The respite is brief. On Monday, L’Éclair publishes a second and longer article. Its headline couldn’t be worse from my point of view: “The Traitor: The Guilt of Dreyfus Demonstrated by the Dossier.”
Feeling sick, I carry it over to my desk. The story is grossly inaccurate but it includes some telling details: that the secret dossier was passed to the judges in the room where they were deliberating; that the dossier contained confidential letters between the German and Italian military attachés; and that one of these letters referred specifically to “that animal Dreyfus”—not exactly “that lowlife D” but close enough. “It was this irrefutable proof,” concludes the article, “that determined the verdict of the judges.”
I drum my fingers. Who is revealing all this detail? Guénée says it is the Dreyfus family. I’m not so sure. Who stands to gain from the leaks? From where I sit, the most obvious beneficiaries are those who want to create a siege mentality within the Ministry of War and curtail my inquiry into Esterhazy. It is the phrase “that animal Dreyfus” that strikes a chord in my memory. Isn’t that what du Paty always claimed about Dreyfus: that he had “animal urges”?
I take a pair of scissors from my desk and carefully cut out the article. Then I write a letter to Gonse, who is still on leave: Recently I took the liberty of telling you that in my opinion we were going to have a major problem on our hands if we did not take the initiative. The attached article in L’Éclair unfortunately confirms me in my opinion. I feel obliged to repeat that in my view it is imperative to act without delay. If we wait any longer, we will be overwhelmed, locked into an inextricable position, and unable either to defend ourselves or ascertain the real truth.
I hesitate before I post it. I am putting my opinion formally on the record. Gonse is a consummate soldier of the filing cabinet, if not the battlefield. He will recognise this for what it is: an escalation of hostilities.
I send it anyway.
The next day he summons me. He has cut short his vacation. He is back in his office. I can sense his panic at a range of two hundred metres.
The corridors of the ministry are quieter than usual. Billot and Boisdeffre are both away in the southwest, accompanying President Fauré as he inspects the autumn manoeuvres. Most General Staff officers with career ambitions—and that is nearly all of them—have made sure they are in the field. As I walk down those empty, echoing passages I am reminded of the atmosphere at the time of the traitor hunt two years ago.
“I got your letter,” says Gonse, waving it at me as I settle down in a chair in front of his desk, “and don’t think I’m not sympathetic to your point of view. If I could put back the clock to the start of this whole damned business, believe me, I would. Cigarette?” He pushes a box towards me. I hold up my hand to decline. He takes one, lights it. His tone could not be friendlier. “Let’s face it, dear Picquart: the investigation into Dreyfus was not handled as professionally as it should have been. Sandherr was a sick man, and du Paty—well, we all know what Armand is like, despite his many fine qualities. But we have to proceed from where we are, and really we can’t go back over it all again. It would reopen too many wounds. You’ve seen the press these past few days, the potential hysteria there is about Dreyfus. It would tear the country apart. We just have to shut it down. You must appreciate that, surely?”
There is a look of such entreaty on his face—such yearning for me to agree—that for a few fleeting moments I am almost tempted to give in. He is not a bad man, just a weak one. He wants a quiet life, pottering back and forth between the ministry and his garden.
“I do see that, General. But these leaks to the press are a warning to us in another way. We have to recognise that an inquiry into the Dreyfus case is already going on as we speak. Unfortunately, it’s organised by the Dreyfus family and their supporters. The process is slipping out of our control. The point I was trying to make in my letter is a basic military principle: that we should be the ones taking the initiative, while there’s still time.”
“And we do that—how? By surrendering? By giving them what they want?”
“No, by abandoning a position that is frankly becoming indefensible and establishing a new line on higher ground.”
“Yes—as I say—by giving them what they want! Anyway, I don’t agree with you. Our present position is highly defensible, just as long as we all stand together. It shelters behind an iron wall of law. We simply say: ‘Seven judges considered all the evidence. They reached a unanimous verdict. The case is closed.’ ”
I shake my head. “No, I’m sorry, General, but that line won’t hold. The judges only reached a unanimous verdict because of the secret file. And the evidence in the secret file is, well …” I stop, unsure how to proceed. I am remembering Guénée’s expression when I started to question him about his supposed conversation with Val Carlos.
