A Man in Uniform (16 page)

He was getting to the end when he came to a piece of paper that made him stop. The sheet had a large ink blot in the middle, which explained why the writer had thrown it out, but a tidy signature was visible at the bottom of the page:
Schwarzkoppen
.

Dubon felt his mouth go dry. That was the name of the military attaché he had met at the Fiteaus’ ball.

He swallowed and began to read. The letter was in French but the hand was small and difficult to decipher in places. The text started in midsentence: “… events, of which you have no doubt heard, were not in fact the …”—here there was a word Dubon could not make out—“… of the evening. The boy was silly and if his father was once a highly effective general, he was already in decline before he was dealt this great personal blow.” Dubon ran his tongue over his teeth. His saliva tasted oddly bitter. The attaché was describing the ball. “The interesting part,” the letter continued, “happened earlier when there was much attempt to silence that young Captain Valcourt, who was discussing the hydraulics on the field guns within our hearing. I don’t think he knows what he is talking about, but it’s an indication the French are
still hard at work on the problem. You should have seen—” At this point the ink blot obliterated the rest of the sentence, leaving only a lengthy salutation visible before the signature.

Major de Ronchaud Valcourt had been perfectly right to silence his brother, Dubon thought: Schwarzkoppen
was
a spy. And the Statistical Section was spying on him in its turn.

The idea of Schwarzkoppen’s proximity was terrifying: a German spy was hardly likely to walk through the front door of the Statistical Section, but it reminded Dubon that any number of his brother-in-laws’ colleagues might appear on the premises and recognize him. He doubted he could count on the casual inattention his neighbor had shown the previous day if an officer who knew him walked up to the reception desk. He had to find the prosecution’s file on Dreyfus and get out of this place fast.

“Hold the fort, won’t you, Dubon?”

It was the colonel, calling out as he went off to lunch. “I’ll be back before three.”

Moments after he left, Major Henry, who had spent the morning in his office behind Dubon with the door closed, emerged and stood at the desk. He puffed out his already significant chest and glared down at Dubon, who belatedly realized he was supposed to salute.

“Major!” he said, scrambling to his feet.

Henry looked at the pile of papers Dubon had been working on.

“There was a delivery this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I will expect them on my desk this afternoon.”

“Major.” Dubon saluted again, since Henry seemed to expect it, and watched as the man marched forcefully from the office. The whole exchange struck him as unnecessary. Henry seemed to be an officer who relished authority for its own sake.

A few minutes later the ebullient Gingras poked his head into the foyer, as though he had been waiting for the coast to clear.

“Plans for lunch? The colonel and the major always go home—very loyal husbands, you know.” He laughed. “I usually go over to the mess. You’re welcome to join me.”

“The mess?” Dubon could barely contain his horror. A whole room full of military officers. What if he saw someone he knew?

But Gingras took his reaction for incomprehension. “The headquarters mess. Doesn’t take two minutes to walk over to the rue Saint-Dominique. We’ll be back long before the colonel and the major.”

“Oh. Thank you, thank you. I’ll just stay here, I think. So much to do and the colonel did seem to think I would stay.”

“Picquart won’t care.”

“Picquart?”

“The colonel, Colonel Picquart. Didn’t they tell you at headquarters who you would be reporting to?” Gingras looked puzzled, and now peered at Dubon as though he were noticing him for the first time.

“Ah, well, I guess they just mentioned Major Henry,” Dubon improvised, only now realizing he had not caught the colonel’s name.

“Shows where their allegiances lie,” Gingras said, satisfied with the explanation. “Anyway, if you want to come for lunch, we do usually shut the office. We all have keys, so whoever is back first can get in.”

“Maybe I’ll pop out to the corner later, when you get back, or something.”

He left, and Dubon slumped back in his chair in relief. He had avoided the mess hall and was now safely alone. For the first time since he had arrived that morning he could relax and stop pretending he knew what he was doing with all these bits of paper. Relief, however, brought hunger; he would have liked lunch, having had nothing to eat since the bread and jam at seven. He was just rising to get a drink of water from a jug kept on a small table beside the exterior door, when he sensed rather than saw a presence in the corridor leading back to the offices. He turned to see a disheveled man standing there. He was wearing drab clothing and badly needed a shave. His face was worn, but his age was hard to calculate; he could have been thirty-five or fifty-five. He carried an old leather satchel under one arm.

