An Officer and a Spy

  He glances at it. Immediately his jaw tenses with anger. ‘My God, you people don’t give up, do you?’ He pushes back his chair, strides across the office, throws open his door and shouts, ‘Billecocq! Bring me the Panizzardi telegram!’ He turns to me. ‘Once and for all, Colonel, that is not what it says, and wishing it did will not make it otherwise.’

  ‘Wait,’ I say, holding up my hand to pacify him, ‘there’s obviously some history here that I’m not aware of. Let me be clear: you’re telling me that this is not an accurate transcription of the decoded telegram?’

  ‘The only reason it took us nine days to arrive at the solution was because your ministry kept refusing to believe the facts!’

  A young, nervous-looking man, presumably Billecocq, arrives bearing a folder. Bazeries snatches it off him and flicks it open. ‘Here it is, you see – the original telegram?’ He holds it up for me to see. I recognise the Italian attaché’s handwriting. ‘Panizzardi took it to the telegraph office on the avenue Montaigne at three o’clock in the morning. By ten, thanks to our arrangement with the telegraph service, it was here in our department. By eleven, Colonel Sandherr was standing exactly where you are now demanding we decipher it as a matter of extreme urgency. I told him it was impossible – this particular cipher was one of great complexity, which we’d never before managed to break. He said, “What if I could guarantee you that it contained a particular word?” I told him that would be a different matter. He said that the word was “Dreyfus”.’

  ‘And how did he know that Panizzardi would mention Dreyfus?’

  ‘Well, that was very clever, I must concede. Sandherr said that the previous day he had arranged for the name to be leaked to the newspapers as the identity of the man arrested for espionage. He reasoned that whoever was employing Dreyfus would panic and contact their superiors. When Panizzardi was followed to the telegraph office in the middle of the night, naturally Colonel Sandherr was sure his tactic had worked. Unfortunately, when I succeeded in breaking the cipher, the text of the message was not as he wished. You can read it yourself.’

  Bazeries shows me the telegram. The solution is written out neatly under the numerals of the encoded text: If Captain Dreyfus has had no dealings with you it would be appropriate to instruct the ambassador to publish an official denial in order to avoid comments by the press.

  I read it through twice to make sure I understand the implications. ‘And so what this suggests is that Panizzardi was actually in the dark about Dreyfus – the direct opposite of what Colonel Sandherr believed?’

  ‘Exactly! Sandherr wouldn’t accept it, though. He insisted we must have got a word wrong somewhere. He took it to the highest levels. He even arranged for one of his agents to feed Panizzardi some fresh information about an unrelated matter, so that he would be obliged to send a second cipher message to Rome incorporating certain technical terms. When we broke that as well, we demonstrated beyond doubt that this was the correct decryption. Nine days this whole procedure took us, from beginning to end. So please, Colonel – don’t let us go over it again.’

  I perform the calculation in my head. Nine days from 2 November takes us to 11 November. The court martial began on 19 December. Which means that for over a month before Dreyfus even stood trial, the Statistical Section were aware that the phrase ‘that lowlife D’ could not possibly refer to Dreyfus, because they knew Panizzardi had never even heard of him – unless he was lying to his superiors, and why would he do that?

  ‘And there is no doubt, is there,’ I ask, ‘that at the end of the whole process you provided the correct version to the Ministry of War?’

  ‘No doubt at all. I gave it to Billecocq to hand-deliver.’

  ‘Can you remember who you gave it to?’ I ask Billecocq.

  ‘Yes, Colonel, I remember it very well, because I gave it to the minister himself. I gave it to General Mercier.’

  When I get back to the Statistical Section, I can smell cigarette smoke emanating from my office, and when I open the door, I find General Gonse sitting at my desk. Henry is resting his ample backside against my table.

  Gonse says cheerfully, ‘You’ve been out a long time.’

  ‘I didn’t know we had an appointment.’

  ‘We didn’t. I just thought I’d drop by.’

  ‘You’ve never done that before.’

