At this point I have to press my forefinger across my lips to hide a smile, for the monologue is not without its comic elements – all the greater when delivered in Gonse’s hoarse and outraged tones. I can only imagine what it must have been like for Lebrun-Renault to turn around and see Gonse bearing down upon him, or his frantic attempts to sober up before explaining his actions, first to the Minister of War, and then, in what must have been an exquisitely embarrassing interview, to President Casimir-Perier himself.
‘There is nothing at all funny about this, Major!’ Gonse has detected my amusement. ‘We are in no condition to fight a war against Germany! If they were to decide to use this as a pretext to attack us, then God help France!’
‘Of course, General.’ Gonse is part of that generation – Mercier and Boisdeffre are of it too – who were scarred as young officers by the rout of 1870 and have been frightened of the Germans’ shadow ever since. ‘Three-to-two’ is their mantra of pessimism: there are three Germans to every two Frenchmen; they spend three francs on armaments to every two that we can afford. I rather despise them for their defeatism. ‘How has Berlin reacted?’
‘Some form of words is being negotiated in the Foreign Ministry to the effect that the Germans are no more responsible for the documents that get sent to them than we are for the ones that come to us.’
‘They have a nerve!’
‘Not really. They’re just providing cover for their agent. We’d do the same. But it’s been touch and go all day, I can tell you.’
The more I think of it, the more amazing it seems. ‘They’d really break off diplomatic relations and risk a war just to protect one spy?’
‘Well, of course, they’re embarrassed at being caught out. It’s humiliating for them. Typical damned Prussian overreaction . . .’
His hand is shaking. He lights a fresh cigarette from his old one and drops the stub into the sawn-off cap of a shell case which serves as his ashtray. He picks a few shreds of tobacco from his tongue then settles back in his couch and regards me through the cloud of smoke. ‘You haven’t touched your drink, I see.’
‘I prefer to keep a clear head when talk turns to war.’
‘Ah! That’s exactly when I find I need one!’ He drains his glass and toys with it. He smiles at me. I can tell he’s desperate for another by the way he glances over at the decanter, but he doesn’t want to look like a drunk in front of me. He clears his throat and says: ‘The minister has been impressed by you, Picquart; by your conduct throughout this whole affair. So has the Chief of Staff. You’ve obviously gained valuable experience of secret intelligence over the past three months. So we have it in mind to recommend you for promotion. We’re thinking of offering you command of the Statistical Section.’
I try to hide my dismay. Espionage is grubby work. Everything I have seen of the Dreyfus case has reinforced that view. It isn’t what I joined the army to do. ‘But surely,’ I object, ‘the section already has a very able commander in Colonel Sandherr?’
‘He is able. But Sandherr is a sick man, and between you and me he isn’t likely to recover. Also, he’s been in the post ten years; he needs a rest. Now, Picquart, forgive me, but I have to ask you this, given the nature of the secret information you’d be handling – there isn’t anything in your past or private life that could leave you open to blackmail, is there?’
With gathering dismay I realise my fate has already been decided, perhaps the previous afternoon when Gonse met Mercier and Boisdeffre. ‘No,’ I say, ‘not that I’m aware of.’
‘You’re not married, I believe?’
‘No.’
‘Any particular reason for that?’
‘I like my own company. And I can’t afford a wife.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all.’
‘Any money worries?’
‘No money.’ I shrug. ‘No worries.’
‘Good.’ Gonse looks relieved. ‘Then it’s settled.’
But still I struggle against my destiny. ‘You realise the existing staff won’t like an outsider coming in – what about Colonel Sandherr’s deputy?’
‘He’s retiring.’
‘Or Major Henry?’
‘Oh, Henry’s a good soldier. He’ll soon knuckle down and do what’s best for the section.’
‘Doesn’t he want the job himself?’
‘He does, but he lacks the education, and the social polish for such a senior position. His wife’s father keeps an inn, I believe.’
‘But I know nothing about spying—’
‘Come now, my dear Picquart!’ Gonse is starting to become irritated. ‘You have exactly the qualities for the post. Where’s the problem? It’s true the unit doesn’t exist officially. There’ll be no parades or stories in the newspapers. You won’t be able to tell anyone what you’re up to. But everyone who’s important will know exactly what you’re doing. You’ll have daily access to the minister. And of course you’ll be promoted to colonel.’ He gives me a shrewd look. ‘How old are you?’
‘Forty.’
‘Forty! There’s no one else in the entire army of that rank at your age. Think of it: you should make general long before you’re fifty! And after that . . . You could be Chief one day.’
Gonse knows exactly how to play me. I am ambitious, though not consumed by it, I hope: I appreciate there are other things in life besides the army – still, I would like to ride my talents as far as they will take me. I calculate: a couple of years in a job I don’t much like, and at the end of them my prospects will be golden. My resistance falters. I surrender.
‘When might this happen?’
‘Not immediately. In a few months. I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it to anyone.’
I nod. ‘Of course, I shall do whatever the army wants me to do. I’m grateful for your faith in me. I’ll try to prove worthy of it.’
‘Good man! I’m sure you will. Now I insist you have that drink that’s still sitting next to you . . .’
And so it is settled. We toast my future. We toast the army. And then Gonse shows me out. At the door, he puts his hand on my arm and squeezes it paternally. His breath is sweet with cognac and cigarette smoke. ‘I know you think spying isn’t proper soldiering, Georges, but it is. In the modern age, this is the front line. We have to fight the Germans every day. They’re stronger than we are in men and materiel – “three-to-two”, remember! – so we have to be sharper in intelligence.’ His grip on my arm tightens. ‘Exposing a traitor like Dreyfus is as vital to France as winning a battle in the field.’
Outside it is starting to snow again. All along the avenue Victor Hugo countless thousands of snowflakes are caught in the glow of the gas lamps. A white carpet is being laid across the road. It’s odd. I am about to become the youngest colonel in the French army but I feel no sense of exhilaration.
In my apartment Pauline waits. She has kept on the same plain grey dress she wore at lunch so that I may have the pleasure of taking it off her. She turns to allow me to unfasten it at the back, lifting her hair in both hands so that I can reach the top hook. I kiss the nape of her neck and murmur into her skin: ‘How long do we have?’
‘An hour. He thinks I’m at church. Your lips are cold. Where have you been?’
I am about to tell her, but then remember Gouse’s instruction. ‘Nowhere,’ I say.
* * *
1 The war of 1870 between France and Germany resulted in a crushing defeat for the French army, which suffered over 140,000 casualties. Under the terms of the armistice, the eastern territories of Alsace and Lorraine became part of Germany.
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 sti
nk’ 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! Folk’s 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 on to 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 on to 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.’