An Officer and a Spy

16

The Sousse Military Club looks out from behind a screen of dusty palms across an unpaved square, past a modern customs shed to the sea. The glint from the Gulf of Hammamet is particularly fierce this afternoon, like sunlight on tin: I have to shield my eyes. A boy in long brown robes passes, leading a goat on a length of rope. The glare melts both figures into tarry black silhouettes.

Inside its heavy brick walls, the Military Club’s decor makes no concession to North Africa. The wooden panelling, stuffed armchairs and tasselled standard lamps are of the type that might be seen in any garrison town in France. As is my custom after lunch, I am seated alone beside the window while my brother officers of the 4th Tunisian Rifles play cards or doze or read the four-day-old French newspapers. Nobody approaches me. Although they are always careful to treat me with the deference owed to my rank, they keep their distance—and who can blame them? After all, there must be something wrong with me—some unspeakable disgrace must have ruined my career: otherwise why would the youngest colonel in the army have been transferred to a dump like this? Against the sky-blue tunic of my new regiment, the scarlet ribbon of my Legion of Honour draws their fascinated eyes like a bullet wound.

As usual, at about three o’clock, through the high glass-panelled door comes a young orderly carrying the afternoon’s post. He is a pretty boy in a rough street-urchin sort of way, a musician in the regimental band who goes by the name of Flavian-Uband Savignaud. He arrived in Sousse a few days after I did: dispatched, I am fairly sure, by the Statistical Section, with orders from Henry or Gonse to spy on me. It is not the spying I resent as much as the incompetence with which he goes about it. “Look,” I want to tell him, “if you’re going to search my belongings, make sure you put them back as you found them: try to make a mental picture in your mind before you start. And if your job is to ensure my mail is intercepted, at least go through the pretence of putting it in the box normally rather than handing it direct to the post office official—I have followed you twice now and observed your sloppiness on both occasions.”

He stops beside my chair and salutes. “Your mail, Colonel. Do you have anything to send?”

“Thank you. Not yet.”

“Is there anything else at all I can do for you, Colonel?” The remark carries a hint of suggestion.

“No. You may go.”

He sways slightly at the waist as he walks away. One of the younger captains puts down his paper to watch him pass. This is something else I resent: not the fact that Henry and Gonse think I might be tempted to go to bed with a man, but that I’d be tempted to go to bed with a man like Savignaud.

I inspect my mail: a letter from my sister and another from my cousin Edmond; both have been opened by the Statistical Section and then resealed with telltale over-firmness using glue. Like my fellow exile Dreyfus, I suffer the intrusion of having my correspondence monitored—although not, as in his case, actually censored. There are a couple of agents’ reports of the type that continue to be forwarded to me as part of the fiction that I am only temporarily seconded from my job; these too have been opened. And then there is a letter from Henry: his schoolroom handwriting is familiar—we have exchanged messages often since I left Paris more than half a year ago.

Until recently the tone of our correspondence has been friendly (Here, the sky is blue and the heat is sometimes too much in the afternoons; it is certainly nothing like Paris). But then in May I was ordered by the High Command in Tunis to take the regiment to Sidi El Hani for three weeks and instruct them in target practice. This entailed a day’s march southwest to pitch camp in the desert. The native troops were difficult to teach, and the heat and the boredom of the featureless stony landscape stretching in every direction, and above all the constant presence of Savignaud, combined to wring from me at last a cry of protest: My dear Henry, Let it be publicly admitted once and for all that I have been relieved of my duties. I have no reason to be embarrassed by that fact; what embarrasses me are all the lies and mysteries that have been spread about me in the course of the last six months.

I assume Savignaud has brought me Henry’s reply. I open it quite casually, expecting the usual soothing reassurances that I shall be returning to Paris very soon. Instead, the tone could not be colder. He has the honour to inform me that “an inquiry” within the Statistical Section has concluded that the only “mysteries” I can be referring to in my letter are the three I perpetrated, to wit: (1) running an illicit operation “unconnected to the service”; (2) suborning false testimony from serving officers “that a classified document had been seized at the post office and came from a known individual”; and (3) “the opening of a secret dossier and examination of its contents, leading to certain indiscretions taking place.” Henry ends with sarcasm: As for the word “lies,” the investigation was unable to determine where, how and to whom this word should be applied. Yours respectfully, J. Henry.

And this man is supposed to be my subordinate! The letter is dated a week ago, Monday, 31 May. I check the envelope for the postmark: Thursday, 3 June. I guess at once what will have happened: Henry will have written this letter and then sent it over the road to Gonse for his approval before dispatching it. So his clumsy threat almost certainly carries behind it the force of the General Staff. I feel a momentary chill on my skin, despite the African heat. I read the letter again. But then my anxiety slowly vanishes and in its place a tremendous feeling of anger begins to build within me (Yours respectfully?), reaching such a level of intensity that it is all I can do not to cry out loud and kick the furniture. I stuff my mail into my trouser pocket, jam my cap back on my head, and stride towards the door with such fury that I am aware of a sudden silence and of heads turning to follow my progress.

