A Man in Uniform (42 page)

Geneviève returned to the pile of letters in her lap, and they sat companionably as occasionally she laughed, or sighed, or tut-tutted and said at various points, “Madame la Baronne …” or “Monsieur Lavallé …” or “les Archembaults …” as if by way of explanation. After about twenty minutes of reading, she remarked, “A lovely letter from Masson.”

At the mention of the name, Dubon looked up sharply from his book.

“He says he’s sorry he couldn’t be at the funeral,” Geneviève said, “but he was out of town on business and he’s only getting back today. It’s not like him to miss something like that. He is always so gracious. Such a fine man.”

“You used to be rather dismissive of him when we were younger,” Dubon couldn’t help observing.

“Was I?”

“You were scathing when he took his father’s title. Baron … just some Napoleonic invention, you said. You used to have trouble getting the word out of your mouth whenever we saw him.” Dubon, as a childhood friend, had simply stuck with “Masson,” but his wife, who had previously called him “Monsieur,” had little choice but to address a baron by his title.

“Well … I …” She hesitated. “His mother’s family is an ancient one.”

“She was crazy, that woman.”

“Yes, so everyone said. Ran in the family, they used to say, although he never shows any sign of it. Anyway, we should judge the man, not his lineage.”

Yes, Dubon thought to himself, we should judge the man.

“May I read his letter?” he asked, reaching across and pulling it off the top of her pile.

It was a model letter of condolence, containing a few telling observations about the fine personality in which the deceased rejoiced and one fond anecdote about him, before observing how proper it was for his correspondent to be grief-stricken over the loss of such a relative. Perhaps he had a form in his drawer to which he just added the appropriate adjectives and stories that a particular death demanded. Dubon had planned to confront Masson soon. If the man had played some part in the forger’s death, Dubon did not expect he would ever pay the price, but the very least he could do, since he had come this far, was make sure that Masson, whoever he was, did not stand in the way of the captain’s appeal. Dubon rose to his feet.

“I am afraid I must go out,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to … well, to go to the office for a bit.”

“Will you be back before you go out to dinner?” she asked. Dubon had already gently paved the way for his absence that evening.

“I’m not sure. Probably just in time to change. You’ll be all right? You and André will go over to your sister’s soon?”

“Yes. I’ll be fine. Maybe we’ll walk out with you.”

“I’ll take you to Anne-Marie’s and go on from there.”

“But it’s in the opposite direction. You don’t want to have to go all the way to the Left Bank and back.”

“No matter.”

Dubon went to warn André they were leaving and returned to the front hall to find Geneviève preparing herself to go out. She was wearing the same plain black suit in which she had attended the funeral the previous day, hidden beneath a black veil that she now unpinned from her
large hat, ready to appear in the street without it. He knew she would discuss with her sisters that day what form their mourning would take and how long it should last, but it would be months before any of them might venture out wearing a white collar let alone a gray suit. He was wearing a black armband himself, as was André, who appeared now, pulling on his jacket.

“Where is Papa going? Can’t I go with him instead?” André asked.

“He is just going to the office for a bit, darling. You come with me to your aunt’s.”

“But I want to be with Papa. I won’t bother you,” André said, turning to his father.

“Not today, André,” Dubon said, smiling gently at his son. “Soon, though. When school’s out you can come to the office and I’ll show you what we do all day, me and Lebrun.”

In fact, the youngest of Geneviève’s three sisters lived in the right direction for Dubon’s purposes. After he dropped his family there, he proceeded to Masson’s apartment off the rue de Varenne—very convenient, now that he thought of it, to Madeleine’s promised rooms in the rue du Bac.

His manservant said he was out, but suggested Dubon return around five.

“Monsieur le Baron made a brief trip to Deauville Thursday. I do not expect him back until four at the earliest.”

It was only half past three, so Dubon spent the next hour and a half wandering the streets, rehearsing in his head what he would say to Masson. He did not want to talk to him about Madeleine; he did not even want to think about her, although he realized that Masson’s business in Deauville must have been their little honeymoon by the seaside.

When he returned to the apartment, Masson still was not back but his servant showed Dubon into Masson’s study to wait. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang. Dubon supposed it was Masson and that the man didn’t bother with a key, but after a moment, the servant reappeared in the room with a telegram that he placed on the desk.

“A telegram for Monsieur le Baron. I’m sure he won’t be long,
Maître. He has a dinner engagement, so I expect him very soon.” The servant shut the door and left him again.

Dubon crossed over to the desk, picked up the telegram, and tore it open. He read it twice over, surprised that Masson did not already know the message it contained, and was just stuffing it into his pocket when the doorbell rang again.

“So, my old friend, we are to have the inevitable confrontation. I had hoped to avoid anything so melodramatic,” Masson said as he settled himself in a chair across from Dubon.

“About Madeleine, you mean?”

“Yes.” Masson looked at him quizzically. “If not about Madeleine, well, you tell me …”

Dubon said nothing. Masson let the silence sit for a while and then offered his condolences. “How is Madame Dubon? Not taking it too hard, I hope.”

“She is managing, thank you. She was touched by your letter.” Despite himself Dubon found the conventional niceties issuing from his lips.

“You have a very lovely wife, Dubon. I have always envied you Geneviève.”

Dubon noted with annoyance that Masson took the liberty of using her first name.

“You should pay her more attention. You wouldn’t want to lose her …”

“… too,” Dubon added sharply. It occurred to Dubon that perhaps Masson had stolen his mistress because he couldn’t steal his wife. The man had wanted something and had taken what he could.

“Madeleine is a businesswoman,” Masson said. “I made her a better offer. That’s fair.”

“Well, I wish you the joy of it, my friend, but if you look on your relationship with her solely as a business transaction, you are unlikely to be satisfied.”

