An Officer and a Spy

13

At precisely ten o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, 1 September, I present myself in General Boisdeffre’s outer office, carrying my briefcase.

Pauffin de Saint Morel says, “You can go straight in, Colonel. He’s expecting you.”

“Thank you. Would you make sure we’re not disturbed?”

I enter to find Boisdeffre leaning over his conference table, studying a map of Paris and making notes. He acknowledges my salute with a smile and a wave and then returns to the map. “Excuse me, Picquart, will you? I shan’t be a moment.”

I close the door behind me. Boisdeffre is tracing the route of the Tsar’s ceremonial parade, marking it on the map in red crayon. For security reasons, Their Imperial Majesties will pass through a succession of wide-open spaces—the Jardins du Ranelagh, the Bois de Boulogne, the Champs-Élysées and the place de la Concorde—where all the houses are screened by trees and stand well back from the road. Nevertheless, every occupant is being given a background check: the Statistical Section has been brought in to advise; Gribelin has been busy with our lists of aliens and potential traitors. Given our urgent need for an alliance with the Russians, if the Tsar were to be assassinated on French soil it would be a national disaster. And the threat is real: it is only fifteen years since his grandfather was blown in half by socialists, only two years since our own president was stabbed to death by an anarchist.

Boisdeffre taps the map and says, “It’s this initial stretch here, between the Ranelagh railway station and the porte Dauphine, that causes me most concern. The First Department tells me we shall need thirty-two thousand men, including cavalry, simply to keep the crowd at a safe distance.”

“Let’s hope the Germans don’t choose that moment to attack us in the east.”

“Indeed.” Boisdeffre finishes writing and looks at me with his full attention for the first time. “So, Colonel, what do we need to talk about? Please.” He sits, and indicates that I should take the chair opposite him. “Is it about the Russian visit?”

“No, General. It’s about the matter we discussed in the automobile on your return from Vichy—the suspected traitor, Esterhazy.”

It takes him a moment to search back through his memory. “Ah yes, I remember. Where do we stand on that?”

“If I could just clear some space …”

“By all means.”

I roll up the map. Boisdeffre takes out his silver snuff box. He places a pinch on the back of his hand and takes two quick sniffs, one in either nostril. He watches as I open my briefcase and extract the documents I need for my presentation: the petit bleu, a photograph of the bordereau, Esterhazy’s letters requesting a transfer to the General Staff, the surveillance photographs of Esterhazy outside the German Embassy, the secret dossier on Dreyfus and my four-page report on the investigation to date. His expression grows increasingly astonished. “Good heavens, my dear Picquart,” he says, half amused, “what have you been doing?”

“We have quite a serious problem to confront, General. I feel it’s my duty to bring it to your attention right away.”

Boisdeffre winces and casts a wistful look at the rolled map: plainly, he would prefer not to be dealing with this. “Very well, then,” he sighs. “As you wish. Proceed.”

I take him through it step by step: the interception of the petit bleu, my initial inquiries into Esterhazy, Operation Benefactor. I show him the pictures taken from the apartment in the rue de Lille. “Here you can see he takes an envelope into the embassy, and here he leaves without it.”

Boisdeffre peers short-sightedly at the photographs. “My God, the things you fellows can do nowadays!”

“The saving grace is that Esterhazy has no access to important classified material: what he offers them is so trivial even the Germans want to sever their connection with him. However,” I say, sliding over the two letters, “Esterhazy is now trying to turn himself into a much more valuable agent, by applying for a position in the ministry—where of course he would have ready access to secrets.”

“How did you get hold of these?”

“General Billot instructed his staff to give them to me.”

“When was this?”

“Last Thursday.” I pause to clear my throat. Here goes, I think. “I noticed almost immediately a striking similarity between Esterhazy’s two letters and the writing of the bordereau. You can see it for yourself. Naturally, I am no handwriting expert, so I took them the next day to Monsieur Bertillon. You remember …”

“Yes, yes.” Boisdeffre’s voice is suddenly faint, dazed. “Yes, of course I remember.”

