An Officer and a Spy (44 page)

The copy has been written out by Lauth and is stamped “Secret,” with a serial number appended by Gribelin. I remember reading the
original when I was stuck in some godforsaken garrison town last winter: in my drab quarters it was like opening a bouquet from the boulevard Saint-Germain. I say, “It’s from an agent of mine, Germain Ducasse. He’s reporting on the closing-down of an operation I was running against the German Embassy. When he writes ‘the masterpiece is finished’ he means that the apartment we were renting has been cleared out successfully. ‘Robert Houdin’ is the cover name of a police agent, Jean-Alfred Desvernine, who was working for me on the investigation of Esterhazy.”

“Ah,” says Pellieux, as if he has caught me out. “So ‘J’ is a man?”

“Yes.”

“And yet he ‘kisses your hand’?”

I think how amused Ducasse would be if he could see the general’s expression of disgusted disbelief.

Pellieux says, “Don’t smirk, Colonel!”

“I’m sorry, General. He is an affected young fellow, I admit, and quite silly in some respects. But he did his work well, and is perfectly trustworthy. It’s merely a joke.”

“And ‘Cagliostro’?”

“Another joke.”

“Pardon me: I’m a simple family man, Colonel. I don’t understand these ‘jokes.’ ”

“Cagliostro was an Italian occultist—Strauss wrote an operetta about him,
Cagliostro in Vienna
—and a man less likely to be susceptible to the occult than Desvernine you could not hope to find. Therein lies the irony. It’s all very harmless, General, I assure you. But obviously suspicious minds in the Statistical Section have used it to build a case against me. I do hope that at some point your inquiry will investigate these other forgeries which are obviously designed to blacken my name.”

“On the contrary, I think you have blackened your own name, Colonel, by associating in the first place with this circle of neurotic homosexuals and table-turners! So I take it the ‘comtesse’ referred to must be Mademoiselle Blanche de Comminges?”

“Yes. She is not actually a comtesse but she can sometimes behave like one.”

“And the ‘Demigod’ and the ‘Good God’?”

“They are nicknames invented by Mademoiselle de Comminges. A mutual friend of ours, Captain Lallemand, is the Demigod; I’m afraid to say that I am the Good God.”

Pellieux regards me contemptuously: to my other sins can now be added blasphemy. “And why is Captain Lallemand the Demigod?”

“Because of his fondness for Wagner.”

“And is he also part of a Jewish circle?”

“Wagner? I very much doubt it.”

It is a mistake, of course. One should never attempt wit in these circumstances. I know it the moment the words leave my lips. The major and the captain and even the secretary smile. But Pellieux’s face sets rigid. “There is nothing in the least amusing about the situation you are in, Colonel. These letters and telegrams are highly incriminating.” He flicks back to the beginning of his file. “Now, let us go over the discrepancies in your testimony once again. Why did you falsely claim to have taken possession of the
petit bleu
at the end of April last year when in fact it was pieced together at the beginning of March …?”

The interrogation continues throughout the day—the same questions, again and again, designed to catch me in a lie. I am familiar with the technique; Pellieux is remorseless in deploying it. At the end of the afternoon session he consults an antique silver pocket watch and says, “We will resume tomorrow morning. In the meantime, Colonel, you are not to communicate with anyone, or to leave, for so much as a minute, the supervision of the officers appointed by this inquiry.”

I stand and salute.

Outside it is dusk. In the waiting room Mercier-Milon pulls back the edge of the curtain and peers down at the crowd of reporters in the place Vendôme. He says, “We should try to leave by a different route.” We go downstairs to the cellar and cross a deserted kitchen to a rear door that opens on to a yard. It has started raining. In the gloom the piles of rubbish seem to move and rustle like living things,
and as we pick our way past them I see the wet brown backs of rats slithering among the rotted food. Mercier-Milon finds a gate in the wall that leads to the garden at the back of the Ministry of Justice. We pass across a muddy lawn and out on to the rue Cambon. A couple of journalists, posted as pickets, see us emerge through the wall next to a streetlamp and we have to sprint two hundred metres to the taxi rank in the rue Saint-Honoré, where we seize the only cab. We pull away just as our pursuers catch up with us.