“Have I missed Henry?” the man asked.

“The major?” Dubon replied. “Just left for lunch.”

“Damn. Thought I’d catch him.” The man turned and began walking back down the corridor.

“May I tell Major Henry who called?” Dubon asked.

The man turned and stared back at him with an amused expression.

“Tell him who called? Uh, no, I don’t think so.”

He walked down the hall to the same closet door the fat woman had used and disappeared, leaving Dubon cursing his own stupidity. The man was clearly a spy and Dubon’s ignorance of the mere etiquette of espionage might have given him away.

He should be profiting from the others’ absence by riffling through the files to see if he could find what he needed, but he had no idea where to start and he felt paralyzed, dreading the idea that someone might return from lunch and catch him in the middle of it. Instead, he sat at the desk with a rather sick feeling in his stomach, sifting purposelessly through the loose paper. Frustrated with himself, he got up. He had to show some initiative. He would go poke his head in that closet to see where the mysterious visitors came from. He stood still for a moment, listening for the sound of the others returning and hearing only the ever-so-faint rumbling of a train somewhere in the distance. He drew himself up, walked swiftly down the corridor, and was just reaching for a door handle when a voice barked at him: “Not that one!”

Dubon started violently and let out an involuntary cry. Steadying himself, he turned to see Hermann standing on the other side of the corridor, at the door to his office. He had forgotten all about the studious Captain Hermann; he had not gone out to lunch.

“I don’t know what you are up to, Dubon,” he said in a cold voice, “but if you are looking for the water closet, we use the one on the landing. The one here is only for the colonel and the major.”

“Oh, very sorry. Didn’t realize,” Dubon mumbled as he retreated hurriedly, bumping into a wall.

Hermann just stared at him and then asked, “Where did you go to school, Dubon?”

“Ah. Saint-Cyr,” Dubon replied, and instantly regretted it. In Jean-Jean’s case it was the truth, but the elite military academy created a
tight cadre. He assumed an Alsatian like Hermann had probably risen through the ranks, but it would not be hard for him or anyone else in the section to start asking around.

“Saint-Cyr? And you are still a captain?” Hermann asked dubiously.

Of course, that was another point. Jean-Jean was ten years younger than he was. Any graduate of Saint-Cyr would have been expected to rise higher than the rank of captain by his midforties.

“I am only thirty-five,” Dubon said, shaving eight years off his age. Hermann, he supposed, was around that age himself so might be more comfortable with the idea that captain was an acceptable rank at that point in life.

“Really? You look at least forty,” Hermann said gracelessly.

“No, thirty-five, and still hoping for promotion.”

“Well, if you want to get ahead around here, don’t use the senior officers’ closet,” Hermann said. “The colonel may not care about these things, but the major is a stickler for rank.”

“Right. Very good. I’ll just go out to the landing, then,” Dubon responded, glad of a reason to end the conversation.

As he relieved himself in the correct closet, which he had already visited that morning but felt it was important to revisit in case Hermann was watching, he felt the fear that had rushed into his body slowly ebbing, only to be replaced by ferocious hunger. He left the building and hurried across the street to an unsavory establishment he had noticed on his way in that morning. He estimated he was less likely to run into anyone he knew in such a place and found it empty except for a few local deliverymen washing down their meal with tumblers of red wine. He gnawed his way through the daily special, a particularly unappetizing piece of tongue, paid his bill, and carefully scanned the street before pushing open the door and leaving. He hung back in the doorway of the café for a moment looking about him and then, seeing no familiar faces, he sprinted back to number 113.

There were no more mysterious apparitions in the corridor that afternoon, but a visitor did walk through the front door. He was a scrawny young lieutenant who tried to close the door behind him while
simultaneously saluting and then, when Dubon waved him in, stood in front of the desk shifting awkwardly from one leg to the other.