“He confirmed that the writing is identical. It then seemed to me, in the light of this, that I should review the rest of the evidence against Dreyfus. Accordingly, I consulted the secret file that was shown to the judges at the court-martial—”

“Just a moment, Colonel.” Boisdeffre holds up his hand. “Wait. When you say you consulted the file, do you mean to tell me it still exists?”

“Absolutely. This is it.” I show him the envelope with “D” written on it. I empty out the contents.

Boisdeffre looks at me as if I have just vomited over his table. “My God, what have you got there?”

“It’s the secret file from the court-martial.”

“Yes, yes—I can see what it is. But what is it doing here?”

“I’m sorry, General? I don’t understand …”

“It was supposed to have been dispersed.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yes, of course! The whole episode was highly irregular.” He pokes gingerly at the pieced-together letters with a long, slim forefinger. “There was a meeting in the minister’s office soon after Dreyfus was convicted. I was present with Colonel Sandherr. General Mercier specifically ordered him to break up the file. The intercepted letters were to be returned to the archive, the commentaries destroyed—he was absolutely clear about it.”

“Well, I don’t know what to say, General.” Now I am the one who is bewildered. “Colonel Sandherr didn’t disperse it, as you can see. In fact he was the one who told me where to find it if I ever needed it. But if I may say so, perhaps the existence of the file is not the main issue we have to worry about.”

“Meaning what?”

“Well, the bordereau—the handwriting—the fact that Dreyfus is innocent …” My voice trails away.

Boisdeffre blinks at me for a few moments. Then he starts gathering together all the papers and photographs that are spread across the table. “I think what you need to do, Colonel, is to go and see General Gonse. Don’t let us forget he is the head of the intelligence department. Really you should have gone to him rather than me. Ask his advice on what needs to be done.”

“I shall do that, General, absolutely. But I do think we need to move quickly and decisively, for the army’s own sake …”

“I know perfectly well what’s good for the army, Colonel,” he says curtly. “You don’t need to worry on that account.” He holds out the evidence. “Go and talk to General Gonse. He’s on leave at the moment, but he’s only just outside Paris.”

I take the papers and open my briefcase. “May I at least leave my report with you?” I search through the bundle. “It’s a summary of where matters stand at the moment.”

Boisdeffre eyes it as if it’s a snake. “Very well,” he says reluctantly. “Give me twenty-four hours to consider it.” I stand and salute. When I am at the door he calls to me: “Do you remember what I told you when we were in my motorcar, Colonel Picquart? I told you that I didn’t want another Dreyfus case.”

“This isn’t another Dreyfus case, General,” I reply. “It’s the same one.”

The next morning I see Boisdeffre again briefly, when I go to retrieve my report. He hands it back to me without a word. There are dark semicircles under his eyes. He looks like a man who has been punched.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “to bring you a potential problem at a time when you have issues of such immense importance to deal with. I hope it isn’t too much of a distraction.”

“What?” The Chief of the General Staff lets out his breath in a gasp of exasperated disbelief. “Do you really think, after what you told me yesterday, that I got a moment’s sleep last night? Now go and talk to Gonse.”

The Gonse family house lies just beyond the northwest edge of Paris, in Cormeilles-en-Parisis. I send a telegram to the general announcing that Boisdeffre would like me to brief him on an urgent matter. Gonse invites me to tea on Thursday.

That afternoon I take the train from the gare Saint-Lazare. Half an hour later I alight in a village so rural I might be two hundred kilometres from the centre of Paris rather than twenty. The departing train dwindles down the track into the distance and I am left entirely alone on the empty platform. Nothing disturbs the silence except birdsong and the distant clip-clop of a carthorse pulling a wagon with a squeaking wheel. I walk over to the porter and ask for directions to the rue de Franconville. “Ah,” he says, taking in my uniform and briefcase, “you’ll be wanting the general.”

I follow his instructions along a country lane out of the village and up a hill, through wooded country, then down a drive to a spacious eighteenth-century farmhouse. Gonse is working in the garden in his shirtsleeves, wearing a battered straw hat. An old retriever lopes across the lawn towards me. The general straightens and leans on his rake. With his tubby stomach and short legs he makes a more plausible gardener than he does a general.

“My dear Picquart,” he says, “welcome to the sticks.”

“General.” I salute. “My apologies for interrupting your vacation.”