Masson just smiled a superior smile.

“I didn’t come to talk about Madeleine,” Dubon said. “I have a question I need to ask you. You gave Madeleine a letter signed by Napoléon. Where did you get it?”

“She showed it to you?”

“It was still sitting there on the table when I arrived.”

“Lovely thing, isn’t it? Not real, of course,” Masson said lightly, but his body betrayed some irritation as he rose from his chair and went over to stand by his desk.

“Where did you get it?”

“Friend of mine in the police passed it on to me. Something of a joke, really. He knew the man who, well, who created it, shall we say.”

“Don’t toy with me, Masson,” Dubon said angrily. “Madeleine told you I had seen it at Rivaud’s, and you took it to give it to her. What, to prove to her you had more power, more contacts, than I? Or were you hoping I would see it and guess at your scope? You had Rivaud murdered to protect Major Henry’s evidence against Dreyfus.”

“Goodness, Dubon. What an accusation. What kind of power do you think I have?”

“I don’t know, but I know you have been fixing the case against the captain.”

“I fix many things for my masters in government,” he said as he perched himself on the edge of the desk. “France needs Dreyfus to be guilty.”

“But you and I know he isn’t guilty. Why can’t France be satisfied with a guilty Esterhazy instead?”

Masson paused, as though reevaluating the situation.

“Ah, you’ve heard that name,” he said as though to himself.

He hadn’t seen Friday’s papers, Dubon realized, thinking bitterly that he must have been too busy in bed with Madeleine in a Deauville hotel room to read the Paris press.

Masson pushed himself away from the desk now and walked around behind it to sit down. He looked at Dubon across its large expanse and said, “I underestimated you, my friend. Did you root out Esterhazy in your little escapade at the Statistical Section?”

It was Dubon’s turn to be surprised, although he realized he should have guessed that Masson knew about his undercover work. “So, Madeleine told you all about it,” he said.

“No. She didn’t betray you. She told me about the Napoléon letter. She seemed impressed by it, so I got it for her. But it was you who told me you were working to reverse a court martial. Do you remember? That time we bumped into each other in that café around the corner from her place. I was waiting for you to clear out of the way actually. Madeleine did tell me you were working on some special assignment that made it impossible for you to visit her, but I also have my contacts in the Statistical Section. When I heard of an odd new clerk who did not speak as much German as required, well, I began to have my suspicions.”

Hermann. The colleague who had questioned Dubon’s German and always seemed to be popping up without warning. He was Masson’s eyes and ears in the section.

“If you knew I had infiltrated the Statistical Section, why did you leave me there?” Dubon asked.

“At first I thought we had better rope you in before you got into trouble. But then you were getting along very well with Picquart. So, I left you there to see what you would find out,” Masson answered, looking pleased with his own cleverness. “If you could discover ways of proving Dreyfus innocent, I needed to know them.”

Dubon gasped at the man’s vanity. “So I was working for you, was I? Your unwitting spy in the Dreyfusard camp?”

“Over the years, I have found that is the best way,” he replied. “Spies are unlikely to betray their masters if they don’t know who they are working for. It’s a little technique I developed after my experiences in Russia, where we always had trouble recruiting local agents.”

“But how do you get the information out of them?”

“People invariably talk. I think that you, for example, have things to tell me about the case against Dreyfus. I’ll find them out, eventually. I was going to suggest we have a good, long dinner sometime, but now you have saved me the trouble.” Masson leaned across the desktop, looming toward Dubon with a smirk on his face. “We can just keep chatting and you’ll betray yourself,” he said.

If the effect was supposed to be menacing, it failed: Dubon was only reminded of the awkwardly unctuous schoolboy Masson had been.

“Spies are an unreliable breed. We have agents in foreign countries reporting on the activities of their own governments, but you can never fully trust them. What kind of man betrays his country for money? It’s no better at home. Various criminal types offer information. All these characters can be bought by either side. They are, like your Madeleine, for sale to the highest bidder.”

Dubon reared up at this last insult. “Stop!”

“I am sorry, my friend. Perhaps my work has made me cynical. There was some disinformation we needed to plant with the Germans,” he continued, “but they were always ferreting out our agents; they were naturally suspicious of any Frenchman who approached them. Thinking on the problem, I realized that if a double agent doesn’t know he is a double agent—if he actually believes he is working for the enemy—then his mission can never be uncovered.”

“Esterhazy … the incompetent spy …” That was why Dreyfus had to be guilty, Dubon thought, to protect Esterhazy’s cover.

“Oh yes, horrible fellow, all puffed up with his own importance, hawking instruction manuals that half the artillery officers in France are using as doorstops. He served our purposes very nicely. He was already trying to sell information to the newspapers. All we had to do was instruct a few of our less reputable contacts to whisper in his ear how the next level of the business worked, then leave a few documents within his reach, and watch him scamper off to the Germans. It was all going swimmingly—”

“Until the Statistical Section uncovered evidence of his treachery.”

“Luckily, those fools could be counted on to get the wrong man. They sent Dreyfus to Devil’s Island, leaving my project to continue.”

“You know Dreyfus is innocent. You left him to rot.”

Masson’s expression was impassive. “There are larger issues at stake here than the life of one small man,” he said grandly.

“There are. Justice, for one. If the Republic does not—”

“Spare me, Dubon. I have worked all my life for the good of the nation.”

“And the disinformation that it was so important to plant with the Germans? It was the material about the artillery, wasn’t it? Tell the enemy all about the new brakes on the 120, convince them they are on to the latest developments in French artillery. It was all a ruse to protect the secrecy of the 75 mm, the gun with the braking system that really works. The 75 mm will decide the next war, and only France will have it.”