An Officer And A Spy Part 2

"General Gonse," I say, saluting. "I had no idea it was you."

Gonse is famous for his fourteen-hour days. I might have guessed that if anyone else was likely to be in the building, it would be him. His enemies say it is the only way he can keep on top of his job.

"That's quite all right, Major Picquart. This place is a warren. May I?" He waddles into my office on his short legs, puffing on a cigarette. "Sorry to interrupt you, but I just had a message from Colonel Guerin at the place Vendme. He says that Dreyfus confessed at the parade this morning. Did you know that?"

I gape at him like a fool. "No, General, I did not."

"Apparently, in the half-hour before the ceremony this morning, he told the captain who was guarding him that he did pa.s.s doc.u.ments to the Germans." Gonse shrugs. "I thought you ought to know, as you were supposed to be keeping an eye on it all for the minister."

"But I've already given him my report ..." I am aghast. This is the sort of incompetence that can wreck a man's career. Ever since October, despite the overwhelming evidence against him, Dreyfus has refused to admit his guilt. And now I'm being told that finally he has confessed, practically under my nose, and I missed it! "I had better go and get to the bottom of this."

"I suggest you do. And when you have, come back and report to me."

Once again I hurry out into the chilly grey half-light. I take a cab from the rank on the corner of the boulevard Saint-Germain, and when we reach the ecole Militaire I ask the driver to wait while I run inside. The silence of the vast empty parade ground mocks me. The only sign of life is the workmen clearing the litter from the place de Fontenoy. I return to the cab and ask to be driven as fast as possible to the headquarters of the military governor of Paris in the place Vendme, where I wait in the lobby of that gloomy and dilapidated building for Colonel Guerin. He takes his time, and when he does appear he has the air of a man who has been interrupted in the middle of a good lunch to which he is anxious to return.

"I've already explained all this to General Gonse."

"I'm sorry, Colonel. Would you mind explaining it to me?"

He sighs. "Captain Lebrun-Renault was detailed to keep an eye on Dreyfus in the guardroom until the ceremony started. He handed him over to the escort, and just as the degradation started he came over to where a group of us were standing and said something like 'Well I'll be d.a.m.ned, the sc.u.m just admitted everything.' "

I take out my notebook. "What did the captain say Dreyfus had told him?"

"I don't recall his actual words. The essence of it was that he'd handed over secrets to the Germans, but they weren't very important, that the minister knew all about them, and that in a few years' time the whole story would come out. Something like that. You need to talk to Lebrun-Renault."

"I do. Where can I find him?"

"I've no idea. He's off duty."

"Is he still in Paris?"

"My dear Major, how would I know that?"

"I don't quite understand," I say. "Why would Dreyfus suddenly admit his guilt to a total stranger, at such a moment and with nothing to gain by it, after denying everything for three months?"

"I can't help you there." The colonel looks over his shoulder in the direction of his lunch.

"And if he'd just confessed to Captain Lebrun-Renault, why did he then go out and repeatedly shout his innocence into a hostile crowd of tens of thousands?"

The colonel squares his shoulders. "Are you calling one of my officers a liar?"

"Thank you, Colonel." I put away my notebook.

When I get back to the ministry, I go straight to Gonse's office. He is labouring over a stack of files. He swings his boots up onto the desk and tilts back in his chair as he listens to my report. He says, "So you don't think there's anything in it?"

"No, I do not. Not now I've heard the details. It's much more likely this dim captain of the Guard got the wrong end of the stick. Either that or he embellished a tale to make himself look important to his comrades. Of course I am a.s.suming," I add, "that Dreyfus wasn't a double agent planted on the Germans."

Gonse laughs and lights another cigarette. "If only!"

"What would you like me to do, General?"

"I don't see there's anything much you can do."

I hesitate. "There is one way of getting a definite answer, of course."

"What's that?"

"We could ask Dreyfus."

Gonse shakes his head. "Absolutely not. He's now beyond communication. Besides, he'll soon be shipped out of Paris." He lifts his feet from the desk and sets them on the floor. He pulls the stack of files towards him. Cigarette ash spills down the front of his tunic. "Just leave it with me. I'll go and explain everything to the Chief of Staff and the minister." He opens a dossier and starts to scan it. He doesn't look up. "Thank you, Major Picquart. You are dismissed."

