An Officer and a Spy (34 page)

My mind keeps wandering eight thousand miles to the shackled figure on Devil’s Island.

When the meeting is finished and everyone is filing out, Gonse asks me to stay for a moment. He could not be friendlier. “I’ve been thinking, my dear Picquart. When all this Russian fuss is over, I want you to undertake a special mission to the eastern garrison towns.”

“To do what, General?”

“Inspect and report on security procedures. Recommend improvements. Important work.”

“How long will I be away from Paris?”

“Oh, just a few days. Perhaps a week or two.”

“But who will run the section?”

“I’ll take it over myself.” He laughs and claps my shoulder. “If you’ll trust me with the responsibility!”

On Sunday, I see Pauline at the Gasts’: the first time I have set eyes on her in weeks. She wears another dress she knows I like, plain yellow with white lace cuffs and collar. Philippe is with her and so are
their two little girls, Germaine and Marianne. Usually I can cope perfectly well seeing the family all together, but on this day it is agony. The weather is cold and wet. We are confined indoors. So there is no escaping the sight of her immersed in her other life—her real life.

After a couple of hours I can’t keep up the pretence any longer. I go out on to the veranda at the back of the house to smoke a cigar. The rain is coming down cold and hard and mixed with hail like a northern European monsoon, stripping the few remaining leaves from the trees. The hailstones bounce off the saturated lawn. I think of Dreyfus’s descriptions of the incessant tropical downpours.

There is a soft chafing of silk behind me, a scent of perfume, and then Pauline is at my side. She doesn’t look at me but stands gazing out across the gloomy garden. I have my cigar in my right hand, my left hangs loosely. The back of her right hand barely brushes against it. It feels as if only the hairs are touching. To anyone coming up behind us we are just two old friends watching the storm together. But her proximity is almost overwhelming. Neither of us speaks. And then the door to the passage bangs open and Monnier’s voice booms out: “Let’s hope it’s not like this next week for Their Imperial Majesties!”

Pauline casually moves her hand up to her forehead to brush away a stray hair. “Are you very much involved in it, Georges?”

“Not much.”

“He’s being modest, as usual,” cuts in Monnier. “I know the part you fellows have played to make the whole thing secure.”

Pauline says, “Will you actually have an opportunity to meet the Tsar?”

“I’m afraid you have to be at least a general for that.”

Monnier says, “But surely you could watch the parade, couldn’t you, Picquart?”

I puff hard on my cigar, wishing he would go away. “I could, if I could be bothered. The Minister of War has allocated places for my officers and their wives at the Bourbon Palace.”

“And you’re not going!” cries Pauline, pretending to punch my arm. “You miserable republican!”

And so on Tuesday morning, Pauline and I edge along the steps of the Bourbon Palace to our allotted places, whereupon I discover that every officer of the Statistical Section has accepted the minister’s invitation and has brought his wife—or in Gribelin’s case his mother. They make no attempt to hide their curiosity when we appear and I realise, too late, how we must look in their eyes—the bachelor chief with his married mistress on his arm. I introduce Pauline very formally, emphasising her social position as the wife of my good friend Monsieur Monnier of the quai d’Orsay. That only makes it sound more suspicious. And although Henry bows briefly and Lauth nods and clicks his heels, I notice that Berthe Henry, the innkeeper’s daughter, with her parvenu’s snobbery, is reluctant even to take Pauline’s hand, while Madame Lauth, her mouth tightly crimped in disapproval, actually turns away.

Not that Pauline seems to care. We have a perfect view, looking straight down the bridge, across the Seine, half a kilometre to the obelisk in the place de la Concorde. The weather is sunny but windy. The vast tricolours hanging off the buildings—the red, white and blue stripes vertical for France, horizontal for Russia—snap and billow against their moorings. The crowds on the bridge are ten or twelve deep and have been waiting since dawn. It is reported to be the same all across the city. According to the Préfecture of Police, one and a half million spectators are lining the route.