The jolt of the horse throws us back in our seats, damp and breathless, and Mercier-Milon laughs. “My God, Georges, we’re certainly not young men anymore!” He pulls out a large white cotton handkerchief and mops his face and grins at me. For a moment he seems to forget that I am in his custody. He opens the window and shouts up to the driver, “Hôtel Terminus!” then slams it shut.

He spends most of the short journey with his arms folded, staring out at the street. It is only as we pull into the rue Saint-Lazare that he suddenly says, without turning round, “You know, it’s funny, General Pellieux asked me yesterday why I’d testified in Dreyfus’s defence.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said one could only speak as one found—that he was always a good soldier and loyal as far as I was concerned.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“He said he’d tried to keep an open mind on the subject himself. But last week when he was asked to lead this inquiry he was shown evidence at the ministry by General Gonse that absolutely proved beyond question that Dreyfus was a traitor. And from that moment on he’s had no doubt that your allegations about Esterhazy are false—the only question now as far as he’s concerned is whether you’ve been duped by a syndicate of Jews or paid by them.” He turns to look at me at last. “I thought you ought to know.”

At that moment the taxi pulls up, and even before the door is opened we are surrounded by reporters. Mercier-Milon clambers out and descends into the melee, using his elbows to clear a path. I follow, and once I reach the lobby the concierge puts his arms across the entrance to prevent anyone following us in. On the marble floor,
beneath the lurid diamanté chandeliers, Périer is already waiting to rush me straight upstairs. I turn to thank Mercier-Milon for his warning, but he has already gone.

I am not allowed to eat downstairs in public. I don’t protest: I have no appetite in any case. Dinner is brought up to our room and I push a piece of veal around my plate with my fork until I give up in disgust. Just after nine, a bellboy delivers a letter that has been left for me at reception. On the envelope I recognise Louis’s writing. I’d like to read what he has to say. I suspect he wants to warn me of something before tomorrow’s hearing. But I don’t want to give Pellieux any excuse to bring fresh disciplinary charges against me. So I burn it, unopened, in the grate in front of Périer.

That night I lie awake listening to Périer snoring in the other bed and try to calculate the weakness of my position. It seems to me precarious whichever way I look at it. I have been delivered to my enemies trussed hand and foot by the tiny threads of a hundred lies and innuendos carefully spun out over the past year. Most people will be only too happy to believe I work for a Jewish syndicate. And as long as the army is allowed to investigate its own misdeeds I see no hope of escape. Henry and Gonse can simply invent whatever “absolute proof” they require and then show it privately to the likes of Pellieux, safe in the knowledge that such loyal staff officers will always do what is expected of them.

Outside in the rue Saint-Lazare even at midnight there is a greater profusion of motorcars than I have ever heard before. The sound of pneumatic tyres on wet asphalt is new to me, like a continual tearing of paper, and eventually it lulls me to sleep.

The next morning when he comes to pick me up, Mercier-Milon has reverted to his former brusque silence. His only comment is to tell me to bring my suitcase: I will not be returning to the hotel.

In the place Vendôme, in the room set aside for the inquiry, Pellieux and the others are in exactly the same positions as when I left them, as if they have spent the night under dust sheets, and the general resumes where he left off as though there had been no interruption.
“Tell us once again, if you would, the circumstances in which you came into possession of the
petit bleu
…”

This goes on for another hour or so, and then he says, without any change of tone, “Madame Monnier—how much of your work have you disclosed to her?”

My throat tightens immediately. “Madame Monnier?”

“Yes, the wife of Monsieur Philippe Monnier of the Foreign Ministry. What have you told her?”

I say in a strained voice, “General—please—I insist—she has nothing to do with this.”

“That is not for you to determine.” He turns to the secretary. “Colonel Picquart’s documents, please.” And while the secretary opens his dispatch box, Pellieux switches his attention back to me. “You will probably not be aware of the fact, Colonel, because you were at sea, but an official search was carried out of your apartment on Tuesday, following an allegation by Major Esterhazy that you were keeping official papers there.”

