Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

There was a deluge of rain this morning. When there was an interval I made the round of the small portion of the little island which is reserved to me. It is a barren place; there are a few banana trees and cocoa palms, and dry soil from which basaltic rock emerges everywhere, and that restless ocean which is always howling and muttering at my feet!

I have been thinking much of you, my dear wife, and of our children. I wonder whether my letters reach you. What a sad and terrible martyrdom is this for both of us, for all of us! The guards are forbidden to speak to me. Days pass without a word. My isolation is so complete that it often seems to me that I have been buried alive.

The conditions under which Lucie is allowed to write are strict. She is not allowed to mention the case, or any events relating to it. She is instructed to deposit all letters at the Colonial Ministry by the 25th of each month. These are then carefully copied and read by the relevant officials in that ministry and in the Ministry of War. Copies are also passed to Major Étienne Bazeries, chief of the cipher bureau in the Foreign Ministry, who checks to see if they may contain encoded messages. (Major Bazeries also scrutinises Dreyfus’s letters to Lucie.) I see from the file that the first batch of her letters reached Cayenne at the end of March, but was returned to Paris to be checked again. Only on 12 June, after a four-month silence, did Dreyfus finally receive word from home:

My darling Fred,

I cannot tell you the sadness and the grief I feel while you are going further and further away. My days pass in anxious thoughts, my nights in frightful dreams. Only the children, with their pretty ways and the pure innocence of their souls, succeed in reminding me of the one compelling duty I must fulfil, and that I have no right to give way. So then I gather strength and put my whole heart into bringing them up as you always desired, following your good counsels, and endeavouring to make them noble in heart, so that when you come back you will find your children worthy of their father, and as you would have moulded them.

With my love always, my dearest husband,

Your devoted

Lucie

The file ends here. I put down the last page and light a cigarette. I have been so absorbed, I haven’t registered that dawn has come. Behind me in the bedroom I can hear Pauline moving around. I go into my tiny kitchen to make coffee and by the time I emerge carrying two cups she is already dressed and looking around for something.

‘I won’t,’ she says distractedly, noticing the coffee, ‘thank you. I have to go but I’m missing a stocking. Ah!’

She sees it and swoops to retrieve it. She rests her instep on a chair and unrolls the white silk over her toes and heel and strokes it up her calf.

I watch her. ‘You look like a Manet: Nana in the Morning .’

‘Isn’t Nana a whore?’

‘Only in the eyes of bourgeois morality.’

‘Yes, well I am bourgeois. And so are you. And so, more to the point, are most of your neighbours.’ She pulls on her shoe and smooths down her dress. ‘If I leave now, they may not see me.’

I pick up her jacket and help her on with it. ‘At least wait while I put on some clothes, and I’ll take you home.’

‘That would rather defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?’ She picks up her bag. Her brightness is terrible. ‘Goodbye, my darling,’ she says. ‘Write to me soon,’ and with the briefest of kisses she is out of the door and gone.

I arrive at the office so early that I expect to have the building to myself. But Bachir, who is dozing in his chair, wakes when I shake him and says that Major Henry is already in his room. I walk upstairs, along the passage, knock briefly on his door and go straight in. My second-in-command is bent over his desk with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers; various documents are strewn in front of him. He looks up in surprise. The spectacles perched on the end of his snub nose make him look unexpectedly old and vulnerable. He seems to feel the same; at any rate he quickly takes them off as he gets to his feet.

‘Good morning, Colonel. You’re in bright and early.’

‘So are you, Major. I’m starting to think you live here! This needs to go back to the Colonial Ministry.’ I hand him the Dreyfus correspondence file. ‘I’ve finished with it.’

‘Thanks. What did you make of it?’

‘The degree of censorship is extraordinary. I’m not sure there’s any need to restrict their correspondence quite so drastically.’

‘Ah!’ Henry gives one of his smirks. ‘Perhaps you have a more tender heart than the rest of us, Colonel.’

I refuse the bait. ‘Actually, it’s not that. If we were to allow Madame Dreyfus to tell her husband what she’s doing, it would save us the trouble of having to find out. And if he were permitted to say more about his case, he might make a mistake and reveal something we don’t know. In any case, if we’re going to eavesdrop, let’s at least encourage them to say something.’

‘I’ll pass that along.’

‘Do.’ I glance down at the desk. ‘What’s all this?’

‘Agent Auguste has made a fresh delivery.’

‘When did you pick it up?’

‘Two nights ago.’

I examine a couple of the torn-up notes. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘Not bad.’

The letters have been ripped into fragments the size of a fingernail: the German military attaché, Colonel Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen, is obviously careful to shred his communications into unusually tiny pieces. But it is stupid of him not to realise that the only secure way to dispose of paper is to burn it. Henry and Lauth are adept at piecing the scraps back together using tiny strips of transparent adhesive paper to repair the tears. The extra layer imparts to the documents a mysterious texture and stiffness. I turn them over. These are in French rather than German, and filled with romantic touches: mon cher ami adoré. . mon adorable lieutenant. . mon pioupiou. . mon Maxi. . je suis à toi. . toujours à toi. . toute à toi, mille et mille tendresses. . à toi toujours .

‘I take it these aren’t from the Kaiser. Or maybe they are.’

Henry grins. ‘Our adorable “Colonel Maxi” is having an affair with a married woman, which is a very foolish thing for a man in his position to do.’

For an instant I wonder if this is a barb aimed at me, but when I glance at Henry, he is not looking in my direction but at the letter, with an expression of lascivious satisfaction.

I say, ‘I thought that Schwartzkoppen was homosexual?’

‘Wives or husbands, apparently it’s all the same to him.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She signs herself Madame Cornet, which is a false name. She uses her sister’s address as a poste restante. But we’ve followed Schwartzkoppen five times now to their little assignations and we’ve identified her as the wife of the councillor of the Dutch legation. She’s called Hermance de Weede.’

‘A pretty name.’

‘For a pretty girl. Thirty-two. Three young kids. He certainly spreads his favours, the gallant colonel.’

‘How long has this been going on?’

‘Since January. We’ve observed them having lunch in a booth at la Tour d’Argent — they took a room in the hotel upstairs afterwards. We’ve also followed them strolling around the Champs de Mars. He’s careless.’

‘And why is it of such interest to us that we expend our resources following a man and a woman who are having an affair?’

Henry regards me as if I am a halfwit. ‘Because it leaves him open to blackmail.’

‘By whom?’

‘By us. By anyone. It’s hardly something he’d want known, is it?’