“Think nothing of it, dear fellow. Come and have some tea.” He takes my arm and leads me into the house. The interior is crammed with Japanese artefacts of the highest quality—antique silkscreens, masks, bowls, vases. Gonse notices my surprise. “My brother’s a collector,” he explains. “This is his place for most of the year.”

Tea has been laid out in a garden room full of wicker furniture: petits fours on the low table, a samovar on the sideboard. Gonse pours me a cup of lapsang souchong. The cane seat squeaks as he sits down. He lights a cigarette. “Well then. Go ahead.”

Like a commercial traveller, I unlock my briefcase and lay out my wares among the porcelain. It is an awkward moment for me: this is the first time I have even mentioned my investigation of Esterhazy to Gonse, the Chief of Intelligence. I show him the petit bleu, and in an attempt to make it seem less of an insult, I pretend that it arrived in late April rather than early March. Then I repeat the presentation I made to Boisdeffre. As I hand him the documents, Gonse studies each in turn, in his usual methodical manner. He spills cigarette ash onto the surveillance photographs, makes a joke of it—“Covering up the crime!”—and blows it away calmly. Even when I produce the secret file he looks unperturbed.

I suspect Boisdeffre must have warned him beforehand of what I was planning to tell him.

“In conclusion,” I say, “I had hoped to find something in the file that would establish Dreyfus’s guilt beyond doubt. But I’m afraid there’s nothing. It wouldn’t withstand ten minutes’ cross-examination by a halfway decent attorney.”

I lay down the last of the documents and sip my tea, which is now stone cold. Gonse lights another cigarette. After a pause he says, “So we got the wrong man?”

He says it matter-of-factly, as one might say, “So we took the wrong turning?” or “So I wore the wrong hat?”

“I’m afraid it looks like it.”

Gonse plays with a match as he considers this, flicking it around and between his fingers with great dexterity, then snaps it. “And yet how do you explain the contents of the bordereau? None of this changes our original hypothesis, does it? It must have been written by an artillery officer who had some experience of all four departments of the General Staff. And that’s not Esterhazy. That’s Dreyfus.”

“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.

For months there has been nothing in the press about Dreyfus. But on the day after my visit to Gonse, the Colonial Ministry is obliged to deny a wild rumour in the London press that he has escaped from Devil’s Island. At the time I think nothing of it: it’s just journalism, and English journalism at that.

Then on the Tuesday Le Figaro appears with its lead story, “The Captivity of Dreyfus,” spread across the first two and a half columns of the front page. The report is an accurate, well-informed and sympathetic account of what Dreyfus is enduring on Devil’s Island (“forty to fifty thousand francs a year to keep alive a French officer who, since the day of his public degradation, has endured a death worse than death”). I presume the information has come from the Dreyfus family.

It is against this background that the next day I go to brief the minister.

I unlock the garden gate and make my way, unseen by any curious eyes in the ministry, across the lawn and into the rear of his official residence.

The old boy has been on leave for a week. This is his first day back. He seems to be in good spirits. His bulbous nose and the top of his bald head are peeling from exposure to the sun. He sits up straight in his chair, stroking his vast white moustaches, watching with amusement as yet again I bring out all the paperwork associated with the case. “Good God! I’m an old man, Picquart. Time is precious. How long is all this going to take?”

“I’m afraid it’s partly your fault, Minister.”

“Ah, do you hear him? The cheek of the young! My fault? And pray, how is that?”

“You very kindly authorised your staff to show me these letters from the suspected traitor, Esterhazy,” I say, passing them over, “and then I’m afraid I noticed their distinct similarity to this.” I give him the photograph of the bordereau.

Once again I am surprised by how quick on the uptake he is. Ancient he may be—a captain of infantry before I was even born—yet he looks from one to the other and grasps the implications immediately. “Well I’ll be blessed!” He makes a clicking sound with his tongue. “You’ve had the handwriting checked, I presume?”

“By the original police expert, Bertillon, yes. He says it is identical. Naturally I’d like to get other opinions.”

“Have you shown this to General Boisdeffre?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his opinion?”

“He referred me to General Gonse.”

“And Gonse?”

“He wants me to abandon my investigation.”