I clump across the wooden veranda, almost knocking aside two majors who are smoking cigars, down the club steps, past the flaccid tricolour, across the wide boulevard and into the Marine Garden, where every Sunday afternoon the regimental band plays familiar melodies to the French expatriate community in a tuneless parody of home. Here I pause to gather myself. The two majors are staring after me from the veranda in open bewilderment. I turn and walk on through the little park towards the sea, past the bandstand and the broken fountain, and along the harbour front.

For months I have been going into the Military Club at lunchtime and scanning the stale newspapers in the hope of finding fresh revelations about the Dreyfus affair. In particular I have counted on the likelihood that sooner or later someone will recognise Esterhazy’s handwriting from the bordereau and approach the Dreyfus family direct. But there has been nothing: the case is not even mentioned anymore. As I walk past the fishing boats, my head down and my hands clasped behind me, I reproach myself furiously for my cowardice. I have left it to others to do my duty. And now Henry and Gonse believe I am so broken down by exile, so crushed by their ruthlessness, that they can intimidate me into complete submission.

There is a fish market on the dockside at the southern end of the quay, close to the walls of the old Arab city, and I stop for a minute to watch as a catch is brought in and tipped over the counter: red mullet, sea bream, hake, mackerel. In a nearby pen are half a dozen turtles, their jaws tied shut with string, still alive, but blinded to prevent them escaping. They make a noise like cobbles being cracked together as they clamber over one another, desperate to regain the water they can sense but no longer see.

My quarters are in the military camp on the other side of the medina—a single-storey brick-built hut on the edge of the parade ground, with two rooms, their windows blanked by mosquito mesh, and a veranda with two chairs, a table and a kerosene lamp. In the torpid heat of the late afternoon the parade ground is deserted. Satisfied that I am unobserved, I drag the table to the edge of the veranda, climb up onto it, and reach up to push aside a loose rafter. The great advantage of being watched by an incompetent spy, and the reason I haven’t asked for Savignaud’s removal, is that he misses things, such as this. I move my fingers in the empty space until they encounter metal—an old cigarette tin.

I pull out the tin, replace the rafter, drag the table back to its original place, and go into my quarters. The larger room serves as a sitting room–cum–office; the curtains are drawn against the sun. I pass through this into my bedroom, sit on the edge of my narrow iron cot, and open the tin. It contains a photograph of Pauline taken five years ago and a bundle of letters from her: Darling Georges … My dearest Georges … I yearn for you … I miss you … I wonder how many hands they have been through; not as many as the Dreyfuses’ correspondence, but doubtless quite a few.

I have visited your apartment several times. All is well. Mme Guerault tells me you are on a secret mission! Sometimes I lie on your bed and your smell is still on the pillow and I imagine where you are and what you are doing. That is when I want you most. In the afternoon light I could scream with wanting you. It is a physical pain …

I don’t need to read them again; I know them off by heart.

Also in the tin is a photograph of my mother, seven hundred francs in cash and an envelope on which I have written: In case of the death of the undersigned, please deliver this letter to the President of the Republic, who alone should know of its contents. G. PICQUART. Inside is a sixteen-paragraph report of my investigation into Esterhazy, written in April. It goes through all the evidence in detail, relates the attempts of Boisdeffre, Gonse and Billot to block my researches, and comes to three conclusions:

1. That Esterhazy is an agent for Germany.

2. That the only tangible facts blamed on Dreyfus are attributable to Esterhazy.

3. That the trial of Dreyfus was handled in an unprecedentedly superficial manner, with the preconceived idea that Dreyfus was guilty, and with a disregard for due legal forms.

From the minarets of the Arab town comes the wail of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. It is Asr, the time when a man’s shadow is twice his height. I slip the letter into the inside pocket of my tunic and go back out into the heat.

Early the following morning, Savignaud brings me hot water in my bedroom as usual so that I can shave. Naked above the waist, I bend to my mirror and lather my face. Instead of leaving, he lingers, watching me from behind.

I look at him in the mirror. “Yes, soldier? What is it?”

“I understand you’ve made an appointment to see General Leclerc in Tunis, Colonel.”

“Do I need your permission?”

“I wondered if you wanted me to accompany you.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“Will you be back in time for dinner?”

“Go away, Savignaud.”

He hesitates, salutes and sidles out of the room. I return to my shaving, but with greater urgency: I have little doubt that he has gone off to telegraph Paris the news of my trip to Tunis.

