An Officer and a Spy (11 page)

He thanks me for my frankness and in the months that follow there is peace between us. He is cheerful, wise, friendly and dedicated—at least to my face. Occasionally I step out from my office into the corridor and catch him with Lauth and Junck speaking
quietly together; there is something about the speed with which they disperse that tells me they have been talking about me. One time I pause outside the door to Gribelin’s archive to rearrange some papers in a file I am returning, and I hear Henry’s voice distinctly from within: “It’s the way he thinks he’s so much cleverer than the rest of us that I can’t stand!” But I don’t know for certain that he’s referring to me—and even if he is, I am willing to ignore it. What chief of any organisation is not complained about behind his back, especially if he is trying to run it with some discipline and efficiency?

Throughout the remainder of that summer and into the autumn and winter of 1895, I make it my business to get the measure of my job. I learn that whenever Agent Auguste has a consignment to drop off, she signals it by placing, first thing in the morning, a particular flowerpot on the balcony of her apartment in the rue Surcouf. This means that she will be at the basilica of Sainte-Clotilde at nine o’clock that evening. I see an opportunity to extend my experience. “I’d like to make the collection tonight,” I announce to Henry one day in October. “Just to get a sense of how the process works.”

I watch him literally swallow his objections. “Good idea,” he says.

In the evening I change into civilian clothes, pick up my briefcase and walk to the nearby basilica—that vast twin-spired mock-Gothic factory of superstition. I know it well from the days when César Franck was the organist and I used to attend his recitals. I arrive in plenty of time and follow Henry’s instructions. I go into the deserted side chapel, walk to the third row of chairs from the front, edge along it three places to the left of the aisle, kneel, take out the prayer book positioned there and insert between its pages two hundred francs. Then I retreat to the back row and wait. No one is around to see me, but if there was I would just look like a troubled civil servant on his way home from the office, stopping off to seek advice from his Maker.

Yet although there is absolutely no danger in what I am doing, my heart pounds. Ridiculous! Perhaps it is the flickering candlelight and the smell of incense, or the echo of footsteps and whispered voices from the immense nave. Whatever it is, and even though I have long since lost my faith, I feel there is something sacrilegious
about this whole transaction taking place on hallowed ground. I keep checking my watch: ten to nine, nine o’clock, five past nine, twenty past nine … Perhaps she isn’t coming? I can imagine Henry’s polite commiserations if I have to tell him tomorrow that she didn’t show up.

But then, just before half past, the silence is broken by a clang as the door behind me opens. A squat female figure in a black skirt and shawl walks past. Halfway up the aisle she stops, makes the sign of the cross, curtseys to the altar, and then heads straight to the designated seat. I see her kneel. Less than a minute later she rises and strides back down the aisle towards me. I keep my eyes fixed on her, curious to see what she is like, this Madame Bastian, a commonplace cleaning woman, yet perhaps the most valuable secret agent in France, in Europe. She gives me a long, hard look as she passes—surprised, I suppose, not to see Major Henry in my place—and I note there is absolutely nothing commonplace in her fierce, almost masculine features, and the challenge of her stare. She is a bold one, maybe even reckless; but then she would have to be, to have smuggled secret documents out of the German Embassy for five years under the noses of the guards.

The moment she has gone, I stand and walk to the place where I left the money. Henry impressed on me not to waste any time. Tucked beneath the chair is a cone-shaped paper sack. It rustles alarmingly as I tug it out and stuff it into my briefcase. I leave the basilica in a hurry, through the doors and down the steps, striding along the dark and empty streets that surround the ministry. Ten minutes after collecting the sack, euphoric with success, I am tipping the contents over the desk in my office.

There is more than I expected: a cornucopia of trash—paper torn and crumpled and dusted with cigarette ash, paper white and grey, cream and blue, tissue and card, tiny pieces and large fragments, handwritten in pencil and ink, typewritten and printed, words in French and German and Italian, train tickets and theatre stubs, envelopes, invitations, restaurant bills and receipts from tailors and taxi cabs and bootmakers … I run my hands through it all, scoop it up and let it trickle through my fingers—mostly it will be rubbish,
I know, but somewhere within it there may be gold. I experience a prospector’s thrill.

I am beginning to enjoy this job.

I write to Pauline twice, but guardedly, in case Philippe opens her letters. She does not reply and I don’t try to seek her out to discover if anything is wrong, principally because I don’t have the time. I have to devote my Saturday nights and Sundays to my mother, whose memory is worsening, and most evenings I am required to stay at the office late. There are so many things to keep an eye on. The Germans are laying telephone cables along the eastern frontier. There is a suspected spy at our embassy in Moscow. An English agent is said to be offering to sell a copy of our mobilisation plans to the highest bidder … I have to write my regular
blancs
. I am fully absorbed.

I still go to the de Commingeses’ salons, but “your sweet Madame Monnier,” as Blanche likes to call her, is never there, even though Blanche insists she always makes a point of inviting her. After one concert I take Blanche out to dinner, to the Tour d’Argent, where we are given a table overlooking the river. Why do I choose this particular restaurant? For one thing it’s a convenient walk from the de Commingeses’ house. But I am also curious to see where Colonel von Schwartzkoppen entertains his mistress. I look around the dining room; it is almost entirely filled with couples. The candlelit booths are made for intimacy—
je suis à toi, toujours à toi, toute à toi …
The latest police agent’s report describes Hermance as “early thirties, blonde, petite, in cream-coloured skirt and jacket trimmed in black.” “At times their hands were not visible above the table.”