2.

That evening, in civilian clothes, I travel out to Versailles to see my mother. The draughty train sways through Paris suburbs weirdly etched by snow and gaslight. The journey takes the best part of an hour; I have the carriage to myself. I try to read a novel, The Adolescent by Dostoyevsky, but every time we cross a set of points the lights cut out and I lose my place. In the blue glow of the emergency illumination I stare out of the window and imagine Dreyfus in his cell in La Sante prison. Convicts are transported by rail in converted cattle trucks. I presume he will be sent west, to an Atlantic port, to await deportation. In this weather the journey will be a bitter h.e.l.l. I close my eyes and try to doze.

My mother has a small apartment in a modern street near the Versailles railway station. She is seventy-seven and lives alone, a widow for almost thirty years. I take it in turns with my sister to spend time with her. Anna is older than I, and has children, which I do not: my watch always falls on a Sat.u.r.day night, the only time I can be sure of getting away from the ministry.

It is well past dark by the time I arrive; the temperature must be minus ten. My mother shouts from behind the locked door: "Who's there?"

"It's Georges, Maman."

"Who?"

"Georges. Your son."

It takes me a minute to persuade her to let me in. Sometimes she mistakes me for my older brother, Paul, who died five years ago; sometimes-and this is oddly worse-for my father, who died when I was eleven. (Another sister died before I was born, a brother when he was eleven days old; there is one thing to be said for senility-since her mind has gone, she does not lack for company.) The bread and milk are frozen solid; the pipes are canisters of ice. I spend the first half-hour lighting fires to try to thaw the place out, the second on my back fixing a leak. We eat boeuf bourguignon, which the maid who comes in once a day has bought at the local traiteur. Maman rallies; she even seems to remember who I am. I tell her what I've been doing but I don't mention Dreyfus or the degradation: she would struggle to understand what I am talking about. Later we sit at the piano, which occupies most of her tiny sitting room, and play a duet, the Chopin rondo. Her playing is faultless; the musical part of her brain remains quite intact; it will be the last thing to go. After she has put herself to bed, I sit on the stool and examine the photographs on top of the piano: the solemn family groups in Strasbourg, the garden of the house in Geudertheim, a miniature of my mother as a music student, a picnic in the woods of Neudorf-artefacts from a vanished world, the Atlantis we lost in the war.*

I was sixteen when the Germans sh.e.l.led Strasbourg, thus kindly enabling me to witness at first hand an event that we teach at the ecole Superieure de Guerre as "the first full-scale use of modern long-range artillery specifically to reduce a civilian population." I watched the city's art gallery and library burn to the ground, saw neighbourhoods blown to pieces, knelt beside friends as they died, helped dig strangers out of the rubble. After nine weeks the garrison surrendered. We were offered a choice between staying put and becoming German or giving up everything and moving to France. We arrived in Paris dest.i.tute and shorn of all illusions about the security of our civilised life.

Before the humiliation of 1870 I might have become a professor of music or a surgeon; after it, any career other than the army seemed frivolous. The Ministry of War paid for my education; the army became my father, and no son ever strove harder to please a demanding papa. I compensated for a somewhat dreamy and artistic nature by ferocious discipline. Out of a cla.s.s of 304 cadets at the military school at Saint-Cyr, I emerged fifth. I can speak German, Italian, English and Spanish. I have fought in the Aures Mountains in North Africa and won the Colonial Medal, on the Red River in Indochina and won the Star for bravery. I am a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. And today, after twenty-four years in uniform, I have been singled out for commendation by both the Minister of War and the Chief of the General Staff. As I lie in my mother's spare bedroom in Versailles, and the fifth of January 1895 turns into the sixth, the voice in my head is not that of Alfred Dreyfus proclaiming his innocence, but Auguste Mercier's hinting at my promotion: I have been impressed by the intelligence you have shown ... It will not be forgotten ...

The following morning, to the sound of bells, I take my mother's fragile arm and escort her to the top of the icy road and around the corner to the cathedral of Saint-Louis-a particularly bombastic monument to state superst.i.tion, I always think; why couldn't the Germans have blown up this? The worshippers are a monochrome congregation, black and white, nuns and widows. I withdraw my arm from hers at the door. "I'll meet you here after Ma.s.s."