An hour later, suitcase in hand, I wait beside the railway line in the central town square. A mining company has recently laid the track from Sousse to Tunis. There is no station: the locomotive simply passes through the streets. The first sign of its approach is a column of black smoke which I see rising in the distance above the flat roofs against the brilliant blue sky. A steam whistle shrieks nearby and a crowd of children erupts around the corner, scattering in all directions, screaming with excitement, pursued by an engine pulling two flatbed trucks and three carriages. It slows to a crawl until its momentum expires altogether in a loud exhalation of steam. I heave my suitcase into the carriage and clamber up the ladder after it, glancing over my shoulder to check if I am followed. But there is no sign of men in uniforms, just Arabs and Jews and a lot of livestock—chickens in crates, a sheep and a small goat with its hooves tethered, which its owner crams beneath his seat.

We pull away, gathering speed until our escort of excited children is left behind. Dust blows through the open sides of the carriage as we rattle out into the monotonous landscape—olive groves and hazy grey mountains to the left of us, the flat glare of the Mediterranean to the right. Every quarter of an hour or so we stop to pick up figures, always accompanied by animals, who seem to rise out of nowhere, shimmering up ahead beside the tracks. I slip my hand inside my tunic and feel the sharp edges of my posthumous letter to the President.

When at last we arrive in Tunis, around the middle of the afternoon, I push my way across the crowded platform to the taxi rank. The heat in the city feels almost solid. The air holds soot and spices—cumin, coriander, paprika—and tobacco and horse dung in a humid suspension. Beside the taxis a boy is selling La Dépêche tunisienne, which for five centimes offers an overnight compilation of the previous day’s news as telegraphed from Paris. I skim it on the drive to army headquarters. Yet again there is nothing about Dreyfus. But it is within my power to change all that. For the twentieth time I touch the letter, like an anarchist checking his dynamite.

Leclerc is too busy to see me, so I am left to sweat in an anteroom for half an hour. Then an aide approaches me: “The general would like to know what this is about.”

“It’s a personal matter.”

He goes away and comes back a couple of minutes later. “The general suggests you discuss all personal issues with General de Chizelle.” De Chizelle is the senior officer of the 4th Tunisian Rifles, my direct superior.

“I am sorry, but this is a personal matter that I can only disclose to the Supreme Commander.”

Once again he withdraws, but this time he is only gone for a few moments. “The general will see you now.”

I leave my suitcase and follow him.

Jérôme Leclerc is on the veranda of his office, in his shirtsleeves, seated at a portable card table, working his way through a pile of letters. An electric fan above his head lifts the edges of the pages, which are weighted down by his revolver. He is in his middle sixties, square-jawed and -shouldered; he has been in Africa so long his skin is almost the same light brown as the natives’.

“Ah,” he says, “the exotic Colonel Picquart: our very own man of mystery, sent to us under cover of darkness!” The sarcasm is not entirely unfriendly. “So tell me, Colonel, what is the latest secret about you that can’t be divulged to your commanding officer?”

“I would like permission to go on leave to Paris.”

“And why can’t you make this application to General de Chizelle?”

“Because he would refuse it.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because I have reason to believe there is a standing instruction from the War Ministry that I should not be allowed to leave Tunisia.”

“If that is true—and I am not confirming that it is—then why have you come to me?”

“Because I believe you are more likely to ignore an order from the General Staff than General de Chizelle.”

Leclerc blinks at me for a moment, and I wonder if he might have me thrown out, but then abruptly he laughs. “Yes, well, that’s probably true. I’m past caring. But I’d need a damned good reason, mark you. It can’t just be that there’s some woman in Paris you want to see.”

“I have unfinished business there.”

“Do you, by God!” He folds his arms and tilts back in his chair and looks me up and down a couple of times. “You’re a funny fish, Colonel Picquart. I don’t know what to make of you. I’d heard you were supposed to be the next Chief of the General Staff but four, and instead suddenly you’re out here in our little backwater. Tell me, what did you do? Embezzle funds?”

“No, General.”

“Screw the minister’s wife?”

“Certainly not that.”

“Then what?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Then I can’t help you.”

He sits back straight in his chair and picks up a sheaf of papers. I feel a sudden desperation. “I’m in a kind of imprisonment out here, General. My mail is read. I’m followed. I’m not allowed to leave. It’s really very effective. If I protest, it’s been made clear to me I’ll be disciplined on trumped-up charges. Short of desertion, I’m not sure how I can escape. And of course if I do desert I really would be finished.”

“Oh no, don’t desert—if you desert I’d have to shoot you.” He gets up to stretch his legs—a big, lithe man, despite his years. A fighter, I think, not a desk man. He prowls up and down the veranda, frowning, and then stops to look out across the garden. I can’t name all the flowers—jasmine I recognise, and cyclamen, and dianthus. He notices me looking. “You like it?”

“It’s very fine.”

“I planted it myself. Prefer this country to France now, oddly. Don’t think I’ll go back when I retire.” He falls silent and then says fiercely, “You know what I can’t stand, Colonel? I can’t abide the way the General Staff dump their rubbish out here. No offence to you, but every malcontent and deviant and well-bred cretin in the army gets sent my way, and I can tell you that I’m just about sick of it!” He taps his foot on the wooden boards, thinking things over. “Do you give me your word that you’ve done nothing criminal or immoral—that you’ve simply fallen foul of those desk generals in the rue Saint-Dominique?”

