He stands. I follow suit.
He says, ‘I wouldn’t describe it as having been a pleasure exactly to have you under my command, but it has certainly been interesting.’ We shake hands. He puts his arm around my shoulders and escorts me to the door. He smells strongly of eau de cologne. ‘I was talking to Colonel Dubuch the other night. He says this Esterhazy character is a thoroughly bad lot. He was out here in ’82 and was charged with embezzlement in Sfax. There was a board of inquiry, but somehow he got off.’
‘It doesn’t surprise me, General.’
‘You must be up against some pretty desperate opposition, Picquart, if they’re willing to tie themselves to a character like that. May I give you some advice?’
‘Please.’
‘Don’t stand too close to the railings on the ship back to France.’
18
THE PASSAGE ACROSS the Mediterranean in November is much rougher than in June. One moment the porthole shows grey sky, the next grey waves. My Russian books slide off my little table and splay out on the floor. As before, I keep mostly to my cabin. Occasionally I am visited by my escort, Monsieur Périer of the Colonial Ministry, but he is very green and prefers to keep to his own quarters. On my rare excursions above decks I follow Leclerc’s advice and keep well away from the edge. I enjoy the lash of the sea across my face, the smell of the coal smoke mingled with the salt spray. Occasionally I am aware of some of the other passengers staring at me, but I am not sure whether they are police agents, or have merely heard that a person whose name is in the news is aboard.
We leave Africa on the Tuesday. On the Thursday afternoon the coast of France comes into view – a watery line in the mist. I have just finished packing when someone knocks on my door. I pick up my revolver and call out, ‘Who’s there?’
A voice replies, ‘It’s the captain, Colonel Picquart.’
‘Just a moment.’ I slip the gun into my pocket and open the door.
He’s a morose-looking fellow in his early fifties; a drinker to judge by the filigree of blood vessels in his eyes: I should guess that plying back and forth between Tunis and Marseille three times a week must become tedious after a while. We exchange salutes. He says, ‘Arrangements have been made to take you and Monsieur Périer off the ship before we dock.’
‘Is that really necessary?’
‘Apparently there’s a crowd of reporters on the quayside, and some protesters. The Ministry of War feels it would be safer to transfer you to a tug while we’re still at sea and then land you ahead of us in a different part of the harbour.’
‘What an absurd idea.’
‘Maybe so,’ replies the captain with a shrug, ‘but those are my orders.’
A half-hour later the throb of the engines ceases and we heave to. I climb up to the deck carrying my suitcase. We have come to a stop about a kilometre outside the harbour entrance. A tugboat lies alongside us. The weather is cold and squally but that doesn’t deter several dozen passengers from lining the rails in sullen silence to watch me depart. It is my first experience of my new celebrity, and a singularly uncomfortable one. There is a strong swell on the sea and the two vessels pitch against one another, their decks rising and falling in opposite directions. My suitcase is taken from me, flung down into the tug and caught, and then I am lowered after it. Strong arms stretch up to lift me aboard. Behind me I hear someone shout an insult; the word ‘Jew’ is whipped away in the wind. Monsieur Périer is handed down along with his luggage. He staggers to the other side of the tug and throws up. The ropes are cast off and we pull clear.
We pass behind the harbour wall and swing to port, moving between the towering hulls of a pair of anchored ironclads, towards the western end of the harbour. Over the tug’s stern, gathered in the place where the ferries berth, I can see a crowd of people, at least a hundred or two. And this is the instance when I realise the hold that the Dreyfus affair is beginning to exert on the imagination of my fellow countrymen. The tug manoeuvres alongside a military dock where a cab is waiting. Next to it stands a young officer. As the crew jump off to tie up the boat, he steps forward and takes my suitcase. He passes it up to the taxi driver, then offers his hand to help me ashore.
He salutes. His manner is cold but impeccable. In the back of the cab, facing me and Périer, he says, ‘If I might make a suggestion, Colonel, it would perhaps be advisable to crouch down as low as possible, at least until we are some distance clear of the port.’