  ‘Haven’t I? Perhaps I should have done it more often. What a separate little operation you have running over here.’ He holds out his hand. ‘I’ll take that secret file on Dreyfus, if I may.’

  ‘Of course. Might I ask why?’

  ‘Not really.’

  I’d like to argue. I glance at Henry. He raises his eyebrows slightly.

  You have to give them what they want, Colonel – they’re the chiefs.

  Slowly I bend to unlock my safe, searching my brain for some excuse not to comply. I take out the file marked ‘D’. Reluctantly I hand it over to Gonse. He opens the flap and quickly thumbs through the contents.

  I ask pointedly, ‘Is it all there?’

  ‘It had better be!’ Gonse smiles at me – a purely mechanical adjustment of his lower face, devoid of all humour. ‘Now then, we need to make a few administrative changes, in view of your imminent departure on your tour of inspection. Henceforth, Major Henry will bring all the Agent Auguste material direct to me.’

  ‘But that’s our most important source!’

  ‘Yes, so it’s only right that it comes to me, as head of the intelligence department. Is that all right with you, Henry?’

  ‘Whatever you wish, General.’

  ‘Am I being dismissed?’

  ‘Of course not, my dear Picquart! This is simply a reshuffle of responsibilities to improve our efficiency. Everything else remains with you. So that’s settled then.’ Gonse stands and stubs out his cigarette. ‘We’ll talk soon, Colonel.’ He clasps the Dreyfus file to his chest with crossed arms. ‘I’ll look after our precious baby very well, don’t you worry.’

  After he has gone, Henry looks at me. He shrugs apologetically. ‘You should have taken my advice,’ he says.

  I have heard it claimed by those who have attended the public executions in the rue de la Roquette that the heads of the condemned men after they have been guillotined still show signs of life. Their cheeks twitch. Their eyes blink. Their lips move.

  I wonder: do these severed heads also briefly share the illusion that they are alive? Do they see people staring down at them and imagine, for an instant or two before the darkness rushes in, that they can still communicate?

  So it is with me after my visit from Gonse. I continue to come into the office at my usual hour as if I am still alive. I read reports. I correspond with agents. I hold meetings. I write my weekly blanc for the Chief of the General Staff: the Germans are planning military manoeuvres in Alsace-Moselle, they are making increasing use of dogs, they are laying a telephone cable at Bussang close to the border. But this is a dead man talking. The real direction of the Statistical Section has passed over the road to the ministry, where regular meetings now take place between Gonse and my officers Henry, Lauth and Gribelin. I hear them leaving. I listen to them coming back. They are up to something, but I cannot work out what.

  My own options seem non-existent. Obviously I cannot report what I know to my superiors, since I must assume they already know it. For a few days I consider appealing directly to the President, but then I read his latest speech, delivered in the presence of General Billot – The army is the nation’s heart and soul, the mirror in which France perceives the most ideal image of her self-denial and patriotism; the army holds the first place in the thoughts of the government and in the pride of the country – and I realise that he would never take up arms on behalf of a despised Jew against ‘the nation’s heart and soul’. Obviously also I cannot share my discoveries with anyone outside the government – senator, judge, newspaper editor – without betraying our most secret intelligence sources. The same applies to the Dreyfus family; besides, the Sûre
té is watching them night and day.

  Above all, I recoil from the act of betraying the army: my heart and soul, my mirror, my ideal.

  Paralysed, I wait for something to happen.

  I notice it on a newsstand on the corner of the avenue Kléber early one morning in November, when I am on my way to work. I am just about to step off the kerb and it stops me dead: a facsimile of the bordereau printed slap in the middle of the front page of Le Matin.

  I glance around at the people reading it in the street. My immediate instinct is to snatch their newspapers off them: don’t they realise this is a state secret? I buy a copy and retreat into a doorway. The full-size illustration is plainly taken from one of Lauth’s photographs. The article is headlined ‘The Proof’; its tone is unremittingly hostile to Dreyfus. Immediately it reads to me like the work of one of the prosecution’s handwriting experts. The timing is obvious. Lazare’s pamphlet, A Judicial Error: the Truth about the Dreyfus Affair, was published three days ago. It contains a violent attack on the graphologists. They have a professional motive to want everyone still to believe that Dreyfus was the author of the bordereau; more to the point, they have all hung on to their facsimiles.