“On my honour.”

He sits down at his desk and starts writing. “Is a week enough?”

“A week is all I need.”

“I don’t want to know what you’re up to,” he says, still writing, “so don’t let’s talk about it. I shan’t inform the ministry that you’ve left Tunisia. If and when they find out, I propose to tell them that I’m a soldier, not a gaoler. But I won’t lie, you understand?” He finishes his writing, blows on the ink and hands the letter to me. It is official permission for Lieutenant Colonel Picquart of the 4th Tunisian Rifles to leave the country on compassionate leave, signed by the General Officer Commanding, Tunisia. It is the first official help I have been offered. I have tears in my eyes, but Leclerc affects not to notice.

——

The passenger ferry for Marseille is scheduled to leave Tunis at noon the next day. A clerk at the steamship company’s office tells me (“with profound regret, my Colonel”) that the list is already full; I have to bribe him twice—first to allot me a tiny two-berth cabin all to myself, and then to keep my name off the passenger manifest. I stay overnight in a pension near the docks and go aboard early, dressed in civilian clothes. Despite the sweltering African midsummer I can’t linger on deck and risk being recognised. I go below and lock my door, strip naked and lie on the lower bunk, dripping sweat. I am reminded of Dreyfus and his description of his warship anchoring off Devil’s Island: I had to wait nearly four days in this tropical heat, shut close in my cell, without once going upon deck. By the time the engines start, my own metal cell is as hot as a Turkish bath. The surfaces vibrate as we slip our moorings. Through the porthole I watch the coast of Africa recede. Only when we are out at sea and I can see nothing except the blue of the Mediterranean do I wrap a towel around my waist, summon the steward and ask him to bring me some food and drink.

I have packed a Russian–French dictionary, and a copy of Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, which I set to work translating, propped up on my bunk bed, the two books balanced on my knees, my pencil and paper beside me. The work soaks up the time and even the heat. To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things …

At midnight, when the vessel seems quiet, I venture up the iron staircase and step cautiously out onto the deck. The momentum of the ship provides a warm northerly breeze of thirteen knots. I walk to the prow and raise my face to it, drinking it in. There is blackness ahead and to either side. The only light is above: a wash of stars and a moon that scuds in and out of cloud and seems to be racing us. A male passenger stands nearby, leaning over the rail, talking quietly to one of the crew. Behind me I hear footsteps and turn to see the glowing red tip of a cigar approaching. I move on quickly, down the other side of the ship to the stern, where I watch our wake for a while, flickering like a comet’s tail. But when I see the cigar again, disembodied in the dark, I go below and make my way along the passageway to my cabin, where I stay for the remainder of the voyage.

We dock in Marseille in the late afternoon of the following day in a summer downpour. It seems an ominous welcome home. I hurry straight to the gare Saint-Charles and buy a ticket on the first available train to Paris, conscious that this is my moment of maximum vulnerability. I must assume that Savignaud has reported my visit to Tunis, and also by now my subsequent failure to return to Sousse. Therefore it’s possible that Gonse and Henry will have worked out that I am on my way back to Paris. All they need to do is ask Leclerc. If I were Henry, I would have telegraphed the Prefécture of Police in Marseille and asked him to keep watch at the station, just in case.

I linger under the station clock with my head buried in a newspaper until just before seven, when I hear the whistle blow and the Paris train begins to move. I grab my suitcase, run through the ticket barrier, weave past the guard, who tries to stop me, and sprint along the platform. I wrench open the rearmost door of the train, feeling the strain on my arm socket as the locomotive gathers momentum. I throw in my suitcase, increase my pace and narrowly manage to scramble aboard and slam the door behind me. I lean out of the window and look back. There is a man fifty metres behind on the platform, a thickset, bare-headed fellow in a brown suit, who has just missed the train and is leaning forward with his hands on his knees, recovering his breath, being reproached by the guard. But whether he is an ordinary passenger who arrived too late or an agent of the Sûreté who was on my tail I have no way of knowing.

The carriages are crowded. I have to walk almost the entire length of the train to find a compartment where I can squeeze into a corner seat. My fellow passengers are businessmen, mostly, and a priest, and an army major who keeps glancing in my direction, even though I am not wearing my uniform, as if he recognises a fellow soldier. I don’t stow my suitcase overhead but keep it on my lap as a precaution should I fall asleep. And indeed, despite my nervous tension, as the day fades, lulled by the motion of the train, I do drop off, only to be jerked awake repeatedly throughout the night whenever we pull into a gas-lit station or someone enters or leaves the compartment. Eventually it is the early June daybreak that rouses me, the light falling drab and grey, like a film of ash spread over the southern outskirts of the city.

