Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

‘Oh God!’

Yet again I describe Esterhazy’s activities and the operation we have mounted to watch him. I give Billot a few more details than I did Boisdeffre; in particular I tell him about the debriefing mission that is under way in Basel. I show him the petit bleu and the surveillance photographs. But I don’t mention Dreyfus: I know that if I did, it would blot out everything else.

Billot interjects a number of shrewd questions. How valuable is this material? Why didn’t Esterhazy’s commanding officer notice something strange about him? Are we sure he’s operating alone? He keeps returning to the image of Esterhazy emerging empty-handed from the embassy. At the end he says, ‘Perhaps we should try to do something clever with the scum? Rather than simply lock him up, couldn’t we use him to feed false information to Berlin?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. The trouble is, the Germans are already suspicious of him. It’s unlikely they’d simply swallow whatever he told them without checking it for themselves. And of course-’

Billot finishes my argument for me. ‘And of course, to get him to play along, we’d have to give him immunity from prosecution, whereas the only place for the likes of Esterhazy is behind bars. No, you’ve done well, Colonel.’ He shuts the file and hands it back to me. ‘Keep on with the investigation until we’ve nailed him once and for all.’

‘You’d be willing to take it all the way to a court martial?’

‘Absolutely! What’s the alternative? To allow him to retire on half-pay?’

‘General Boisdeffre would prefer it if there were no scandal. .’

‘I’m sure he would. I don’t relish one myself. But if we allowed him to get away with it — that really would be a scandal!’

I return to my office well satisfied. I have the approval of the two most powerful men in the army to continue my investigation. Effectively Gonse has been cut out of the chain of command. All I can do now is to wait for news from Basel.

The day drags on with routine work. The drains stink more than usual in the heat. I find it hard to concentrate. At half past five, I ask Captain Junck to book a telephone call to the Schweizerhof hotel for seven o’clock. At the appointed time I stand by the receiver in the upstairs corridor, smoking a cigarette, and when the bell sounds I snatch the instrument from its cradle. I know the Schweizerhof: a big, modern place overlooking a city square crossed by tramlines. I give Lauth’s cover name to the front desk and ask to speak to him. There is a long wait while the undermanager goes off to check. When he returns, he announces that the gentleman has just checked out and has left no forwarding address. I hang up, wondering what I should read into this. It may be that they are continuing the debriefing into a second day and have taken the precaution of changing hotels, or it could be that the meeting is over and they are rushing to catch the overnight train back to Paris. I hang around for another hour in the hope of receiving a telegram, then decide to leave for the evening.

I would welcome some company to distract me, but everyone seems to be away for August. The de Commingeses have closed up their house and decamped to their summer estate. Pauline is on holiday in Biarritz with Philippe and her daughters. Louis Leblois has gone home to Alsace to be with his gravely ill father. I am suffering from a pretty bad dose of what the gentlemen in the rue de Lille would call Weltschmerz : I am world weary. In the end, I dine alone in a restaurant near the ministry and return to my apartment intending to read Zola’s new novel. But its subject, the Roman Catholic Church, bores me, and it also runs to seven hundred and fifty pages. I am willing to accept such prolixity from Tolstoy but not from Zola. I set it aside long before the end.

I am at my desk early the next morning, but no telegrams have come in overnight and it isn’t until early in the afternoon that I hear Henry and Lauth coming upstairs. I rise from my seat and stride across my office. Flinging open the door, I am surprised to find them both wearing uniform. ‘Gentlemen,’ I say with sarcasm, ‘you have actually been to Switzerland, I take it?’

The two officers salute, Lauth with a certain nervousness it seems to me, but Henry with a nonchalance that borders on insolence. He says, ‘I’m sorry, Colonel. We stopped off at home to change.’

‘And how was your trip?’

‘I should say it was a pretty good waste of time and money, wouldn’t you agree, Lauth?’

‘It proved to be disappointing, I’m afraid, yes.’

I look from one to the other. ‘Well, that’s unexpectedly depressing news. You’d better come in and tell me what happened.’

I sit behind my desk with my arms folded and listen while they relate their story. Henry does most of the talking. According to him, he and Lauth went directly from the railway station to the hotel for breakfast, then upstairs to the room, where they waited until nine thirty, when Inspector Vuillecard brought in Cuers. ‘He was pretty shifty from the start — nervous, couldn’t sit still. Kept going over to the window and checking the big square in front of the station. Mostly what he wanted to talk about was him — could we guarantee the Germans would never find out what he’d done for us?’

‘And what could he tell you about the Germans’ agent?’

‘Just a few bits and scraps. He reckoned he’d personally seen four documents that had come in via Schwartzkoppen — one about a gun and another about a rifle. Then there was something about the layout of the army camp at Toul, and the fortifications at Nancy.’

I ask, ‘What were these? Handwritten documents?’

‘Yes.’

‘In French?’

‘That’s it.’

‘But he didn’t have a name for this agent, or any other clue to his identity?’

‘No, just that the German General Staff decided he wasn’t to be trusted and ordered Schwartzkoppen to break off relations with him. Whoever he is, he was never very important and he’s no longer active.’

I turn to Lauth. ‘Were you talking in French or German?’

He flushes. ‘French to start with, in the morning, then we switched to German in the afternoon.’

‘I told you to encourage Cuers to speak in German.’

‘With respect, Colonel,’ cuts in Henry, ‘there wasn’t much point in my being there unless I had a chance to talk to him myself. I take responsibility for that. I stuck it for about three hours then I left it to Captain Lauth.’

‘And how long did you talk to him in German, Lauth?’

‘For another six hours, Colonel.’

‘And did he say anything else of interest?’

Lauth meets my gaze and holds it. ‘No. We just went over the same old ground again and again. He left at six to catch the train back to Berlin.’

‘He left at six?’ I can no longer suppress my exasperation. ‘You see, gentlemen, this just doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would a man risk travelling seven hundred kilometres to a foreign city to meet intelligence officers from a foreign power in order to say almost nothing? In fact to say less than he’d already told us in Berlin?’

Henry says, ‘It’s obvious, surely? He must have changed his mind. Or he was lying in the first place. What a fellow blurts out when he’s drunk at home at night with someone he knows is different to what he might say in the cold light of day to strangers.’

‘Well why didn’t you take him out and get him drunk then?’ I bang my fist down on the desk. ‘Why didn’t you make some effort to get to know him better?’ Neither man answers. Lauth looks at the floor, Henry stares straight ahead. ‘It seems to me that you both couldn’t wait to get back on that train to Paris.’ They start to protest but I cut them off. ‘Save your excuses for your report. That will be all, gentlemen. Thank you. You may leave.’