‘How long are you in town?’
‘Only a couple of hours. I’ll get the evening train back to Paris.’
‘This calls for a drink.’ He opens a drawer in his desk and takes out a bottle of cognac and a pair of tumblers. He fills them to the brim. We toast the army. He fills them again and we toast my promotion. But I sense that somewhere, deep beneath the congratulations, the narrowest of gaps has opened between us. Not that anyone walking in would have guessed it. Curé pours a third round. We unbutton our tunics and loll back in our chairs, smoking, our feet on his desk. We talk of old comrades and old times. We laugh. A brief silence falls and then he says, ‘So what exactly is it you’re doing in Paris these days?’
I hesitate; I am not supposed to mention it.
‘I have Sandherr’s job, running secret intelligence.’
‘Do you, by God?’ He frowns at his empty glass; this time he doesn’t suggest another toast. ‘So you’re up here snooping?’
‘Something like that.’
A flicker of his former mirth returns. ‘Not into me, I hope!’
‘Not this time.’ I smile and put down my glass. ‘There’s a major with the Seven-Four called Esterhazy.’
Curé turns to me. His expression is unreadable. ‘There is indeed.’
‘What is he like?’
‘What has he done?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
Curé nods slowly. ‘I thought you’d say that.’ He pulls himself to his feet and starts buttoning his tunic. ‘I don’t know about you, but I need to clear my head.’
Outside the wind is bracing, edged sharp by the sea. We stroll around the perimeter of the parade ground. After a while Curé says, ‘I understand you can’t tell me what this is about, but if I could give you a piece of advice, you want to be careful how you approach Esterhazy. He’s dangerous.’
‘What, you mean physically dangerous?’
‘In every way. How much do you know about him?’
‘Nothing. You’re the first person I’ve come to.’
‘Just bear in mind he’s well connected. His father was a general. He calls himself “Count Esterhazy”, but I think that’s merely an affectation. Be that as it may, his wife is the daughter of the marquis de Nettancourt, so he knows a lot of people.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Oh, he must be nearly fifty, I should think.’
‘Fifty?’ I glance around the barracks. It’s the end of the afternoon. Soldiers, pasty-faced and with grey shaven heads, are leaning out of their dormitory windows, like prison inmates.
Curé follows my gaze. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘Do you?’
‘Why, if he’s fifty and the son-in-law of a marquis, is he stuck in a dump like this? Certainly it’s the first thing I’d want to know.’
‘Well then, since you bring it up, why is he?’
‘Because he has no money.’
‘Even with all these connections?’
‘He gambles it away. Not just at the table, either. On the racetrack and the stock market.’
‘Surely his wife must have some capital?’
‘Ah, but she’s got wise to him. I heard him complain that she’s even put the country house in her name, to protect herself from his creditors. She won’t let him have a sou.’
‘He also has an apartment in Paris.’
‘You may be sure that’s hers as well.’
We walk on in silence. I’m remembering Schwartzkoppen’s letter. That was all about money. Your conditions too harsh for me . . . ‘Tell me,’ I say, ‘what kind of an officer is he?’
‘The worst.’
‘He neglects his duties?’
‘Entirely. The colonel’s stopped giving him anything to do.’
‘So he’s never here?’
‘On the contrary, he’s always here.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Getting in the way! He likes to hang around and ask a lot of damn fool questions about things that have nothing to do with him.’
‘Questions about what?’
‘Everything.’
‘Gunnery, for example?’
‘Definitely.’
‘What does he ask about gunnery?’
‘What doesn’t he ask! He’s been on at least three artillery exercises, to my certain knowledge. The last one the colonel absolutely refused to assign him to, so he ended up paying for the trip himself.’
‘I thought you said he didn’t have any money?’
‘True, that’s a point.’ Curé halts in his tracks. ‘Now I think about it, I happen to know he also paid a corporal in his battalion to copy the firing manuals – you know we’re not allowed to keep them for more than a day or two.’
‘Did he give a reason?’
‘He said he was thinking of suggesting some improvements . . .’
We resume walking. The sun has dipped behind one of the dormitory blocks, casting the parade ground into shadow. The air is suddenly chilly. I say, ‘You mentioned earlier that he was dangerous.’