I move towards the very front of the train, so that at five in the morning, as we pull into the gare de Lyon, I am the first to disembark. I hurry across the deserted concourse, my eyes darting in all directions, but all I can see are a few ragged men, les ramasseux de mégots, gathering cigarette butts in order to sell the tobacco. I tell the taxi driver, “Sixteen, rue Cassette,” and sink down low in my seat. A quarter of an hour later we are skirting the Jardin du Luxembourg and turning into the narrow street. As I pay the fare, I glance in either direction: no one is about.

On the second floor I knock on the apartment door: loudly enough to wake the occupants but not so loud, I hope, that I terrify them. Unfortunately no one can be roused from their bed at five-thirty in the morning without experiencing dread. I see it in my sister’s eyes the moment she opens the door, clutching her nightdress to her throat, and finds me there exhausted and engrimed with the dust and smell of Africa.

Jules Gay, my brother-in-law, boils a kettle to make coffee while Anna fusses around in the children’s old bedroom, making it fit for me to sleep in. They are a couple on their own together now, pushing sixty; I can tell they are glad to take me in, to have someone to look after.

Over coffee I say, “I’d prefer it if no one knew I was here, if that’s all right with you both?”

They exchange glances. Jules replies, “Of course. We can be discreet.”

“If anyone comes to the door asking for me, you should tell them you don’t know where I am.”

Anna says, only half jokingly, “Good heavens! You haven’t deserted, have you, Georges?”

“The one person I do need to see is Louis Leblois. Would you be kind enough to take a message to him, asking if he could call round as soon as possible? But tell him he mustn’t mention to anyone that I’m here.”

“So you only want to talk to your lawyer?” Jules laughs. “That’s not a good sign.” It’s the closest he comes to an expression of curiosity.

After breakfast he goes off to work, and then later Anna leaves to find Louis. I prowl around the apartment, examining its contents—the crucifix above the marital bed, the family Bible, the Meissen porcelain figures that used to belong to my grandmother in Strasbourg and which somehow survived the siege. I peer out of the windows at the front of the apartment, which overlook the rue Cassette, and then at the rear, where there is a public garden: that is where I would station a man if I were watching the house—with a small pocket telescope he could record every movement. I am unable to sit still. The most quotidian sounds of Parisian life—children playing in the park, the clip-clop of traffic, the cry of a hawker—seem charged with menace.

Anna returns and says that Louis will come as soon as he can get away from court. She cooks me an omelette for lunch and I tell her about life in Sousse as if I have been on some exotic grand tour—the narrow stone alleyways of the old Arab town unaltered since the days of the Phoenicians, the hot stink of tethered sheep on the street corners waiting to be slaughtered, the foibles of the tiny French community, only eight hundred souls out of nineteen thousand. “No culture,” I complain. “No one to talk to. Nothing Alsatian to eat. My God, how I hate it!”

She laughs. “And I suppose you’ll tell me next they’ve never even heard of Wagner.” But she doesn’t ask how I ended up there.

At four, Louis arrives. He crosses the carpet on his dainty feet and we embrace. The mere sight of him helps restore my nerve. His trim figure and beard, his neat appearance, his mild voice, his economical gestures—all convey an air of supreme competence. “Leave it to me,” his personage seems to say. “I have made a study of all that is difficult in this world, I have mastered it, and I am ready to place my mastery at your disposal for an appropriate fee.” Even so, I feel I have a duty to warn him what he might be getting into. So after I have fetched my suitcase from the children’s bedroom, and Anna has made tea and discreetly withdrawn from the sitting room, I sit with the case on my lap and my thumbs poised on the locks and say, “Listen, Louis, before I go any further, you ought to be aware that for us merely to have this conversation could put you in some danger.”

“Physical danger?”

“No, not that—I’m sure not that. But professional danger—political danger. It could become all-consuming.” Louis frowns at me. “I suppose what I’m trying to say is that once you start on this I can’t promise you where it may end. And you need to be aware of that now.”

“Oh do shut up, Georges, and tell me what all this is about.”

“Well, if you’re quite certain.” I press my thumbs on the locks and open the suitcase. “It’s difficult to know where to start. You remember I came to see you in the middle of November, to tell you I was going away?”

“Yes, for a couple of days or so you said.”

“It was a trap.” From a false compartment at the bottom of the case I take out a wedge of papers. “First of all I was sent by the General Staff to Châlons to inspect intelligence procedures in the Sixth Corps. Then I was told I would have to go straight on to Nancy to write a report on the Seventh as well. Naturally I asked for permission to return to Paris, for a few hours at least, just to pick up some clean clothes. That was turned down flat by telegram—you see?” I hand it over. “All these letters I’ve kept are from my immediate superior, General Charles-Arthur Gonse, ordering each move—there are fourteen. From Nancy I was sent to Besançon. Then to Marseille. Then to Lyon. Then to Briançon. Then back to Lyon again, where I fell ill. This is the letter I received from Gonse while I was there: I’m sorry that you are suffering, but I hope that after resting in Lyon you will regain your strength. Meanwhile prepare yourself to depart for Marseille and Nice …”

“And all this time you were not permitted to return to Paris, not even for a day?”

