Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

‘Absolutely not. He won’t be back for several weeks and I need it right away.’ I pause, waiting for him to move. ‘Come along, Monsieur Gribelin.’ I hold out my arm to him. ‘I’m sure you have the keys to his office.’

I sense he would like to lie. But that would mean disobeying a direct order from a superior. And that is an act of rebellion of which Gribelin, unlike Henry, is congenitally incapable. He says, ‘Well, I suppose we can check. .’ He unlocks the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk and takes out his bunch of keys. Together we go downstairs.

Henry’s office overlooks the rue de l’Université. The smell of the drains seems stronger in the unaired room. A large fly knocks itself dementedly against the grimy window. There is the usual War Ministry-issue desk, chair, safe, filing cabinet and thin square of brown carpet. The only personal touches are a carved wooden tobacco jar in the shape of a dog’s head on the desk, an elaborately hideous German regimental beer stein on the windowsill, and a photograph of Henry with some comrades in the uniform of the 2nd Zouaves in Hanoi: he was there at the same time as I was, although if we met I’ve forgotten it. Gribelin crouches to unlock the safe. He searches through the files. When he finds what he wants, he locks it again. As he straightens, his knees make a sound like snapping twigs. ‘Here you are, Colonel.’

It appears to be the same manila envelope with the letter ‘D’ written in the corner that I handed to the president of the court martial twenty months earlier, except that the seal has been broken. I weigh it in my hand. I remember thinking how light it was when du Paty gave it to me originally; it feels the same. ‘This is all there is?’

‘That’s all. If you let me know when you’ve finished with it, I can lock it up again.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it from now on.’

Back in my office I lay the envelope on my desk and contemplate it for a moment. Odd that such a dreary-looking object should assume such significance. Do I really want to do this? Once one has read a thing, there is no un-reading it. There could be consequences — legal and ethical — that I can’t even guess at.

I lift the flap and pull out the contents. There are five documents.

I start with a handwritten deposition from Henry, providing the context for his theatrical testimony at the court martial:

Gentlemen,

In June 1893, the Statistical Section came into possession of a note written by the German military attaché Colonel von Schwartzkoppen. This note showed that he was in receipt, via an unknown informant, of the plans of the fortifications at Toul, Reims, Langres and Neufchâteau.

In January 1894, another intercepted note revealed that he had paid this informant an advance of six hundred francs for the plans of Albertville, Briançon, Mézières and the new embankments on both sides of the Moselle and the Meurthe.

Two months later, in March 1894, an agent of the Sûreté, François Guénée, acting on our behalf, met the Spanish military attaché, the marquis de Val Carlos, a regular informant of the Statistical Section. Among other intelligence, the marquis warned M. Guénée of a German agent employed on the General Staff. His exact words were: ‘Be sure to tell Major Henry on my behalf (and he may repeat it to the colonel) that there is reason to intensify surveillance at the Ministry of War, since it emerges from my last conversation with the German attachés that they have an officer on the General Staff who is keeping them admirably well informed. Find him, Guénée: if I knew his name, I would tell you!’

I subsequently met the marquis de Val Carlos myself in June 1894. He told me that a French officer who worked specifically in the Second Department of the General Staff — or at any rate had worked there in March and April — had supplied information to the German and Italian military attachés. I asked for the name of this officer, but he could not tell me. He said: ‘I am sure of what I say but I do not know the officer’s name.’ Following my report of this conversation to Colonel Sandherr, new orders were issued for a much more rigorous surveillance. It was during this period, on 25 September, that the bordereau that forms the basis of the Dreyfus case came into our possession.

(Signed)

Henry, Hubert-Joseph (Major)

The next three documents are original, glued-together papers purloined from Schwartzkoppen’s waste-paper basket: raw intelligence presumably included to buttress Henry’s statement. The first is written in German, in Schwartzkoppen’s own hand, and appears to be a draft memorandum, either for his own use or for his superiors in Berlin, jotted down after he was first approached by the would-be traitor. He has torn it into extra fine pieces; there are tantalising gaps:

Doubt. . Proof. . Letter of service. . A dangerous situation for myself with a French officer. . Must not conduct negotiations personally. . Bring what he has. . Absolute. . Intelligence Bureau. . no relation. . Regiment. . only importance. . Leaving the ministry. . Already elsewhere. .

The second reassembled document is a letter to Schwartzkoppen from the Italian military attaché, Major Alessandro Panizzardi. It is written in French, dated January 1894, and begins My dear Bugger .

I have written to Colonel Davignon again, and that is why, if you have the opportunity to broach this question with your friend, I ask you to do so in such a way that Davignon doesn’t come to hear of it. . for it must never be revealed that one has dealings with another.

Goodbye my good little dog,

Your A

Davignon is the deputy head of the Second Department — the officer responsible for briefing the various foreign military attachés and arranging their invitations to manoeuvres, receptions, lectures and so forth. I know him well. His integrity is, as they say, above reproach.

The third reconstituted letter is a note from Schwartzkoppen to Panizzardi:

P 16.4.94

My dear friend,

I am truly sorry not to have seen you before I left. Anyway, I will be back in eight days. I am enclosing twelve master plans of Nice which that lowlife D gave me for you. I told him that you did not intend to resume relations. He claims there was a misunderstanding and that he would do his utmost to satisfy you. He says that he had insisted you would not hold it against him. I replied that he was crazy and that I did not think you would resume relations with him. Do as you wish! I am in a hurry.

Alexandrine

Don’t bugger too much!!!

The final document, again handwritten, is a commentary on Dreyfus’s alleged career as a spy signed by du Paty. It attempts to draw together all these various scraps of evidence into a coherent story:

Captain Dreyfus began his espionage activities for the German General Staff in 1890, aged thirty, while undergoing instruction at the École Centrale de Pyrotechnie Militaire in Bourges, where he purloined a document describing the process for filling shells with melinite.

In the second half of 1893, as part of the stagiaire system, Captain Dreyfus was attached to the First Department of the General Staff. While there he had access to the safe containing the blueprints of various fortifications, including those at Nice. His behaviour throughout his attachment was suspicious. Enquiries have established that it would have been an easy matter for him to remove these plans when the office was unattended. These were passed to the German Embassy, and later forwarded to the Italian military attaché (see attached document: ‘that lowlife D’).