Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

Boisdeffre eyes it as if it’s a snake. ‘Very well,’ he says reluctantly. ‘Give me twenty-four hours to consider it.’ I stand and salute. When I am at the door he calls to me: ‘Do you remember what I told you when we were in my motor car, Colonel Picquart? I told you that I didn’t want another Dreyfus case.’

‘This isn’t another Dreyfus case, General,’ I reply. ‘It’s the same one.’

The next morning I see Boisdeffre again briefly, when I go to retrieve my report. He hands it back to me without a word. There are dark semicircles under his eyes. He looks like a man who has been punched.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘to bring you a potential problem at a time when you have issues of such immense importance to deal with. I hope it isn’t too much of a distraction.’

‘What?’ The Chief of the General Staff lets out his breath in a gasp of exasperated disbelief. ‘Do you really think, after what you told me yesterday, that I got a moment’s sleep last night? Now go and talk to Gonse.’

The Gonse family house lies just beyond the north-west edge of Paris, in Cormeilles-en-Parisis. I send a telegram to the general announcing that Boisdeffre would like me to brief him on an urgent matter. Gonse invites me to tea on Thursday.

That afternoon I take the train from the gare Saint-Lazare. Half an hour later I alight in a village so rural I might be two hundred kilometres from the centre of Paris rather than twenty. The departing train dwindles down the track into the distance and I am left entirely alone on the empty platform. Nothing disturbs the silence except birdsong and the distant clip-clop of a carthorse pulling a wagon with a squeaking wheel. I walk over to the porter and ask for directions to the rue de Franconville. ‘Ah,’ he says, taking in my uniform and briefcase, ‘you’ll be wanting the general.’

I follow his instructions along a country lane out of the village and up a hill, through wooded country, then down a drive to a spacious eighteenth-century farmhouse. Gonse is working in the garden in his shirtsleeves, wearing a battered straw hat. An old retriever lopes across the lawn towards me. The general straightens and leans on his rake. With his tubby stomach and short legs he makes a more plausible gardener than he does a general.

‘My dear Picquart,’ he says, ‘welcome to the sticks.’

‘General.’ I salute. ‘My apologies for interrupting your vacation.’

‘Think nothing of it, dear fellow. Come and have some tea.’ He takes my arm and leads me into the house. The interior is crammed with Japanese artefacts of the highest quality — antique silkscreens, masks, bowls, vases. Gonse notices my surprise. ‘My brother’s a collector,’ he explains. ‘This is his place for most of the year.’

Tea has been laid out in a garden room full of wicker furniture: petits fours on the low table, a samovar on the sideboard. Gonse pours me a cup of lapsang souchong. The cane seat squeaks as he sits down. He lights a cigarette. ‘Well then. Go ahead.’

Like a commercial traveller, I unlock my briefcase and lay out my wares among the porcelain. It is an awkward moment for me: this is the first time I have even mentioned my investigation of Esterhazy to Gonse, the Chief of Intelligence. I show him the petit bleu , and in an attempt to make it seem less of an insult, I pretend that it arrived in late April rather than early March. Then I repeat the presentation I made to Boisdeffre. As I hand him the documents, Gonse studies each in turn, in his usual methodical manner. He spills cigarette ash on to the surveillance photographs, makes a joke of it — ‘Covering up the crime!’ — and blows it away calmly. Even when I produce the secret file he looks unperturbed.

I suspect Boisdeffre must have warned him beforehand of what I was planning to tell him.

‘In conclusion,’ I say, ‘I had hoped to find something in the file that would establish Dreyfus’s guilt beyond doubt. But I’m afraid there’s nothing. It wouldn’t withstand ten minutes’ cross-examination by a halfway decent attorney.’

I lay down the last of the documents and sip my tea, which is now stone cold. Gonse lights another cigarette. After a pause he says, ‘So we got the wrong man?’

He says it matter-of-factly, as one might say, ‘So we took the wrong turning?’ or ‘So I wore the wrong hat?’

‘I’m afraid it looks like it.’

Gonse plays with a match as he considers this, flicking it around and between his fingers with great dexterity, then snaps it. ‘And yet how do you explain the contents of the bordereau ? None of this changes our original hypothesis, does it? It must have been written by an artillery officer who had some experience of all four departments of the General Staff. And that’s not Esterhazy. That’s Dreyfus.’

‘On the contrary, this is where we made our original error. If you look at the bordereau again, you’ll see it always talks about notes being handed over: a note on the hydraulic brake. . a note on covering troops. . a note on artillery formations. . a note on Madagascar. .’ I point out what I mean on the photograph. ‘In other words, these aren’t the original documents. The only document that was actually handed over — the firing manual — we know that Esterhazy acquired by going on a gunnery course. Therefore I’m afraid the bordereau indicates precisely the opposite of what we thought it did. The traitor wasn’t on the General Staff. He didn’t have access to secrets. He was an outsider, a confidence trickster if you like, picking up gossip, compiling notes and trying to sell them for money. It was Esterhazy.’

Gonse settles back in his chair. ‘May I make a suggestion, dear Picquart?’

‘Yes please, General.’

‘Forget about the bordereau .’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Forget about the bordereau . Investigate Esterhazy if you like, but don’t bring the bordereau into it.’

I take my time responding. I know he is dim, but this is absurd. ‘With respect, General, the bordereau — the fact that it’s in Esterhazy’s handwriting, and the fact that we know he took an interest in artillery — the bordereau is the main evidence against Esterhazy.’

‘Well you’ll have to find something else.’

‘But the bordereau -’ I bite my tongue. ‘Might I ask why?’

‘I should have thought that was obvious. A court martial has already decided who wrote the bordereau . That case is closed. I believe it’s what the lawyers call res judicata: “a matter already judged”.’ He smiles at me through his cigarette smoke, pleased to have remembered this piece of schoolroom Latin.

‘But if we discover Esterhazy was the traitor and Dreyfus wasn’t. .?’

‘Well we won’t discover that, will we? That’s the point. Because, as I have just explained to you, the Dreyfus case is over. The court has pronounced its verdict and that is the end of that.’

I gape at him. I swallow. Somehow I need to convey to him, in the words of the cynical expression, that what he is suggesting is worse than a crime: it is a blunder. ‘Well,’ I begin carefully, ‘ we may wish it to be over, General, and our lawyers may indeed tell us that it is over. But the Dreyfus family feel differently. And putting aside any other considerations, I am worried, frankly, about the damage to the army’s reputation if it were to emerge one day that we knew his conviction was unsafe and we did nothing about it.’

‘Then it had better not emerge, had it?’ he says cheerfully. He is smiling, but there is a threat in his eyes. ‘So there we are. I’ve said all I have to say on the matter.’ The arms of the wicker chair squeak in protest as he pushes himself to his feet. ‘Leave Dreyfus out of it, Colonel. That’s an order.’