I do as he asks. And so, like a hunted criminal, I return to France.
At the railway station, a first-class compartment at the rear of the train has been reserved for our exclusive use. Périer pulls down the blinds on the doors and the windows and refuses to allow me out to buy a newspaper. If I so much as visit the lavatory he insists on accompanying me and standing outside the door until I have finished. Occasionally I wonder what he would do if I disobeyed his orders, which invariably are delivered in a nervous, embarrassed, almost pleading tone. But in truth I am afflicted by a curious fatalism. I surrender myself to events, and to the rocking cocoon of our journey, which begins in the darkness of Marseille at five in the afternoon and ends in the darkness of Paris at five in the morning.
I am asleep when we arrive at the gare de Lyon. The jolting of the compartment awakens me and I open my eyes to see Périer peering around the edge of the window blind. He says, ‘We shall wait here, Colonel, if you don’t mind, until the other passengers have disembarked.’ Ten minutes later we step down on to the deserted platform. A porter wheels our cases ahead of us and we walk the length of the train to the ticket barrier, where a dozen men are waiting, holding notebooks. Périer warns me, ‘Don’t say anything,’ and we hold on to our hats and hunch forward slightly, as if stepping into a headwind. Their shouted questions all come at once so that it is impossible to distinguish more than a few words: ‘Esterhazy . . .? Dreyfus . . .? Veiled lady . . .? Search . . .?’ There is a brilliant lightning flash and the whumph of a magnesium tray igniting, but we are hurrying too fast, I am sure, for any photograph to be usable. Ahead of us a couple of railway officials have their arms outstretched and they steer us into an empty waiting room and close the door. Inside, my old friend Armand Mercier-Milon, now a colonel, salutes me very formally.
‘Armand,’ I say, ‘I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you,’ and I hold out my hand, but instead of offering me his, he merely gestures me towards the door.
‘There’s a motor car waiting,’ he says. ‘We need to leave before they run round to the front of the station.’
Drawn up outside is a big modern vehicle in the livery of the Compagnie Paris–Lyon Méditerranée. I am squeezed on to the back seat between Périer and Mercier-Milon. The luggage is stowed and the car pulls away just as the reporters come pouring out of the station towards us. Mercier-Milon says, ‘I have a letter here for you from the Chief of Staff.’
It is awkward to open the envelope in the cramped space. Colonel Picquart, I order you very strictly not to communicate with anyone until you have given your evidence to General de Pellieux’s inquiry. Boisdeffre.
We pass quickly and in silence through the darkened, rainy streets. There is no traffic at this hour; hardly anyone is about. We head west along the boulevard Saint-Martin and I wonder if they might be taking me back to my apartment, but then suddenly we turn off north and pull up on the rue Saint-Lazare outside the giant hôtel Terminus. A porter opens the door. Périer gets out first. He says, ‘I’ll go in and register us.’
‘Am I staying here?’
‘For now.’
He disappears inside. I haul myself out of the car and contemplate the vast facade. It occupies an entire city block – five hundred bedrooms: a temple of modernity. Its electric lights glisten in the rain. Mercier-Milon joins me. Out of earshot of anyone else for the first time he says, ‘You are a bloody fool, Georges. What can you have been thinking of?’ He speaks quietly but with force and I can tell he’s been bursting to say this since we left the railw
ay station. ‘I mean, I feel sorry for Dreyfus myself – I was one of the few prepared to defend him at that charade of a court martial. But you? Passing secret information to an outsider, so that he can use it against your own commanders? That’s a crime in my book. I doubt you’ll find a soldier in the whole of France who’ll defend what you’ve done.’
His vehemence both shakes and angers me. I say coldly, ‘What happens next?’
‘You go to your room and change into your uniform. You speak to no one. You write to no one. You open no letters. I’ll wait in the lobby. At nine I’ll come and fetch you and escort you to the place Vendôme.’
Périer appears in the doorway. ‘Colonel Picquart? Our room is ready.’
‘Our room? You mean we are to share one?’