Blanche says, “What are you smiling at?”

“I know a colonel who brings his mistress here. They take a room upstairs.”

She stares at me, and in that instant the thing is settled. I have a word with the maître d’hôtel, who says, “My dear Colonel, of course there is a room available,” and after we have eaten our dinner we
are shown upstairs by an unsmiling young man who takes a large tip without acknowledgement.

Later, Blanche asks, “Is it better to make love before dinner or after it, do you think?”

“There’s a case for either. I think probably before.” I kiss her and get out of bed.

“I agree. Let’s do it before next time.”

She is twenty-five. Whereas Pauline at forty undresses in the darkness and drapes herself languorously with a sheet or a towel, Blanche stretches naked on her back under the electric light, smoking a cigarette, her left knee raised, her right foot resting on it, examining her wriggling toes. She flings out her arm and flicks ash in the vague direction of the ashtray.

“Surely,” she says, “the correct answer is both.”

“It can’t be both, my darling,” I correct her, ever the tutor, “because that would be illogical.” I am standing at the window with the curtain wrapped around me like a toga, looking across the embankment to the Île Saint-Louis. A boat glides past, ploughing a glossy furrow in the black river, its deck lit up as if for a party but deserted. I am trying to concentrate on this moment, to file it away in my memory, so that if anyone ever asks me, “When were you content?” I can answer, “There was an evening with a girl at the Tour d’Argent …”

“Is it true,” asks Blanche suddenly from the bed behind me, “that Armand du Paty had some kind of hand in the Dreyfus business?”

The moment freezes, vanishes. I don’t need to turn round. I can see her reflection in the window. Her right foot is still describing its ceaseless circle. “Where did you hear that?”

“Oh, just something Aimery said tonight.” She rolls over quickly and stabs out her cigarette. “In which case, it means of course that the poor Jew is bound to turn out to be innocent.”

This is the first time anyone has suggested to me that Dreyfus might not be guilty. Her flippancy shocks me. “It’s not a subject to joke about, Blanche.”

“Darling, I’m not! I’m absolutely serious!” She thumps the pillow into shape and lies back with her hands clasped behind her head. “I
thought it was odd at the time, the way he had his insignia torn off publicly and was marooned on a desert island—all a little too much, no? I should have guessed Armand du Paty was behind it! He may dress like an army officer, but beneath that tunic beats the heart of a romantic lady novelist.”

I laugh. “Well, I must bow to your superior knowledge of what goes on beneath his tunic, my dear. But I happen to know more than you about the Dreyfus case, and believe me, there were many other officers involved in that inquiry apart from your former lover!”

She pouts at me in the glass; she doesn’t like being reminded of the lapse of taste that was her affair with du Paty. “Georges, you look exactly like Jove standing there. Be a Good God and come back to bed …”

The exchange with Blanche unsettles me very slightly. The tiniest speck of—no, I shall not call it
doubt
, exactly—let us say
curiosity
lodges in my mind, and not so much about Dreyfus’s guilt as his punishment. Why, I ask myself, do we persist in this absurd and expensive rigmarole of imprisonment, which requires four or five guards to be stranded with him in silence on his tiny island? What is our policy? How many hours of bureaucratic time—including mine—are to be tied up in the endless administration, surveillance and censorship his punishment entails?

I keep these thoughts to myself as the weeks and months pass. I continue to receive reports from Guénée on the monitoring of Lucie and Mathieu Dreyfus; it yields nothing. I read their letters to the prisoner (
My good dear husband, What endless hours, what painful days we have experienced since this disaster struck its stunning blow …
) and his replies, which are mostly not delivered (
Nothing is so depressing, nothing so exhausts the energy of heart and mind as these long agonising silences, never hearing human speech, seeing no friendly face, nor even one that shows sympathy …
). I am also copied into the regular dispatches from the Colonial Ministry’s officials in Cayenne, monitoring the convict’s health and morale:

Gradually over the winter I discern that we do in fact have a policy with regard to Dreyfus, it has simply never been explained to me in so many words, either verbally or on paper. We are waiting for him to die.

The first anniversary of Dreyfus’s degradation comes and goes on 5 January 1896 with little comment in the press. There are no letters or petitions, no demonstrations for him or against. He seems to have been forgotten on his rock. Come the spring, I have been in charge of the Statistical Section for eight months, and all is calm.

And then, one morning in March, Major Henry asks to see me in my office. His eyes are pink and swollen.

“My dear Henry,” I say, laying aside the file I have been reading. “Are you all right? What is the matter?”

He stands in front of my desk. “I’m afraid I need to ask for some urgent leave, Colonel. I have a family crisis.”

I tell him to close the door and take a seat. “Is there anything I can do?”

“There isn’t anything that can be done, Colonel, I’m afraid.” He blows his nose on a large white handkerchief. “My mother is dying.”

“Well, I’m extremely grieved to hear that. Is anyone with her? Where does she live?”