“See for yourself.”

Louis takes the handful of letters and scans them, frowning. “But this is ridiculous …”

“I was told I would be meeting the Minister of War over Christmas in Marseille, but he didn’t turn up. Instead I was ordered to sail directly for Algeria—that was at the end of last year—to reorganise intelligence. And then a month after I got to Algeria I was ordered to Tunisia. Once I was in Tunisia I was transferred out of my old regiment and into a native outfit. Suddenly it wasn’t an inspection trip anymore: it was a permanent posting to the colonies.”

“You must have complained, I assume?”

“Of course. Gonse simply wrote back telling me to stop sending him so many letters: You just have to let things go and gain satisfaction from serving a regiment in Africa. Effectively, I’d been exiled.”

“Did they give you a reason?”

“They didn’t have to. I knew what it was. I was being punished.”

“Punished for what?”

I take a breath. It still feels almost sacrilegious to say it aloud. “For having discovered that Captain Dreyfus is innocent.”

“Ah.” Louis looks at me, and for once even his mask of professional detachment seems to crack very slightly. “Ah, yes, I can see that would do it.”

I hand Louis the envelope that is to be delivered to the President in the event of my death. He pulls a face as he reads the inscription. I suppose he considers it melodramatic, the sort of device one might encounter in a railway “thriller.” I would have felt the same until a year ago. Now I have come to see that thrillers may sometimes contain more truths than all Monsieur Zola’s social realism put together.

I say, “Go ahead.” I light a cigarette and watch his expression as he takes out the letter. He reads the opening paragraph aloud: “I, the undersigned Marie-Georges Picquart, Lieutenant Colonel with the 4th Colonial Infantrymen, formerly head of the secret intelligence service at the Ministry of War, certify on my honour the accuracy of the following information, which in the interests of truth and justice it is impossible to ‘stifle,’ as has been attempted …” His voice trails off. He frowns, and then glances at me.

I say, “There’s still time to stop, if you don’t want to get involved. I wouldn’t blame you for a moment. But I warn you: if you continue beyond that paragraph, you will be in the same predicament I am.”

“Well now you make it sound quite irresistible.” He continues reading, but silently, his eyes moving rapidly back and forth as he scans the lines. When he’s finished, he blows out his cheeks in a sigh, then leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. “How many copies of this letter exist?”

“Only that one.”

“God! Only this? And you carried it all the way from Tunisia?” He shakes his head in dismay. “Well, the first thing you’ll have to do is to copy it out at least twice more. We shall need three copies as an absolute minimum. What else do you have in that old suitcase of yours?”

“There’s this,” I say, giving him my original report to Boisdeffre: “Intelligence Service note on Major Esterhazy, 74th Infantry.” “And there are these”—my earlier exchange of letters with Gonse, after I had been out to see him in the country, in which he urges me not to extend my inquiries from Esterhazy to Dreyfus. “There’s also this”—the letter from Henry revealing the existence of an inquiry into my behaviour as chief of the Statistical Section.

Louis reads them quickly and with complete absorption. When he has finished, he sets them aside and looks at me with great seriousness. “The question I ask all my clients at the outset, Georges—and that is what you are now, by the way, although heaven knows how I’m ever going to be paid—the question I always ask my clients is: what do you want to achieve from this?”

“I want to see justice done—that above all. I’m anxious that the army should emerge from this scandal with as little damage as possible: I still love the army. And on a selfish note, I’d like to have my career restored.”

“Ha! Well, you might conceivably achieve one of those, or by a miracle two, but three is quite impossible! I assume there’s no one in the military hierarchy who would take up the struggle alongside you?”

“That’s not the way the army works. Unfortunately, we are dealing with four of the most senior officers in the country—the Minister of War, the Chief of the General Staff, the Head of Military Intelligence and the Commander of the Fourth Army Corps—that’s Mercier’s command these days—and all four of them are implicated in this affair to a greater or lesser extent, not to mention the entire secret intelligence section. Don’t misunderstand me, Louis. The army isn’t completely rotten. There are plenty of good and honourable men in the High Command. But if it came to it they would all put the interests of the army first. Certainly none of them is going to want to bring the temple crashing down around their ears, just for the sake of a—well …” I hesitate.

“A Jew?” suggests Louis. I make no response. “Well,” he continues, “if we can’t approach someone in the army with the facts, then what else can we do?”

