Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

On the train back to Paris I sit with my briefcase clutched tightly in my lap. I stare out bleakly at the rear balconies and washing lines of the northern suburbs, and the soot-caked stations — Colombes, Asnières, Clichy. I can hardly believe what has just occurred. I keep going over the conversation in my mind. Did I make some mistake in my presentation? Should I have laid it out more clearly — told him in plain terms that the so-called ‘evidence’ in the secret file crumbles into the mere dust of conjecture compared to what we know for sure about Esterhazy? But the more I think of it, the more certain I am that such frankness would have been a grave error. Gonse is utterly intransigent: nothing I can say will shift his opinion; there is no way on earth, as far as he’s concerned, that Dreyfus will be brought back for a retrial. To have pushed it even further would only have led to a complete breakdown in our relations.

I don’t return to the office: I cannot face it. Instead I go back to my apartment and lie on my bed and smoke cigarette after cigarette with a relentlessness that would impress Gonse, even if nothing else about me does.

The thing is, I have no wish to destroy my career. Twenty-four years it has taken me to get this far. Yet my career will be pointless to me — will lose the very elements of honour and pride that make it worth having — if the price of keeping it is to become merely one of the Gonses of this world.

Res judicata!

By the time it is dark and I get up to turn on the lamps, I have concluded that there is only one course open to me. I shall bypass Boisdeffre and Gonse and exercise my privilege of unrestricted access to the hôtel de Brienne: I shall lay the case personally before the Minister of War.

Things are starting to stir now — cracks in the glacier; a trembling under the earth — faint warning signs that great forces are on the move.

For months there has been nothing in the press about Dreyfus. But on the day after my visit to Gonse, the Colonial Ministry is obliged to deny a wild rumour in the London press that he has escaped from Devil’s Island. At the time I think nothing of it: it’s just journalism, and English journalism at that.

Then on the Tuesday Le Figaro appears with its lead story, ‘The Captivity of Dreyfus’, spread across the first two and a half columns of the front page. The report is an accurate, well-informed and sympathetic account of what Dreyfus is enduring on Devil’s Island (‘forty to fifty thousand francs a year to keep alive a French officer who, since the day of his public degradation, has endured a death worse than death’). I presume the information has come from the Dreyfus family.

It is against this background that the next day I go to brief the minister.

I unlock the garden gate and make my way, unseen by any curious eyes in the ministry, across the lawn and into the rear of his official residence.

The old boy has been on leave for a week. This is his first day back. He seems to be in good spirits. His bulbous nose and the top of his bald head are peeling from exposure to the sun. He sits up straight in his chair, stroking his vast white moustaches, watching with amusement as yet again I bring out all the paperwork associated with the case. ‘Good God! I’m an old man, Picquart. Time is precious. How long is all this going to take?’

‘I’m afraid it’s partly your fault, Minister.’

‘Ah, do you hear him? The cheek of the young! My fault? And pray how is that?’

‘You very kindly authorised your staff to show me these letters from the suspected traitor, Esterhazy,’ I say, passing them over, ‘and then I’m afraid I noticed their distinct similarity to this.’ I give him the photograph of the bordereau .

Once again I am surprised by how quick on the uptake he is. Ancient he may be — a captain of infantry before I was even born — yet he looks from one to the other and grasps the implications immediately. ‘Well I’ll be blessed!’ He makes a clicking sound with his tongue. ‘You’ve had the handwriting checked, I presume?’

‘By the original police expert, Bertillon, yes. He says it is identical. Naturally I’d like to get other opinions.’

‘Have you shown this to General Boisdeffre?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s his opinion?’

‘He referred me to General Gonse.’

‘And Gonse?’

‘He wants me to abandon my investigation.’

‘Does he, indeed? Why’s that?’

‘Because he believes, as do I, that it would almost certainly set in train a process that would lead to an official revision of the Dreyfus affair.’

‘Heavens! That would be an earthquake!’

‘It would, Minister, especially as we would have to reveal the existence of this. .’

I hand him the secret file. He squints at it. ‘“D”? What the hell is this?’ He has never even heard of it. I have to explain. I show him the contents, item by item. Once again he goes straight to the heart of the matter. He extracts the letter referring to ‘that lowlife D’ and holds it close to his face. His lips move as he reads. The backs of his hands are flaking like his scalp, and mottled with liver spots: an old lizard who has survived more summers than anyone could believe possible.

When he gets to the end he says, ‘Who’s “Alexandrine”?’

‘That’s von Schwartzkoppen. He and the Italian military attaché call one another by women’s names.’

‘Why would they do that?’

‘Because they are buggers, Minister.’

‘Good God!’ Billot pulls a face. He holds the letter gingerly between finger and thumb and passes it back to me. ‘You have a pretty tawdry job, Picquart.’

‘I know that, General. I didn’t ask for it. But now I have it, it seems to me I must do it properly.’

‘I agree.’

‘And in my view, that means investigating Esterhazy thoroughly for the crimes he’s committed. And if it transpires that we have to fetch Dreyfus back from Devil’s Island — well, I say it’s better for us in the army to rectify our own mistake rather than be forced to do it by outside pressure later.’

Billot stares into the middle distance, his right thumb and forefinger smoothing down his moustaches. He grunts as he thinks. ‘This secret file,’ he says after a while. ‘Surely it’s against the law to pass evidence to the judges without letting the defence have a chance to challenge it first?’

‘It is. I regret having been a party to it.’

‘So whose decision was it?’

‘Ultimately, it was General Mercier’s, as Minister of War.’

‘Ha! Mercier? Really? I suppose I might have guessed he’d be in there somewhere!’ The staring and the moustache-smoothing and the grunting resume. Eventually he gives a long sigh. ‘I don’t know, Picquart. It’s a devil of a problem. You’re going to have to let me think about it. Obviously, there would be consequences if it turned out we had locked up the wrong man for all this time, especially having made such a public spectacle out of doing it — profound consequences, for both the army and the country. I’d have to talk to the Prime Minister. And I can’t do that for at least a week — I’ve got the annual manoeuvres in Rouillac starting on Monday.’

‘I appreciate that, General. But in the meantime do I have your permission to continue my investigation of Esterhazy?’

The massive head nods slowly. ‘I should think so, my boy, yes.’

‘Wherever the investigation leads me?’

Another heavy nod: ‘Yes.’

Filled with renewed energy, that evening I meet Desvernine in our usual rendezvous at the gare Saint-Lazare. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since the middle of August. I am slightly late. He is already sitting waiting for me in a corner seat, reading Le Vélo . He has stopped drinking beer, I notice, and gone back to mineral water. As I slip into the chair opposite him, I nod to his newspaper. ‘I didn’t know you were a cyclist.’