‘It’s not easy to describe. There’s a kind of . . . wildness about him, and also cunning. And yet he can be quite charming. Put it this way: despite the way he acts, nobody wants to cross him. He also has a quite extraordinary appearance. You’d need to see him to understand what I mean.’
‘I’d like to. The trouble is, I can’t risk letting him see me. Is there a place I might get a glimpse of him, without him realising it?’
‘There’s a bar near here he goes to most nights. It’s not certain, but you could probably spot him there.’
‘Could you take me?’
‘I thought you were getting out on the evening train?’
‘I can stay until the morning. One night won’t hurt. Come on, my friend! It will be like old times.’
But Curé seems to have had enough of the ‘old times’ routine. His glance is hard, appraising. ‘Now I know it must be serious, Georges, if you’re willing to give up a night in Paris for it.’
Curé presses me to come back to his quarters and wait with him for nightfall, but I prefer not to linger within the confines of the barracks in case I’m recognised. There is a small hotel for commercial travellers close to the station which I remember passing; I walk back and pay for a room. It is a stale-smelling, dingy place, without electricity; the mattress is hard and thin; whenever a train passes, the walls shake. But it will do for a night. I stretch out on the bed: it’s short; my feet hang over the edge. I smoke and contemplate the mysterious Esterhazy, a man who appears to possess in abundance the very thing that Dreyfus so singularly lacked: motive.
The day fades in the window. At seven, the bells of Our Lady of Rouen begin to peal – heavy and sonorous, the noise rolls across the river like a barrage, and when it stops, the sudden silence seems to hang in the air like smoke.
It is dark by the time I rouse myself to go downstairs. Curé is already waiting for me. He suggests I wrap my cape tight around my shoulders to hide the insignia of my rank.
We walk for five or ten minutes through the shuttered back streets, past a couple of quiet bars, until we reach a cul-de-sac filled with the shadows of people, soldiers mostly, and a few young women. They are talking quietly, laughing, hanging around a long, low building with no windows that looks like a converted warehouse. A painted sign proclaims: ‘Folies Bergère’. The hopelessness of this provincial aspiration is almost touching.
Curé says, ‘Wait here. I’ll see if he’s in yet.’
He moves off. A door opens, briefly silhouetting his figure against a purplish oblong gleam; I hear a snatch of noise and music and then he is swallowed up by darkness. A woman baring a large expanse of cleavage, white as gooseflesh in the cold, comes up to me holding an unlit cigarette and asks for a light. Without bothering to think I strike a match. In the yellow flare she is young and pretty. She peers at me short-sightedly. ‘Do I know you, my darling?’
I realise my mistake. ‘I’m sorry. I’m waiting
for someone.’ I blow out the flame and walk away.
She calls after me, laughing: ‘Don’t be like that, sweetheart!’
Another woman says: ‘Who is he, anyway?’
And then a man yells drunkenly: ‘He’s just a stuck-up cunt!’
A couple of soldiers turn to stare.
Curé appears in the doorway. He nods and beckons. I walk over to him. ‘I ought to leave,’ I say.
‘One quick look, then go.’ He takes my arm and steers me ahead of him, along a short passage, down a few steps, through a heavy black velvet curtain and into a long room, misty with tobacco smoke, packed with people sitting at small round tables. At the far end a band is playing, while on stage half a dozen girls in corsets and crotchless knickers hoist their skirts and kick their legs listlessly at the clientele. Their feet thump against the bare boards. The place smells of absinthe.
‘That’s him.’