“I am Lieutenant Laurent. From headquarters. I was supposed to be here this morning but there was a mix-up at the rue Saint-Dominique. I had to go back to get the papers signed.” At this he held up an envelope. “I know I was supposed to start this morning. I’m very sorry.”

Dubon felt his skin crawl. This surely was the temporary clerk, the
real
temporary clerk. Could he dare send the man about his business?

“Really, I mean, I’m not sure, you are …” He stalled for time as he rose to his feet.

At this point, the colonel returned from lunch and stopped at Dubon’s desk. The lieutenant saluted.

“Who are you?” the colonel asked incuriously.

“Laurent, sir. Reporting for duty. Sent over from the rue Saint-Dominique.”

“Isn’t that just typical.” The colonel laughed. “My predecessor put in the request for a clerk in January, they send us two in May.”

“I know I was supposed to be here this morning—”

“You were supposed to be here four months ago. Anyway, we don’t need you now. They already sent over this fellow yesterday. Off you go, back to headquarters. They’ll find something else for you to do, I’m sure.”

“But, Colonel—”

“Off you go now,” the colonel repeated, moving in the direction of his own office.

The lieutenant saluted and left, backing away without turning around, as though the colonel were some royal personage to whom one might never turn one’s back.

The colonel watched him leave and caught Dubon’s glance as he did so. He rolled his eyes and, as soon as the lieutenant disappeared through the front door, said to Dubon, “Well, guess we got the better end of that deal, eh?”

Dubon saluted him smartly and sat back down at his desk, feeling warmed by the compliment. He savored it for a moment until he realized how idiotic it was to be flattered that someone would judge him to
be the better clerk. What if Laurent’s superiors called on Picquart to explain why he had been returned to them? Dubon would be exposed and sent packing, to his great humiliation, if not much worse. He supposed there were severe penalties for impersonating a military officer, although the government might be embarrassed enough he had got inside that it would not risk prosecuting him. Could they actually accuse him of being a spy? He would have to count on the evidently glacial bureaucracy of the rue Saint-Dominique and Statistical Section’s low standards of administration to keep him safe for another day or two while he hunted for the Dreyfus file. In the meantime, the colonel and the major were less likely to question his credentials if they wanted to keep him; he needed to do the clerical work correctly, and he couldn’t help feeling a little pleased with what he had pulled off so far. He had insinuated himself into the place and discovered the French were somehow getting hold of papers the Germans had discarded; now he needed to find the ones that had led Henry to finger Dreyfus.

Three hours later he had made no progress but had at least tidied the desktop before he left for the day. As he walked down the rue de Lille, his huge relief at being out of the place for a few hours gave way to a sense of exhilaration and adventure. He hadn’t felt this giddy since he first made plans to rent an apartment for Madeleine. He tucked his cap under his arm and walked briskly, scanning the crowds. They were heavy enough at this time of day that he could easily enough sidestep any approaching acquaintance. Still, he was happy to get through the doors of his own familiar office, where he found Lebrun, tidying up for the day.

“Ah, Lebrun.”

Lebrun looked puzzled; Dubon could not for an instant think why, and then remembered the uniform. Goodness, what had he been thinking?

“Ah yes, well, a family uniform, of course … bit of playacting on my part … uh … for a rather delicate case.”

“That would be the widow Duhamel’s case, Maître?”

“Yes, yes. Of course. Did she come today?” he asked eagerly.

“She’s waiting in your office now, Maître.”

“I’ll just go in, then,” he said, moving toward the inner office.

“Very good, Maître,” Lebrun said coolly.

Dubon turned back to him. “This case may take some time, Lebrun. I’ll need you to handle the office during my absence. Perhaps another week or so. I’ll try to get here every evening by six, and if you would stay a bit later, we can review the day’s business then. Of course, I’ll, er, compensate you for the extra work. Was, uh, thinking of raising your pay in September, in any case. I had been meaning to tell you, but I have been a bit busy.”

“Thank you, Maître. That is most appreciated, Maître, most appreciated. There were some messages today. And I will need to know how I should proceed with the Montcharnet file. We have yet to hear from his lawyer and it has been a month.”