An Officer and a Spy

3

Six months pass. June arrives. The air warms up and very soon Paris starts to reek of shit. The stench rises out of the sewers and settles over the city like a putrid gas. People venture out of doors wearing linen masks or with handkerchiefs pressed to their noses, but it doesn’t make much difference. In the newspapers the experts are unanimous that it isn’t as bad as the original “great stink” of 1880—I can’t speak to that: I was in Algeria at the time—but certainly it ruins the early days of summer. “It is impossible to stand on one’s balcony,” complains Le Figaro, “impossible to sit on the terrace of one of the busy, joyful cafés that are the pride of our boulevards, without thinking that one must be downwind from some uncouth, invisible giant.” The smell infiltrates one’s hair and clothes and settles in one’s nostrils, even on one’s tongue, so that everything tastes of corruption. Such is the atmosphere on the day I take charge of the Statistical Section.

Major Henry, when he comes to collect me at the Ministry of War, makes light of it: “This is nothing. You should have grown up on a farm! Folks’ shit, pigs’ shit: where’s the difference?” His face in the heat is as smooth and fat as a large pink baby’s. A smirk trembles constantly on his lips. He addresses me with a slight overemphasis on my rank—“Colonel Picquart!”—that somehow combines respect, congratulations and mockery in a single word. I take no offence. Henry is to be my deputy, a consolation for being passed over for the chief’s job. From now on we are locked in roles as ancient as warfare. He is the experienced old soldier who has come up through the ranks, the sergeant major who makes things work; I the younger commissioned officer, theoretically in charge, who must somehow be prevented from doing too much damage. If each of us doesn’t push the other too far, I think we should get along fine.

Henry stands. “So then, Colonel: shall we go?”

I have never before set foot in the Statistical Section—not surprising, as few even know of its existence—and so I have requested that Henry show me round. I expect to be led to some discreet corner of the ministry. Instead he conducts me out of the back gate and a short walk up the road to an ancient, grimy house on the corner of the rue de l’Université which I have often passed and always assumed to be derelict. The darkened windows are heavily shuttered. There is no nameplate beside the door. Inside, the gloomy lobby is pervaded by the same cloying smell of raw sewage as the rest of Paris, but with an added spice of musty dampness.

Henry smears his thumb through a patch of black spores growing on the wall. “A few years ago they wanted to pull this place down,” he says, “but Colonel Sandherr stopped them. Nobody disturbs us here.”

“I am sure they don’t.”

“This is Bachir.” Henry indicates an elderly Arab doorman, in the blue tunic and pantaloons of a native Algerian regiment, who sits in the corner on a stool. “He knows all our secrets, don’t you, Bachir?”

“Yes, Major!”

“Bachir, this is Colonel Picquart …”

We step into the dimly lit interior and Henry throws open a door to reveal four or five seedy-looking characters smoking pipes and playing cards. They turn to stare at me, and I just have time to take the measure of the drab sofa and chairs and the scaly carpet before Henry says, “Excuse us, gentlemen,” and quickly closes the door again.

“Who are they?” I ask.

“Just people who do work for us.”

“What sort of work?”

“Police agents. Informers. Men with useful skills. Colonel Sandherr takes the view that it’s better to keep them out of mischief here rather than let them hang around on the streets.”

We climb the creaking staircase to what Henry calls “the inner sanctum.” Because all the doors are closed, there is almost no natural light along the first-floor passage. Electricity has been installed, but crudely, with no attempt to redecorate where the cables have been buried. A piece of the plaster ceiling has come down and been propped against the wall.

I am introduced to the unit one by one. Each man has his own room and keeps his door closed while he works. There is Major Cordier, the alcoholic who will be retiring shortly, sitting in his shirtsleeves, reading the anti-Semitic press, La Libre Parole and L’Intransigeant, whether for work or pleasure I do not ask. There is the new man, Captain Junck, whom I know slightly from my lectures at the École Supérieure de Guerre—a tall and muscular young man with an immense moustache, who now is wearing an apron and a pair of thin gloves. He is opening a pile of intercepted letters, using a kind of kettle, heated over a jet of gas flame, to steam the glue on the envelope: this is known as a “wet opening,” Henry explains.

