The following morning when I go into the office, the Dreyfus file is on my desk—not the secret dossier but the Colonial Office record, which continues to be sent over regularly for my comments.
There have been two security scares about Dreyfus in recent weeks. First there was the English newspaper report that the prisoner had escaped. Then there was a letter addressed to him posted in the rue Cambon and signed with a name that looked like “Weiler” that contained a message supposedly written in invisible ink: Impossible to decipher last communication. Return to the former procedure in your answer. Indicate precisely where the documents are and how the cupboard can be unlocked. Actor ready to move immediately. Dreyfus’s guards were ordered to observe him closely after he was handed this letter. He merely frowned and put it aside. Manifestly he had never heard of “Weiler.” Both we and the Sûreté were in agreement that this was just a malicious hoax.
Yet as I turn the pages of the file I see that the episodes have been used by the Colonial Ministry as a pretext to make Dreyfus’s confinement much harsher. For the past three weeks he has been clapped in irons every night. There is even an illustration of the contraption shipped over from the penal colony in Cayenne that is used to restrain him. Two U-shaped irons are fixed to his bed. His ankles are put into these at sundown. A bar is then inserted through the irons and padlocked. He is left in this position until dawn. In addition, a double perimeter fence of heavy timber is being erected around his hut to a height of two and a half metres. The inner fence is only half a metre from his window. Therefore his view of the sea is entirely cut off. And during the day he is no longer allowed access to the island beyond the second perimeter fence. The bare narrow space of rock and scrub between the two walls, in which there are no trees or shade, is now the entirety of his world.
As usual, the file contains an appendix of Dreyfus’s confiscated writings:
Yesterday evening I was put in irons. Why, I know not. Since I have been here, I have always scrupulously observed the orders given me. How is it I did not go crazy during the long, dreadful night? (7 September 1896)
These nights in irons! I do not even speak of the physical suffering, but what moral ignominy, and without any explanation, without knowing why or for what cause! What an atrocious nightmare is this in which I have lived for nearly two years! (8 September)
Put in irons when I am already watched like a wild beast night and day by a guard armed with rifle and revolver! No, the truth should be told. This is not a security precaution. This is a measure of hatred and torture, ordered from Paris by those who, not being able to strike a family, strike an innocent man, because neither he nor his family will accept submissively the most frightful judicial error that has ever been made. (9 September)
I am disinclined to read any further. I have seen what the chafing of leg irons can do to a prisoner’s flesh: cut it to the bone. In the insect-infested heat of the tropics, the torment must be unendurable. For a moment my pen hovers over the file. But in the end I simply mark it “Return to the Colonial Ministry” and sign the circulation slip without comment.
Later that day I attend a meeting in Gonse’s office to settle last-minute security details for the Tsar’s visit. Sombre-faced men from the Interior and Foreign Ministries, the Sûreté and the Élysée Palace—men full of the grand self-importance of those who handle such issues—sit around the table and discuss the minutiae of the Imperial itinerary.
The Russian flotilla will be escorted into Cherbourg harbour on Monday at 1 p.m. by twelve ironclads. The President of the Republic will meet the Tsar and Tsarina. There will be a dinner for seventy in the Arsenal at 6:30, General Boisdeffre to be seated at the Tsar’s table. On Tuesday morning the Russian Imperial train will arrive in Versailles at 8:50 a.m. The Imperial party will transfer to the President’s train, which will arrive at the Ranelagh railway station at 10 a.m. It will take one and a half hours for the procession to cover the ten-kilometre route into Paris: 80,000 soldiers will be deployed for protection. All suspected terrorists have either been detained or turned away from Paris. After luncheon at the Russian Embassy, the Tsar and Tsarina will visit the Russian Orthodox church in the rue Daru. At 6:30 there will be a state banquet for two hundred and seventy at the Élysée, and at 8:30 fireworks in the Trocadéro followed by a gala performance at the Opéra. On Wednesday …
My mind keeps wandering eight thousand miles to the shackled figure on Devil’s Island.
When the meeting is finished and everyone is filing out, Gonse asks me to stay for a moment. He could not be friendlier. “I’ve been thinking, my dear Picquart. When all this Russian fuss is over, I want you to undertake a special mission to the eastern garrison towns.”
