Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

And with that Sandherr draws the blankets around his shoulders and rolls on to 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 he 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 one another 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.

The following morning I describe the strange apparition to Major Henry. He frowns.

‘The first-floor window of number six? That must have been Dreyfus’s wife, and his little boy — what is he called? — Pierre, that’s it. And there’s a girl, Jeanne. Madame Dreyfus keeps the kids at home all day, so they don’t pick up stories about their father. She’s told them he’s on a special mission abroad.’

‘And they believe her?’

‘Why wouldn’t they? They’re only tiny.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Oh, we still keep an eye on them, don’t worry.’

‘How close an eye?’

‘We have an agent on their domestic staff. We follow them. We intercept their mail.’

‘Even six months after Dreyfus was convicted?’

‘Colonel Sandherr had a theory that Dreyfus might turn out to be part of a spying syndicate. He thought that if we watched the family we might uncover leads to other traitors.’

‘But we haven’t?’

‘Not yet.’

I lounge back in my chair and study Henry. He is friendly-looking, apparently out of condition but still, I would guess, underneath the layer of fat, physically strong: the sort of fellow who would be stood a lot of drinks in a bar, and would know how to tell a good story when he was in the mood. We are about as dissimilar as it is possible for two men to be. ‘Did you know,’ I ask, ‘that Colonel Sandherr’s apartment is only about a hundred metres from the Dreyfus place?’

From time to time a sly look can come into Henry’s eyes. It is the only crack in his armour of bonhomie. He says, in an off-handed way, ‘Is it as close as that? I hadn’t realised.’

‘Yes. In fact it seems to me, looking at the location, they’re bound to have met occasionally, even if only casually in the street.’

‘That may well be. I do know the colonel tried to avoid him. He didn’t like him — thought he was always asking too many questions.’

I bet he didn’t like him , I think. The Jew with the vast apartment and a view of the river. . I imagine Sandherr striding briskly towards the rue Saint-Dominique at nine o’clock one morning and the young captain attempting to fall in beside him and engage him in conversation. Dreyfus always seemed to me, when I dealt with him, to have something missing from his brain: some vital piece of social equipment which should have told him when he was boring people or that they didn’t wish to speak to him. But he was incapable of recognising his effect on others, while Sandherr, who could see a conspiracy in a pair of butterflies alighting on the same bloom, would have become increasingly suspicious of his inquisitive Jewish neighbour.

I open my desk drawer and take out the various medicines I discovered the previous day: a couple of tins and two small dark blue bottles. I show them to Henry. ‘Colonel Sandherr left these behind.’

‘That was an oversight. May I?’ Henry takes them from me with fumbling hands. In his clumsiness he almost drops one of the bottles. ‘I’ll see they get returned to him.’

I can’t resist saying, ‘Mercury, extract of guaiacum and potassium iodine. . You do know what these are normally used to treat, don’t you?’

‘No. I’m not a doctor. .’

I decide not to pursue it. ‘I want a full report of what the Dreyfus family are up to — who they’re seeing, whatever they might be doing to help the prisoner. I also want to read all of Dreyfus’s correspondence, to and from Devil’s Island. I assume it’s being censored, and we have copies?’

‘Naturally. I’ll tell Gribelin to arrange it.’ He hesitates. ‘Might I ask, Colonel: why all this interest in Dreyfus?’

‘General Boisdeffre thinks it might turn into a political issue. He wants us to be prepared.’

‘I understand. I’ll get on to it at once.’

He leaves, cradling Sandherr’s medicines. Of course he knows exactly what they’re prescribed for: we’ve both hauled enough men out of unregistered brothels in our time to know the standard treatment. And so I am left to ponder the implications of inheriting a secret intelligence service from a predecessor who is apparently suffering from tertiary syphilis, more commonly known as general paralysis of the insane.

That afternoon I write my first secret intelligence report for the General Staff — a blanc , as they are known in the rue Saint-Dominique. I cobble it together from the local German newspapers and from one of the agents’ letters that Sandherr has elucidated for me: A correspondent from Metz reports that, for the past few days, there has been great activity among the troops in the Metz garrison. There is no noise and alarm in the city, but the military authorities are pushing the troops intensively. .

I read it over when I’ve finished and ask myself: is this important? Is it even true? Frankly, I have not the faintest idea. I know only that I am expected to submit a blanc at least once a week, and that this is the best I can do for my first attempt. I send it over the road to the Chief of Staff’s office, bracing myself for a rebuke for crediting such worthless gossip. Instead, Boisdeffre acknowledges receipt, thanks me, forwards a copy to the head of the infantry (I can imagine the conversation in the officers’ club: I hear on the grapevine that the Germans are up to something in Metz. . ), and fifty thousand troops in the eastern frontier region have their lives made slightly more miserable by several days of additional drills and forced marches.

It is my first lesson in the cabalistic power of ‘secret intelligence’: two words that can make otherwise sane men abandon their reason and cavort like idiots.