Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

There is a gap, and then the Russian state coach appears, surrounded by a mounted bodyguard. Pauline gasps and clutches my arm.

After all the talk of alliances and armies, it is the smallness of the Imperial couple that makes the most impression on me. Tsar Nicholas II might be mistaken for a frightened fair-headed boy wearing a false beard and his father’s uniform. He salutes mechanically every few seconds, touching the edge of his astrakhan cap in rapid gestures — more nervous tic than acknowledgement of applause. Sitting by his side the Tsarina Alexandra appears even younger, a girl who has raided the dressing-up box. She wears a swansdown boa and clutches a white parasol in one hand and an immense bouquet in the other. She bows rapidly to right and left. I am close enough to see her clenched smile. They both look apprehensive. Their carriage swings sharply rightwards and they sway gently over to one side with the motion then disappear — sucked out of sight into a funnel of noise.

Still holding my arm, Pauline turns to speak to me. I can’t quite hear her voice above the tumult. ‘What?’ She pulls me closer, her lips so close I can feel her breath in my ear, and as I strain to listen, I see Henry, Lauth and Gribelin all staring at us.

Afterwards I follow the trio back to the office along the rue de l’Université. They are perhaps fifty metres ahead of me. The street is empty. Most people, including our womenfolk, have decided to stay where they are in order to catch a glimpse of the Imperial couple driving back across the bridge after lunch to the Russian Orthodox church. Something about the way Henry is gesturing with his hand and the other two are nodding tells me they are talking about me. I can’t resist quickening my step until I am right behind them. ‘Gentlemen!’ I say loudly. ‘I’m glad to see you’re not neglecting your duties!’

I had expected guilty laughter, even embarrassment. But the three faces that turn to meet mine are surly and defiant. I have offended their bourgeois sensitivities even more than I realised. We complete the journey to the Statistical Section in silence and I keep to my office for the rest of the day.

The sun sets over Paris shortly after seven. By eight it is too gloomy to read. I don’t switch on my lamp.

The timbers of the old building shrink and creak as the day cools into evening. The birds in the minister’s garden fall silent. The shadows achieve a solid geometry. I sit at my desk, waiting. If ever there was a time for the ghosts of Voltaire and Montesquieu to materialise, this is it. At eight thirty when I open my door I half expect to see a periwig and velvet coat floating down the corridor. But the ancient house seems deserted. Everyone has gone off to watch the fireworks in the Trocadéro, even Capiaux. The front door will be locked. I have the place to myself.

From my drawer I take the leather roll of lock-picking tools that Desvernine left behind months earlier. As I climb the stairs I am aware of the ludicrousness of my situation: the chief of the secret intelligence section obliged to break into the archives of his own department. But I have considered the problem rationally from every angle and I can see no better solution. At the very least, it is worth a try.

I kneel in the passage outside Gribelin’s door. My first discovery is that lock-picking is easier than it looks. Once I have the hang of which instrument to use I am able to find the notch in the underside of the bolt. All I have to do next is press. Then it is a matter of maintaining the pressure with the left hand while with the right I insert the pick and manipulate it to raise the tumblers. One rises, then a second, and finally the third; the racking stump slides forwards; there is a well-oiled click and the door opens.

I turn on the electric light. It would take me hours to pick all the locks in Gribelin’s archive. But I remember he keeps his keys in the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk. After ten minutes of patient trial and error, it yields to my pick. I open the drawer. The keys are there.

Suddenly there is a bang that makes my heart jump. I glance out of the window. Searchlights on top of the Eiffel Tower a kilometre away are shining across the Seine to the place de la Concorde. The beams are surrounded by bursting stars which pulse and flash in silence and then a second or two later come the explosions, loud enough to vibrate the glass panes in their ancient mouldings. I glance at my watch. Nine o’clock. They are running half an hour late. The fireworks are scheduled to last thirty minutes.

I take Gribelin’s bunch of keys and start trying to open the nearest filing cabinet.

Once I have worked out which key fits which lock, I open all the drawers. My first priority is to collect every scrap of Agent Auguste material I can find.

The glued-together documents are already beginning to yellow with age. They rustle like dried leaves as I sort them into piles: letters and telegrams from Hauptmann Dame in Berlin, signed with his nom de guerre , ‘Dufour’; letters to Schwartzkoppen from the German ambassador, Count Münster, and to Panizzardi from the Italian ambassador, Signor Ressmann, and to the military attaché of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Colonel Schneider. There is an envelope full of cinders dated November 1890. There are letters to Schwartzkoppen from the Italian naval attaché, Rosselini, and the British military attaché, Colonel Talbot. Here are the forty or fifty love letters from Hermance de Weede — My dear adored friend. . My Maxi. . — and perhaps half that many from Panizzardi: My dear little one. . My big cat. . My dear big bugger. .

There was a time when I would have felt uncomfortable — grubby, even — handling such intimate material; no longer.

Mixed in with all this is a cipher telegram from Panizzardi to the General Staff in Rome, dispatched at three o’clock on the morning of Friday 2 November 1894:

Commando Stato Maggiore Roma

913 44 7836 527 3 88 706 6458 71 18 0288 5715 3716 7567 7943 2107 0018 7606 4891 6165

Panizzardi

The decoded text is clipped to it, written out by General Gonse: Captain Dreyfus has been arrested. The Ministry of War has evidence of his dealings with Germany. We have taken all necessary precautions.

I copy it down in my notebook. Beyond the window, the Eiffel Tower is a cascade of tumbling light. There is one last final thunderous explosion and slowly it fades into darkness. I hear a faint roar of applause. The display is over. I estimate it would take someone roughly thirty minutes to escape from the crowds in the Trocadéro gardens and get back to the section.

I return my attention to the glued-together documents.

Much of the material is incomplete or pointless, its sense tantalisingly out of reach. It suddenly strikes me as madness to try to read so much meaning into such detritus: that we are little better than the haruspices of the ancient world who decided public policy by scrutinising animal livers. My eyes feel gritty. I have been stuck in my office without food since noon. Perhaps that explains why, when I do come to the crucial document, I miss it at first, and move on to the next. But it nags at my mind, and then I go back and look at it again.

It is a short note, in thin black ink, on squared white paper, torn into twenty pieces, a few of which are missing. The writer is offering to sell Schwartzkoppen ‘the secret of smokeless powder’. It is signed your devoted Dubois and dated 27 October 1894 — two weeks after Dreyfus’s arrest.

I delve a little further into the file. Two days later, Dubois writes to the German attaché again: I can procure for you a cartridge from the Lebel rifle that will enable you to analyse the secret of the smokeless powder. Schwartzkoppen does not seem to have done anything about it. Why should he? The letter looks cranky and I guess he could go into almost any bar in any garrison town in France and pick up a Lebel cartridge for the price of a beer.