  I hail a cab to get to the office as quickly as possible. The atmosphere is funereal. Even though the report appears to vindicate Dreyfus’s conviction, it is a calamity for our section. Schwartzkoppen, like the rest of Paris, will be able to read the bordereau over his breakfast table; when he realises his private correspondence is in the hands of the French government he will choke, and then presumably he will try to work out how it reached them. The long career of Agent Auguste may well be over. And what of Esterhazy? The thought of how he will react to seeing his handwriting emblazoned over the newsstands is the only aspect that gives me any pleasure, especially when Desvernine comes to see me late in the morning to report that he has just observed the traitor rushing bare-headed out of the apartment of Four-Fingered Marguerite into a rainstorm, ‘looking as if all the hands of hell were after him’.

  I am summoned by General Billot. He sends a captain with a message that I am to come to his office at once.

  I would like time to prepare for this ordeal. I say to the captain, ‘I’ll be there directly. Tell him I’m on my way.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Colonel. My orders are to escort you to him now.’

  I collect my cap from the hatstand. When I step into the corridor I notice Henry loitering outside his office with Lauth. Something about their stance – some combination of shiftiness and curiosity and triumph – tells me that they knew beforehand that this summons was coming and wanted to watch me leave. We nod to one another politely.

  The captain and I walk round to the street entrance of the hôtel de Brienne.

  I have Colonel Picquart to see the Minister of War . . .

  As we climb the marble staircase, I recall how I trotted up here so eagerly after Dreyfus’s degradation – the silent garden in the snow, Mercier and Boisdeffre warming the backs of their legs at the blazing fire, the delicate fingers smoothly turning the globe and picking out Devil’s Island . . .

  Boisdeffre once again waits in the minister’s office. He is seated at the conference table with Billot and Gonse. Billot has a closed file in front of him. The three generals side by side make a sombre tribunal – a hanging committee.

  The minister smooths his walrus moustaches and says, ‘Sit down, Colonel.’

  I assume I am to be blamed for the leak of the bordereau, but Billot takes me by surprise. He begins without preliminaries: ‘An anonymous letter has been passed to us. It alleges that Major Esterhazy will shortly be denounced in the Chamber of Deputies as an accomplice of Dreyfus. Have you any idea where the author of this letter could have obtained the information that Esterhazy was under suspicion?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘I presume I don’t have to tell you that this represents a serious breach in the confidentiality of your inquiry?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m appalled to hear of it.’

  ‘It’s intolerable, Colonel!’ His cheeks redden, his eyes pop. Suddenly he has become the choleric old general beloved of the cartoonists. ‘First the existence of the dossier is revealed! Then a copy of the bordereau is printed on the front page of a newspaper! And now this! Our inescapable conclusion is that you have developed an obsession – in fact a dangerous fixation – with substituting Major Esterhazy for Dreyfus, and that you are willing to go to any lengths to fulfil it, including leaking secret information to the press.’

  Boisdeffre says, ‘It’s a very poor business, Picquart. Very poor. I’m disappointed in you.’

  ‘I can assure you, General, I have never disclosed the existence of my inquiry to anyone, certainly not to Esterhazy. And I’ve never leaked information to the press. My inquiry is not a matter of personal obsession. I have simply followed a logical trail of evidence which leads to Esterhazy.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ Billot shakes his head. ‘You have disobeyed specific orders to keep clear of the Dreyfus business. You have gone around acting like a spy in your own department. I could call one of my orderlies now and have you taken to Cherche-Midi on a charge of insubordination.’

  There is a pause, and then Gonse says, ‘If it really is a question of logic, Colonel, what would you do if we showed you cast-iron proof that Dreyfus was a spy?’

  ‘If it were cast-iron, then obviously I’d accept it. But I don’t believe such proof can be found.’