Gonse says quietly, “The evidence is what, Colonel?”
“The evidence in the file is”—I spread my hands—“weak. If the proofs it contained were cast-iron, we might be able to excuse the fact that they weren’t seen by the defence. But as it is …”
“I completely understand what you’re saying, my dear Picquart—believe me, I do!” He leans forward, imploring. “But that’s precisely why the integrity of the secret file must be protected at all costs. Suppose we follow your route to this higher ground of yours, and we say to the French people: ‘Oh look, Esterhazy wrote the bordereau after all, let’s bring back Dreyfus, let’s hold some great new trial’—what will happen next? People will want to know how the original judges—all seven of them, mark you—could have got the whole thing so wrong. That will lead straight to the secret file. Some very senior figures are going to be gravely embarrassed. Do you want that? Can you imagine the damage it will do to the reputation of the army?”
“I accept there would be damage, General. But we would also gain credit for cleaning out our own stables. Whereas it seems to me that we will only compound that damage if we pile fresh lies on top of the old—”
“Nobody’s talking about lying, Colonel! I’m not asking you to lie! I’d never do that. I know you are a man of honour. I’m not asking you to do anything, in point of fact. I’m merely asking you not to do something—not to go near the Dreyfus case. Is that so unreasonable, Georges?” He risks a little smile. “After all, I know your views on the Chosen Race—really, when all is said and done, what does it matter to you if one Jew stays on Devil’s Island?”
It is as if he has leaned across his desk and offered me a secret handshake. I say carefully, “I suppose it matters to me because he is an innocent man.”
Gonse laughs; there is an edge of hysteria to it. “Well, how very sentimental!” He claps his hands. “A beautiful thought! Newborn lambs and kittens and Alfred Dreyfus—all innocent!”
“With respect, General, you make it sound as if I have some emotional attachment to the man. I can assure you I have no feelings for him one way or the other. Frankly, I wish he were guilty—it would make my life a great deal easier. And until quite recently I was certain that he was. But now I look at the evidence and it seems to me that he can’t be. The traitor is Esterhazy.”
“Perhaps it’s Esterhazy and perhaps it’s not. You can’t be sure. The fact is, however, if you say nothing, nobody will ever know.”
So we have reached the dark heart of the matter at last. Suddenly the room seems even quieter than before. He stares at me quite frankly. I take a moment before replying.
“That is an abominable suggestion, General. You cannot expect me to carry this secret with me to my grave.”
“Most certainly I can, and I do! Taking secrets to the grave is the essence of our profession.”
Another silence, and then I try again. “All I ask is that the whole case be thoroughly investigated—”
“All you ask!” Gonse finally erupts. “All! I like that! I don’t understand you, Picquart! So what are you saying? That the entire army—the entire nation come to that!—is supposed to revolve around your tender conscience? You have a pretty good conceit of yourself, I must say!” His neck is fat and flushed bright pink, like some unspeakable pneumatic rubber tube. It bulges against the collar of his tunic. He is terrified, I realise. Abruptly his manner becomes businesslike. “Where is the secret file now?”
“In my safe.”
“And you haven’t discussed its contents with anyone else?”
“Of course not.”
“You have made no copies?”
“No.”
“And you are not the source of these leaks to the newspapers?”
“If I were, I would hardly admit it, would I?” I can no longer keep the contempt out of my voice. “But for what it’s worth, the answer is no.”
“Don’t be insolent!” Gonse stands. I follow suit. “This is an army, Colonel, not a society for debating ethics. The Minister of War gives orders to the Chief of Staff, the Chief of Staff gives orders to me, and I give orders to you. I now order you formally, and for the final time, not to investigate anything connected with the Dreyfus case, and not to disclose anything about it to anyone who isn’t authorised to receive such information. Heaven help you if you disobey. Understand?”
I cannot even bring myself to reply to him. I salute, turn on my heel, and walk out of the room.
When I get back to the office, Capiaux tells me Desvernine is in the waiting room with the forger Lemercier-Picard. After my encounter with Gonse, interviewing such a creature is the last thing I feel like doing, but I don’t want to send him away.