“Does he, indeed? Why’s that?”

“Because he believes, as do I, that it would almost certainly set in train a process that would lead to an official revision of the Dreyfus affair.”

“Heavens! That would be an earthquake!”

“It would, Minister, especially as we would have to reveal the existence of this …”

I hand him the secret file. He squints at it. “ ‘D’? What the hell is this?” He has never even heard of it. I have to explain. I show him the contents, item by item. Once again he goes straight to the heart of the matter. He extracts the letter referring to “that lowlife D” and holds it close to his face. His lips move as he reads. The backs of his hands are flaking like his scalp, and mottled with liver spots: an old lizard who has survived more summers than anyone could believe possible.

When he gets to the end he says, “Who’s ‘Alexandrine’?”

“That’s von Schwartzkoppen. He and the Italian military attaché call each other by women’s names.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because they are buggers, Minister.”

“Good God!” Billot pulls a face. He holds the letter gingerly between finger and thumb and passes it back to me. “You have a pretty tawdry job, Picquart.”

“I know that, General. I didn’t ask for it. But now I have it, it seems to me I must do it properly.”

“I agree.”

“And in my view, that means investigating Esterhazy thoroughly for the crimes he’s committed. And if it transpires that we have to fetch Dreyfus back from Devil’s Island—well, I say it’s better for us in the army to rectify our own mistake rather than be forced to do it by outside pressure later.”

Billot stares into the middle distance, his right thumb and forefinger smoothing down his moustaches. He grunts as he thinks. “This secret file,” he says after a while. “Surely it’s against the law to pass evidence to the judges without letting the defence have a chance to challenge it first?”

“It is. I regret having been a party to it.”

“So whose decision was it?”

“Ultimately, it was General Mercier’s, as Minister of War.”

“Ha! Mercier? Really? I suppose I might have guessed he’d be in there somewhere!” The staring and the moustache-smoothing and the grunting resume. Eventually he gives a long sigh. “I don’t know, Picquart. It’s a devil of a problem. You’re going to have to let me think about it. Obviously, there would be consequences if it turned out we had locked up the wrong man for all this time, especially having made such a public spectacle out of doing it—profound consequences, for both the army and the country. I’d have to talk to the Prime Minister. And I can’t do that for at least a week—I’ve got the annual manoeuvres in Rouillac starting on Monday.”

“I appreciate that, General. But in the meantime do I have your permission to continue my investigation of Esterhazy?”

The massive head nods slowly. “I should think so, my boy, yes.”

“Wherever the investigation leads me?”

Another heavy nod: “Yes.”

——

Filled with renewed energy, that evening I meet Desvernine in our usual rendezvous at the gare Saint-Lazare. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since the middle of August. I am slightly late. He is already sitting waiting for me in a corner seat, reading Le Vélo. He has stopped drinking beer, I notice, and gone back to mineral water. As I slip into the chair opposite him, I nod to his newspaper. “I didn’t know you were a cyclist.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Colonel. I’ve had a machine for ten years.” He folds the paper up small and stuffs it into his pocket. He seems to be in a bad mood.

I say, “No notebook today?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “There’s nothing to report. Benefactor’s still on leave at his wife’s place in the Ardennes. The embassy’s quiet, half shut up for the summer—no sign of either of our men for weeks. And your friend Monsieur Ducasse has had enough and gone to Brittany for a holiday. I tried to stop him but he said if he stayed in the rue de Lille much longer he’d go crazy. I can’t say I blame him.”

“You sound frustrated.”

“Well, Colonel, it’s been five months since I started investigating this bastard—if you’ll excuse me—and I don’t know what else we’re supposed to do. Either we pick him up and sweat him for a bit, see if we can make him admit something, or we suspend the operation: that would be my proposal. Either way, the weather’s turning colder and we ought to pull those speaking-tubes out within a day or two. If the Germans decide to light a fire, we’ll be in trouble.”

“Well, for once let me show you something,” I say, and pass the photographs of Esterhazy’s letters face-down across the table. “Benefactor is trying to get a position on the General Staff.”

Desvernine looks at the letters and immediately his expression brightens. “The bastard!” he repeats happily, under his breath. “He must owe more than we thought.”

