An Officer and a Spy (25 page)

“I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you it definitely wasn’t our friend on Devil’s Island, because it was written in the last month.”

He thrusts it back at me: it’s clear he doesn’t want any part of it. “You should show this to Bertillon. He’s the graphologist.”

“I already have. He says it’s identical to the
bordereau
—‘identical,’ that was his word.”

There is an awkward silence, which du Paty tries to cover by breathing on both sides of his monocle, polishing it on the sleeve of his dressing gown, screwing it back into his eye and staring at me. “What exactly are you about here, Georges?”

“I’m just about doing my duty, Armand. It’s my responsibility to investigate potential spies and I seem to have found another—a traitor who somehow escaped detection when you were leading the Dreyfus investigation two years ago.”

Du Paty folds his arms defensively inside the wide sleeves of his robe. He looks absurd, like a wizard in a cabaret at Le Chat Noir. “I’m not infallible,” he says. “I’ve never pretended otherwise. It’s possible there were others involved. Sandherr always believed Dreyfus had at least one accomplice.”

“Did you have any names?”

“Personally I suspected that brother of his, Mathieu. So did Sandherr, as a matter of fact.”

“But Mathieu wasn’t in the army at the time. He wasn’t even in Paris.”

“No,” replies du Paty with great significance, “but he was in Germany. And he’s a Jew.”

I have no desire to be drawn into any of du Paty’s crazy theories. It is like becoming lost in a maze with no exits. I say, “I must allow you to get back to your work.” I rest my briefcase on the escritoire for a moment so that I can put away the photograph. As I do so, my eye falls unavoidably on a page of du Paty’s novel.
“You shall not deceive me with your beauty for a second time, mademoiselle,” cried the duc d’Argentin, with a flourish of his poisoned dagger …

Du Paty watches me. He says, “The
bordereau
wasn’t the only evidence against Dreyfus, you know. It was the intelligence we had that actually convicted him. The secret file.
As you remember
.” There is a definite threat in this last remark.

“I do remember.”

“Good.”

“Are you trying to imply something?”

“No. Or at least only that I hope you don’t forget, as you pursue your investigations, that you were part of the whole prosecution as well. Let me show you out.”

At the door I say, “Actually, that’s not entirely accurate, if you’ll allow me to correct you. You and Sandherr and Henry and Gribelin were the prosecuting authority. I was never anything more than an observer.”

Du Paty emits a whinny of laughter. His face is close enough to mine for me to smell his breath: there’s a whiff of decay about it that seems to come from deep within him and reminds me of the drains beneath the Statistical Section. “Oh, is that what you think? An observer! Come, my dear Georges, you sat through the entire court-martial! You were Mercier’s errand boy throughout the whole thing! You advised him on his tactics! You can’t turn round now and say it was nothing to do with you! Why else do you think you’ve ended up chief of the Statistical Section?” He opens the door. “Will you give my regards to Blanche, by the way?” he calls after me. “She’s still not married, I believe? Tell her I would call upon her, but you know how it is: my wife wouldn’t approve.”

I am too angry to think of a reply, and so I leave him with the
satisfaction of the last word, imagining himself a wit: smiling after me insufferably from his doorstep in his dressing gown and slippers and fez.

I walk back towards the office slowly, thinking over what I have just been told.

Is this what people say about me—that I was Mercier’s errand boy? That I only got my present job because I knew how to tell him the things he wanted to hear?

I feel as if I have walked into a mirrored room and glimpsed myself from an unfamiliar angle for the first time. Is that really what I look like? Is that who I am?

Two months after Dreyfus’s arrest, in the middle of December 1894, General Mercier summoned me to see him. I was not told what it was about. I assumed it must be in connection with the Dreyfus affair and that others would be present. I was right on the first point, wrong on the second. This time Mercier received me alone.