“To do what, General?”
“Inspect and report on security procedures. Recommend improvements. Important work.”
“How long will I be away from Paris?”
“Oh, just a few days. Perhaps a week or two.”
“But who will run the section?”
“I’ll take it over myself.” He laughs and claps my shoulder. “If you’ll trust me with the responsibility!”
On Sunday, I see Pauline at the Gasts’: the first time I have set eyes on her in weeks. She wears another dress she knows I like, plain yellow with white lace cuffs and collar. Philippe is with her and so are their two little girls, Germaine and Marianne. Usually I can cope perfectly well seeing the family all together, but on this day it is agony. The weather is cold and wet. We are confined indoors. So there is no escaping the sight of her immersed in her other life—her real life.
After a couple of hours I can’t keep up the pretence any longer. I go out on to the veranda at the back of the house to smoke a cigar. The rain is coming down cold and hard and mixed with hail like a northern European monsoon, stripping the few remaining leaves from the trees. The hailstones bounce off the saturated lawn. I think of Dreyfus’s descriptions of the incessant tropical downpours.
There is a soft chafing of silk behind me, a scent of perfume, and then Pauline is at my side. She doesn’t look at me but stands gazing out across the gloomy garden. I have my cigar in my right hand, my left hangs loosely. The back of her right hand barely brushes against it. It feels as if only the hairs are touching. To anyone coming up behind us we are just two old friends watching the storm together. But her proximity is almost overwhelming. Neither of us speaks. And then the door to the passage bangs open and Monnier’s voice booms out: “Let’s hope it’s not like this next week for Their Imperial Majesties!”
Pauline casually moves her hand up to her forehead to brush away a stray hair. “Are you very much involved in it, Georges?”
“Not much.”
“He’s being modest, as usual,” cuts in Monnier. “I know the part you fellows have played to make the whole thing secure.”
Pauline says, “Will you actually have an opportunity to meet the Tsar?”
“I’m afraid you have to be at least a general for that.”
Monnier says, “But surely you could watch the parade, couldn’t you, Picquart?”
I puff hard on my cigar, wishing he would go away. “I could, if I could be bothered. The Minister of War has allocated places for my officers and their wives at the Bourbon Palace.”
“And you’re not going!” cries Pauline, pretending to punch my arm. “You miserable republican!”
And so on Tuesday morning, Pauline and I edge along the steps of the Bourbon Palace to our allotted places, whereupon I discover that every officer of the Statistical Section has accepted the minister’s invitation and has brought his wife—or in Gribelin’s case his mother. They make no attempt to hide their curiosity when we appear and I realise, too late, how we must look in their eyes—the bachelor chief with his married mistress on his arm. I introduce Pauline very formally, emphasising her social position as the wife of my good friend Monsieur Monnier of the quai d’Orsay. That only makes it sound more suspicious. And although Henry bows briefly and Lauth nods and clicks his heels, I notice that Berthe Henry, the innkeeper’s daughter, with her parvenu’s snobbery, is reluctant even to take Pauline’s hand, while Madame Lauth, her mouth tightly crimped in disapproval, actually turns away.
Not that Pauline seems to care. We have a perfect view, looking straight down the bridge, across the Seine, half a kilometre to the obelisk in the place de la Concorde. The weather is sunny but windy. The vast tricolours hanging off the buildings—the red, white and blue stripes vertical for France, horizontal for Russia—snap and billow against their moorings. The crowds on the bridge are ten or twelve deep and have been waiting since dawn. It is reported to be the same all across the city. According to the Préfecture of Police, one and a half million spectators are lining the route.
From the place de la Concorde comes the faint roar of thousands of voices cheering, and then gradually at first but increasing in volume, as in a symphony, an underlying percussion of horses’ hooves on cobbles. A shimmering line of light appears spread across the wide thoroughfare, and then more lines behind it, which gradually resolve into helmets and breastplates glinting in the bright sun—wave after wave of lancers and cuirassiers, bobbing up and down on their horses, banners streaming, twelve abreast, riding across the bridge. On and on they come, heading straight for us at a stiff trot, until it seems they will mount the steps and charge right through us. But then abruptly at the last moment they sweep round to our right, down the boulevard Saint-Germain. Behind them come the native cavalry—the Chasseurs d’Afrique, the Algerian Saphis, the Arab caids and chiefs, their horses shying at the racket of the crowd—and then after these is the procession of open state carriages—the President, the Russian ambassador, the leaders of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, and all the other prominent figures of the Republic, including General Billot. There is a particularly loud cheer for Boisdeffre in his plumed helmet, which he doffs from side to side: the gossip is that after this he could be Foreign Minister.