The moment I enter, I recognise him as another of that little group, along with Guénée, who were playing cards and smoking pipes on my first morning. Moisés Lehmann suits him better as a name than Lemercier-Picard. He is small and Jewish-looking, plump with charm and confidence, smelling of eau de cologne and eager to impress me with his skill. He persuades me to write out three or four sentences in my own handwriting—“Go on, Colonel: what harm can it do, eh?”—and then after a couple of practice attempts he produces a passable copy. “The trick is speed,” he explains. “One must capture the essence of the line and inhabit its character and then write naturally. You have a very artistic hand, Colonel: very secretive, very introspective, if I may say so.”
“That’s enough, Moisés,” says Desvernine, pretending to cuff his ear. “The colonel has no time for your nonsense. You can get out of here now. Wait for me in the lobby.”
The forger grins at me. “A pleasure to meet you, Colonel.”
“It’s mutual. And I’d like my sheet of handwriting back, if you please.”
“Oh yes,” he says, pulling it out of his pocket. “I almost forgot.”
After he’s gone, Desvernine says, “I thought you ought to know that Esterhazy seems to have done a runner. He and his wife have moved out of the apartment in the rue de la Bienfaisance—and left in a hurry, by the look of it.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been inside. Don’t worry—I didn’t have to do anything illegal. It’s up for rent. I pretended I was looking for a place. They’ve taken away most of their furniture, just left a few bits of rubbish. He burned a lot of paper in the hearth. I found this.”
It is a visiting card, singed at the edges:
ÉDOUARD DRUMONT
Editor
La Libre Parole
I turn it back and forth. “So Esterhazy’s a contributor to that anti-Jewish rag?”
“Apparently. Or perhaps he just gives them information—plenty in the army do. The thing is, Colonel—he’s gone to ground. He’s not in Paris. He’s not even in Rouen anymore. He’s moved out to the Ardennes.”
“Do you think he knows we’re on to him?”
“I’m not sure. But I don’t like the smell of it. I think if we’re going to lay our trap we need to do it quickly.”
“Have we done anything about those speaking-tubes yet?”
“They came out yesterday.”
“Good. And how soon before the flues can be bricked up again?”
“We have a man going in tonight.”
“All right. Leave it with me.”
Billot is my only hope now. Billot: the old lizard, the old survivor, the two times Minister of War—surely he will realise not just the immorality but the political insanity of the General Staff’s policy?
He is due to return from the manoeuvres in the southwest on Friday. That morning Le Figaro publishes on its front page the text of a petition sent by Lucie Dreyfus to the Chamber of Deputies, pointing out that the government hasn’t denied the stories about the secret file:
And so it must be true that a French officer has been convicted by a court-martial on a charge produced by the prosecution without his knowledge, which therefore neither he nor his counsel was able to discuss.
It is the denial of all justice.
I have been the victim of the most cruel martyrdom for almost two years—like the man in whose innocence I have absolute faith. I have remained silent despite the odious and absurd slanders propagated amongst the public and the press.
Today it is my duty to break that silence, and without comment or recriminations I address myself to you, gentlemen, the only power to whom I can have recourse—and I demand justice.
In the narrow, gloomy passages and stairwells of the Statistical Section there is silence. My officers shut themselves away in their rooms. Hourly I expect to be summoned over the road by Gonse for an explanation of this latest bombshell, but the telephone never rings. From my office I keep half an eye on the back of the hôtel de Brienne. Finally, just after three o’clock, I glimpse uniformed orderlies with dispatch cases passing behind its tall windows. The minister must be back. The topography works in my favour: Gonse, sitting in the rue Saint-Dominique, will not yet know he has returned. I go down into the rue de l’Université, cross the street and take out my key to let myself into the minister’s garden.
And then something odd happens. My key does not fit. I try it three or four times, dully refusing to believe it won’t work. But the shape of the lock is entirely different to what it used to be. Eventually I give up and walk the long way round, via the place du Palais Bourbon, like any ordinary mortal.
“Colonel Picquart to see the Minister of War …”
The sentry lets me through the gate but the captain of the Republican Guard in the downstairs lobby asks me to wait. After a few minutes, Captain Calmon-Maison comes downstairs.
