Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

Everyone suspected everyone else. Old incidents were dredged up and picked over, ancient rumours and feuds revived. The ministry was paralysed by suspicion. I went through the handwriting of every officer on our list, even Boucher’s; even mine. I found no match.

And then someone — it was Colonel d’Aboville, deputy chief of the Fourth — had a flash of inspiration. If the traitor could draw on current knowledge of all four departments, wasn’t it reasonable to assume that he had recently worked in all four? And unlikely as it seemed, there was a group of officers on the General Staff of whom that was true: the stagiaires from the École Supérieure de Guerre — men who were relative strangers to their long-serving comrades. Suddenly it was obvious: the traitor was a stagiaire with a background in artillery.

Eight captains of artillery on the stagiaire programme fitted that particular bill, but only one of them was a Jew: a Jew moreover who spoke French with a German accent, whose family lived in the Kaiser’s Reich and who always had money to throw around.

Gribelin, watching me, says, ‘I’m sure you remember the bordereau , Colonel.’ He gives one of his rare smiles. ‘Just as I remember that you were the one who provided us with the sample of Dreyfus’s handwriting that matched it.’

It was Colonel Boucher who brought me the request from the Statistical Section. Normally he was loud and cheerfully red-faced, but on this occasion he was sombre, even grey. It was a Saturday morning, two days after we had started hunting for the traitor. He closed the door behind him and said, ‘It looks like we might be getting close to the bastard’

‘Really? That’s quick.’

‘General Gonse wants to see some handwriting belonging to Captain Dreyfus.’

‘Dreyfus?’ I repeated, surprised.

Boucher explained d’Aboville’s theory. ‘And so,’ he concluded, ‘they’ve decided the traitor must be one of your stagiaires .’

‘One of my stagiaires ?’ I did not like the sound of that!

I had skimmed through Dreyfus’s file the previous day and eliminated him as a suspect. Now I pulled it out again and compared the handwriting of a couple of his letters to the bordereau . And on second glance, looking at them more closely, perhaps there were similarities: the same small lettering; the same slope to the right; similar spacing between both words and lines. . A terrible feeling of certainty began to seize hold of me. ‘I don’t know, Colonel,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’ I showed the letters to Boucher.

‘Well, I’m no expert either, but they look pretty much alike to me. You’d better bring them along.’

Ten minutes earlier, Dreyfus had been no more of a suspect to me than anyone else. But the power of suggestion is insidious. As the colonel and I walked together along the corridors of the ministry, my imagination began to fill with thoughts of Dreyfus — of his family still living in Germany, of his solitariness and cleverness and arrogance, of his ambition to enter the General Staff and his careful cultivation of senior officers — so much so that by the time we reached General Gonse’s office I had all but convinced myself: Of course he would betray us, because he hates us; he has hated us all along because he isn’t like us, and knows he never will be, for all his money; he is just. .

A regular Jew!

Waiting for us, along with Gonse himself, were Colonel d’Aboville, Colonel Fabre, the chief of the Fourth Department, Colonel Lefort, head of the First, and Colonel Sandherr. I laid Dreyfus’s letters out on Gonse’s desk and stepped back while my superiors crowded around to look. And from that huddle of uniformed backs arose a growing exclamation of shock and conviction: ‘Look how he forms the capital “s” there, and the “j”. . And the small “m” and the “r”, do you see? And the gap between the words is exactly the same. . I’m no expert, but. . No, I’m no expert either, but. . I’d say they’re identical. .’

Sandherr straightened and slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘I should have known! How many times have I seen him loitering round, asking questions?’

Fabre said, ‘I predicted exactly this in my report on him, do you remember, Major Picquart?’ He pointed at me. ‘“An incomplete officer, lacking the qualities of character necessary for employment on the General Staff. .” Were those not my very words?’

‘They were, Colonel,’ I agreed.

Gonse said to me, ‘Where is Dreyfus exactly?’

‘He’s at infantry camp outside Paris until the end of next week.’

‘Good.’ Sandherr nodded. ‘Excellent. That gives us some time. We need to get all this to a handwriting expert.’

Gonse said: ‘So you really think it’s him?’

‘Well, if not him — who?’

No one responded. That was the nub of it. If the traitor wasn’t Dreyfus, then who was it? You? Me? Your comrade? Mine? Whereas if it was Dreyfus, this debilitating hunt for an enemy within would come to an end. Without saying it, or even thinking it, collectively we willed it to be so.

Gonse sighed and said, ‘I’d better go and tell General Mercier. He may have to speak to the Prime Minister.’ He glanced at me, as if I were the one responsible for introducing this contagion into the ministry, and said to Boucher, ‘I don’t think we need detain Major Picquart any longer, do you, Colonel?’

Boucher said, ‘No, I don’t believe so. Thank you, Picquart.’

‘Thank you, General.’

I saluted and left.

I have been silent for a while. Suddenly I am aware of Gribelin, still staring at me.

‘Strange,’ I say, flourishing the bordereau . ‘Curious how it brings it all back.’

‘Yes, I can imagine.’

And that might well have been the end of it, as far as my own involvement was concerned. But then to my surprise, a week later I received a telegram at my apartment summoning me to a meeting in the office of the Minister of War at six o’clock on the evening of Sunday 14 October.

I presented myself at the hôtel de Brienne at the appointed time. I could hear voices as I climbed the stairs, and when I reached the first floor I discovered a small group waiting in the corridor to go in: General Boisdeffre, General Gonse, Colonel Sandherr and a couple of men I didn’t recognise — a corpulent, claret-faced major who, like me, wore the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and a superintendent from the Sûreté. There was one other officer. He was standing further along the passage next to the window, rather self-importantly wearing a monocle and flicking through a file, and I realised it was Colonel du Paty de Clam, Blanche’s former lover. He saw me looking at him, closed his file, removed his monocle, and strutted towards me.

‘Picquart,’ he said, returning my salute. ‘What an appalling business this is.’

‘I didn’t know you were involved in it, Colonel.’

‘Involved!’ Du Paty laughed and shook his head. ‘My dear Major, I’ve been put in charge of the entire investigation! I’m the reason you’re here!’

I always found something disconcerting about du Paty. It was as if he were acting the central part in a play for which no one else had been shown the script. He might laugh abruptly, or tap his nose and adopt an air of great mystery, or disappear from a room in the middle of a conversation without explanation. He fancied himself a detective in the modern scientific manner and had made a study of graphology, anthropometry, cryptography and secret inks. I wondered what role in his drama he had chosen for me to play.

I said, ‘May I ask how the investigation is going?’

‘You are about to hear.’ He patted the file and nodded to the minister’s door, which at that moment was being opened by one of his staff officers.