From the place de la Concorde comes the faint roar of thousands of voices cheering, and then gradually at first but increasing in volume, as in a symphony, an underlying percussion of horses’ hooves on cobbles. A shimmering line of light appears spread across the wide thoroughfare, and then more lines behind it, which gradually resolve into helmets and breastplates glinting in the bright sun—wave after wave of lancers and cuirassiers, bobbing up and down on their horses, banners streaming, twelve abreast, riding across the bridge. On and on they come, heading straight for us at a stiff trot,
until it seems they will mount the steps and charge right through us. But then abruptly at the last moment they sweep round to our right, down the boulevard Saint-Germain. Behind them come the native cavalry—the Chasseurs d’Afrique, the Algerian Saphis, the Arab caids and chiefs, their horses shying at the racket of the crowd—and then after these is the procession of open state carriages—the President, the Russian ambassador, the leaders of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, and all the other prominent figures of the Republic, including General Billot. There is a particularly loud cheer for Boisdeffre in his plumed helmet, which he doffs from side to side: the gossip is that after this he could be Foreign Minister.

There is a gap, and then the Russian state coach appears, surrounded by a mounted bodyguard. Pauline gasps and clutches my arm.

After all the talk of alliances and armies, it is the
smallness
of the Imperial couple that makes the most impression on me. Tsar Nicholas II might be mistaken for a frightened fair-headed boy wearing a false beard and his father’s uniform. He salutes mechanically every few seconds, touching the edge of his astrakhan cap in rapid gestures—more nervous tic than acknowledgement of applause. Sitting by his side the Tsarina Alexandra appears even younger, a girl who has raided the dressing-up box. She wears a swansdown boa and clutches a white parasol in one hand and an immense bouquet in the other. She bows rapidly to right and left. I am close enough to see her clenched smile. They both look apprehensive. Their carriage swings sharply rightwards and they sway gently over to one side with the motion then disappear—sucked out of sight into a funnel of noise.

Still holding my arm, Pauline turns to speak to me. I can’t quite hear her voice above the tumult. “What?” She pulls me closer, her lips so close I can feel her breath in my ear, and as I strain to listen, I see Henry, Lauth and Gribelin all staring at us.

Afterwards I follow the trio back to the office along the rue de l’Université. They are perhaps fifty metres ahead of me. The street is
empty. Most people, including our womenfolk, have decided to stay where they are in order to catch a glimpse of the Imperial couple driving back across the bridge after lunch to the Russian Orthodox church. Something about the way Henry is gesturing with his hand and the other two are nodding tells me they are talking about me. I can’t resist quickening my step until I am right behind them. “Gentlemen!” I say loudly. “I’m glad to see you’re not neglecting your duties!”

I had expected guilty laughter, even embarrassment. But the three faces that turn to meet mine are surly and defiant. I have offended their bourgeois sensitivities even more than I realised. We complete the journey to the Statistical Section in silence and I keep to my office for the rest of the day.

The sun sets over Paris shortly after seven. By eight it is too gloomy to read. I don’t switch on my lamp.

The timbers of the old building shrink and creak as the day cools into evening. The birds in the minister’s garden fall silent. The shadows achieve a solid geometry. I sit at my desk, waiting. If ever there was a time for the ghosts of Voltaire and Montesquieu to materialise, this is it. At eight-thirty when I open my door I half expect to see a periwig and velvet coat floating down the corridor. But the ancient house seems deserted. Everyone has gone off to watch the fireworks in the Trocadéro, even Capiaux. The front door will be locked. I have the place to myself.

From my drawer I take the leather roll of lock-picking tools that Desvernine left behind months earlier. As I climb the stairs I am aware of the ludicrousness of my situation: the chief of the secret intelligence section obliged to break into the archives of his own department. But I have considered the problem rationally from every angle and I can see no better solution. At the very least, it is worth a try.

I kneel in the passage outside Gribelin’s door. My first discovery is that lock-picking is easier than it looks. Once I have the hang of which instrument to use I am able to find the notch in the underside
of the bolt. All I have to do next is press. Then it is a matter of maintaining the pressure with the left hand while with the right I insert the pick and manipulate it to raise the tumblers. One rises, then a second, and finally the third; the racking stump slides forwards; there is a well-oiled click and the door opens.

I turn on the electric light. It would take me hours to pick all the locks in Gribelin’s archive. But I remember he keeps his keys in the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk. After ten minutes of patient trial and error, it yields to my pick. I open the drawer. The keys are there.