There is a gap, and then the Russian state coach appears, surrounded by a mounted bodyguard. Pauline gasps and clutches my arm.
After all the talk of alliances and armies, it is the smallness of the Imperial couple that makes the most impression on me. Tsar Nicholas II might be mistaken for a frightened fair-headed boy wearing a false beard and his father’s uniform. He salutes mechanically every few seconds, touching the edge of his astrakhan cap in rapid gestures—more nervous tic than acknowledgement of applause. Sitting by his side the Tsarina Alexandra appears even younger, a girl who has raided the dressing-up box. She wears a swansdown boa and clutches a white parasol in one hand and an immense bouquet in the other. She bows rapidly to right and left. I am close enough to see her clenched smile. They both look apprehensive. Their carriage swings sharply rightwards and they sway gently over to one side with the motion then disappear—sucked out of sight into a funnel of noise.
Still holding my arm, Pauline turns to speak to me. I can’t quite hear her voice above the tumult. “What?” She pulls me closer, her lips so close I can feel her breath in my ear, and as I strain to listen, I see Henry, Lauth and Gribelin all staring at us.
Afterwards I follow the trio back to the office along the rue de l’Université. They are perhaps fifty metres ahead of me. The street is empty. Most people, including our womenfolk, have decided to stay where they are in order to catch a glimpse of the Imperial couple driving back across the bridge after lunch to the Russian Orthodox church. Something about the way Henry is gesturing with his hand and the other two are nodding tells me they are talking about me. I can’t resist quickening my step until I am right behind them. “Gentlemen!” I say loudly. “I’m glad to see you’re not neglecting your duties!”
I had expected guilty laughter, even embarrassment. But the three faces that turn to meet mine are surly and defiant. I have offended their bourgeois sensitivities even more than I realised. We complete the journey to the Statistical Section in silence and I keep to my office for the rest of the day.
The sun sets over Paris shortly after seven. By eight it is too gloomy to read. I don’t switch on my lamp.
The timbers of the old building shrink and creak as the day cools into evening. The birds in the minister’s garden fall silent. The shadows achieve a solid geometry. I sit at my desk, waiting. If ever there was a time for the ghosts of Voltaire and Montesquieu to materialise, this is it. At eight-thirty when I open my door I half expect to see a periwig and velvet coat floating down the corridor. But the ancient house seems deserted. Everyone has gone off to watch the fireworks in the Trocadéro, even Capiaux. The front door will be locked. I have the place to myself.
From my drawer I take the leather roll of lock-picking tools that Desvernine left behind months earlier. As I climb the stairs I am aware of the ludicrousness of my situation: the chief of the secret intelligence section obliged to break into the archives of his own department. But I have considered the problem rationally from every angle and I can see no better solution. At the very least, it is worth a try.
I kneel in the passage outside Gribelin’s door. My first discovery is that lock-picking is easier than it looks. Once I have the hang of which instrument to use I am able to find the notch in the underside of the bolt. All I have to do next is press. Then it is a matter of maintaining the pressure with the left hand while with the right I insert the pick and manipulate it to raise the tumblers. One rises, then a second, and finally the third; the racking stump slides forwards; there is a well-oiled click and the door opens.
I turn on the electric light. It would take me hours to pick all the locks in Gribelin’s archive. But I remember he keeps his keys in the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk. After ten minutes of patient trial and error, it yields to my pick. I open the drawer. The keys are there.
Suddenly there is a bang that makes my heart jump. I glance out of the window. Searchlights on top of the Eiffel Tower a kilometre away are shining across the Seine to the place de la Concorde. The beams are surrounded by bursting stars which pulse and flash in silence and then a second or two later come the explosions, loud enough to vibrate the glass panes in their ancient mouldings. I glance at my watch. Nine o’clock. They are running half an hour late. The fireworks are scheduled to last thirty minutes.