In the next-door room, another captain, Valdant, is using the “dry” method, scraping at the gummed seals with a scalpel: I watch for a couple of minutes as he makes a small opening on either side of the envelope flap, slides in a long, thin pair of forceps, twists them around a dozen times to roll the letter into a cylinder, and extracts it deftly through the aperture without leaving a mark. Upstairs, M. Gribelin, the spidery archivist who had the binoculars at Dreyfus’s degradation, sits in the centre of a large room filled with locked cabinets, and instinctively hides what he is reading the moment I appear. Captain Matton’s room is empty: Henry explains that he is leaving—the work is not to his taste. Finally I am introduced to Captain Lauth, whom I also remember from the degradation ceremony: another handsome, blond cavalryman from Alsace, in his thirties, who speaks German and ought to be charging around the countryside on horseback. Yet here he is instead, also wearing an apron, hunched over his desk with a strong electric light directed onto a small pile of torn-up notepaper, moving the pieces around with a pair of tweezers. I look to Henry for an explanation. “We should talk about that,” he says.

We go back downstairs to the first-floor landing. “That’s my office,” he says, pointing to a door without opening it, “and there is where Colonel Sandherr works”—he looks suddenly pained—“or used to work, I should say. I suppose that will be yours now.”

“Well, I’ll need to work somewhere.”

To reach it, we pass through a vestibule with a couple of chairs and a hatstand. The office beyond is unexpectedly small and dark. The curtains are drawn. I turn on the light. To my right is a large table, to my left a big steel filing cupboard with a stout lock. Facing me is a desk; to one side of it a second door leads back out to the corridor; behind it is a tall window. I cross to the window and pull back the dusty curtains to disclose an unexpected view over a large formal garden. Topography is my speciality—an awareness of where things lie in relation to one another; precision about streets, distances, terrain—nevertheless, it takes me a moment to realise that I am looking at the rear elevation of the hôtel de Brienne, the minister’s garden. It is odd to see it from this angle.

“My God,” I say, “if I had a telescope, I could practically see into the minister’s office!”

“Do you want me to get you one?”

“No.” I look at Henry. I can’t make out whether he’s joking. I turn back to the window and try to open it. I hit the catch a couple of times with the heel of my hand, but it has rusted shut. Already I am starting to loathe this place. “All right,” I say, wiping the rust off my hand, “I’m clearly going to rely on you a great deal, Major, certainly for the first few months. This is all very new to me.”

“Naturally, Colonel. First, permit me to give you your keys.” He holds out five, on an iron ring attached to a light chain, which I could clip to my belt. “This is to the front door. This is to your office door. This is your safe. This: your desk.”

“And this?”

“That lets you into the garden of the hôtel de Brienne. When you need to see the minister, that’s the way you go. General Mercier presented the key to Colonel Sandherr.”

“What’s wrong with the front door?”

“This way’s quicker. And more private.”

“Do we have a telephone?”

“Yes, it’s outside Captain Valdant’s room.”

“What about a secretary?”

“Colonel Sandherr didn’t trust them. If you need a file, ask Gribelin. If you need help copying, you can use one of the captains. Valdant can type.”

I feel as if I have wandered into some strange religious sect, with obscure private rituals. The Ministry of War is built on the site of an old nunnery, and the officers of the General Staff on the rue Saint-Dominique are nicknamed “the Dominicians” because of their secret ways. But already I can see they have nothing on the Statistical Section.

“You were going to tell me what Captain Lauth was working on just now.”

“We have an agent inside the German Embassy. The agent supplies us regularly with documents that have been thrown away and are supposed to go to the embassy furnace to be burned with the trash. Instead they come to us. Mostly they’ve been torn up, so we have to piece them together. It’s a skilled job. Lauth is good at it.”

“This was how you first got onto Dreyfus?”

“It was.”

“By sticking together a torn-up letter?”

“Exactly.”

“My God, from such small beginnings …! Who is this agent?”

“We always use the code name ‘Auguste.’ The product is referred to as ‘the usual route.’ ”

I smile. “All right, let me put it another way: who is ‘Auguste’?” Henry is reluctant to reply, but I am determined to press him: if I am ever to get a grip on this job, I must know how the service functions from top to bottom, and the sooner the better. “Come now, Major Henry, I am the head of this section. You will have to tell me.”

Reluctantly he says, “A woman called Marie Bastian; one of the embassy cleaners. In particular she cleans the office of the German military attaché.”

“How long has she been working for us?”

“Five years. I’m her handler. I pay her two hundred francs a month.” He cannot resist adding boastfully, “It’s the greatest bargain in Europe!”

“How does she get the material to us?”

“I meet her in a church near here, sometimes every week, sometimes two—in the evenings, when it’s quiet. Nobody sees us. I take the stuff straight home.”