‘I am afraid so.’
I try to make light of this humiliating arrangement – ‘Your devotion to your duties really is exemplary, Monsieur Périer’ – but that is when I realise that of course he is not an official of the Colonial Ministry at all; he is a secret policeman of the Sûreté.
The only time he lets me out of his sight is when I take a bath. Lying in the tub I listen to him moving around in the bedroom. Someone knocks on the outer door and he lets them in. I hear low male voices and I think how vulnerable I would be if two men were to enter quickly and grab my ankles. A simple case of drowning in the bath: it would be over in minutes with barely a mark to show.
Périer – if that is his name – calls through the door, ‘Your breakfast is here, Colonel.’
I step out of the bath, dry myself and put on the sky-blue tunic and the red trousers with grey stripe that make up the uniform of the 4th Tunisian Rifles. In the mirror it seems to me that I cut an incongruous figure – the colours of north Africa in the winter of northern Europe. They have even dressed me up to look a motley fool. I doubt you’ll find a soldier in the whole of France who’ll defend what you’ve done. Well then. So be it.
I drink black coffee. I eat tartine. I translate another page of Dostoyevsky. What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? At nine, Mercier-Milon comes to collect me and we ride down in the lift to the lobby without exchanging a word. Outside on the pavement the pack of journalists surges towards us. ‘Damn it,’ says Mercier-Milon, ‘they must have followed us from the station.’
‘If only our soldiers were as resourceful.’
‘This isn’t funny, Georges.’
The same chorus of questions: ‘Dreyfus . . .? Esterhazy . . .? Search . . .? Veiled lady . . .?’
Mercier-Milon pushes them out of the way and opens the door to our carriage. ‘Jackals!’ he mutters.
Over my shoulder I glimpse some of the reporters jumping in taxis to follow us. Our journey is short, barely half a kilometre. We arrive to find a dozen more already lying in wait in the corner of the place Vendôme. They block the huge, worm-eaten old door that leads to the headquarters of the military governor of Paris. Only when Mercier-Milon draws his sword and they hear the scrape of steel do they fall back and let us pass. We enter a chilly vaulted chamber, like the nave of an abandoned church, and climb a staircase lined with plaster statues. In this quasi-religious house I perceive that I have become something beyond a mere dangerous nuisance to my masters: I am a heretic to the faith. We sit in silence in a waiting room for a quarter of an hour until Pellieux’s aide comes to fetch me. As I stand to go, Mercier-Milon’s expression is one of pity mixed with a kind of dread. He says, very quietly, ‘Good luck, Georges.’
I know Pellieux by reputation only as a monarchist and a strict Catholic. I suspect that he despises me on sight. In response to my salute he simply points to a chair where I may sit. He is in his middle fifties, handsome, vain: his dark hair, which matches the blackness of his tunic, is brushed back carefully into a severe widow’s peak; his moustaches are full and splendid. He presides at a table flanked by a major and a captain whom he does not introduce; a uniformed secretary sits at a separate desk to take notes.
Pellieux says, ‘The purpose of this inquiry, Colonel, is to establish the facts regarding your investigation of Major Esterhazy. To that end I have already interviewed Major Esterhazy himself, Monsieur Mathieu Dreyfus, and Senator Auguste Scheurer-Kestner and Maître Louis Leblois. At the end of my inquiry I will recommend to the minister what, if any, disciplinary action needs to be taken. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, General.’ Now I know why they have taken such pains to prevent me speaking to anyone: they have already interviewed Louis and they don’t want me to know how much he has told them.
‘Very well, let us begin at the beginning.’ Pellieux’s voice is cold and precise. ‘When did Major Esterhazy first come to your attention?’
‘When the Statistical Section intercepted a petit bleu addressed to him from the German Embassy.’
‘And this was when?’
‘In the spring of last year.’
‘Be more precise.’
‘I’m not sure of the precise date.’
‘You told General Gonse that it was in “late April”.’
‘Then that is when it must have been.’
‘No, in fact it was in early March.’