I take Gribelin’s bunch of keys and start trying to open the nearest filing cabinet.
Once I have worked out which key fits which lock, I open all the drawers. My first priority is to collect every scrap of Agent Auguste material I can find.
The glued-together documents are already beginning to yellow with age. They rustle like dried leaves as I sort them into piles: letters and telegrams from Hauptmann Dame in Berlin, signed with his nom de guerre, “Dufour”; letters to Schwartzkoppen from the German ambassador, Count Münster, and to Panizzardi from the Italian ambassador, Signor Ressmann, and to the military attaché of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Colonel Schneider. There is an envelope full of cinders dated November 1890. There are letters to Schwartzkoppen from the Italian naval attaché, Rosselini, and the British military attaché, Colonel Talbot. Here are the forty or fifty love letters from Hermance de Weede—My dear adored friend … My Maxi …—and perhaps half that many from Panizzardi: My dear little one … My big cat … My dear big bugger …
There was a time when I would have felt uncomfortable—grubby, even—handling such intimate material; no longer.
Mixed in with all this is a cipher telegram from Panizzardi to the General Staff in Rome, dispatched at three o’clock on the morning of Friday, 2 November 1894:
Commando Stato Maggiore Roma
913 44 7836 527 3 88 706 6458 71 18 0288 5715 3716 7567 7943 2107 0018 7606 4891 6165
Panizzardi
The decoded text is clipped to it, written out by General Gonse: Captain Dreyfus has been arrested. The Ministry of War has evidence of his dealings with Germany. We have taken all necessary precautions.
I copy it down in my notebook. Beyond the window, the Eiffel Tower is a cascade of tumbling light. There is one last final thunderous explosion and slowly it fades into darkness. I hear a faint roar of applause. The display is over. I estimate it would take someone roughly thirty minutes to escape from the crowds in the Trocadéro gardens and get back to the section.
I return my attention to the glued-together documents.
Much of the material is incomplete or pointless, its sense tantalisingly out of reach. It suddenly strikes me as madness to try to read so much meaning into such detritus: that we are little better than the haruspices of the ancient world who decided public policy by scrutinising animal livers. My eyes feel gritty. I have been stuck in my office without food since noon. Perhaps that explains why, when I do come to the crucial document, I miss it at first, and move on to the next. But it nags at my mind, and then I go back and look at it again.
It is a short note, in thin black ink, on squared white paper, torn into twenty pieces, a few of which are missing. The writer is offering to sell Schwartzkoppen “the secret of smokeless powder.” It is signed your devoted Dubois and dated 27 October 1894—two weeks after Dreyfus’s arrest.
I delve a little further into the file. Two days later, Dubois writes to the German attaché again: I can procure for you a cartridge from the Lebel rifle that will enable you to analyse the secret of the smokeless powder. Schwartzkoppen does not seem to have done anything about it. Why should he? The letter looks cranky and I guess he could go into almost any bar in any garrison town in France and pick up a Lebel cartridge for the price of a beer.
It is the name of the signatory that interests me. Dubois? I am sure I have just read that name. I go back to the pile of letters from Panizzardi to Schwartzkoppen. My beautiful little girl … My little green dog … Dear Top Bugger … Your devoted bugger 2nd class … And here it is: in a note of 1893, the Italian writes to Schwartzkoppen: I have seen M. Dubois.
Attached to the letter is a cross-reference to a file. It takes me several minutes to work out Gribelin’s system and track it down. In a folder I find a brief report addressed to Colonel Sandherr by Major Henry dated April 1894 regarding the possible identity of the agent referred to as “D” who has provided the Germans and Italians with “twelve master plans of Nice.” Henry’s conclusion is that he is one Jacques Dubois, a printer who works for a factory that handles Ministry of War contracts: it is he who has probably also provided the Germans with large-scale drawings of the fortifications at Toul, Reims, Langres, Neufchâteau and the rest. When he sets the printing machine for a run, it is a simple matter for him to print off extra copies for his own use. I interviewed him yesterday, relates Henry, and found him to be a miserable fellow, a criminal fantasist with limited intelligence and no access to classified material. The plans he has handed over are publicly available. Recommendation: no further action necessary.
So there it is. “D” is not Dreyfus; he is Dubois.