For a moment I can only gape at him. “No, I most certainly was not aware of it, General. And if I had been I would have protested strongly. Who authorised this raid?”

“I did, at the request of Colonel Henry. Major Esterhazy claims to have received information from a woman whose name he does not know but who swears that she is an acquaintance of yours. This woman, whom he has only seen heavily veiled, says that you have been keeping secret documents relating to his case at your private address.”

It is such an absurd idea, Pauline and Esterhazy together, that I find myself emitting a gasp of laughter. But then the secretary places several bundles of letters in front of Pellieux and I recognise them as my private correspondence: old letters from my mother and my dead brother; correspondence from my family and friends; business letters and love letters; invitations and telegrams kept for their sentimental value. “This is an outrage!”

“Come now, Colonel—why such sensitivity? I don’t believe we have taken any action against you that you haven’t taken against Major Esterhazy. Now,” he says, picking up a collection of Pauline’s
letters tied with a blue silk ribbon, “it’s apparent from the nature of her letters to you that you have an intimate relationship with Madame Monnier—one that I assume her husband is not aware of?”

My face is burning now. “I absolutely refuse to answer that question.”

“On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that my relationship with Madame Monnier has no conceivable relevance to this inquiry.”

“Surely it does if you disclosed secret information to her, or if she is the so-called veiled lady in contact with Major Esterhazy? And most certainly it does if you have left yourself open to blackmail as a result of it.”

“But none of those things is true!” Now I know what Louis was trying to warn me about in his letter the previous evening. “Tell me, General, am I at any point going to be asked about the central facts of this business?”

“There is no need to be impertinent, Colonel.”

“For example, about the fact that Esterhazy plainly wrote the
bordereau
—that even the government’s main expert concedes his handwriting is a perfect match?”

“That is outside the scope of this inquiry.”

“Or the use of falsified material in the dossier used to convict Dreyfus?”

“The Dreyfus case is res judicata.”

“Or the conspiracy within the General Staff to keep me in North Africa—or even to send me to my death—to prevent my exposing what had happened?”

“That is outside the scope of this inquiry.”

“Then if you will forgive me, General, I believe your inquiry to be a sham and that your conclusions were written before I even started to give my evidence, and I hereby withdraw my cooperation from this process.”

And with that I stand, salute, turn on my heel and stride out of the room. I expect to hear Pellieux bellowing at me to stay where I am. But he says nothing, whether because he is too surprised to react or because he feels he has made his point and is happy to see the back
of me I do not know and nor, at that moment, do I care. I retrieve my suitcase from the empty waiting room and descend the stairs. I pass a few officers, who give me sidelong looks. None tries to stop me. I go out through the cathedral-like door and into the place Vendôme. My exit is so unexpected that most of the journalists don’t notice me hurrying past them and I am almost at the corner before I hear them shouting—“There he goes!”—and then the sound of their feet running over the cobbles after me. I put my head down and increase my pace, ignoring their questions. A couple scramble to get ahead of me and try to block my path, but I push them aside. On the rue de Rivoli I spot a taxi and flag it down. The reporters fan out along the street searching for cabs to follow me; one athletic fellow even tries to keep up with me on foot. But the driver cracks his whip, and when I look back he has given up the chase.

The rue Yvon-Villarceau runs north to south between the rue Copernic and the rue Boissière. Directly opposite my apartment building, at the northern end, the foundations are being sunk for a new block. As we pass the entrance I scan the street for reporters and police, but all I can see are workmen. I tell the driver to pull up round the corner, then pay the fare and walk back.

The double doors are glazed and barred. I cup my hands and peer through the dusty glass into the empty vestibule. At my feet, mud and rubble have turned the cobblestones into a country lane; the smell of freshly dug earth seasons the cold rain. I feel like a visitor returning after a long interval to the scene of an earlier life. I open the door and am halfway to the stairs when I hear the familiar faint click of a latch. But whereas before the concierge would always scuttle from her lair to engage me in conversation, now she keeps her distance, watching me through a crack in her doorway. I pretend not to notice and mount the steps, carrying my suitcase up to the fourth floor. On the landing there is no sign of forced entry: she must have given the authorities her key.