He nods to a table less than twenty paces away, where two couples share a bottle of champagne. One of the women, a redhead, has her back to me; the other, a brunette, is twisted round in her seat looking towards the stage. The men face one another, talking in a desultory way. There is no need for Curé to tell me which it is he has brought me to see. Major Esterhazy reclines with his chair pushed well back from the table, his tunic unbuttoned, his pelvis thrust forward, his arms hanging down either side almost to the floor; in his right hand he holds casually at an angle, as if it is barely worth considering, a glass of champagne. His head in profile is flattish and tapers like a vulture’s to a great beak of a nose. His moustache is large and swept back. He seems to be drunk. His companion notices us standing by the door. He says something, and Esterhazy slowly turns his head in our direction. His eyes are round and protuberant: not natural, but crazy, like glass balls pressed into the skull of a skeleton in a medical school. The overall effect, as Curé warned, is unsettling. My God, I think, he could burn this entire place down and everyone in it, and not care a damn. His glance settles on us briefly, and for a second I detect a hint of curiosity in the tilt of his head and the narrowing of his gaze. Fortunately, he is befuddled by drink, and when one of the women says something his attention wanders vaguely back to her.
Curé touches my elbow. ‘We should go.’ He pulls aside the curtain and ushers me away.
7
I ARRIVE BACK in Paris just before noon the following day, a Saturday, and decide against going into the office. It is therefore not until Monday, four days after my last conversation with Lauth, that I return to the section. Even as I am climbing the stairs I can hear Major Henry’s voice, and when I reach the landing I see him along the corridor, just emerging from Lauth’s room. He is wearing a black armband.
‘Colonel Picquart,’ he says, coming up to me and saluting. ‘I am reporting for duty.’
‘It’s good to have you back, Major,’ I reply, returning his salute, ‘although naturally I am very sorry for the circumstances. I do hope your mother’s passing was as peaceful as possible.’
‘There aren’t many easy ways out of this life, Colonel. To be frank, by the end, I was praying for it to be over. From now on I intend to keep hold of my service revolver. I want a good clean bullet when my own time comes.’
‘That’s my intention, too.’
‘The only problem is whether one will still have the strength to pull the trigger.’
‘Oh, I expect there will be plenty around who will be only too happy to oblige us.’
Henry laughs. ‘You’re not wrong there, Colonel!’
I unlock my door and invite him in. The office has the cold, stale feel of a room that has not been used for several days. He takes a seat. The spindly wooden legs creak under his weight.
‘So,’ he says, lighting a cigarette, ‘I hear you’ve been busy while I’ve been away.’
‘You’ve spoken to Lauth?’ Of course, I might have guessed Lauth would have told him: those two are very thick together.
‘Yes, he’s filled me in. May I see the new material?’
I feel a certain irritation as I unlock my safe and hand him the file. I say, conscious of sounding petty, ‘I had assumed I would be the one to brief you first.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Only to the extent that I asked Lauth not to mention it to anyone.’
Henry, with his cigarette clamped between his lips, puts on his spectacles, and holds up the two documents. He squints at them through the smoke. ‘Well,’ he mutters, ‘perhaps he doesn’t regard me as just “anyone”.’ The cigarette wobbles as he speaks, showering ash into his lap.
‘Nobody is suggesting you are.’
‘Have you done anything about this yet?’
‘I haven’t told anyone in the rue Saint-Dominique, if that’s what you mean.’
‘That’s probably wise. They will only start flapping.’
‘I agree. I want us to make our own enquiries first. I’ve already been to Rouen—’
He peers at me over the top of his spectacles. ‘You’ve been to Rouen?’
‘Yes, there’s a major in the Seven-Four – Esterhazy’s regiment – who’s an old friend of mine. He was able to give me some personal information.’
Henry resumes reading. ‘And might I ask what this old friend told you?’
‘He said that Esterhazy is in the habit of asking a lot of suspicious questions. That he’s even paid for himself to go on artillery exercises, and had the firing manuals copied afterwards. Also that he’s desperate for money and isn’t a man of good character.’
‘Really?’ Henry turns the petit bleu over to examine the address. ‘He seemed fine when he worked here.’
I have to give him credit for the aplomb with which he delivers this bombshell. For a moment or two I simply stare at him. ‘Lauth never mentioned that Esterhazy was employed here.’
‘That’s because he didn’t know.’ Henry sets the documents down on my desk and takes off his spectacles. ‘It was long before Lauth’s time. I’d only just been posted here myself.’
‘When was this?’
‘Must be fifteen years ago.’
‘So you know Esterhazy?’
‘I did once, yes – slightly. He wasn’t here long – he worked as a German translator. But I haven’t seen him for years.’