“You take it home?” I can’t conceal my surprise. “Is that safe?”

“Absolutely. There’s only my wife and me, and our baby lad. I sort through it there, take a quick look at whatever’s in French—I can’t understand German: Lauth handles the German stuff here.”

“I see. Good.” Although I nod in approval, this procedure strikes me as amateurish in the extreme. But I am not going to pick a fight on my first day. “I have a feeling we are going to get along very well, Major Henry.”

“I do hope so, Colonel.”

I look at my watch. “If you’ll excuse me, I shall have to go out soon to see the Chief of Staff.”

“Would you like me to come with you?”

“No.” Again I am not sure if he is being serious. “That won’t be necessary. He’s taking me to lunch.”

“Splendid. I’ll be in my office if you need me.” Our exchange is as formal as a pas de deux.

Henry salutes and leaves. I close the door and look around me. My skin crawls slightly; I feel as if I am wearing the outfit of a dead man. There are shadows on the walls where Sandherr’s pictures hung, burns on the desk from his cigarettes, ring marks on the table from his drinks. A worn track in the carpet shows where he used to push back his chair. His presence oppresses me. I find the correct key and unlock the safe. Inside are several dozen letters, unopened, addressed to various places around the city, to four or five different names—aliases presumably. These, I guess, must be reports from Sandherr’s agents that have been forwarded since he left. I open one—Unusual activity is reported in the garrison at Metz …—then close it again. Espionage work: how I loathe it. I should never have taken this posting. It seems impossible to imagine that I will ever feel at home.

Beneath the letters is a thin manila envelope containing a large photograph, twenty-five centimetres by twenty. I recognise it immediately from Dreyfus’s court-martial—a copy of the covering note, the famous bordereau, that accompanied the documents he passed to the Germans. It was the central evidence against him produced in court. Until this morning I had no idea how the Statistical Section had got its hands on it. And no wonder. I have to admire Lauth’s handiwork. Nobody looking at it could tell it had once been ripped into pieces: all the tear marks have been carefully touched out, so that it seems like a whole document.

I sit at the desk and unlock it. Despite the slow progressive nature of his illness, Sandherr seems to have ended up vacating the premises in a hurry. A few odds and ends have been left behind. They roll about when I pull open the drawers. Pieces of chalk. A ball of sealing wax. Some foreign coins. Four bullets. And various tins and bottles of medicine: mercury, extract of guaiacum, potassium iodine.

General de Boisdeffre gives me lunch at the Jockey Club to celebrate my appointment, which is decent of him. The windows are all closed, the doors are shut, bowls of freesias and sweet peas have been placed on every table. But nothing can entirely dispel the sweetly sour odour of human excrement. Boisdeffre affects not to notice. He orders a good white burgundy and drinks most of it, his high cheeks gradually flushing the colour of a Virginia creeper in autumn. I drink sparingly and keep a tiny notebook open beside my plate like a good staff officer.

The president of the club, Sosthènes de La Rochefoucauld, duc de Doudeauville, is at the neighbouring table. He comes across to greet the general. Boisdeffre introduces me. The duc’s nose and cheekbones look as delicately ridged and fragile as meringues; his handshake is a brush of papery skin against my fingers.

Over potted trout the general talks about the new tsar, Nicholas II. Boisdeffre is anxious to be informed of any Russian anarchist cells that may be active in Paris. “I want you to keep your ears open wide for that one; anything we can pass on to Moscow will be valuable in negotiations.” He swallows a morsel of fish and goes on: “An alliance with Russia will solve our inferiority vis-à-vis the Germans with one diplomatic stroke. It is worth a hundred thousand men, at least. That is why half my time is devoted to foreign affairs. At the highest level, the border between the military and the political ceases to exist. But we must never forget the army must always be above mere party politics.”

This prompts him to reminisce about Mercier, no longer Minister of War but now seeing out the years before his retirement as commander of the 4th Army Corps at Le Mans. “He was right to foresee that the President might fall, wrong to believe that he stood any chance of replacing him.”

I am so surprised I stop eating, my fork poised midway to my mouth. “General Mercier thought that he might become president?”