  ‘That is where you are wrong.’

  Gonse glances at Billot, who opens the file. It appears to contain only a single sheet of paper.

  Billot says, ‘We have recently intercepted a letter, via Agent Auguste, from Major Panizzardi to Colonel Schwartzkoppen. This is the relevant passage: I have read that a deputy is going to ask questions about Dreyfus. If someone asks in Rome for new explanations, I will say that I have never had any dealings with this Jew. If someone asks you, say the same, for no one must ever know what happened to him. It’s signed “Alexandrine”. There,’ says Billot, closing the file with great satisfaction, ‘what do you say about that?’

  It is a forgery, of course. It has to be. I keep my composure. ‘When exactly did this reach us, may I ask?’

  Billot turns to Gonse, who says, ‘Major Henry collected it in the usual way about two weeks ago. It was in French, so he pieced it together.’

  ‘Could I see the original?’

  Gonse bridles. ‘Why is that necessary?’

  ‘Only that I would be interested in seeing what it looks like.’

  Boisdeffre says, with great chilliness, ‘I would sincerely hope, Colonel Picquart, that you are not doubting the integrity of Major Henry. The message was retrieved and reconstructed – and that is that. We are sharing it with you now in the expectation that its existence will not be disclosed to the press, and that finally you will drop your pernicious insistence that Dreyfus is innocent. Otherwise the consequences for you will be grave.’

  I stare from one general to the next. So this is what the army of France has sunk to. Either they are the greatest fools in Europe or the greatest villains: for the sake of my country I am not sure which is worse. But some instinct for self-preservation warns me not to fight them now; I must play dead.

  I bow my head slightly. ‘If you are satisfied that it is authentic, then naturally I accept that it must be.’

  Billot says, ‘Therefore you also must accept that Dreyfus is guilty?’

  ‘If the document is authentic, then yes – he must be.’

  There. It is done. I do not know what else I could have said at that moment that would have made any difference to Dreyfus’s plight.

  Billot says, ‘In view of your previous record, Colonel, we are willing to suspend taking legal action against you, at least for the time being. We do, however, expect you to turn over all documents connected with the investigation of Major Esterhazy, including the petit bleu, to Major Henry. And you will proceed immediately to the depot at Châlons to begin y
our tour of inspection with the 6th and 7th Corps.’

  Gonse is smiling again. ‘I’ll take all your office keys now, my dear Picquart, if I may. There’s no need for you to return to the section. Major Henry can take over the day-to-day running. You go straight home and pack.’

  I fill a suitcase with enough clothes for three or four days. I ask the concierge to forward my mail to the Ministry of War. Then I just have sufficient time before my train leaves at seven to call on a few people to say goodbye.

  Pauline is in the family’s apartment on the rue de la Pompe, supervising tea for the girls. She looks alarmed to see me. ‘Philippe will be back from the office any minute,’ she whispers, half closing the door behind her.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not coming in.’ I stand on the landing with my suitcase beside me and tell her that I’m going away.

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘It should only be for a week or so, but if it turns out to be longer and you need to make contact, write to me care of the ministry – only be careful what you say.’

  ‘Why? Is something the matter?’

  ‘No, but precautions are always wise.’ I kiss her hand and press it to my cheek.

  ‘Maman!’ shrills a voice behind her.

  ‘You’d better go,’ I say.

  I take a cab to the boulevard Saint-Germain and ask the driver to wait. By now it is dark and the lights of the great house are bright in the November gloom; there is an atmosphere of activity: Blanche will be holding one of her musical soirées later in the evening. ‘Stranger!’ she greets me. ‘You’re far too early.’

  ‘I won’t come in,’ I say. ‘I’m afraid I have to leave Paris for a few days.’ I repeat the instructions I’ve just given Pauline: if she needs to get in touch she should do so via the ministry, but she should try to be discreet. ‘Give my love to Aimery and Mathilde.’

  ‘Oh, Georges!’ she cries in delight, pinching my cheek and kissing the tip of my nose. ‘You are a mystery!’