"Aren't you coming in?"

"I never come in, Maman. We have this conversation every week."

She peers at me with moist grey eyes. Her voice quivers. "But what shall I tell G.o.d?"

"Tell Him I'll be in the Cafe du Commerce in the square over there."

I leave her in the care of a young priest and walk towards the cafe. On the way I stop to buy a couple of newspapers, Le Figaro and Le Pet.i.t Journal. I take a seat at a table in the window, order coffee, light a cigarette. Both papers have the degradation on their front pages-the Journal, indeed, has almost nothing else. Its report is ill.u.s.trated by a series of crude sketches: of Dreyfus being marched into the parade ground, of the plump little official in his cape reading out the judgment, of the insignia being ripped from Dreyfus's uniform, and of Dreyfus himself looking like a white-haired old man at thirty-five. The headline is "The Expiation": "We demanded for the traitor Dreyfus the supreme penalty. We continue to believe that the only appropriate punishment is death ..." It is as if all the loathing and recrimination bottled up since the defeat of 1870 has found an outlet in a single individual.

I sip my coffee and my gaze skims over the Journal's sensational description of the ceremony until suddenly it hits this: "Dreyfus turned towards his escort and said: 'If I did hand over doc.u.ments, it was only to receive others of greater importance. In three years the truth will come out and the minister himself will reopen my case.' This half-confession is the first that the traitor has made since his arrest ..."

Without taking my eyes from the newsprint, I slowly put down my cup and read the pa.s.sage again. Then I pick up Le Figaro. No mention of any confession, half or otherwise, on the front page: a relief. But on the second is a late news item-"Here now is the account of a witness, received in the last hour ..."-and I find myself reading another version of the same story, only this time Lebrun-Renault is identified as the source by name, and this time there is no mistaking the authentic voice of Dreyfus. I can hear his desperation in every line, frantic to convince anyone, even the officer guarding him: "Look, Captain; listen. A letter was discovered in a cupboard in an emba.s.sy; it was a covering note for four other doc.u.ments. This letter was shown to handwriting experts. Three said I had written it; two said I hadn't. And it's solely on the basis of this that I've been condemned! When I was eighteen, I entered the ecole Polytechnique. I had a brilliant military career ahead of me, a fortune of five hundred thousand francs and the prospect of an annual income of fifty thousand a year. I've never chased girls. I've never touched a playing card in my life. Therefore I had no need of money. So why would I commit treason? For money? No. So why?"

None of these details is supposed to be made public, and my first response is to curse Lebrun-Renault beneath my breath as a b.l.o.o.d.y young fool. Shooting one's mouth off in front of journalists is unpardonable for an officer at any time-but on a matter as sensitive as this? He must have been drunk! It crosses my mind that I should return to Paris immediately and go straight to the War Ministry. But then I consider my mother, no doubt even at this moment down on her knees praying for my immortal soul, and decide that I am probably better off out of it.

And so I allow the day to proceed as planned. I retrieve my mother from the clutches of a pair of nuns, we walk back to the house, and at noon my cousin, Edmond Gast, sends his carriage to collect us for lunch at his home in the nearby village of Ville-d'Avray. It is a pleasant, easy gathering of family and friends: the sort of friends who have been around long enough to feel like family. Edmond, a couple of years my junior, is already the mayor of Ville-d'Avray, one of those lucky individuals with a gift for life. He farms, paints, hunts, makes money easily, spends it well, and loves his wife-and who can be surprised, since Jeanne is still as pretty as a girl by Renoir? I envy no man, but if I did it would be Edmond. Next to Jeanne in the dining room sits Louis Leblois, who was at school with me; beside me is his wife, Martha; opposite me is Pauline Romazzotti, who, despite her Italian surname, grew up with us near Strasbourg, and who is now married to an official at the Foreign Ministry, Philippe Monnier, a man eight or ten years older than the rest of us. She is wearing a plain grey dress trimmed with white which she knows I like because it reminds me of one she wore when she was eighteen.