I sit back in my chair. ‘This raises the matter to a whole new level.’
‘Does it?’ Henry shrugs. ‘I’m not sure I follow. Why?’
‘You seem to be taking this very calmly, Major!’ There is something mocking about Henry’s studied indifference; I can feel my anger rising. ‘Obviously it’s more serious if Esterhazy has received some training in our intelligence techniques.’
Henry smiles and shakes his head. ‘If I may offer you some advice, Colonel, I wouldn’t get too dramatic about it. It doesn’t matter how many gunnery courses he’s been on. I don’t see how Esterhazy can have had access to anything important, stuck out in Rouen. And in fact that letter from Schwartzkoppen tells us plainly that he didn’t, because the Germans are threatening to break off relations with him. They wouldn’t do that if they thought they had a valuable spy.
‘It’s always an easy mistake to make,’ continues Henry, ‘if you’re new to this game, to think that the first dodgy fellow you come across is a master spy. It’s seldom the case. In fact you can end up doing a lot more damage by overreacting than the so-called traitor has caused in the first place.’
‘You are not suggesting, I hope,’ I reply stiffly, ‘that we just leave him to carry on supplying information to a foreign power, even if it may be of little value?’
‘Not at all! I agree absolutely we should keep an eye on him. I just think we should keep it in proportion. Why don’t I ask Guénée to start sniffing around, see what he can find out?’
‘No, I don’t want Guénée handling this.’ Guénée is another member of Henry’s gang. ‘I want to use someone else for a change.’
‘As you wish,’ says Henry. ‘Tell me who you’d like and I’
ll assign him.’
‘No, actually, thank you for the offer, but I’ll assign him.’ I smile at Henry. ‘The extra experience will do me good. Please . . .’ I indicate the door. ‘And again: welcome back. Would you mind telling Gribelin to come down and see me?’
What is particularly galling about Henry’s pious little sermon is that I can see the truth in it. He’s right: I have allowed my imagination to build Esterhazy up into a traitor on the scale of Dreyfus, whereas in fact, as Henry says, all the evidence indicates that he hasn’t done anything very much. Still, I am not going to give him the satisfaction of letting him take over the operation. I shall keep this one to myself. Thus when Gribelin comes to see me, I tell him I want a list of all the police agents the section has used recently, together with their addresses and a brief service history. He goes away and comes back half an hour later with a dozen names.
Gribelin is an enigma to me: the epitome of the servile bureaucrat; an animated corpse. He could be any age between forty and sixty and is as thin as a wraith of black smoke, the only colour he wears. Mostly he closets himself alone upstairs in his archive; on the rare occasions he does appear he creeps along close to the wall, dark and silent as a shadow. I could imagine him slipping around the edge of a closed door, or sliding beneath it. The only sound he emits occasionally is the clinking of the bunch of keys that is attached to his waist by a chain. He stands now with perfect stillness in front of my desk while I scan the list. I ask him which of the agents he would recommend. He refuses to be drawn: ‘They are all good men.’ He doesn’t ask me why I need an agent: Gribelin is as discreet as a papal confessor.
In the end I select a young officer with the Sûreté, Jean-Alfred Desvernine, attached to the police division at the gare Saint-Lazare. He’s a former lieutenant of the dragoons from the Médoc, risen through the ranks, obliged to resign his commission because of gambling debts, but who has made an honest fist of his life since: if anyone has a chance of prising open the secrets of Esterhazy’s addiction, I reckon it will be him.
After Gribelin has slunk away, I write Desvernine a message asking him to meet me the day after tomorrow. Rather than inviting him to the office, where Henry and Lauth will be able to see him, I propose a meeting at nine in the morning outside the Louvre museum, in the place du Carrousel. I tell him I shall be in civilian dress, with a frock coat and a bowler hat, and with a red carnation in my buttonhole and a copy of Le Figaro under my arm. As I seal the envelope, I reflect how easily I am slipping into the clichés of the spying world. It alarms me. Already I trust no one. How long before I am raving like Sandherr about degenerates and foreigners? It is a déformation professionnelle: all spymasters must go mad in the end.