Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

Early the following morning, Savignaud brings me hot water in my bedroom as usual so that I can shave. Naked above the waist, I bend to my mirror and lather my face. Instead of leaving, he lingers, watching me from behind.

I look at him in the mirror. ‘Yes, soldier? What is it?’

‘I understand you’ve made an appointment to see General Leclerc in Tunis, Colonel.’

‘Do I need your permission?’

‘I wondered if you wanted me to accompany you.’

‘It’s not necessary.’

‘Will you be back in time for dinner?’

‘Go away, Savignaud.’

He hesitates, salutes and sidles out of the room. I return to my shaving, but with greater urgency: I have little doubt that he has gone off to telegraph Paris the news of my trip to Tunis.

An hour later, suitcase in hand, I wait beside the railway line in the central town square. A mining company has recently laid the track from Sousse to Tunis. There is no station: the locomotive simply passes through the streets. The first sign of its approach is a column of black smoke which I see rising in the distance above the flat roofs against the brilliant blue sky. A steam whistle shrieks nearby and a crowd of children erupts around the corner, scattering in all directions, screaming with excitement, pursued by an engine pulling two flatbed trucks and three carriages. It slows to a crawl until its momentum expires altogether in a loud exhalation of steam. I heave my suitcase into the carriage and clamber up the ladder after it, glancing over my shoulder to check if I am followed. But there is no sign of men in uniforms, just Arabs and Jews and a lot of livestock — chickens in crates, a sheep, and a small goat with its hooves tethered which its owner crams beneath his seat.

We pull away, gathering speed until our escort of excited children is left behind. Dust blows through the open sides of the carriage as we rattle out into the monotonous landscape — olive groves and hazy grey mountains to the left of us, the flat glare of the Mediterranean to the right. Every quarter of an hour or so we stop to pick up figures, always accompanied by animals, who seem to rise out of nowhere, shimmering up ahead beside the tracks. I slip my hand inside my tunic and feel the sharp edges of my posthumous letter to the President.

When at last we arrive in Tunis, around the middle of the afternoon, I push my way across the crowded platform to the taxi rank. The heat in the city feels almost solid. The air holds soot and spices — cumin, coriander, paprika — and tobacco and horse dung in a humid suspension. Beside the taxis a boy is selling La Dépêche tunisienne , which for five centimes offers an overnight compilation of the previous day’s news as telegraphed from Paris. I skim it on the drive to army headquarters. Yet again there is nothing about Dreyfus. But it is within my power to change all that. For the twentieth time I touch the letter, like an anarchist checking his dynamite.

Leclerc is too busy to see me, so I am left to sweat in an anteroom for half an hour. Then an aide approaches me: ‘The general would like to know what this is about.’

‘It’s a personal matter.’

He goes away and comes back a couple of minutes later. ‘The general suggests you discuss all personal issues with General de Chizelle.’ De Chizelle is the senior officer of the 4th Tunisian Rifles, my direct superior.

‘I am sorry, but this is a personal matter that I can only disclose to the Supreme Commander.’

Once again he withdraws, but this time he is only gone for a few moments. ‘The general will see you now.’

I leave my suitcase and follow him.

Jérôme Leclerc is on the veranda of his office, in his shirtsleeves, seated at a portable card table, working his way through a pile of letters. An electric fan above his head lifts the edges of the pages, which are weighted down by his revolver. He is in his middle sixties, square-jawed and-shouldered; he has been in Africa so long his skin is almost the same light brown as the natives’.

‘Ah,’ he says, ‘the exotic Colonel Picquart: our very own man of mystery, sent to us under cover of darkness!’ The sarcasm is not entirely unfriendly. ‘So tell me, Colonel, what is the latest secret about you that can’t be divulged to your commanding officer?’

‘I would like permission to go on leave to Paris.’

‘And why can’t you make this application to General de Chizelle?’

‘Because he would refuse it.’

‘And how do you know that?’

‘Because I have reason to believe there is a standing instruction from the War Ministry that I should not be allowed to leave Tunisia.’

‘If that is true — and I am not confirming that it is — then why have you come to me?’

‘Because I believe you are more likely to ignore an order from the General Staff than General de Chizelle.’

Leclerc blinks at me for a moment, and I wonder if he might have me thrown out, but then abruptly he laughs. ‘Yes, well, that’s probably true. I’m past caring. But I’d need a damned good reason, mark you. It can’t just be that there’s some woman in Paris you want to see.’

‘I have unfinished business there.’

‘Do you, by God!’ He folds his arms and tilts back in his chair and looks me up and down a couple of times. ‘You’re a funny fish, Colonel Picquart. I don’t know what to make of you. I’d heard you were supposed to be the next Chief of the General Staff but four, and instead suddenly you’re out here in our little backwater. Tell me, what did you do? Embezzle funds?’

‘No, General.’

‘Screw the minister’s wife?’

‘Certainly not that.’

‘Then what?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Then I can’t help you.’

He sits back straight in his chair and picks up a sheaf of papers. I feel a sudden desperation. ‘I’m in a kind of imprisonment out here, General. My mail is read. I’m followed. I’m not allowed to leave. It’s really very effective. If I protest, it’s been made clear to me I’ll be disciplined on trumped-up charges. Short of desertion, I’m not sure how I can escape. And of course if I do desert I really would be finished.’

‘Oh no, don’t desert — if you desert I’d have to shoot you.’ He gets up to stretch his legs — a big, lithe man, despite his years. A fighter, I think, not a desk man. He prowls up and down the veranda, frowning, and then stops to look out across the garden. I can’t name all the flowers — jasmine I recognise, and cyclamen, and dianthus. He notices me looking. ‘You like it?’

‘It’s very fine.’

‘I planted it myself. Prefer this country to France now, oddly. Don’t think I’ll go back when I retire.’ He falls silent and then says fiercely, ‘You know what I can’t stand, Colonel? I can’t abide the way the General Staff dump their rubbish out here. No offence to you, but every malcontent and deviant and well-bred cretin in the army gets sent my way, and I can tell you that I’m just about sick of it!’ He taps his foot on the wooden boards, thinking things over. ‘Do you give me your word that you’ve done nothing criminal or immoral — that you’ve simply fallen foul of those desk-generals in the rue Saint-Dominique?’

‘On my honour.’

He sits down at his desk and starts writing. ‘Is a week enough?’

‘A week is all I need.’

‘I don’t want to know what you’re up to,’ he says, still writing, ‘so don’t let’s talk about it. I shan’t inform the ministry that you’ve left Tunisia. If and when they find out, I propose to tell them that I’m a soldier, not a gaoler. But I won’t lie, you understand?’ He finishes his writing, blows on the ink and hands the letter to me. It is official permission for Lieutenant Colonel Picquart of the 4th Tunisian Rifles to leave the country on compassionate leave, signed by the General Officer Commanding, Tunisia. It is the first official help I have been offered. I have tears in my eyes, but Leclerc affects not to notice.