An Officer and a Spy (41 page)

“And presumably this was why you were so keen to go to Paris in the summer?”

Again I seek refuge in evasion. “I am profoundly sorry if I’ve caused you embarrassment. I was being threatened with disciplinary action if I dared to protest at my treatment. I felt I had to go back to Paris to talk to my lawyer.”

“This is completely unacceptable behaviour, Colonel.”

“I understand, General, and I apologise. I didn’t know what else I could do.”

“No, not your behaviour—
Billot
’s behaviour is unacceptable. And these people have the nerve to feel superior to the Africans!”
He gives me back my newspaper. “Unfortunately I can’t countermand a direct order from the head of the army, but I can obstruct it. Go back to Sousse and pretend to get yourself ready to go south. In the meantime I’ll see what I can do. In any case, if what you say about Billot is true, he may not be minister for very much longer.”

The next day, a Sunday, the orderly who runs the Sousse Military Club brings in the newspapers soon after eleven. The rest of the garrison is at church. I have the place to myself. I order a cognac, pick up one of the club’s two copies of
La Dépêche tunisienne
and retreat with it to my customary window seat.

It’s a nightmare to sit here idly not knowing what is going on. I resolve to send a telegram to Louis. I finish my cognac and walk as far as the new post office building beside the harbour. Then my nerve fails me and I linger for ten minutes smoking a cigarette in the Bar de la Poste, watching a dozen of my fellow expatriates play boules in the dusty square. The truth is that any message I send or receive is certain to be intercepted, just as any code I might invent would not fool the experts for more than a few minutes.

On Tuesday, the actual Paris newspapers that were published the previous Friday finally arrive in Sousse. They carry the first stories of Scheurer-Kestner’s intervention in the Dreyfus affair.
Le Figaro, Le Matin, La Libre Parole, Le Petit Parisien
and the rest are passed
around the club and provoke outrage among my fellow officers. From my window seat I hear them talking. “Do you think this fellow Scheurer-Kestner is also a Jew?” “Well, with a name like that, if he’s not a Jew he must be a German …” “It’s a contemptible slur on the army—let’s hope someone seeks satisfaction …” “Yes, say what you like about Morès but he would have known how to deal with the scoundrel …” “What do you think of it all, Colonel, if you don’t mind us asking?”

I am so unused to being addressed in the club, it takes me a moment to realise they are talking to me. I put down my novel and turn round in my chair. Half a dozen tanned and moustached faces are looking at me. “I’m sorry,” I say. “What do I think about …?”

“This canard that Dreyfus might have been innocent?”

“Oh, that? That’s a bad business, don’t you think? A very bad business.” This gnomic utterance seems to satisfy them and I return to my book.

Wednesday is quiet. Then on Thursday
La Dépêche
reports new developments:

I lie awake that night with my door locked and my revolver under my pillow, listening to the predawn call to prayer from the nearby minaret. I entertain myself by picturing the crisis meetings in Billot’s office: the minister raging, Gonse nervously spilling cigarette ash down his tunic, Boisdeffre frozen, Henry drunk; I think of Gribelin scuttling back and forth between his files in an effort to fish up new scraps of evidence against Dreyfus, and Lauth steaming open my letters and trying to decipher the hidden code by which I am
somehow controlling events. I exult in this imagined confounding of my enemies.

And then my enemies begin returning fire.

The opening shot is a telegram. Jemel brings it to my office first thing. It was dispatched from the Bourse post office in Paris the previous day:
We have proof that the
bleu
was forged by Georges. Blanche. Blanche?

It is like a threat whispered by a stranger in a crowd who has melted away before one has time to look round. I am conscious of Jemel studying my reaction. The thing is meaningless and yet sinister, especially the use of Blanche’s name. “I can’t make sense of this,” I tell him. “Perhaps it’s been garbled in transmission. Would you mind going back to the telegraph office and asking them to repeat it?”

