Robert Harris: An Officer and a Spy

The ministerial office is unchanged since the days of Mercier and Billot, still panelled in duck-egg blue, although Pauline, who acts as chatelaine, likes to arrange fresh flowers each day on the table between the large windows overlooking the garden. The trees this afternoon are bare; the lights of the ministry burn bright in the late November gloom.

‘Sit down, Major,’ I say. ‘Make yourself comfortable. Have you been in here before?’

‘No, Minister.’ He lowers himself on to the gilt chair and sits very formally, stiff-backed.

I take the seat opposite him. He has thickened out, looks good, almost sleek in his expensively cut uniform. The pale blue eyes behind the familiar pince-nez are wary. ‘So then,’ I say, putting my fingertips together, and contemplating him long and hard, ‘what is it you want to discuss?’

‘It concerns my rank,’ he says. ‘The promotion I have received, from captain to major, takes no account of the years I spent wrongly imprisoned on Devil’s Island. Whereas your promotion — if you’ll forgive me for pointing it out — from colonel to brigadier general, treats your eight years out of the army as though they were spent in active service. I believe this is unfair — prejudiced, in fact.’

‘I see.’ I feel my smile hardening. ‘And what do you want me to do about it?’

‘Rectify it. Promote me to the rank I should have achieved.’

‘Which would be what, in your opinion?’

‘Lieutenant colonel.’

I pause. ‘But that would require special legislation, Major. The government would have to go back to the Chamber of Deputies and introduce a new motion.’

‘It should be done. It is the right thing.’

‘No. It is impossible.’

‘Might I ask why?’

‘Because,’ I say in exasperation, ‘it is politically impossible. The motion passed in July, when feelings were overwhelmingly in your favour because it was the day after your exoneration. This is now November — the mood is already quite different. Also, I have a difficult enough task as it is — as I’m sure you will appreciate — coming back into this building as Minister of War and trying to work with so many officers who were for so long our bitter enemies. I must swallow my anger every day and put past battles behind me. How can I now turn round to them and tear open the whole controversy yet again?’

‘Because it is the right thing to do.’

‘I’m sorry, Dreyfus. It simply cannot be.’

We sit in silence. Suddenly there is more than just a strip of carpet between us: there is a chasm, and I would number those few seconds as among the most excruciating of my life. Eventually I can bear it no longer and get to my feet. ‘If that is all. .?’

At once, Dreyfus also stands. ‘Yes, that is all.’

I show him towards the door. It seems an appalling note on which to end.

‘It is a matter of some regret to me, Major,’ I say carefully, ‘that we have not met alone in private until now.’

‘No. Not since the morning of my arrest, when you took me to your office before conducting me to meet Colonel du Paty.’

I feel my face colouring. ‘Yes, I apologise for my part in that lugubrious charade.’

‘Ah well. You made up for it, I think!’ Dreyfus looks around the office and nods in appreciation. ‘It is a great thing to have done all that, and at the end of it to have been appointed to the Cabinet of the French Republic.’

‘And yet, you know, the strange truth is I would never have attained it without you.’

‘No, my General,’ says Dreyfus, ‘you attained it because you did your duty.’