Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

We make love in the children’s bedroom, under the watchful eyes of a row of my nephew’s old toy soldiers. Afterwards, lying in my arms, she says, ‘You were really going to go back to Africa without trying to see me?’

‘Not by choice, my darling.’

‘Without even sending me a note?’

‘I’m worried I’m going to bring disaster down on you if we carry on like this.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘I promise you, you will care, because it won’t be just you who is damaged: it will be the girls as well.’

Suddenly she sits up straight. She is so angry she doesn’t bother to cover herself with a sheet in the way that she normally does. Her hair is tousled, loose, and for the first time I notice a few strands of grey among the blonde. Her skin is flushed rose pink. There is sweat between her breasts. She looks magnificent. ‘You have no right,’ she says, ‘after all these years, to make decisions that affect the two of us without even telling me what’s in your mind! And don’t you dare use the girls as an excuse!’

‘Darling, wait-’

‘No! Enough!’

She moves to get out of bed but I grasp her shoulders. She tries to shrug me off. I push her down and hold her. She gasps and struggles beneath me. But she is weaker than she looks, even in her anger, and I restrain her easily. ‘Listen, Pauline,’ I say quietly, ‘I’m not talking about gossip — we’re already common gossip among our circle. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out Philippe actually guessed about us years ago — even a man who works at the Foreign Ministry can’t be as blind to the obvious as all that.’

‘Don’t talk about him! You know nothing about him!’ Pinioned, she beats the back of her head against the pillow in helpless frustration.

I press on. ‘Gossip is one thing — if it’s just gossip, it can be ignored. But I’m talking about exposure and humiliation. I’m talking about the power of the state being used to crush us — to parade us through the newspapers and the courts, to invent things about us and pass them off as true. Nothing is going to withstand that. Do you think I’ve been away from home for the past seven months by choice? And that’s only a tiny foretaste of what they can do to us.’

I clamber off her and sit on the edge of the bed with my back to her. She doesn’t move. After a while she says, ‘It’s useless, I suppose, to ask what exactly it is that has brought this foulness into our lives?’

‘I can’t speak of it to anyone, apart from Louis. And I’ve only talked to him because he’s my lawyer. If anything happens, he’s the one you should go to. He’s wise.’

‘And how long is this going to continue — for the rest of our lives?’

‘No, a few more weeks — perhaps a couple of months. And then the storm will break, and you will be able at last to see what it has all been about.’

She is silent for a while, and then she says, ‘Can we still write to one another, at least?’

‘Yes, but we need to take precautions.’ I rise from the bed and walk naked into the sitting room to fetch a pencil and paper. It is a relief to be doing something practical. When I return, she is sitting up with her arms wrapped around her knees. ‘I’ve arranged with Louis to set up a poste restante with a friend in the avenue de la Motte-Picquet — here’s the address. I’ll send my letters to you there: have someone else pick them up on your behalf. I won’t put your name on the envelope or use it in the letter itself, and I won’t add a signature. And you shouldn’t sign your letters to me, or put anything in them that would give anyone a clue as to who you are.’

‘Are people in the government really going to read our letters?’

‘Yes, almost certainly: many people — ministers, army officers, policemen. There’s one precaution you can take, although it may mean the letter doesn’t get through. Use a double envelope; the inner one you should cover entirely with glue, so that when you insert it into the outer envelope it sticks to it. That way it can’t be opened and then resealed. So if they do tamper with it they’ll have to keep it and they may not want to be as blatant as that. I don’t know — it’s worth a try.’

She tilts her head to one side and looks at me in a kind of puzzled wonder, as if seeing me properly for the first time. ‘How do you come to know all this?’

I put my arms around her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It was my job.’

Four months pass.

The Sousse Military Club still looks out from behind its screen of dusty palms across the unpaved square to the sea. The glare off the Mediterranean remains as fiercely metallic as ever. The same boy in long brown robes still passes at the same time in the middle of the afternoon, leading a goat on a length of rope. The only difference these days is that the boy gives me a wave and I wave back, for I have become a familiar sight. As usual when lunch is over I am seated alone beside the window while my brother officers continue to play cards or doze or read the four-day-old French newspapers. Nobody approaches me.

It is Friday 29 October 1897, and I have checked those stale newspapers every day since my return from Paris, without once coming across the word ‘Dreyfus’. I am beginning to worry that something may have happened to Louis.

In time-honoured fashion, at about three o’clock, through the high glass-panelled door comes a young orderly carrying the afternoon’s post. It is no longer Savignaud — he has gone, arrested for immoral conduct with a local olive oil trader, sentenced to nine days’ detention and shipped off to God knows where. His replacement is an Arab, Jemel, and if he is a spy, as I assume he must be, he is too good for me to catch him out; in consequence, I rather miss Savignaud and his familiar, clumsy ways.

Jemel glides to a stop alongside my chair and salutes. ‘You have a telegram, Colonel.’

It is from army headquarters in Tunis: The Ministry of War today orders Colonel Picquart to proceed immediately to El-Ouatia to investigate and if possible verify reports of hostile Bedouin cavalry massing in the vicinity of Tripoli. Please report to me to discuss the implications of your mission before your departure. Cordially yours, Leclerc.

Jemel says, ‘Will there be a reply, Colonel?’

For a moment I am too surprised to speak. I read the telegram again, just to make sure I am not hallucinating.

‘Yes,’ I say eventually. ‘Will you please telegraph General Leclerc and tell him that I shall report to him tomorrow?’

‘Of course, Colonel.’

After Jemel has shimmied off into the afternoon heat, I study the telegram again. El-Ouatia?

The following morning I catch the train to Tunis. In my briefcase I have a file: ‘Intelligence report on the assassination of the marquis de Morès’. I know it well: I wrote it — one of the few real accomplishments of my time in Africa.

Morès, a fanatical anti-Semite and the most celebrated duellist of the day, came to Tunisia two years ago with a madcap plan to lead an Arab revolt against the British Empire, starting with a trek across the Tunisian Sahara — an area beyond law and civilisation, where Bedouin caravans still occasionally pass trailing columns of Negro slaves chained at the neck. Nevertheless, ignoring all warnings, he set off with a party of thirty, following the coast before heading south from Gabes into the desert.

Riding a camel, escorted by six Tuareg whom he saw as the nucleus of his private army, Morès struck camp on the morning of 8 June last year. He was a mile ahead of the rest of his followers when Bedouin fighters began to appear all around him. At that instant his escort fell upon him and attempted to seize his Winchester rifle and revolver. Morès shot two of his assailants dead with his revolver, mortally wounded a third and then ran forty metres to a nearby tree, shooting two more of the pursuing Tuareg. Dropping to his knees, he reloaded and awaited rescue from the remainder of his expedition. But they, too frightened or treacherous to move, had halted a kilometre away. The heat of the day grew fierce. One Tuareg went forward to pretend to parley with the marquis; in reality he wanted to find out how many bullets he had left. Desperate, Morès seized him round the throat as a hostage. Soon afterwards the man broke free, whereupon Morès shot him dead. But the distraction had lasted long enough for his assassins to get closer. The marquis was hit by a rifle bullet in the back of the neck. His money belt was cut open and a hundred and eighty gold pieces were stolen. His corpse was stripped and mutilated.