A Man in Uniform (14 page)

Dubon found himself in a small foyer, facing a vacant reception desk. He waited a bit and then tried some throat clearing. When this produced no results, he went around behind the desk toward the back of the foyer and stuck his head through a door that was slightly ajar, interrupting a large man who was bent over his work.

“Excuse me, Monsieur, but there was no one at the desk. I am an assistant—”

The man cut him off. “Yes, right, well, you had better go and see the
chef.
”

“The
chef
?”

“Yes. The
chef
. I don’t know anything about anything.” His tone was one of umbrage, but he clearly recognized this wasn’t the way to greet a visitor because he stopped and then continued in a more measured way. “We’re a small outfit here and he’s in charge, so he can tell you what’s required.”

“Ah, yes, and where might I—?”

“Across the way,” the man said, nodding over his left shoulder, and then returned to his papers.

Dubon walked to the other side of the foyer to another door and knocked tentatively. A voice invited him to enter. Dubon did so and, realizing he had forgotten not only to salute the first man but also to his horror that he had called him Monsieur, took a sharp glance at the stripes on the uniform in front of him, saluted smartly, and barked
out, “Mon Colonel,” just the way he had seen his brothers-in-law greet superior officers.

“I am so sorry to trouble you, Colonel. I am an assistant to Colonel Aubry who worked on—”

“At last, eh? Wondered when they were going to send someone over,” the colonel said. He was wearing a well-tailored tunic full of medals and sported a small, neatly trimmed mustache. Compared with his colleague, he exuded friendly competence. “Just give me one minute and we’ll set you up. I’ll get Major Henry to see to you.”

Major Henry. It was the name Fournier had mentioned at the racetrack. Dubon, whose feeling of bowel-emptying fear had receded somewhat when no one had instantly seen through his disguise, now felt it all return. He was about to be introduced to the man who had built the case against Dreyfus. The colonel tidied up a file he had open, put it in a desk drawer, and locked the drawer with a key he returned to his pocket. He then led Dubon right back across the hall to the first office.

“Major. This is …” Dubon stood gaping at the same man he had approached a few seconds before. This disgruntled fellow was the mastermind of counterespionage? He did not match any image of a spy that Dubon had conjured for himself. The colonel, meanwhile, seemed to be repeating something.

“Your name? They didn’t tell us your name.”

“Dubon.” He gulped, realizing too late he had abandoned his intended pseudonym.

“Good, Captain Dubon. This is Major Henry,” the colonel said. “He’ll get you started.” With that, he left the room.

With barely concealed annoyance, the major now hauled himself to standing. He was not fat, Dubon realized, but bull-like, thick-set with a big head and broad face, its width exaggerated by his closely cropped hair. Heavily, he escorted Dubon back to the empty reception desk.

“There you go,” he said, and lumbered back to his own office.

Dubon sat down, since that seemed to be required of him, and let out his breath. He had made it through the front door and no one had seen through his disguise; he congratulated himself, but what was he supposed to do now? They seemed to be expecting him, or at least
expecting someone. The desk at which he sat was covered in paper. He sifted through it and read a few pieces at random. They were official memos of what seemed the utmost banality. “With regards to the construction taking place at rue Saint-Dominique headquarters during the month of April, note that all personnel shall henceforth use the entrance on the boulevard Saint-Germain until further notice,” one advised. Another listed the dates of the various holidays for the previous calendar year. He opened a drawer. It was stuffed with more loose papers, many of them labeled
To File
or
To Copy
. He opened another drawer and found more of the same, except these were in German and labeled
To Translate
. Some were typed; some were handwritten. A few were merely ripped fragments. Dubon didn’t read much German so he turned back to the other papers and leafed through them. Perhaps he was supposed to file them. There were some newspaper clippings about military affairs, but none of them mentioned the captain. Dubon almost laughed out loud when he found what appeared to be a statistical breakdown of the shoe sizes of new recruits, though his giddiness rapidly deflated as he realized that this pile of paper was completely uninformative. All that he had stumbled into was some lowly military desk job.

“Why, at last!” The front door opened and a captain burst in and smartly saluted him. He was an athletic-looking fellow, blond and well groomed, a younger version of the colonel. He was followed by a quieter sort, a small, dark man who said nothing. “And how long are you with us?” the first one asked cheerfully.

“That hasn’t really been—”

“No doubt they will snatch you back the minute you get used to the place. Tessier had only been with us six months, and they sent him back to headquarters. And the last chap, can’t even remember his name, he lasted a mere two weeks. No loss there. You can probably tell that from the state of the files. Anyway, welcome. I’m Captain Gingras. This is Captain Hermann.” He gestured to the smaller man, who merely nodded.

“Dubon, er, Captain Dubon.”

“Nice to meet you, Dubon. Artillery, eh?” he said, looking at Jean-Jean’s various insignia. “Hoping to climb the ladder with some desk
work? Has Major Henry got you settled? Not much to it. Just file the stuff, you know. We are drowning in paper.”

“Ah. And the ones in German?”

“No trouble. Hermann is your man,” he said, slapping his taciturn colleague on the back. “He’s Alsatian, like the colonel. Both of them speak German like natives. You just tidy the papers and put them on his desk—you might try to put them in some sort of chronological order—and he’ll work his way through them one of these years. Won’t you, Hermann?”

“Undoubtedly,” Hermann said, and then lapsed back into silence while Gingras prattled on.

“By the time he’s got to the bottom of the pile, the Germans will probably have reached the Pyrenees and invented flying machines. And we will still be sitting here translating the ambassador’s laundry list. And that’s just the German. Haven’t had an Italian speaker in a year.” Gingras saluted and sauntered off down the one hallway that led out of the reception area, calling back over his shoulder as he pulled open an office door, “Have fun with it. See you later.”