I hold up my key to show him. “It doesn’t work anymore.” I try to make a joke of it. “Like Adam, I appear to have been expelled from the garden for an excess of curiosity.”
Calmon-Maison’s face is deadpan. “I’m sorry, Colonel. We have to change the locks occasionally—security, you understand.”
“You don’t have to explain, Captain. But I still need to brief the minister.”
“Unfortunately, he’s only just returned from Châteauneuf. He has a lot to do, and he’s really rather exhausted. Could you possibly come back on Monday?” At least he has the grace to look embarrassed as he says this.
“It won’t take long.”
“Nevertheless …”
“I’ll wait.” I resume my place on the red leather banquette.
He looks at me dubiously. “Perhaps I’d better go and have another word with the minister.”
“Perhaps you should.”
He clatters off up the marble staircase, and shortly afterwards calls down to me, his voice echoing off the stone walls. “Colonel Picquart!”
Billot is sitting behind his desk. “Picquart,” he says, wearily raising his hand, “I’m afraid I’m very busy”—although there is no sign of any activity in his office, and I suspect he has simply been staring out of the window.
“Forgive me, Minister. I shan’t detain you. But in the light of the newspaper stories this week, I feel the need to press you now for a decision about the Esterhazy investigation.”
Billot peers at me warily from beneath his bushy white brows. “A decision about what aspect of it, exactly?”
I begin to describe the idea I have devised with Desvernine, of luring Esterhazy to a meeting by means of a message purporting to come from Schwartzkoppen, but he cuts me off very quickly. “No, no, I don’t like that at all—that’s far too crude. In fact, you know, I’m starting to think that the quickest way to deal with this swine is actually not to prosecute him at all but to pension him off. Either that, or send him somewhere a long way away—Indochina or Africa: I don’t know—preferably somewhere he can contract a very nasty local disease, or take a bullet in the back without too many questions being asked.”
I’m not sure how to respond to this suggestion, so I ignore it. “And what do we do about Dreyfus?”
“He’ll just have to stay where he is. The law has pronounced and that’s an end of it.”
“So you’ve reached a final decision?”
“I have. I had the opportunity before the parade in Châteauneuf to discuss the matter privately with General Mercier. He motored over specially from Le Mans to talk about it.”
“I bet he did!”
“Be careful, Colonel …!” Billot points a warning finger at me. Up till now he has always encouraged me to tiptoe to the edge of insubordination: it has amused him to play the indulgent paterfamilias. Clearly, like access to his garden, that privilege has been withdrawn.
Still, I can’t stop myself. “This secret file—you do know that it proves nothing against Dreyfus? That it may even contain downright lies?”
Billot puts his hands over his ears. “There are things I shouldn’t hear, Colonel.”
He looks absurd, in the way that stubborn old men sometimes do: a sulky child in a nursery.
“I can shout quite loudly,” I warn him.
“I mean it, Picquart! I mustn’t hear it!” His voice is sharp. Only when he is satisfied that I won’t pollute his ears any further does he lower his hands. “Now don’t be such an arrogant young fool and listen to me.” His voice is conciliatory, reasonable. “General Boisdeffre is about to welcome the Tsar to Paris in a diplomatic coup that will change the world. I have a six-hundred-million-franc budget estimate to negotiate with the Finance Committee. We simply can’t allow ourselves to be distracted from these great issues by the sordid matter of one Jew on a rock. It would tear the army to pieces. I would be hounded out of this office—and rightly so. You must keep the whole matter in proportion. Do you understand what I’m saying, Colonel?”
I nod.
He rises from behind his desk with surprising grace and comes round to stand in front of me. “Calmon-Maison tells me we’ve had to change the locks on the garden. It’s such a bore. I’ll make sure you get a new key. I do so greatly value your intelligence, dear boy.” He offers me his hand. His grip is hard, dry, calloused. He clamps his other hand around mine, imprisoning it. “There’s nothing easy about power, Georges. One needs the stomach to take hard decisions. But I’ve seen all this before. Today the press is Dreyfus, Dreyfus, Dreyfus; tomorrow, without some new disclosure, they’ll have forgotten all about him, you’ll see.”