I am about to reply when there is a loud knocking at the door. Something about the force of it, the implied sense of entitlement, warns me this is official: police. Louis opens his mouth to speak, but I hold up a silencing hand. I walk quietly over to the sitting-room door, which is glass-paned with lace curtains, and peer round the edge, just as Anna, smoothing her skirts, walks down the passage from the kitchen. She catches my eye, nods to show she knows what she has to do, then opens the front door.

I can’t see who is standing there, but I can hear him—a heavy male voice: “Excuse me, madame, is Colonel Picquart here?”

“No. Why would he be? This isn’t his apartment.”

“Do you happen to know where he is?”

“The last letter I had was posted in Tunisia. And who are you, may I ask?”

“Forgive me, madame—I’m just an old army friend.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Let’s just leave it at that, shall we? You can tell him ‘an old army friend’ was looking for him. Goodbye.”

Anna closes the door and locks it. She glances at me. I smile. She has done well. I turn to Louis. “They know I’m in Paris.”

Louis leaves soon afterwards, taking with him all my papers apart from the letter to the President, which he tells me to copy out twice. I stay up late after Jules and Anna have gone to bed, sitting at the kitchen table with pen and ink—the anarchist again, assembling his bomb. The trial of Dreyfus was handled in an unprecedentedly superficial manner, with the preconceived idea that Dreyfus was guilty, and with a disregard for due legal forms …

Louis returns the following day at the same time, late in the afternoon. Anna shows him into the sitting room. I embrace him and then go over to the window and peer down into the street. “Do you think you might have been followed?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

I crane my neck to look up and down the rue Cassette. “I can’t actually see anyone watching the house. But these people are good, unfortunately. I think it would be wise to assume that you were.”

“I agree. Now, my dear friend, did you make those copies of your letter? Excellent.” He takes them from me and puts them in his briefcase. “One copy can remain in my safe and the other can go to a safe deposit box in Geneva.” He smiles at me. “Cheer up, my dear Georges! Now, even if they kill you and then go on to kill me, they’ll still have to invade Switzerland!”

But another day cooped up in my sister’s apartment has not put me in the mood for jokes. “I don’t know, Louis. I wonder if the safest course isn’t just to give everything to the newspapers and have done with it.”

“Oh no, no, no!” replies Louis in great alarm. “That would be fatal—both for yourself and for Dreyfus. I’ve been doing some hard thinking about the whole matter. This letter from Major Henry,” he says, pulling it out, “is really very interesting, you know—very cunning, actually. They’ve obviously prepared contingency plans in case you make public what you know, but not only that—they want you to understand broadly what those contingency plans are.”

“In order to frighten me off?”

“Yes, it’s good logic, if you think about it. Their primary objective is that you should do nothing. Therefore they want to show you how unpleasant they are willing to make your life if you do try to do something.” He studies the letter. “As I understand it, Major Henry is alleging here, in effect, that you conspired to frame Esterhazy: first by mounting an illegal operation against him, secondly by attempting to suborn from your associates false testimony about the incriminating evidence, and thirdly by leaking classified information to undermine the case against Dreyfus. Clearly, that will be their line of defence if you go to the newspapers: that you have been working for the Jews all along.”

“Absurd!”

“Absurd, I agree. But a great many people will be eager to believe it.”

I can see the truth of this. “Well then,” I say, “if I don’t go openly to the newspapers, perhaps I should go privately to the Dreyfus family, and at least give them the name of Esterhazy?”

“I have thought about that as well. Plainly the family are admirably loyal to their unfortunate captain. But I have to ask myself, as your lawyer, would they feel a similar loyalty to you? To have the name of Esterhazy would of course be immensely useful to their cause. But the real prize for them would be the fact that his name came to them from you—from the chief of the secret intelligence service himself.”

“You think they would reveal me as their source?”

“If their objective is to free their brother, they would be almost bound to. And I wouldn’t blame them if they did, would you? In any case, even if they didn’t release your name themselves, I’m sure it would leak within a day or two. You are being watched and so are they. And unfortunately, once your name is known, it will provide the General Staff with all the evidence they need to convince most people that you have been conspiring to free Dreyfus all along. That is why I say this letter of Henry’s is very cunning.”

“So I’m trapped?”

“Not entirely. We must think tactically. What do you soldiers call it when you go around the side of your opponent rather than charging him head-on?”

“Outflanking?”

“Outflanking—exactly—we need to outflank them. You should not talk to anyone: that only plays into their hands. You should leave all that to me. I shall take your information and give it not to the newspapers or to the Dreyfus camp, but to a public figure of unimpeachable integrity.”

“And who might this paragon be?”

“I spent a good part of last night thinking about exactly that, and this morning while I was shaving the answer came to me. With your permission, I shall go and see the Vice President of the Senate, Auguste Scheurer-Kestner.”

“Why him?”

“To begin with, he’s an old family friend—my father taught him mathematics—so I know him. He’s a man of Alsace, which is always reassuring. He’s rich, which gives him independence. But above all, he’s a patriot. He’s never done a sordid or selfish thing in his life. Let your friend Major Henry try to smear old Auguste as a traitor!”