I wish I could tell him about the bordereau and Dreyfus and the secret file, but I daren’t, not yet—not until I have official clearance from Billot to broaden the scope of my inquiry.

Desvernine says, “What do you propose to do about him, Colonel?”

“I think we need to become much more active. I’m going to suggest to the minister that he actually agrees to Benefactor’s request and gives him a position on the General Staff, in a department where we can monitor him round the clock. We should let him believe he has access to secret material—something apparently valuable, but which we’ve forged—and then we should follow him and see what he does with it.”

“That’s good. And I’ll tell you what else we could do, if we’re indulging in a little forgery. Why don’t we send him a fake message from the Germans inviting him to a meeting to discuss the future? If Benefactor turns up, that’s incriminating in itself. But if he turns up carrying secret material, we’ll have caught him red-handed.”

I think this over. “Is there a forger we could use?”

“I’d suggest Lemercier-Picard.”

“Is he trustworthy?”

“He’s a forger, Colonel. He’s about as trustworthy as a snake. His real name is Moisés Lehmann. But he did a lot of work for the section when Colonel Sandherr was there, and he knows we’ll come looking for him if he tries to pull any tricks. I’ll find out where he is.”

Desvernine leaves looking much happier than he did when I arrived. I stay to finish my drink, then take a taxi home.

The next day it suddenly starts to feel like autumn—a threatening dark grey sky, windy, the first leaves blowing off the trees and chasing down the boulevards. Desvernine is right: we need to get those sound-tubes out of the apartment in the rue de Lille as soon as possible.

I arrive at the office at my usual time and quickly scan the day’s papers laid out ready for me by Capiaux on my table. Le Figaro’s description of Dreyfus’s conditions on Devil’s Island has stirred up the sediment of opinion again, and everywhere Dreyfus is widely denounced: “Make him suffer even more” seems to be the collective view. But it is a story in L’Éclair that brings me up short—an anonymous article headlined “The Traitor” which alleges that Dreyfus’s guilt was proved beyond doubt by “a secret file of evidence” passed to the judges at his court-martial. The author calls on the army to publish the contents in order to put an end to the “inexplicable sense of pity” surrounding the spy.

This is the first time the existence of the secret file has been mentioned in the press. The coincidence that it should happen now, of all times, just as I have taken possession of the dossier, makes me uneasy. I march down the corridor to Lauth’s office and drop the newspaper on his desk. “Seen this?”

Lauth reads it and looks up at me, alarmed. “Somebody must be talking.”

“Find Guénée,” I order him. “He’s supposed to be monitoring the Dreyfus family. Tell him to come over here now.”

I walk back to my office, unlock my safe and take out the secret file. I sit at my desk and make a list of everyone who knows about it: Mercier, Boisdeffre, Gonse, Sandherr, du Paty, Henry, Lauth, Gribelin, Guénée; to these nine, thanks to my briefing yesterday, can now be added Billot—that’s ten; and then there are the seven judges, starting with Colonel Maurel—seventeen—and President Fauré, and the President’s doctor, Gibert—that’s nineteen—who was the man who told Mathieu Dreyfus—who makes twenty; and after that—who knows how many more Mathieu has told?

There is no such thing as a secret—not really, not in the modern world, not with photography and telegraphy and railways and newspaper presses. The old days of an inner circle of like-minded souls communicating with parchment and quill pens are gone. Sooner or later most things will be revealed. That is what I have been attempting to make Gonse understand.

I massage my temples, trying to think it through. The leak ought to vindicate my position. But I suspect it is more likely to make Gonse and Boisdeffre panic and strengthen their determination to limit the investigation.

Guénée arrives in my office towards the end of the morning, jaundice-yellow as usual and smelling like the inside of an old tobacco pipe. He has brought with him the Dreyfus surveillance file. He looks around nervously. “Is Major Henry here?”

“Henry’s still on leave. You’ll have to deal with me.”

Guénée sits and opens his file. “It’s the Dreyfus family who are behind it, Colonel, almost certainly.”

“Even though the tone of the L’Éclair article is hostile to Dreyfus?”