“Indeed, he entertained that delusion. This is one of the problems with a republic—at least under a monarchy no one seriously imagines he can become king. When Monsieur Casimir-Perier resigned in January, and the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies convened at Versailles to elect his successor, General Mercier’s ‘friends’—as it would be delicate to call them—had a flyer circulated, calling on them to elect the man who had just delivered the traitor Dreyfus to the court-martial. He received precisely three votes out of eight hundred.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I believe it was what our English friends call ‘a long shot.’ ” Boisdeffre smiles. “But now of course the politicians will never forgive him.” He dabs at his moustache with his napkin. “You’ll have to think a little more politically from now on, Colonel, if you’re going to fulfil the great hopes we all have of you.” I bow my head slightly, as if the Chief of Staff is hanging a decoration round my neck. He says, “Tell me, what do you make of the Dreyfus business?”

“Distasteful,” I reply. “Squalid. Distracting. I’m glad it’s over.”

“Ah, but is it, though? I am thinking politically here, rather than militarily. The Jews are a most persistent race. For them, Dreyfus sitting on his rock is like an aching tooth. It obsesses them. They won’t leave it alone.”

“He’s an emblem of their shame. But what can they do?”

“I’m not sure. But they’ll do something, we may count on that.” Boisdeffre stares over the traffic in the rue Rabelais and falls silent for a few moments. His profile in the odiferous sunlight is immensely distinguished, carved in flesh by centuries of breeding. I am reminded of the effigy of a long-suffering Norman knight, kneeling in some Bayeux chapel. He says thoughtfully, “What Dreyfus said to that young captain, about not having a motive for treason—I think we ought to be ready with an answer to that. I’d like you to keep the case active. Investigate the family—‘feed the file,’ as your predecessor used to say. See if you can find a little more evidence about motives that we can hold in reserve in case we need it.”

“Yes, of course, General.” I add it to the list in my notebook, just beneath “Russian anarchists”: “Dreyfus: motive?”

The rillettes de canard arrive and the conversation moves on to the current German naval review at Kiel.

That afternoon I extract the agents’ letters from the safe in my new office, stuff them into my briefcase and set off to visit Colonel Sandherr. His address, given to me by Gribelin, is only a ten-minute walk away, across the river in the rue Léonce Reynaud. His wife answers the door. When I tell her I’m her husband’s successor, she draws back her head like a snake about to strike: “You have his position, monsieur, what more do you want from him?”

“If it’s inconvenient, madame, I can come back another time.”

“Oh, can you? How kind! But why would it be convenient for him to see you at any time?”

“It’s all right, my dear.” From somewhere behind her comes Sandherr’s weary voice. “Picquart is an Alsace man. Let him in.”

“You,” she mutters bitterly, still staring at me although she is addressing her husband, “you’re too good to these people!” Nevertheless, she stands aside to let me pass.

Sandherr calls out, “I’m in the bedroom, Picquart, come through,” and I follow the direction of his voice into a heavily shaded room that smells of disinfectant. He is propped up in bed in a nightshirt. He switches on a lamp. As he turns his unshaven face towards me, I see it is covered in sores, some still raw and weeping, others pitted and dry. I had heard there had been a sharp deterioration in his condition; I had no idea it was as bad as this. He warns: “I’d stay there if I were you.”

“Excuse me for this intrusion, Colonel,” I say, trying not to allow my distaste to show, “but I rather need your help.” I hoist the briefcase to show him.

“I thought you might.” He points a wavering finger at my case. “It’s all in there, is it? Let me see.”

I take out the letters and approach the bed. “I assume they’re from agents.” I place them on his blanket, just within his reach, and step back. “But I don’t know who they are, or who to trust.”

“My watchword is: don’t trust anyone, then you won’t be disappointed.” He turns to stretch for his spectacles on the nightstand and I see how the sores that swirl under the stubble of his jaw and throat run in a livid track across the side of his neck. He puts on the glasses and squints at one of the letters. “Sit down. Pull up that chair. Do you have a pencil? You will need to write this down.”

For the next two hours, with barely a pause for breath, Sandherr takes me on a guided tour through his secret world: this man works in a laundry supplying the German garrison in Metz; that man has a position in the railway company on the eastern frontier; she is the mistress of a German officer in Mulhouse; he is a petty criminal in Lorraine who will burgle houses to order; he is a drunk; he is a homosexual; she is a patriot who keeps house for the military governor and who lost her nephew in ’70; trust this one and that one; take no notice of him or her; he needs three hundred francs immediately; he should be dispensed with altogether … I take it down at dictation speed until we have worked through all the letters. He gives me a list of other agents and their code names from memory, and tells me to ask Gribelin for their addresses. He starts to tire.

“Would you like me to leave?” I ask.