I sit back and consider this. The other advantage of Scheurer-Kestner is that he is a member of the moderate left but with plenty of friends on the right. He is by temperament emollient but determined. “And what will the senator do with the information?”

“That will be up to him. Knowing his instinct for compromise, I would guess he’ll approach the government to begin with, and try to sort it out that way. He’ll only go to the press if the authorities won’t listen. But one thing I’ll absolutely insist on beforehand is that your name is not to be mentioned as the source of the information. No doubt the General Staff will guess you’re behind it, but they’ll be hard pushed to prove it.”

“And what about me? What shall I do during this process?”

“Nothing. You will return to Tunisia and lead a blameless life—let them follow you all they want: they will observe nothing untoward. That alone will drive them mad. In short, my dear Georges, you just sit in the desert and wait for things to happen.”

On the final day of my leave, after Jules has gone to work and my suitcase is packed ready for the evening train, there is another knock on the door—but softer this time, and tentative. I put down my book and listen as Anna lets in the visitor. A moment later the sitting-room door opens and there is Pauline. She looks at me without speaking. Behind her, Anna is putting on her hat. “I have to go out for an hour,” she says briskly, before adding, with a mixture of fondness and disapproval, “and only for an hour, mind you.”

We make love in the children’s bedroom, under the watchful eyes of a row of my nephew’s old toy soldiers. Afterwards, lying in my arms, she says, “You were really going to go back to Africa without trying to see me?”

“Not by choice, my darling.”

“Without even sending me a note?”

“I’m worried I’m going to bring disaster down on you if we carry on like this.”

“I don’t care.”

“I promise you, you will care, because it won’t be just you who is damaged: it will be the girls as well.”

Suddenly she sits up straight. She is so angry she doesn’t bother to cover herself with a sheet in the way that she normally does. Her hair is tousled, loose, and for the first time I notice a few strands of grey among the blonde. Her skin is flushed rose pink. There is sweat between her breasts. She looks magnificent. “You have no right,” she says, “after all these years, to make decisions that affect the two of us without even telling me what’s in your mind! And don’t you dare use the girls as an excuse!”

“Darling, wait—”

“No! Enough!”

She moves to get out of bed but I grasp her shoulders. She tries to shrug me off. I push her down and hold her. She gasps and struggles beneath me. But she is weaker than she looks, even in her anger, and I restrain her easily. “Listen, Pauline,” I say quietly, “I’m not talking about gossip—we’re already common gossip among our circle. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out Philippe actually guessed about us years ago—even a man who works at the Foreign Ministry can’t be as blind to the obvious as all that.”

“Don’t talk about him! You know nothing about him!” Pinioned, she beats the back of her head against the pillow in helpless frustration.

I press on. “Gossip is one thing—if it’s just gossip, it can be ignored. But I’m talking about exposure and humiliation. I’m talking about the power of the state being used to crush us—to parade us through the newspapers and the courts, to invent things about us and pass them off as true. Nothing is going to withstand that. Do you think I’ve been away from home for the past seven months by choice? And that’s only a tiny foretaste of what they can do to us.”

I clamber off her and sit on the edge of the bed with my back to her. She doesn’t move. After a while she says, “It’s useless, I suppose, to ask what exactly it is that has brought this foulness into our lives?”

“I can’t speak of it to anyone, apart from Louis. And I’ve only talked to him because he’s my lawyer. If anything happens, he’s the one you should go to. He’s wise.”

“And how long is this going to continue—for the rest of our lives?”

“No, a few more weeks—perhaps a couple of months. And then the storm will break, and you will be able at last to see what it has all been about.”

She is silent for a while, and then she says, “Can we still write to each other, at least?”

“Yes, but we need to take precautions.” I rise from the bed and walk naked into the sitting room to fetch a pencil and paper. It is a relief to be doing something practical. When I return, she is sitting up with her arms wrapped around her knees. “I’ve arranged with Louis to set up a poste restante with a friend in the avenue de la Motte-Picquet—here’s the address. I’ll send my letters to you there: have someone else pick them up on your behalf. I won’t put your name on the envelope or use it in the letter itself, and I won’t add a signature. And you shouldn’t sign your letters to me, or put anything in them that would give anyone a clue as to who you are.”

“Are people in the government really going to read our letters?”

“Yes, almost certainly: many people—ministers, army officers, policemen. There’s one precaution you can take, although it may mean the letter doesn’t get through. Use a double envelope; the inner one you should cover entirely with glue, so that when you insert it into the outer envelope it sticks to it. That way it can’t be opened and then resealed. So if they do tamper with it they’ll have to keep it and they may not want to be as blatant as that. I don’t know—it’s worth a try.”

She tilts her head to one side and looks at me in a kind of puzzled wonder, as if seeing me properly for the first time. “How do you come to know all this?”

I put my arms around her. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It was my job.”