“That’s just to cover their tracks. The editor, Sabatier, has been got at by them—we’ve monitored him meeting both Mathieu and Lucie. This is part of a pattern of increased activity by the family lately—you may have noticed. They’ve hired the Cook Detective Agency in London to dig for information.”

“And have they got anywhere?”

“Not that we know of, Colonel. That may be why they’ve changed their tactics and decided to become more public. It was a journalist employed by the detective agency who planted the false story that Dreyfus had escaped.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I suppose, to get people talking about him again.”

“Well then, I’d say they’ve succeeded, wouldn’t you?”

Guénée lights a cigarette. His hands are shaking. He says, “You remember a year ago, I told you about a Jewish journalist the family were talking to—Bernard Lazare? Anarchist, socialist, Jewish activist?”

“What about him?”

“He now seems to be writing a pamphlet in defence of Dreyfus.”

He searches through the file and gives me a photograph of a heavyset, youngish man in pince-nez with a huge balding forehead and a heavy beard. Clipped to it is a selection of newspaper cuttings authored by Lazare: “The New Ghetto,” “Anti-Semitism and Anti-Semites,” a series of recent articles in La Voltaire attacking Drumont of La Libre Parole (you are not invulnerable, neither you nor your friends …).

“Quite the polemicist,” I say, flicking through it. “And now he’s working with Mathieu Dreyfus?”

“No doubt of it.”

“So he’s another who must know about the secret file?”

Guénée hesitates. “Yes, presumably.”

I add Lazare’s name to the list; that makes twenty-one; this is becoming hopeless. “Do we know when this pamphlet is likely to appear?”

“We haven’t picked up anything from our sources in the French printing trade. They may be planning to publish abroad. We don’t know. They’ve become much more professional.”

“What a mess!” I toss the photograph of Lazare back across the desk towards Guénée. “This secret file is going to become a real embarrassment. You were involved in its compilation, isn’t that right?”

I don’t ask the question in an interrogatory way, but entirely casually. To my surprise Guénée frowns and shakes his head, as if making a great effort at memory. “Ah no, Colonel, not I.”

The stupid lie puts me on immediate alert. “No? But surely you provided Major Henry with a statement from the Spanish military attaché? It was a central part of the case against Dreyfus.”

“Did I?” Suddenly he looks less sure.

“Well, did you or didn’t you? Major Henry says you did.”

“Then I must have.”

“I have it here, in fact: what you said Val Carlos told you.” I take the secret file from my desk drawer, open it and extract Henry’s deposition. Guénée’s eyes widen in amazement at the sight of it. “ ‘Be sure to tell Major Henry on my behalf (and he may repeat it to the colonel)’—that’s Colonel Sandherr, I presume—‘that there is reason to intensify surveillance at the Ministry of War, since it emerges from my last conversation with the German attachés that they have an officer on the General Staff who is keeping them admirably well informed. Find him, Guénée: if I knew his name, I would tell you!’ ”

“Yes, that sounds about right.”

“And he actually said this to you roughly six months before Dreyfus was arrested?”

“Yes, Colonel—in March.”

Something in his demeanour tells me he is still lying. I look again at the statement. It doesn’t sound much like a Spanish marquis to me; it reads more like a policeman making up evidence.

“Wait a moment,” I say. “Let me be clear about this. If I go to see the marquis de Val Carlos and say to him, ‘My dear Marquis, between you and I, is it true that you said these words to Monsieur Guénée that helped send Captain Dreyfus to Devil’s Island?’ he will reply, ‘My dear Major Picquart, that’s absolutely correct’?”

Panic flickers in Guénée’s face. “Well I don’t know about that, Colonel. Remember, he said that to me in confidence. Given all this stuff in the press about Dreyfus now—how can I swear to what he’d say today?”

I stare at him. My God, I think. What in the name of heaven were they up to? If Val Carlos didn’t say it to Guénée, it stands to reason he didn’t say it to Henry either. Because it wasn’t just Guénée whom the Spaniard was supposed to have warned about a German spy on the General Staff: it was Henry. It was their alleged conversation that provided the basis for Henry’s theatrical testimony at the court-martial: The traitor is that man!

A long pause is ended by a knock at the door. Lauth thrusts his blond head into the room. I wonder how long he has been listening. “General Boisdeffre would like you to go over and see him straight away, Colonel.”