You order me to shoot a man and I’ll shoot him …
I have made a careful note of where every document and folder originated and now I start the laborious process of putting each one back in its proper place. It takes me perhaps ten minutes to return it all exactly to where it was, to lock up the filing cabinets and wipe down the table surfaces. By the time I finish it is just after ten. I replace Gribelin’s keys in his desk drawer, kneel, and set about the tricky business of locking it again. I am conscious of the minutes passing as I try to manipulate the two thin metal tools. My hands are clumsy with tiredness and slippery with sweat. For some reason it seems much harder to close a lock than open one, but at last I manage it. I turn off the lights.
My only remaining task is to relock the door to the archive. I am still on my knees in the corridor fiddling with the tumblers when I think I hear the front door slam downstairs. I pause, straining to hear. I can’t pick out any suspicious noises. I must be imagining things. I resume my frustrating efforts. But then comes the definite creak of a footstep on the first-floor landing and someone begins to mount the stairs to the archive. I am so close to shifting the final tumbler I am reluctant to abandon the attempt. Only when I hear a much louder creak do I realise I am out of time. I dart across the passage, try the nearest door—locked—and then the next one—open—and slip inside.
I listen to the slow, deliberate tread of someone approaching along the corridor. Through the gap between the door and the jamb I see Gribelin come into view. My God, is there anything in this wretched man’s life apart from work? He stops outside the entrance to the archive and takes out his key. He inserts it in the lock and tries to turn it. I can’t see his face, but I see his shoulders stiffen. What is this? He tries the handle and opens the door cautiously. He doesn’t go in but stands on the threshold, listening. Then he throws the door wide open, turns on the light and moves inside. I can hear him checking his desk drawers. A moment later he returns to the corridor and glances up and down it. He ought to be an absurd little figure—a small dark-suited troll. But somehow he isn’t. There is a malevolence about him as he stands there, alert and suspicious—he is a danger to me, this man.
Finally—satisfied presumably that he must have made a mistake in locking up—he goes back into the archive and closes the door. I wait another ten minutes. Then I take off my shoes and creep past his lair in my stockinged feet.
On my walk back to my apartment I stop in the middle of the bridge and drop the roll of lock-picking tools into the Seine.
——
Over the next few days the Tsar tours Notre-Dame, names a new bridge after his father, banquets in Versailles.
While he goes about his business, I go about mine.
I walk over the road to see Colonel Foucault, who has come back from the Berlin embassy to witness the Imperial visit. We exchange a few pleasantries and then I ask him, “Did you ever hear anything from Richard Cuers after that meeting we arranged in Basel?”
“Yes, he came and complained about it bitterly. I gather you fellows decided to give him some rough treatment. Who on earth did you send?”
“My deputy, Major Henry; another of my officers, Captain Lauth; and a couple of policemen. Why? What did Cuers say?”
“He said he’d made the journey in good faith, to reveal what he knew about the German agent in France, but when he got to Switzerland he felt he was treated as if he was a liar and a fantasist. There was one French officer in particular—fat, red-faced—who merely bullied him: interrupted him all the time; made it clear he didn’t believe a word of what he was saying. That was a deliberate tactic, I assume?”
“Not that I’m aware of; not at all.”
Foucault looks at me in consternation. “Well, whether it was intentional or not, you won’t be hearing from Cuers again.”
I go to see Tomps at the headquarters of the Sûreté. I tell him, “It’s about your trip to Basel.” Immediately he looks anxious. He doesn’t want to land anyone in any trouble. But it’s clear the episode has been preying on his mind.
“I won’t quote you,” I promise him. “Just tell me what happened.”
He doesn’t take much prompting. He seems to be relieved to get it off his chest.
“Well, Colonel,” he says, “you remember our original plan? It worked to the letter. I followed Cuers from the German railway station to the cathedral, saw him make contact with my colleague Vuillecard, then followed the pair of them to the Schweizerhof, where Major Henry and Captain Lauth were ready for him upstairs. After that I went back to the bar at the station to wait. I guess it must have been about three hours later that Henry suddenly came in and ordered a drink. I asked him how it was going and he said, ‘I’ve had enough of this bastard’—you know how he talks—‘there’s nothing we can learn from him, I’ll bet a month’s salary on it.’ I said, ‘Well, what are you doing back here so early?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I played Mr. Big, pretended to get angry and finally walked out of there. I left him with Lauth: let the young fellow have a try!’ Obviously I was disappointed with the sound of how this was going, so I said, ‘You know I’m an old acquaintance of Cuers? You know he likes a lot of absinthe? He really loves a drink. That might have been a better approach. If Captain Lauth can’t get anywhere, do you want me to have a try?’ ”
“And what did Major Henry say to that?”