Hermann did not follow him immediately but simply stared at Dubon for a moment as though evaluating him before he too went down the hall to an office.

So this, Dubon deduced, was the mysterious world of counterespionage. And he, apparently, had been mistaken for a temporary clerk.

It was an impression that was confirmed a few hours later when the colonel called him into his office.

“Do you take dictation?” he asked.

Dubon hesitated.

“No. Don’t suppose you do. Last one didn’t either. I want to send a memo, and I will speak very slowly. How’s your typing? No, eh? Ask the major to show you the machine. It’s quite simple, really.”

Dubon left the Statistical Section shortly after five, his head spinning. It was probably too late to catch the widow at his office or to send a message to Lebrun; he could trust the man to pack up for the day on his own and usher her out. Not sure what else to do, Dubon wandered
home in a haze, crossing the bridge back to the Right Bank on foot before he hailed a cab and sank onto its seat exhausted, pulling his cap off his head, undoing the top button of his tunic and wiping his brow. Like some disheveled partygoer coming home from a masquerade ball, he was thinking only of how good it would feel to change clothes and have a drink when he got home.

He alighted a few steps from his own building, remembering now that he had better take a peek through the glass in the front door to check there was no sign of the concierge in the lobby, lest he be obliged to come up with some improbable story to explain his dress. He was a few meters from the front door when a jolt of fear ran through his body, leaving his mouth dry: a neighbor who lived in the building next door was walking down the street straight toward him. He was a man to whom Dubon usually raised his hat. Dubon pulled his cap out from under his arm and jammed it on his head. Should he say hello normally? Instinctively, he put his head down and bolted toward his own door, arriving there just before the man reached him. Dubon pulled the door open and stepped into the lobby. His heart was pounding in his chest—he felt as if he had run a kilometer rather than crossed the pavement—but he risked a quick glance behind him as he pulled the door shut. His neighbor was continuing down the street completely unperturbed, without so much as breaking step. The man had just crossed paths with an army officer he did not know. The uniform in which Dubon felt so conspicuous had made him invisible.

Standing in the lobby, waiting for his breathing to return to normal, Dubon planned his next steps. He would need to sneak back into the apartment and change before Geneviève or Luc saw him. At least he had his latch key. He turned it in the lock as silently as possible and opened the door a little. Seeing no one in sight, he made for the library, slipped inside, closed the door, and pushed a chair in front of it. That way he would get some warning if either of them were going to wander in. He was about to change his clothes when he realized his own suit was back at the office. He took off the uniform’s distinctive tunic, hung it back in the wardrobe, and then sprinted down the hall to his own dressing room to find another business suit. He changed as quickly as he could and then slipped Jean-Jean’s pants back into the library. He
straightened his own familiar tie in the mirror, took a deep breath, and attempted a saunter as he walked down the hall into the salon.

Geneviève was sitting on the sofa with Masson at her side and a tea tray on the table in front of them. She looked up at her husband in surprise and then glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was just past five thirty.

“What on earth are you doing home at this hour?”

It was only at that moment that Dubon remembered Madeleine.

“Good play?” Dubon recalled that Masson had been escorting Geneviève to a matinee that afternoon.

“Horrible.” Masson laughed. “That’s why we are sitting here drinking tea. We left at the intermission.”

“It’s a good thing you weren’t there, François. It was just the sort of thing you complain about. Melodramatic. I can’t think why the critics recommended it,” Geneviève said. Dubon’s distaste for the theater was well established. His wife usually found other companions when she especially wanted to see something.

“Everyone waving their arms about, and the speeches, interminable, and that was only the first half,” Masson added, and gave Dubon a rueful look. “Perhaps you are right about theater.”

“My tastes shouldn’t preclude others from enjoying themselves, but I do find it very artificial,” Dubon said.

“But you still enjoy a novel, don’t you?” Masson asked in a leisurely way.

He showed no sign of rising from the sofa. Dubon supposed a more jealous husband might be offended by his lengthy tête-à-tête with
Geneviève, but he did not put much stock in his old friend’s powers of seduction. Besides, whatever her social enthusiasms, he always could trust Geneviève.

“What are you reading now?” Masson continued.

“Oh, I have been rereading
Germinal,
” Dubon replied, thinking of the book that had lain unopened by his bedside for several weeks.

Masson all but guffawed. “Oh yes, you and Monsieur Zola, the plight of the workers in the mines. Ever the armchair socialist, eh?”

Dubon bristled, but before he could come to the writer’s defense, Geneviève interrupted.

“Now, Baron, you mustn’t tease him,” she said, nervously trying to smooth over any tension.

“Of course, Madame, your husband has put his radical days behind him,” Masson said rather archly.

Dubon rose to the bait. “Really, Masson. I don’t think I have betrayed my ideals. Many of us grow a little calmer in middle age,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “I do have a family to consider.”

“Oh, certainly, you would never risk your lovely wife. She is your best achievement.”

“Well, I’m sorry you were both disappointed with the play,” Dubon said, recognizing he had sounded inappropriately angry and trying to wrench the conversation back to a proper course. “I know Geneviève was looking forward to it.”

“We will hope for better entertainment next time,” Masson said genially, rising to his feet.

“There’s that pianist your sister wants us to hear,” he added to Geneviève. “I am looking forward to that. With your permission, I’ll take my leave of you now. I have a dinner this evening and should be off home to dress.” He bent to kiss Geneviève’s hand, glancing at Dubon as he did so, and then followed Dubon from the room.