“In a minute.” He gestures feebly. “In the chiffonier over there are a couple of things you ought to have.” He watches as I kneel to open it. I take out a metal cash box, very heavy, and also a large envelope. “Open them,” he says. The cash box is unlocked. Inside is a small fortune in gold coins and banknotes: mostly French francs, but also German marks and English pounds. He says, “There should be about forty-eight thousand francs’ worth. When you run short, speak to Boisdeffre. Monsieur Paléologue of the Foreign Ministry is also under instructions to contribute. Use it for agents, special payments. Be sure to keep plenty by you. Put the box in your bag.”

I do as he tells me, and then I open the envelope. It contains about a hundred sheets of paper: lists of names and addresses, neatly handwritten, arranged by département.

Sandherr says, “It needs to be kept updated.”

“What is it?”

“My life’s work.” He emits a dry laugh, which degenerates into a cough.

I turn the pages. There must be two or three thousand people listed. “Who are they all?”

“Suspected traitors, to be arrested immediately in the event of war. The regional police are only allowed to know the names in their respective areas. There is one other master copy apart from that one, which the minister keeps. There’s also a longer list that Gribelin has.”

“Longer?”

“It contains one hundred thousand names.”

“What a list!” I exclaim. “It must be as thick as a Bible! Who are they?”

“Aliens, to be interned if hostilities break out. And that doesn’t include the Jews.”

“You think if there’s a war the Jews should be interned?”

“At the very least they should be obliged to register, and placed under curfew and travel restrictions.” Shakily, Sandherr removes his spectacles and places them on the nightstand. He lies back on the pillow and closes his eyes. “My wife is very loyal to me, as you saw—more loyal than most wives would be in these circumstances. She thinks it’s a disgrace I’ve been placed on the retired list. But I tell her I’m happy to fade into the background. When I look around Paris and see the number of foreigners everywhere, and consider the degeneracy of every moral and artistic standard, I realise I no longer know my own city. This is why we lost in ’70—the nation is no longer pure.”

I begin gathering up the letters and packing them into my briefcase. This sort of talk always bores me: old men complaining that the world is going to the dogs. It’s so banal. I am anxious to get away from this oppressive presence. But there is one other thing I need to ask. “You mention the Jews,” I say. “General Boisdeffre is worried about a potential revival of interest in the Dreyfus case.”

“General Boisdeffre,” says Sandherr, as if stating a scientific fact, “is an old woman.”

“He’s concerned at the lack of an obvious motive …”

“Motive?” mutters Sandherr. His head starts shaking on the pillow, whether in disbelief or from the effects of his condition I cannot tell. “What is he prattling on about? Motive? Dreyfus is a Jew, more German than French! Most of his family live in Germany! All his income was derived from Germany. How much more motive does the general require?”

“Nevertheless, he’d like me to ‘feed the file.’ Those were his words.”

“The Dreyfus file is fat enough. Seven judges saw it and unanimously declared him guilty. Talk to Henry about it if you have any trouble.”

And with that Sandherr draws the blankets around his shoulders and rolls onto his side with his back to me. I wait for a minute or so. Eventually I thank him for his help and say goodbye. But if he hears me, he makes no answer.

I stand on the pavement outside Sandherr’s apartment, mometarily dazzled by the daylight after the gloom of his sickroom. My briefcase stuffed with money and the names of traitors and spies feels heavy in my hand. As I cross the avenue du Trocadéro in search of a cab, I glance to my left to make sure I am not about to be run over, at which point I vaguely register an elegant apartment block with a double door, and the number 6 on a blue tile beside it. At first I think nothing of it, but then I come to a dead stop and look at it again: no. 6 avenue du Trocadéro. I recognise this address. I have seen it written down many times. This is where Dreyfus was living at the time of his arrest.

I glance back to the rue Léonce Reynaud. It is, of course, a coincidence, but still a singular one: that Dreyfus should have lived so close to his nemesis they could practically have seen each other from their respective front doors; at the very least they must have passed in the street often, walking to and from the War Ministry at the same times every day. I step to the edge of the pavement, tilt my head back and shield my eyes to examine the grand apartment building. Each tall window has a wrought-iron balcony, wide enough to sit on, looking out across the Seine—a much more opulent property than the Sandherrs’, tucked away in its narrow cobbled street.

My eye is caught by something at a first-floor window: the pale face of a young boy, like an invalid confined indoors, looking down at me; an adult comes to join him—a young woman with a face as white as his, framed by dark curls—his mother, perhaps. She stands behind him with her hands on his arms, and together they stare at me—a uniformed colonel watching them from the street—until she whispers in his ear and gently pulls him away, and they disappear.