumping of the guards’ boots on the stone floor and the rustle of the venomous spider crabs moving in the rafters; I feel the saturating furnace of the humid heat and the raw itch of the mosquito bites and ant stings, the doubling-over stomach cramps and blinding headaches; I smell the mouldiness of his clothes and his books destroyed by damp and insects, the stink of his latrine and the eye-watering clinging pale smoke of the cooking fire built from wet green wood; above all I am hollowed by his loneliness. Devil’s Island is twelve hundred metres long by four hundred wide at its maximum point; it has a surface area of just one-sixth of a square kilometre. It wouldn’t take long to map it. I wonder if he remembers what I taught him.

After I have finished reading the file, I take up my pen and write a note to the Colonial Minister informing him that I have no comments to make.

I place it in my out-tray. I sink back in my chair and think about Dreyfus.

I became professor of topography at the École Supérieure de Guerre in Paris when I was thirty-five. Some friends thought I was mad to take the post—I was already a battalion commander in Besançon—but I saw the opportunity: Paris is Paris, after all, and topography is the fundamental science of war. Could a battery at A bring fire to bear on N? Would the churchyard, village Z, be under fire of a battery at G? Could a picket be posted in the fields immediately east of N, unseen by an enemy’s vedette at G? I instructed my students in how to measure distances by counting their paces (the more rapid, the more accurate); how to survey terrain using a plane table or a prismatic compass; how to sketch the contours of a hill in red pencil using a Watkins clinometer or Monsieur Fortin’s mercurial barometer; how to bring the sketch alive by mixing in green or blue chalk scraped from a pencil in imitation of a flat wash of watercolour; how to use a pocket sextant, a theodolite, a sketching protractor; how to make an accurate representation from the saddle under fire. Among the students to whom I taught these skills was Dreyfus.

However hard I try, I cannot recall our first meeting. I looked down from the lecture podium week after week at the same eighty faces and only gradually did I learn to distinguish his from the others: thin, pale, solemn, myopic in his pince-nez. He was barely thirty but his lifestyle and appearance made him seem much older than his contemporaries. He was a husband among bachelors, a man of means among the perennially hard up. In the evenings when his comrades went out drinking he returned home to his smart apartment and his wealthy wife. He was what my mother would have called “a regular Jew,” by which she meant such things as “new money,” pushiness, social climbing and a fondness for expensive ostentation.

Twice Dreyfus tried to invite me to social functions: on the first occasion to dinner at his apartment on the avenue du Trocadéro and on the second to what he called “some top-class shooting” he had rented out near Fontainebleau; on both occasions I declined. I didn’t much care for him, even less so when I discovered that the rest of his family had elected to remain in occupied Alsace, and that Germany was where his money came from: blood money, I thought it. At the end of one term, when I failed to award him the high marks for cartography he believed he deserved, he actually confronted me.

“Have I done something to offend you?” His voice was his least attractive feature: nasal and mechanical, with a grating trace of Mulhouse German.

“Not at all,” I replied. “I can show you my marking scheme if you like.”

“The point is, you are the only one of my tutors who has given me a low mark.”

“Well,” I said, “perhaps I don’t share your high opinion of your own abilities.”

“So it’s not because I’m a Jew?”

The bluntness of the accusation took me aback. “I am scrupulous not to let any personal prejudices affect my judgement.”

“Your use of the word ‘scrupulous’ suggests it might be a factor.” He was tougher than he looked. He stood his ground.

I replied coldly, “If you are asking, Captain, whether I like Jews particularly, the honest answer I suppose would be no. But if you are implying that because of that I might discriminate against you in a professional matter, I can assure you—never!”

That concluded the conversation. There were no more private approaches after that; no further invitations to dinner or to shooting, top-class or otherwise.

At the end of three years’ teaching, my gamble paid off and I was transferred from the École to the General Staff. There was talk even then of sending me to the Statistical Section: the skills of topography are a useful grounding for secret intelligence. But I fought hard to avoid becoming a spy. Instead I was made deputy chief of the Third Department (Training and Operations). And here I ran across Dreyfus again.

Those who graduate in the highest places from the École Supérieure are rewarded by a two-year attachment to the General Staff, consisting of six months in each of the four departments. It was part of my job to supervise the placement of these stagiaires, as they are called. Dreyfus had passed out ninth in his year. Therefore he was fully entitled to come into the Ministry of War. It fell to me to determine where he should go. He would be the only Jew on the General Staff.

It was a time of growing anti-Semitic agitation within the army, whipped along by that poisonous rag La Libre Parole, which alleged that Jewish officers were being given preferential treatment. Despite my lack of sympathy towards him, I took some care to try to protect Dreyfus from the worst of it. I had an old friend, Armand Mercier-Milon, a major in the Fourth Department (Movement and Railways), who was entirely free of prejudice. I had a word with him. The upshot was that Dreyfus went to the Fourth for his initial placement at the start of 1893. In the summer he moved on to the First (Administration); then at the beginning of 1894 to the Second (Intelligence); and finally in July he came to my department, the Third, to complete his rotation on the General Staff.