Everyone around the table apart from Monnier is an exile from Alsace and n.o.body has a good word to say for our fellow Alsatian, Dreyfus, not even Edmond, whose politics are radical republican. We all have tales of Jews, especially from Mulhouse, whose loyalties, when it came to the crunch and they were offered their choice of citizenship after the war, turned out to be German rather than French.

"They shift with the wind, according to who has power," p.r.o.nounces Monnier, waving his winegla.s.s back and forth. "That is how their race has survived for two thousand years. You can't blame them, really."

Only Leblois ventures a scintilla of doubt. "Mind you, speaking as a lawyer, I'm against secret trials in principle, and I must admit I wonder if a Christian officer would have been denied the normal judicial process in the same way-especially as according to Le Figaro the evidence against him sounds so thin."

I say coldly, "He was 'denied the normal judicial process,' as you put it, Louis, because the case involved matters of national security that simply couldn't have been aired in open court, whoever was the defendant. And there was plenty of evidence against him: I can give you my absolute a.s.surance of that!"

Pauline frowns at me and I realise I have raised my voice. There is a silence. Louis adjusts his napkin but says nothing more. He doesn't want to spoil the meal, and Pauline, ever the diplomat's wife, seizes the chance to move the conversation on to a more congenial topic.

"Did I tell you that Philippe and I have discovered the most wonderful new Alsatian restaurant on the rue Marbeuf ..."

It is five by the time I arrive home. My apartment is in the sixteenth arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, close to the place Victor Hugo. The address makes me sound much smarter than I am. In truth, I have just two small rooms on the fourth floor, and I struggle to afford even these on a major's pay. I am no Dreyfus, with a private income ten times my salary. But it has always been my temperament to prefer a tiny amount of the excellent to a plenitude of the mediocre; I get by, just about.

I let myself in from the street and have barely taken a couple of paces towards the stairs when I hear the concierge's voice behind me-"Major Picquart!"-and turn to discover Madame Guerault brandishing a visiting card. "An officer came to call on you," she announces, advancing towards me. "A general!"

I take the card: "General Charles-Arthur Gonse, Ministry of War." On the reverse he has written his home address.

His place is close to the avenue du Bois de Boulogne; I can walk to it easily. Within five minutes I am ringing his bell. The door is opened by a very different figure from the relaxed fellow I left on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. He is unshaven; the pouches beneath his eyes are dark and heavy with exhaustion. His tunic is open to the waist, revealing a slightly grubby undershirt. He holds a gla.s.s of cognac.

"Picquart. Good of you to come."

"My apologies that I'm not in uniform, General."

"No matter. It's a Sunday, after all."

I follow him through the darkened apartment-"My wife is in the country," he explains over his shoulder-and into what seems to be his study. Above the window is a pair of crossed spears-mementos of his service in North Africa, I a.s.sume-and on the chimneypiece a photograph of him taken a quarter of a century ago, as a junior staff officer in the 13th Army Corps. He refreshes his drink from a decanter and pours one for me, then flops down on to the couch with a groan and lights a cigarette.

"This d.a.m.ned Dreyfus affair," he says. "It will be the death of us all."

I make some light reply-"Really? I would have preferred mine to be slightly more heroic!"-but Gonse fixes me with a look of great seriousness.

"My dear Picquart, you don't seem to realise: we have just come very close to war. I have been up since one o'clock this morning, and all because of that d.a.m.ned fool Lebrun-Renault!"

"My G.o.d!" Taken aback, I set down my untasted gla.s.s of cognac.

"I know it's hard to believe," he says, "that such a catastrophe might have resulted from one idiot's gossip, but it's true."

He tells me how, an hour after midnight, he was woken by a messenger from the Minister of War. Summoned to the htel de Brienne, he found Mercier in his dressing gown with a private secretary from the elysee Palace who had with him copies of the first editions of the Paris newspapers. The private secretary then repeated to Gonse what he had just told Mercier: that the President was appalled-appalled! scandalised!-by what he had just read. How could it be that an officer of the Republican Guard could spread such stories-in particular, that a doc.u.ment had been stolen by the French government from the German Emba.s.sy, and that the whole episode was some kind of espionage trap for the Germans? Was the Minister of War aware that the German amba.s.sador was coming to the elysee that very afternoon to present a formal note of protest from Berlin? That the German emperor was threatening to withdraw his amba.s.sador from Paris unless the French government stated once and for all that it accepted the German government's a.s.surances that it had never had any dealings with Captain Alfred Dreyfus? Find him, the President demanded! Find this Captain Lebrun-Renault and shut him up!

