Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

‘It’s always an easy mistake to make,’ continues Henry, ‘if you’re new to this game, to think that the first dodgy fellow you come across is a master spy. It’s seldom the case. In fact you can end up doing a lot more damage by overreacting than the so-called traitor has caused in the first place.’

‘You are not suggesting, I hope,’ I reply stiffly, ‘that we just leave him to carry on supplying information to a foreign power, even if it may be of little value?’

‘Not at all! I agree absolutely we should keep an eye on him. I just think we should keep it in proportion. Why don’t I ask Guénée to start sniffing around, see what he can find out?’

‘No, I don’t want Guénée handling this.’ Guénée is another member of Henry’s gang. ‘I want to use someone else for a change.’

‘As you wish,’ says Henry. ‘Tell me who you’d like and I’ll assign him.’

‘No, actually, thank you for the offer, but I’ll assign him.’ I smile at Henry. ‘The extra experience will do me good. Please. .’ I indicate the door. ‘And again: welcome back. Would you mind telling Gribelin to come down and see me?’

What is particularly galling about Henry’s pious little sermon is that I can see the truth in it. He’s right: I have allowed my imagination to build Esterhazy up into a traitor on the scale of Dreyfus, whereas in fact, as Henry says, all the evidence indicates that he hasn’t done anything very much. Still, I am not going to give him the satisfaction of letting him take over the operation. I shall keep this one to myself. Thus when Gribelin comes to see me, I tell him I want a list of all the police agents the section has used recently, together with their addresses and a brief service history. He goes away and comes back half an hour later with a dozen names.

Gribelin is an enigma to me: the epitome of the servile bureaucrat; an animated corpse. He could be any age between forty and sixty and is as thin as a wraith of black smoke, the only colour he wears. Mostly he closets himself alone upstairs in his archive; on the rare occasions he does appear he creeps along close to the wall, dark and silent as a shadow. I could imagine him slipping around the edge of a closed door, or sliding beneath it. The only sound he emits occasionally is the clinking of the bunch of keys that is attached to his waist by a chain. He stands now with perfect stillness in front of my desk while I scan the list. I ask him which of the agents he would recommend. He refuses to be drawn: ‘They are all good men.’ He doesn’t ask me why I need an agent: Gribelin is as discreet as a papal confessor.

In the end I select a young officer with the Sûreté, Jean-Alfred Desvernine, attached to the police division at the gare Saint-Lazare. He’s a former lieutenant of the dragoons from the Médoc, risen through the ranks, obliged to resign his commission because of gambling debts, but who has made an honest fist of his life since: if anyone has a chance of prising open the secrets of Esterhazy’s addiction, I reckon it will be him.

After Gribelin has slunk away, I write Desvernine a message asking him to meet me the day after tomorrow. Rather than inviting him to the office, where Henry and Lauth will be able to see him, I propose a meeting at nine in the morning outside the Louvre museum, in the place du Carrousel. I tell him I shall be in civilian dress, with a frock coat and a bowler hat, and with a red carnation in my buttonhole and a copy of Le Figaro under my arm. As I seal the envelope, I reflect how easily I am slipping into the clichés of the spying world. It alarms me. Already I trust no one. How long before I am raving like Sandherr about degenerates and foreigners? It is a déformation professionnelle : all spymasters must go mad in the end.

On Wednesday morning, suitably accoutred, I present myself outside the Louvre. From the lines of tourists suddenly emerges a keen-looking, fresh-faced man with a salt-and-pepper moustache, who I take to be Desvernine. We exchange nods. I realise he must have been watching me for several minutes.

‘You’re not being followed, Colonel,’ he says quietly, ‘at least not as far as I can tell. However, I suggest we take a walk into the museum, if that’s agreeable, where it will look more natural if I need to make notes.’

‘Whatever you advise: this sort of thing is not my line.’

‘Quite right too, Colonel — leave it to the likes of me.’

He has a sportsman’s open shoulders and rolling walk. I follow him towards the nearest pavilion. It is early in the day, and therefore not yet crowded. In the vestibule there is a cloakroom by the entrance, stairs straight ahead, and galleries to our left and right. When Desvernine turns right, I make a protest: ‘Do we have to go in there? That’s the most awful rubbish.’

‘Really? It all looks the same to me.’

‘You handle the police work, Desvernine; leave the culture to me. We’ll go in here.’

I buy a guidebook and in the Galerie Denon, which has the smell of a schoolroom, we stand together and contemplate a bronze of Commodus as Hercules — a Renaissance copy from the Vatican. The gallery is almost deserted.

I say, ‘This must remain between the two of us, understood? If your superiors try to discover what you’re doing, refer them to me.’

‘I understand.’ Desvernine takes out his notebook and pencil.

‘I want you to find out everything you can about an army major by the name of Charles Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.’ My voice echoes even when I whisper. ‘He sometimes calls himself Count Esterhazy. He’s forty-eight years old, serving with the 74th Infantry Regiment in Rouen. He’s married to the daughter of the marquis de Nettancourt. He gambles, plays the stock market, generally leads a dissolute life — you’ll know where to look for such a character better than I.’

Desvernine flushes slightly. ‘When do you need this done?’

‘As quickly as possible. Would it be possible to have a preliminary report next week?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘One other thing: I’m interested in how often Esterhazy goes to the German Embassy.’

If Desvernine finds this last request surprising, he is too professional to show it. We must make an odd couple: I in my bowler and frock coat, apparently reading the guidebook and holding forth; he in a shabby brown suit, taking down my dictation. But nobody is looking at us. We move along to the next exhibit. The guidebook lists it as Boy extracting a thorn from his foot .

Desvernine says, ‘We should meet somewhere different next time, just as a precaution.’

‘What about the restaurant at the gare Saint-Lazare?’ I suggest, remembering my trip to Rouen. ‘That’s on your patch.’

‘I know it well.’

‘Next Thursday, at seven in the evening?’

‘Agreed.’ He writes it down then puts away his notebook and stares at the bronze sculpture. He scratches his head. ‘You really think this stuff is good, Colonel?’

‘No, I didn’t say that. As so often in life, it’s just better than the alternative.’

Not all my time is devoted to investigating Esterhazy. I have other things to worry about — not least, the treasonable activity of homing pigeons.

Gribelin brings me the file. It has been sent over from the rue Saint-Dominique, and as he hands it to me I detect at last a faint gleam of malicious pleasure in those dull eyes. It seems that pigeon-fanciers in England are in the habit of transporting their birds to Cherbourg and releasing them to fly back across the Channel. Some nine thousand are set loose each year: a harmless if unappealing pastime which Colonel Sandherr, in the final phase of his illness, decided might pose a threat to national security and should be banned, for what if the birds were used to carry secret messages? This piece of madness has been grinding its way through the Ministry of the Interior for the best part of a year, and a law has been prepared. Now General Boisdeffre insists that I, as chief of the Statistical Section, must prepare the Ministry of War’s opinion on the draft legislation.