Billot’s prediction about Dreyfus and the press proves correct. As abruptly as they took him up again, the newspapers lose all interest in the prisoner on Devil’s Island. He is replaced on the front pages by stories about the Russian state visit, in particular by speculation about what the Tsarina will be wearing. But I do not forget him.
Although I have to tell Desvernine we will not be requiring the services of Monsieur Lemercier-Picard, and that our request to lay a trap has been refused, I continue to pursue my investigation of Esterhazy as best I can. I interview a retired noncommissioned officer, Mulot, who remembers copying out portions of an artillery manual for the major; I also meet Esterhazy’s tutor at gunnery school, Captain le Rond, who calls his former pupil a blackguard: “If I met him in the street I would refuse to shake his hand.” All this goes into the Benefactor file, and occasionally at the end of the day as I leaf through the evidence we have so far collected—the petit bleu, the surveillance photographs, the statements—I tell myself that I will see him in prison yet.
But I am not offered a new key to the garden of the hôtel de Brienne: if I want to see the minister, I have to make an appointment. And although he always receives me cordially, there is an unmistakable reserve about him. The same is true of Boisdeffre and Gonse. They no longer entirely trust me, and they are right.
One day towards the end of September, I climb the stairs to my office at the start of the morning and see Major Henry standing further along the corridor, deep in conversation with Lauth and Gribelin. His back is to me, but those broad and fleshy shoulders and that wide neck are as recognisable as his face. Lauth glances past him, notices me and darts him a warning look. Henry stops talking and turns round. All three officers salute.
“Gentlemen,” I say. “Major Henry, welcome back. How was your leave?”
He is different. He has caught the sun—like everyone else apart from me—but he has also changed his haircut to a short fringe so that he looks less like a sly farmer and more like a crafty monk. And there’s something else: a new energy in him, as if all the negative forces that have been swirling around our little unit—the suspicion and disaffection and anxiety—have coalesced in his capacious frame and charged him with a kind of electricity. He is their leader. My jeopardy is his opportunity. He is a danger to me. All this passes through my mind in the few seconds it takes him to salute, grin and say, “My leave was good, Colonel, thank you.”
“I need to brief you on what’s been happening.”
“Whenever you wish, Colonel.”
I am on the point of inviting him into my office, and then I change my mind. “I tell you what, why don’t we have a drink together at the end of the day?”
“A drink?”
“Only because we’ve never had a drink before.”
“Well, that is a poor state of affairs, is it not? Let us rectify it. Shall we walk somewhere together? Let us say at five o’clock?”
Accordingly at five he knocks on my door, I pick up my cap and we go out into the street. He asks, “Where do you want to go?”
“Wherever you like. I don’t frequent the bars round here very often.”
“The Royale, then. It saves us from having to think.”
The Taverne Royale is the favourite bar of the General Staff. I haven’t been in it for years. The place is quiet at this hour: just a couple of captains drinking near the door, the barman reading a paper, a waiter wiping down the tables. On the walls are regimental photographs; on the bare wooden floor, sawdust; the colours are all brown and brass and sepia. Henry is very much at home. We take a table in the corner and he orders a cognac. For want of a better idea I do the same. “Leave us the bottle,” Henry tells the waiter. He offers me a cigarette. I refuse. He lights one for himself and suddenly I realise that an odd part of me has actually missed the old devil, just as one occasionally grows fond of something familiar and even ugly. Henry is the army, in a way that I, or Lauth, or Boisdeffre will never be. When soldiers break ranks and want to run away on the battlefield, it is the Henrys of this world who can persuade them to come back and keep fighting.
“Well,” he says, raising his glass, “what shall we drink to?”
“How about something we both love? The army.”
“Very well,” he agrees. We touch glasses: “The army!”
He downs his tumbler in one, tops up mine then refills his own. He sips it, staring at me over the rim. His small eyes are a muddy colour, and opaque: I can’t read them. “So—things seem to be in a bit of a mess back at the office, Colonel, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“I’ll have that cigarette after all, if I may.” He pushes his cigarette case across the table towards me. “And whose fault is that, do you think?”
“I point no fingers. I’m just saying, that’s all.”