He was sitting behind his desk. A weak fire of brownish coal hissed in the grate. The bare facts of Dreyfus’s arrest had been leaked to the press six weeks earlier, at the beginning of November—
High Treason. Arrest of the Jewish Officer A. Dreyfus
—and people were agog to know what he was guilty of, and what the government planned to do about him; I was curious myself. Mercier told me to take a seat and then played his favourite trick of making me wait while he finished annotating whatever document he was bent over, giving me a long opportunity to study the top of his narrow, close-cropped, balding skull and speculate on what schemes and secrets it contained. Eventually he set down his pen and said, “Before I go any further, let me just be certain—you haven’t taken any part in the investigation of Captain Dreyfus since his arrest?”

“None, Minister.”

“And you haven’t spoken about the case to Colonel du Paty or Colonel Sandherr or Major Henry?”

“No.”

There was a pause while Mercier scrutinised me through his eye slits. “You have literary interests, I believe?”

I hesitated. This was the sort of admission that could ruin one’s prospects of promotion. “To some degree; in private, General; yes, I take an interest in all the arts.”

“There’s no need to be ashamed of it, Major. I simply want someone who can make a report for me that would contain more than just the bare facts. Do you think you can do that?”

“I would hope so. Naturally, it would depend on what it’s about.”

“Do you remember what you said in this office on the eve of Dreyfus’s arrest?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, General.”

“You asked Colonel du Paty: ‘What happens if Dreyfus doesn’t confess?’ I made a note of it at the time. It was a good question. ‘What happens if he doesn’t confess?’ Colonel du Paty assured us he would. But now it transpires he hasn’t, despite being held in prison for the past two months. In confidence, Major, I must tell you I feel let down.”

“I can understand that.”
Poor old du Paty
, I thought. I found it hard to keep a straight face.

“Now Captain Dreyfus is going to stand trial next week in front of a military court, and the very same people who assured me he would confess are promising me with equal certainty that he will be found guilty. But I have learned to be more cautious, you understand?”

“Absolutely.”

“The government will be roasted alive if this trial goes wrong. You’ve seen the press already: ‘the case will be hushed up because the officer is a Jew …’ So this is what I want you to do.” He put his elbows on his desk and spoke very quietly and deliberately. “I want you, Major Picquart, to attend the court-martial every day on my behalf and report back to me each evening on what you’ve seen. I don’t just want ‘He said this, he said that …’—any secretary with shorthand could give me that. I want the very nub of the thing.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Describe it to me like a writer. Tell me how the prosecution sounds. Look at the judges, study
the witnesses. I can’t attend the court myself. That would make the whole thing seem like a political trial. So you’ll have to be my eyes and ears. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, General,” I said, “I would be honoured.”

I withdrew from Mercier’s office maintaining a suitably solemn expression. But as soon as I reached the landing I tipped my cap to the painting of Napoleon. A personal assignment from the Minister of War! But not just that—I was to be his “eyes and ears”! I trotted down those marble steps with a broad smile on my face.

Dreyfus’s court-martial was scheduled to start on Wednesday, 19 December in the military courthouse, a grim old building directly across the street from the Cherche-Midi prison, and to last three or four days. I very much hoped it would be over by Saturday night: I had tickets to the Salle d’Harcourt, to attend the first public performance of Monsieur Debussy’s
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
.

I made sure to be at the court building early. It was not yet light when I made my way into the crowded vestibule. The first person I met was Major Henry: when he saw me, he jerked his head back in surprise.

“Major Picquart! What are you doing here?”

“The minister has asked me to attend as his observer.”

“Has he, by God?” Henry pulled a face. “Aren’t we grand these days? So you’re to be his stool pigeon? We’ll have to watch what we say when you’re around!” He tried to make it sound as if he was making a joke, but I could tell he was affronted, and from that moment on he was always wary of me. I wished him good luck and climbed the stone staircase to the courtroom on the first floor.

The building was a former convent with low, thick arched doors and roughly plastered whitewashed walls that had little nooks built into them for icons. The chamber set aside for the hearing was barely larger than a classroom and already packed with reporters, gendarmes, soldiers and those peculiar members of the general public whose pastime is attending trials. At the far end, on a platform erected beneath a mural of the Crucifixion, was a long table for the judges, covered with green baize. Carpets had been nailed up over the windows—whether to shut out prying eyes or the December
cold I never did discover, but the effect was claustrophobic and curiously sinister. There was a plain wooden chair facing the judges for the accused, a small desk behind it for his lawyer and another nearby for the prosecutor. A chair just to the side of and behind the judges was reserved for me. There was nowhere for the spectators to sit; they could only press themselves against the walls. I took out my notebook and pencil and sat down to wait. At one point du Paty pushed his way in briefly, followed by General Gonse. They surveyed the scene, then left.