“Thank you. Tell his office I’m on my way.” Lauth withdraws. I say to Guénée, “We’ll talk about this some other time.”

“Yes, Colonel.” He leaves, looking—or so it seems to me—mightily relieved to have escaped without any further interrogation.

Boisdeffre is seated behind his grand desk, his elegant hands palm-down on the surface; a copy of L’Éclair lies between them. He says, “I gather you saw the minister yesterday.” His tone is one of a calmness that is only being maintained with great difficulty.

“Yes, I see him most days, General.”

Boisdeffre has left me standing to attention on the carpet, the first time this has happened.

“And you showed him the secret file on Dreyfus?”

“I felt he needed to be aware of the facts—”

“I will not have it!” He lifts one of his hands and brings it down hard on his desk. “I told you to speak to General Gonse and to no one else! Why do you think you can disobey my orders?”

“I’m sorry, General, I wasn’t aware your order applied to the minister. If you remember, last month you gave me permission to brief General Billot about the Esterhazy investigation.”

“About Esterhazy, yes! But not about Dreyfus! I thought it was made absolutely clear to you by General Gonse that you were to keep the two matters separate?”

I continue to stare straight ahead, at a particularly hideous oil painting by Delacroix hanging just above the Chief of Staff’s scanty white hair. Only occasionally do I risk a brief glance at the general himself. He seems to be under tremendous stress. The Virginia creeper–like mottling on his cheeks has ripened from crimson to purple.

“Frankly, I don’t believe it’s possible to keep the two matters separate, General.”

“That may be your opinion, Colonel, but you have no business trying to create dissension in the high command.” He picks up the newspaper and waves it at me. “And where did this come from?”

“The Sûreté believe the story may have originated with the Dreyfus family.”

“And did it?”

“It’s impossible to say. A considerable number of people have knowledge of the file.” I pull out my list. “I count twenty-one so far.”

“Let me see that.” Boisdeffre holds out his hand. He runs his eye down the column of names. “So you are saying that one of these must be behind the leak?”

“I can’t see where else it could have come from.”

“I notice you haven’t put your own name on it.”

“I know that I’m not a suspect.”

“You might know that, but I don’t. A casual observer might find it a curious coincidence that just as you begin agitating for a reopening of the Dreyfus case, revelations about it start to appear in the press.”

There is a loud crack from somewhere beyond the tall windows. It sounds as though a tree has blown down. Rain slashes against the glass. Boisdeffre, still staring at me, doesn’t seem to notice.

“I deny that insinuation absolutely, General. These stories do nothing to help my investigation, as you have just made clear. They only make it more difficult.”

“That’s one view. Another is that you are seeking every possible means to reopen the Dreyfus case, whether by going to the minister behind my back, or fomenting an agitation in the press. Did you know that a member of the Chamber of Deputies has announced he is seeking to question the government about the whole affair?”

“I give you my word I had nothing to do with this.”

The general bestows on me a look of deep suspicion. “Let us hope this is the end of these disclosures. It’s bad enough for the press to report the existence of the file. If they were to describe its actual contents, it would become much more serious. I’ll keep this list, if I may.”

“Of course.” I bow my head in a way that I hope indicates contrition, even though I don’t feel it.

“Very well, Colonel.” He flicks his fingers, as if dismissing a waiter at the Jockey Club. “You may go.”

I step out into the rue Saint-Dominique to find a hurricane blowing: a freak system that moves across Paris between noon and three. I have to clutch the railings to prevent myself being knocked off my feet; by the time I reach our building I am drenched to the skin. The wind takes roofs off the Opéra-Comique and the Préfecture of Police. It blows out the windows on one side of the Palace of Justice. Riverboats are torn from their moorings and dashed against the quays. Some of the laundrywomen on the banks of the Seine are blown into the water and have to be rescued. The stalls in the flower market in the place Saint-Sulpice are entirely whisked away. Walking home that evening I pass through streets that lie ankle-deep in shredded vegetation and broken tiles. The havoc is terrible, but privately I am relieved: the press will have other things to talk about for the next few days apart from Captain Dreyfus.