I light my cigarette and toy with my glass, moving it around the table as if it is a chess piece. I feel a curious desire to unburden myself. “Man to man, I never wanted to be chief of the section, did you know that? I had a horror of spies. I only achieved the position by accident. If I hadn’t known Dreyfus, I wouldn’t have been involved in his arrest, and then I wouldn’t have attended the court-martial and the degradation. Unfortunately, I think our masters have got the entirely wrong idea about me.”
“And what would the right idea be?”
Henry’s cigarettes are very strong, Turkish. The back of my nose feels as if it’s on fire. “I’ve been having another look at Dreyfus.”
“Yes, Gribelin told me you’d taken the file. You seem to have stirred things up.”
“General Boisdeffre was convinced the dossier no longer existed. He said that General Mercier ordered Colonel Sandherr to get rid of it.”
“I didn’t know that. The colonel just told me to keep it nice and safe.”
“Why did Sandherr disobey, do you think?”
“You’d have to ask him that.”
“Perhaps I shall.”
“You can ask him all you want, my Colonel, but you won’t get much of an answer.” Henry taps the side of his head. “He’s under lock and key in Montauban. I went all the way down to visit him. It was pitiful.” He looks mournful. He suddenly raises his glass. “To Colonel Sandherr: one of the best!”
“To Sandherr,” I respond, and pretend to drink his health. “But why did he retain the file, do you think?”
“I suppose because he thought it might be useful—it was the file that convicted Dreyfus after all.”
“Except you and I both know that Dreyfus is innocent.”
Henry’s eyes open wide in warning and alarm. “I wouldn’t talk like that too loudly, Colonel, especially not in here. Some of the fellows wouldn’t like it.”
I look around. The bar is beginning to fill. I lean in closer and lower my voice. I’m not sure whether I’m seeking a confession or offering one, only that some kind of absolution is required. “It wasn’t Dreyfus who wrote the bordereau,” I say quietly. “It was Esterhazy. Even Bertillon says his writing is a perfect match. That’s the central part of the case against Dreyfus demolished right there! As for your secret file of evidence—”
A gust of laughter from the neighbouring table interrupts me. I glance at them in irritation.
Henry says, very seriously now, studying me intently, “What were you going to say about the secret file?”
“With the best will in the world, my dear Henry, the only thing in it that points to Dreyfus is the fact that the Germans and the Italians were receiving plans of fortifications from someone with the initial ‘D.’ I’m not blaming you, incidentally: once Dreyfus was in custody, your job was to make the most convincing case you could. But now that we have the facts about Esterhazy, it changes everything. Now we know that the wrong man was condemned. So you tell me: what are we supposed to do in the light of that? Simply ignore it?”
I sit back. After a long silence, during which he continues to scan my face, Henry says, “Are you asking me for my advice?”
I shrug. “By all means, if you have any.”
“You’ve mentioned this to Gonse?”
“I have.”
“And Boisdeffre, and Billot?”
“Yes.”
“And what do they say?”
“They say drop it.”
“Then for God’s sake, Colonel,” he hisses, “drop it!”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m just not made that way. It’s not what I joined the army to do.”
“Then you’ve chosen the wrong profession.” Henry shakes his head in disbelief. “You have to give them what they want, Colonel—they’re the chiefs.”
“Even though Dreyfus is innocent?”
“There you go, saying it again!” He looks around. Now it’s his turn to lean over the table and talk quietly. “Listen, I don’t know whether he’s innocent or guilty, Colonel, and quite frankly I don’t give a shit, if you’ll excuse me, either way, and neither should you. I did as I was told. You order me to shoot a man and I’ll shoot him. You tell me afterwards you got the name wrong and I should have shot someone else—well, I’m very sorry about that, but it’s not my fault.” He pours us both another cognac. “You want my advice? Well here’s a story. When my regiment was in Hanoi, there was a lot of thieving in the barracks. So one day my major and I, we laid a trap and we caught the thief red-handed. It turned out he was the son of the colonel—God knows why he needed to steal from the likes of us, but he did it. Now my major—he was a bit like you, a little bit of the idealistic type, shall we say—he wanted this man prosecuted. The top brass disagreed. Still, he went ahead and brought the case anyway. But at the court-martial it was my major that was broken. The thief went free. A true story.” Henry raises his glass to me. “That’s the army we love.”