Soon afterwards the main players began to appear. There was Maître Edgar Demange, Dreyfus’s attorney, exotic in his black robes and cylindrical black cap but otherwise the epitome of a dull middle-aged farmer with a broad, clean-shaven face and straggling wispy sideburns. The prosecutor was Brisset, thin as a sabre, in the uniform of a major. And finally there came the seven military judges, also in uniform—a colonel, three majors and two captains, led by the president of the court, Colonel Émilien Maurel. He was a shrivelled and unhealthy-looking elderly figure: I learned later he was suffering from piles. He took his place in the centre of the long table and addressed the court in a peevish voice: “Bring in the accused!”

All eyes went to the back of the court and the door opened and in he came. He was slightly bent from lack of exercise, grey from exhaustion and the darkness of his cell, thin from his poor diet: in ten weeks he had aged ten years. And yet, as he advanced into the room, escorted by a lieutenant of the Republican Guard, he held his head at a defiant angle. I even detected a hint of anticipation in his step. Perhaps Mercier was right to be worried.
Quite the grand seigneur
, I noted,
& eager to begin
. He halted in front of Colonel Maurel and saluted.

Maurel coughed to clear his throat and said, “State your name.”

“Alfred Dreyfus.”

“Place of birth?”

“Mulhouse.”

“Age?”

“Thirty-five.”

“You may sit.”

Dreyfus lowered himself into his place. He took off his cap and placed it under his seat. He adjusted his pince-nez and glanced around. I was in his direct line of sight. Almost at once his gaze settled on me. I must have held his stare for perhaps half a minute. What was in his expression? I couldn’t tell. But I sensed that to look away would be to concede that I had played a shabby trick on him, and so I wouldn’t do it.

In the end, it was the prosecutor, Brisset, who made us break our contest and look away at the same time. He rose and said, “Monsieur President, in view of the sensitive nature of this case, we would like to request that this hearing be held in private.”

Demange immediately lumbered to his feet. “Monsieur President, we object strongly. My client has the right to be treated the same as anyone else who is accused.”

“Monsieur President, under normal circumstances, nobody would argue with that. But the evidence against Captain Dreyfus necessarily includes important matters of national defence.”

“With all due respect, the only actual
evidence
against my client consists of just one sheet of disputed writing …”

A murmur of surprise went round the room. Maurel gavelled it away. “Maître Demange! Be silent, please! You are too experienced an advocate to be excused that type of trick. This court will stand adjourned while we retire to make our decision. Take the accused back to his cell.”

Dreyfus was led away again. The judges filed out after him. Demange looked content with this first exchange. As I later warned Mercier, whatever happened, he had smuggled out to the public a message about the thinness of the prosecution’s case.

Fifteen minutes later the judges returned. Maurel ordered that Dreyfus should be retrieved from his cell. He was conducted back to his place, apparently as unperturbed as ever. Maurel said, “We have considered the matter carefully. This case is highly unusual in that it touches on the gravest and most sensitive issues of national security. In these matters one simply cannot be too careful. Our ruling therefore is that all spectators should be excluded immediately and that these hearings should proceed in private.” A great groan of
complaint and disappointment arose. Demange tried to object, but Maurel brought down his gavel. “No, no! I have made my decision, Maître Demange! I shall not debate it with you. Clerk, clear the court!”

Demange slumped back. Now he looked grim. It took barely two minutes for the press and public to be ushered out by the gendarmes. When the clerk closed the door, the atmosphere was completely altered. The room was hushed. The carpeted windows seemed to seal us off from the outside world. Only thirteen remained: Dreyfus and his defender and prosecutor; the seven judges; the clerk, Vallecalle; a police official and me.