And so General Arthur Gonse, the Chief of French Military Intelligence, at the age of fifty-six, found himself in the humiliating position of taking a carriage and going from door to door-to regimental headquarters, to Lebrun-Renault's lodgings, to the fleshpots of Pigalle-until finally, just before dawn, he had run his quarry to earth in the Moulin Rouge, where the young captain was still holding forth to an audience of reporters and prost.i.tutes!

At this point I have to press my forefinger across my lips to hide a smile, for the monologue is not without its comic elements-all the greater when delivered in Gonse's hoa.r.s.e and outraged tones. I can only imagine what it must have been like for Lebrun-Renault to turn around and see Gonse bearing down upon him, or his frantic attempts to sober up before explaining his actions, first to the Minister of War, and then, in what must have been an exquisitely embarra.s.sing interview, to President Casimir-Perier himself.

"There is nothing at all funny about this, Major!" Gonse has detected my amus.e.m.e.nt. "We are in no condition to fight a war against Germany! If they were to decide to use this as a pretext to attack us, then G.o.d help France!"

"Of course, General." Gonse is part of that generation-Mercier and Boisdeffre are of it too-who were scarred as young officers by the rout of 1870 and have been frightened of the Germans' shadow ever since. "Three-to-two" is their mantra of pessimism: there are three Germans to every two Frenchmen; they spend three francs on armaments to every two that we can afford. I rather despise them for their defeatism. "How has Berlin reacted?"

"Some form of words is being negotiated in the Foreign Ministry to the effect that the Germans are no more responsible for the doc.u.ments that get sent to them than we are for the ones that come to us."

"They have a nerve!"

"Not really. They're just providing cover for their agent. We'd do the same. But it's been touch and go all day, I can tell you."

The more I think of it, the more amazing it seems. "They'd really break off diplomatic relations and risk a war just to protect one spy?"

"Well, of course, they're embarra.s.sed at being caught out. It's humiliating for them. Typical d.a.m.ned Prussian overreaction ..."

His hand is shaking. He lights a fresh cigarette from his old one and drops the stub into the sawn-off cap of a sh.e.l.l case which serves as his ashtray. He picks a few shreds of tobacco from his tongue then settles back in his couch and regards me through the cloud of smoke. "You haven't touched your drink, I see."

"I prefer to keep a clear head when talk turns to war."

"Ah! That's exactly when I find I need one!" He drains his gla.s.s and toys with it. He smiles at me. I can tell he's desperate for another by the way he glances over at the decanter, but he doesn't want to look like a drunk in front of me. He clears his throat and says: "The minister has been impressed by you, Picquart; by your conduct throughout this whole affair. So has the Chief of Staff. You've obviously gained valuable experience of secret intelligence over the past three months. So we have it in mind to recommend you for promotion. We're thinking of offering you command of the Statistical Section."

I try to hide my dismay. Espionage is grubby work. Everything I have seen of the Dreyfus case has reinforced that view. It isn't what I joined the army to do. "But surely," I object, "the section already has a very able commander in Colonel Sandherr?"

"He is able. But Sandherr is a sick man, and between you and me he isn't likely to recover. Also, he's been in the post ten years; he needs a rest. Now, Picquart, forgive me, but I have to ask you this, given the nature of the secret information you'd be handling-there isn't anything in your past or private life that could leave you open to blackmail, is there?"

With gathering dismay I realise my fate has already been decided, perhaps the previous afternoon when Gonse met Mercier and Boisdeffre. "No," I say, "not that I'm aware of."

"You're not married, I believe?"

"No."

"Any particular reason for that?"

"I like my own company. And I can't afford a wife."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"Any money worries?"

"No money." I shrug. "No worries."

"Good." Gonse looks relieved. "Then it's settled."

But still I struggle against my destiny. "You realise the existing staff won't like an outsider coming in-what about Colonel Sandherr's deputy?"