I saw very little of Dreyfus throughout that summer and autumn of 1894—he was often away from Paris—although we would nod civilly enough to each other if we happened to pass in the corridor. From the reports of his section chiefs I knew that he was regarded as hardworking and intelligent but uncongenial, a loner. Some also spoke of him as cold and arrogant to his equals and obsequious to his superiors. During a General Staff visit to Charmes he monopolised General Boisdeffre over dinner and took him off for an hour to smoke cigars and discuss improvements in artillery, much to the annoyance of the more senior officers present. Nor did he make any effort to disguise his wealth. He had a wine cellar built in his apartment, employed three or four servants, kept horses in livery, collected pictures and books, hunted regularly and bought a Hamerless shotgun from Guinard & Cie on the avenue de l’Opéra for five hundred and fifty francs—the equivalent of two months’ army salary.

There was something almost heroic in his refusal to play the part of the grateful outsider. But looking back, one can see it was a foolish way to behave, especially in that climate.

A regular Jew …

Operation Benefactor languishes in the August heat. There are no fresh sightings of Esterhazy in the rue de Lille. Schwartzkoppen seems to be away on leave. The Germans’ apartment is shuttered up for the summer. I write to Boisdeffre on his estate in Normandy asking for permission to obtain a sample of Esterhazy’s handwriting, in case it matches any scrap of evidence retrieved by Agent Auguste. My request is turned down on the grounds that this would represent “a provocation.” If Esterhazy has to be removed from the army, Boisdeffre reiterates that he wants it done quietly, without a scandal. I raise it with the Minister of War. He is sympathetic, but on this issue he refuses to overrule the Chief of the General Staff.

Meanwhile the atmosphere inside the Statistical Section is as noxious as the drains. Several times when I step out of my office I hear doors close along the corridor. The whispering starts up again. On the fifteenth there is a small party in the waiting room to say goodbye to Bachir, who is retiring as concierge, and to welcome his successor, Capiaux. I say a few words of thanks: “The building will not be the same without the presence of our old comrade, Bachir,” to which Henry remarks into his glass, just loud enough for everyone to hear, “Well why did you get rid of him then?” Afterwards the others all go off to continue drinking at the Taverne Royale, a favourite bar nearby. I am not asked to go with them. Sitting alone at my desk with a bottle of cognac, I remember Henry’s remark on his return from Basel: Whoever he is, he was never very important and he’s no longer active. Have I caused all this ill feeling in pursuit of an agent who in any case was never much more than a chancer and a fantasist?

On the twentieth, Henry departs on a month’s leave to his family’s home on the Marne. Normally before he goes away he puts his head round my door to say goodbye. On this occasion, he slips away without a word. In his absence the building sinks even further into the August torpor.

And then, on the twenty-seventh, a Thursday afternoon, I receive a message from Billot’s orderly Captain Calmon-Maison asking if he might have a word with me as soon as is convenient. I have cleared my in-tray so I decide I might as well walk over right away: through the garden and up the stairs and into the office of the minister’s secretariat. The windows are open. The room is light and airy. Three or four young officers are working together congenially. I feel a stab of envy: how much better to be here than across the street in my dank and rancorous warren! Calmon-Maison says, “I have something here that General Billot thinks you ought to see.” He goes to a filing cabinet and takes out a letter. “It came in yesterday. It’s from Major Esterhazy.”

The letter is handwritten, addressed to Calmon-Maison, dated Paris two days earlier. It is a request to be transferred to the General Staff. The implications of this hit me with a force that is almost physical. He’s trying to get into the ministry. He’s trying to get access to secret material he can sell …

Calmon-Maison says, “My colleague Captain Thévenet has received a similar appeal.”

“May I see it?”

He gives me the second letter. It is couched in almost identical terms to the first: I am writing to request an immediate transfer from the headquarters of the 74th Infantry Regiment in Rouen … I believe I have demonstrated the qualities necessary for work on the General Staff … I have served in the Foreign Legion and in the intelligence department as a German translator … I would be most grateful if you could bring this request to the attention of the appropriate authority …

“Have you replied?”

“We’ve sent him a holding letter—‘your request is being considered by the minister.’ ”

“Can I borrow these?”

Calmon-Maison responds as if reciting a legal formula: “The minister has asked me to tell you that he can see no objection to your making use of these letters as part of your inquiry.”

Back in my office, I sit at my desk with the letters in front of me. The writing is neat, regular, well spaced. I am almost sure I have seen it before. At first I think it must be because the script is quite similar to that of Dreyfus, whose correspondence I have spent so many hours studying lately.

And then I remember the bordereau—the covering note that was retrieved from Schwartzkoppen’s wastepaper basket and that convicted Dreyfus of treason.

I look at the letters again.

No, surely not …

I rise from my seat like a man in a dream and take the few steps across the carpet to the safe. My hand shakes very slightly as I insert the key. The envelope containing the photograph of the bordereau is still there, where Sandherr left it: I have been meaning for months to take it upstairs to Gribelin so he can file it away in his archive.

The bordereau, in facsimile, is a column of thirty narrow lines of handwriting—undated, unaddressed, unsigned:

I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information …

1. A note on the hydraulic brake of the 120 and how that part performed

2. A note on covering troops (several modifications will be introduced by the new plan)

3. A note on the change to artillery formations

4. A note concerning Madagascar

5. The draft Field Artillery Firing Manual (14 March 1894)

The last paragraph explains that the Ministry of War will not permit individual officers to keep possession of the Field Artillery Firing Manual for very long, therefore if you would like to take from it what interests you and afterwards leave it at my disposal, I will collect it. Otherwise I can copy it verbatim and send you the copy. I am off to manoeuvres.

The leading handwriting expert in Paris swore that this was written by Dreyfus. I carry the photograph over to my desk and place it between the two letters from Esterhazy. I stoop for a closer look.

The writing is identical.