Robert Harris - An Officer and a Spy

Major Henry, when he comes to collect me at the Ministry of War, makes light of it: ‘This is nothing. You should have grown up on a farm! Folk’s shit, pigs’ shit: where’s the difference?’ His face in the heat is as smooth and fat as a large pink baby’s. A smirk trembles constantly on his lips. He addresses me with a slight overemphasis on my rank — ‘ Colonel Picquart!’ — that somehow combines respect, congratulations and mockery in a single word. I take no offence. Henry is to be my deputy, a consolation for being passed over for the chief’s job. From now on we are locked in roles as ancient as warfare. He is the experienced old soldier who has come up through the ranks, the sergeant major who makes things work; I the younger commissioned officer, theoretically in charge, who must somehow be prevented from doing too much damage. If each of us doesn’t push the other too far, I think we should get along fine.

Henry stands. ‘So then, Colonel : shall we go?’

I have never before set foot in the Statistical Section — not surprising, as few even know of its existence — and so I have requested that Henry show me round. I expect to be led to some discreet corner of the ministry. Instead he conducts me out of the back gate and a short walk up the road to an ancient, grimy house on the corner of the rue de l’Université which I have often passed and always assumed to be derelict. The darkened windows are heavily shuttered. There is no nameplate beside the door. Inside, the gloomy lobby is pervaded by the same cloying smell of raw sewage as the rest of Paris, but with an added spice of musty dampness.

Henry smears his thumb through a patch of black spores growing on the wall. ‘A few years ago they wanted to pull this place down,’ he says, ‘but Colonel Sandherr stopped them. Nobody disturbs us here.’

‘I am sure they don’t.’

‘This is Bachir.’ Henry indicates an elderly Arab doorman, in the blue tunic and pantaloons of a native Algerian regiment, who sits in the corner on a stool. ‘He knows all our secrets, don’t you, Bachir?’

‘Yes, Major!’

‘Bachir, this is Colonel Picquart. .’

We step into the dimly lit interior and Henry throws open a door to reveal four or five seedy-looking characters smoking pipes and playing cards. They turn to stare at me, and I just have time to take the measure of the drab sofa and chairs and the scaly carpet before Henry says, ‘Excuse us, gentlemen,’ and quickly closes the door again.

‘Who are they?’ I ask.

‘Just people who do work for us.’

‘What sort of work?’

‘Police agents. Informers. Men with useful skills. Colonel Sandherr takes the view that it’s better to keep them out of mischief here rather than let them hang around on the streets.’

We climb the creaking staircase to what Henry calls ‘the inner sanctum’. Because all the doors are closed, there is almost no natural light along the first-floor passage. Electricity has been installed, but crudely, with no attempt to redecorate where the cables have been buried. A piece of the plaster ceiling has come down and been propped against the wall.

I am introduced to the unit one by one. Each man has his own room and keeps his door closed while he works. There is Major Cordier, the alcoholic who will be retiring shortly, sitting in his shirtsleeves, reading the anti-Semitic press, La Libre Parole and L’Intransigeant , whether for work or pleasure I do not ask. There is the new man, Captain Junck, whom I know slightly from my lectures at the École Supérieure de Guerre — a tall and muscular young man with an immense moustache, who now is wearing an apron and a pair of thin gloves. He is opening a pile of intercepted letters, using a kind of kettle, heated over a jet of gas flame, to steam the glue on the envelope: this is known as a ‘wet opening’, Henry explains.

In the next-door room, another captain, Valdant, is using the ‘dry’ method, scraping at the gummed seals with a scalpel: I watch for a couple of minutes as he makes a small opening on either side of the envelope flap, slides in a long, thin pair of forceps, twists them around a dozen times to roll the letter into a cylinder, and extracts it deftly through the aperture without leaving a mark. Upstairs, M. Gribelin, the spidery archivist who had the binoculars at Dreyfus’s degradation, sits in the centre of a large room filled with locked cabinets, and instinctively hides what he is reading the moment I appear. Captain Matton’s room is empty: Henry explains that he is leaving — the work is not to his taste. Finally I am introduced to Captain Lauth, whom I also remember from the degradation ceremony: another handsome, blond cavalryman from Alsace, in his thirties, who speaks German and ought to be charging around the countryside on horseback. Yet here he is instead, also wearing an apron, hunched over his desk with a strong electric light directed on to a small pile of torn-up notepaper, moving the pieces around with a pair of tweezers. I look to Henry for an explanation. ‘We should talk about that,’ he says.

We go back downstairs to the first-floor landing. ‘That’s my office,’ he says, pointing to a door without opening it, ‘and there is where Colonel Sandherr works’ — he looks suddenly pained — ‘or used to work, I should say. I suppose that will be yours now.’

‘Well, I’ll need to work somewhere.’

To reach it, we pass through a vestibule with a couple of chairs and a hatstand. The office beyond is unexpectedly small and dark. The curtains are drawn. I turn on the light. To my right is a large table, to my left a big steel filing cupboard with a stout lock. Facing me is a desk; to one side of it a second door leads back out to the corridor; behind it is a tall window. I cross to the window and pull back the dusty curtains to disclose an unexpected view over a large formal garden. Topography is my speciality — an awareness of where things lie in relation to one another; precision about streets, distances, terrain — nevertheless, it takes me a moment to realise that I am looking at the rear elevation of the hôtel de Brienne, the minister’s garden. It is odd to see it from this angle.

‘My God,’ I say, ‘if I had a telescope, I could practically see into the minister’s office!’

‘Do you want me to get you one?’

‘No.’ I look at Henry. I can’t make out whether he’s joking. I turn back to the window and try to open it. I hit the catch a couple of times with the heel of my hand, but it has rusted shut. Already I am starting to loathe this place. ‘All right,’ I say wiping the rust off my hand, ‘I’m clearly going to rely on you a great deal, Major, certainly for the first few months. This is all very new to me.’

‘Naturally, Colonel. First, permit me to give you your keys.’ He holds out five, on an iron ring attached to a light chain, which I could clip to my belt. ‘This is to the front door. This is to your office door. This is your safe. This: your desk.’

‘And this?’

‘That lets you into the garden of the hôtel de Brienne. When you need to see the minister, that’s the way you go. General Mercier presented the key to Colonel Sandherr.’

‘What’s wrong with the front door?’

‘This way’s quicker. And more private.’

‘Do we have a telephone?’

‘Yes, it’s outside Captain Valdant’s room.’

‘What about a secretary?’

‘Colonel Sandherr didn’t trust them. If you need a file, ask Gribelin. If you need help copying, you can use one of the captains. Valdant can type.’

I feel as if I have wandered into some strange religious sect, with obscure private rituals. The Ministry of War is built on the site of an old nunnery, and the officers of the General Staff on the rue Saint-Dominique are nicknamed ‘the Dominicians’ because of their secret ways. But already I can see they have nothing on the Statistical Section.