Suddenly there is a bang that makes my heart jump. I glance out of the window. Searchlights on top of the Eiffel Tower a kilometre away are shining across the Seine to the place de la Concorde. The beams are surrounded by bursting stars which pulse and flash in silence and then a second or two later come the explosions, loud enough to vibrate the glass panes in their ancient mouldings. I glance at my watch. Nine o’clock. They are running half an hour late. The fireworks are scheduled to last thirty minutes.

I take Gribelin’s bunch of keys and start trying to open the nearest filing cabinet.

Once I have worked out which key fits which lock, I open all the drawers. My first priority is to collect every scrap of Agent Auguste material I can find.

The glued-together documents are already beginning to yellow with age. They rustle like dried leaves as I sort them into piles: letters and telegrams from Hauptmann Dame in Berlin, signed with his
nom de guerre
, “Dufour”; letters to Schwartzkoppen from the German ambassador, Count Münster, and to Panizzardi from the Italian ambassador, Signor Ressmann, and to the military attaché of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Colonel Schneider. There is an envelope full of cinders dated November 1890. There are letters to Schwartzkoppen from the Italian naval attaché, Rosselini, and the British military attaché, Colonel Talbot. Here are the forty or fifty love letters from Hermance de Weede—
My dear adored friend … My Maxi …
—and perhaps half that many from Panizzardi:
My dear little one … My big cat … My dear big bugger …

There was a time when I would have felt uncomfortable—grubby, even—handling such intimate material; no longer.

Mixed in with all this is a cipher telegram from Panizzardi to the General Staff in Rome, dispatched at three o’clock on the morning of Friday, 2 November 1894:

The decoded text is clipped to it, written out by General Gonse:
Captain Dreyfus has been arrested. The Ministry of War has evidence of his dealings with Germany. We have taken all necessary precautions
.

I copy it down in my notebook. Beyond the window, the Eiffel Tower is a cascade of tumbling light. There is one last final thunderous explosion and slowly it fades into darkness. I hear a faint roar of applause. The display is over. I estimate it would take someone roughly thirty minutes to escape from the crowds in the Trocadéro gardens and get back to the section.

I return my attention to the glued-together documents.

Much of the material is incomplete or pointless, its sense tantalisingly out of reach. It suddenly strikes me as madness to try to read so much meaning into such detritus: that we are little better than the haruspices of the ancient world who decided public policy by scrutinising animal livers. My eyes feel gritty. I have been stuck in my office without food since noon. Perhaps that explains why, when I do come to the crucial document, I miss it at first, and move on to the next. But it nags at my mind, and then I go back and look at it again.

It is a short note, in thin black ink, on squared white paper, torn into twenty pieces, a few of which are missing. The writer is offering to sell Schwartzkoppen “the secret of smokeless powder.” It is signed
your devoted Dubois
and dated 27 October 1894—two weeks after Dreyfus’s arrest.

I delve a little further into the file. Two days later, Dubois writes
to the German attaché again:
I can procure for you a cartridge from the Lebel rifle that will enable you to analyse the secret of the smokeless powder
. Schwartzkoppen does not seem to have done anything about it. Why should he? The letter looks cranky and I guess he could go into almost any bar in any garrison town in France and pick up a Lebel cartridge for the price of a beer.

It is the name of the signatory that interests me. Dubois? I am sure I have just read that name. I go back to the pile of letters from Panizzardi to Schwartzkoppen.
My beautiful little girl … My little green dog … Dear Top Bugger … Your devoted bugger 2nd class …
And here it is: in a note of 1893, the Italian writes to Schwartzkoppen:
I have seen M. Dubois
.

Attached to the letter is a cross-reference to a file. It takes me several minutes to work out Gribelin’s system and track it down. In a folder I find a brief report addressed to Colonel Sandherr by Major Henry dated April 1894 regarding the possible identity of the agent referred to as “D” who has provided the Germans and Italians with “twelve master plans of Nice.” Henry’s conclusion is that he is one Jacques Dubois, a printer who works for a factory that handles Ministry of War contracts: it is he who has probably also provided the Germans with large-scale drawings of the fortifications at Toul, Reims, Langres, Neufchâteau and the rest. When he sets the printing machine for a run, it is a simple matter for him to print off extra copies for his own use.
I interviewed him yesterday
, relates Henry,
and found him to be a miserable fellow, a criminal fantasist with limited intelligence and no access to classified material. The plans he has handed over are publicly available. Recommendation: no further action necessary
.