I hesitate. ‘Was it?’
‘Come, Colonel. You know perfectly well it was in March. Major Henry was on compassionate leave at the bedside of his dying mother. He remembers the date. He returned to Paris on a flying visit, met Agent Auguste and received a consignment of documents, which he then handed over to you. So why did you falsify the date in your report?’
The aggression of his manner and the detail of his research catch me off guard. All I can remember is that by the time I came to submit my report I had been investigating Esterhazy for nearly six months without Gonse’s knowledge: an act of insubordination which I thought I might make slightly more palatable by pretending it was only four. At the time the lie didn’t seem important – it isn’t important – but suddenly now in this room, under the hostile eye of this Grand Inquisitor, it looks inexplicably suspicious.
Pellieux says sarcastically, ‘Take all the time you need, Colonel.’
After a long pause I reply, ‘I must have been confused about the dates.’
‘“Confused about the dates”?’ Pellieux turns mockingly to his aides. ‘But I thought you were supposed to be a soldier of scientific precision, Colonel – part of the modern-thinking generation that would replace such reactionary old fossils as me!’
‘I’m afraid even scientists occasionally make mistakes, General. But in the end the date is of no significance.’
‘On the contrary, dates are always significant. Treason itself is mostly a question of dates, as the saying has it. First you claim Major Esterhazy only came to your attention in April. Now we have established it was at least March. But there is evidence in your file on Esterhazy indicating it was even earlier.’
He passes the captain a newspaper cutting. The captain dutifully comes round from behind the table and hands it to me. It is an announcement of the death of the marquis de Nettancourt, Esterhazy’s father-in-law, dated 6 January 1896.
‘I’ve never seen this before.’
Pellieux affects astonishment. ‘Well then, where did it come from?’
‘I presume it must have been added to the file after I left.’
‘But you would agree at first glance that this suggests you were taking an interest in Esterhazy two months before the arrival of the petit bleu?’
‘At first glance, yes. I think that may be the reason why someone put it there.’
Pellieux makes a note. ‘Go back to the petit bleu. Describe its arrival.’
‘Major Henry brought it in as part of a delivery late one afternoon.’
‘In what form was this delivery?’
‘The material always arrived in small, cone-shaped brown paper sacks. This particular cone was bulkier than usual, because Henry had missed a meeting with our agent due to his mother’s
illness.’
‘Did you examine the contents with him?’
‘No, as I mentioned earlier, he had a train to catch. I put it straight in my safe and gave it to Captain Lauth the following morning.’
‘Is it possible that someone could have interfered with the cone between your being handed it by Henry and you giving it to Lauth?’
‘No, it was locked up.’
‘But you could have interfered with it. In fact you could have added to it the fragments of the petit bleu.’
I feel my face turning red. ‘That is an outrageous accusation.’
‘Your outrage is irrelevant. Answer the question.’
‘Very well, the answer is yes. Yes, I could, theoretically, have added the petit bleu to the consignment. But I did not.’
‘Is this the petit bleu?’ Pellieux holds it up. ‘Do you recognise it?’
The light in the chamber is dim. I have to lean forward and half rise from my seat to make it out. It looks more worn than I remember it: I assume it must have been handled many times over the past year. ‘Yes. That looks like it.’
‘Do you realise that under a microscope it is possible to see that the original address has been scratched out and that of Major Esterhazy written over it? And also that chemical analysis has revealed that the ink on the back of the telegram card is different to that on the front? One is iron gall ink while the other contains an ingredient found in the trees of Campeche.’
I jerk my head back slightly in surprise. ‘Then it’s been tampered with.’
‘Indeed it has. It is a forgery.’
‘No, General – it has been tampered with since I left Paris. When I was still in the section I swear that was a genuine document – I must have held it in my hands a hundred times. May I examine it more closely? Perhaps it is slightly different . . .’
‘No, you have already identified it. I don’t want it damaged any further. The petit bleu is a fake. And I suggest that the individual most likely to have perpetrated the forgery is you.’