Tomps continues his passable impersonation of Henry. “ ‘No,’ he says, ‘it’s not worth the trouble. Forget it.’ Then at six, when Captain Lauth had finished his session and turned up at the station, I asked Henry again: ‘Listen, I know Cuers well. Why don’t you let me take him out for a drink?’ But he just repeated what he’d said before: ‘No, it’s useless. We’re wasting our time here.’ So we caught the night train to Paris and that was that.”
Back in my office, I open a file on Henry. That Henry is the man who framed Dreyfus I have no doubt.
Code-breaking isn’t the province of the Statistical Section, or even the Ministry of War. It is run out of the Foreign Ministry by a seven-man team whose presiding genius is Major Étienne Bazeries. The major is famous in the newspapers for having broken the Great Cipher of Louis XIV and revealed the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask. He conforms to every cliché of the eccentric prodigy—unkempt, abrupt, forgetful—and is not an easy man to get to see. Twice I visit the quai d’Orsay on the pretext of other business and try to find him, only to be told by his staff that no one knows where he is. It is not until the end of the month that I track him to his office. He is in his shirtsleeves, bent over his desk with a screwdriver and a cylindrical enciphering device which lies all around him in pieces. In theory I am his superior officer, but Bazeries doesn’t salute or even stand; he has never believed in rank, just as he doesn’t believe in haircuts or shaving or even, to judge by the atmosphere in his office, washing.
“The Dreyfus affair,” I say to him. “The telegram from the Italian military attaché, Major Panizzardi, sent to the General Staff in Rome on the second of November 1894.”
He squints up at me through greasy spectacles. “What about it?”
“You broke it?”
“I did. It took me nine days.” He resumes tinkering with his machine.
I take out my notebook and open it to a double page. On one side is the coded text that I copied down from the file in the archive, on the other the solution as written out by Gonse: Captain Dreyfus has been arrested. The Ministry of War has evidence of his dealings with Germany. We have taken all necessary precautions. I offer it to Bazeries. “Is this your solution?”
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 nonexistent. 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 Sûreté 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’s. 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 your tour of inspection with the Sixth and Seventh 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!”
When I climb back into my cab, I see her in the downstairs window, showing the musicians where to set up. I retain one final impression of chandeliers and a profusion of indoor plants, of Louis XIV chairs covered in rose-pale silk and of light gleaming on the polished spruce and maple of the instruments. Blanche is smiling at one of the violinists, pointing out where he should sit. The cabman flicks his whip and this vision of civilisation jerks out of sight.
My final call is on Louis Leblois. Again the driver waits; again I do not go in but stay on the landing to say my goodbyes. He has only just returned from court. He sees my anguish immediately.
“I suppose you can’t talk about it?”
“I fear not.”
“I’m here if you need me.”
As I get back into the cab, I glance along the rue de l’Université to the offices of the Statistical Section. The building is a patch of gloom even in the darkness. I notice that a taxi has parked about twenty paces behind us with the yellow light of the Poissonnière-Montmartre depot. It pulls away as we do, and when we arrive at the gare de l’Est, it stops a discreet distance away. I guess I must have been followed ever since I left my apartment. They aren’t taking any chances.
On a Morris column outside the station, amid the adverts and the multicoloured playbills of the Opéra-Comique and the Comédie-Française, is a poster showing the facsimile of the bordereau from Le Matin beside a sample of Dreyfus’s writing: placed together the two look very different. Mathieu has already paid for these posters to be plastered all over Paris. That was quick work! “Where Is the Proof?” demands the headline. A reward is offered for anyone who recognises the original.
He is not going to give up, I think, not until his brother is either free or dead. As I stow my suitcase in the overhead rack and settle into my seat on the crowded eastbound train, that thought, at least, gives me some hope.