He returns later in the morning. “There is no doubt, Colonel,” he says. “They checked in Paris: the text is accurate. Also, this has just arrived for you, redirected from Tunis.” He gives me a letter. On the envelope, which is marked “urgent,” my name is misspelt “Piquart.” I vaguely recognise the handwriting. Here it comes: the second shot.

“Thank you, Jemel.”

I wait until he has gone before I open it.

A letter of complaint from the traitor, in the same hand in which he wrote the
bordereau
—one almost has to admire the impudence of the fellow! And then the questions start to assail me. How does he know my name? Or that I am in Tunis? Or that I have obtained samples of his handwriting? Presumably from the author of this alleged “anonymous letter.” And who could be the author of such a letter? Henry? Is this where the logic of the General Staff’s position has led them—actually to helping the guilty man evade justice as the only means of keeping the innocent man imprisoned? I fetch out the telegram.
We have proof that the
bleu
was forged by Georges. Blanche
. What are they up to?

The next day Jemel brings me another telegram, another menacing riddle:
Stop the Demigod. Everything is discovered. Extremely serious matter. Speranza
. This message was sent from the rue la Fayette post office in Paris, and actually on the same day as the Blanche telegram, but it has taken an extra twenty-four hours to reach me because, like Esterhazy’s letter, it was wrongly addressed to me in Tunis.

I have never met anyone called Speranza—I know it only as the Italian word for “hope”—but “the Demigod” is Blanche’s nickname for our mutual friend and fellow Wagnerian Captain William Lallemand. And the only person connected to the Statistical Section who is likely to know that obscure fact from our circle is Blanche’s former lover, du Paty.

Du Paty
. Yes—of course—the moment the name comes into my mind it is obvious: du Paty has been drafted in to help devise this sinister production; his decayed Gothic style, part Dumas, part
Fleurs du Mal
, is inimitable. But whereas a year or two ago I would have laughed off any threat from so ludicrous a figure, now I know differently. Now I have seen what he is capable of. And that is when I realise I am being fitted for the same convict’s outfit as Dreyfus.

——

The echo of the next detonation, on Wednesday, 17 November, is sufficient to shake even the sleepy palms of the Sousse Military Club:

I read it after lunch and then retreat to the window, where I pretend to be immersed in my novel. Behind me the
Dépêche
is passed from hand to hand. “Well,” says one officer, “there you go—that’s the Jews for you—they stick together and they don’t let up.” Another says, “I must say, I feel sorry for this fellow Esterhazy.” Then a third, the captain who lusted after Savignaud, chimes in: “You see here it says that Esterhazy has written to General Billot? ‘I have read in this morning’s papers the infamous accusation brought against me. I ask you to order an inquiry, and I am ready to reply to all the charges.’ ” “Good for him,” rejoins the first, “but what chance does he stand against all that Jewish gold?” The captain: “That’s true enough—perhaps we should raise a subscription for poor old Esterhazy? Put me down for twenty francs.”

The following day I go for a long ride along the coast to clear my head. Far out to sea, immense clouds are rolling north, trailing funeral draperies of rain. It is the start of the wettest season. I spur
my mount and gallop towards the thousand-year-old watchtower of the Ribat in Monastir, a distance of perhaps fifteen kilometres. As I come closer, it stands out pale against the darkening sea. I consider riding into the little fishing port. But the sky is now as black as squid’s ink, and sure enough, as I turn for home the cloud overhead splits like a slashed sac and a drenching cold rain begins to fall.

When I reach the base I go straight to my quarters to change. The door, which I had made sure to lock, is open and I enter to find Jemel standing guiltily in the middle of my sitting room. A few seconds earlier and I would have caught him mid-search, but now I look around and can see nothing out of place.

I say curtly, “Fetch me some water; I need a bath.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

By the time I reach the Military Club I am too late for lunch, and I can tell from the instant I enter that something momentous has happened. Conversations cease as I walk towards my normal place. Several of the older officers quickly finish their drinks and leave. Today’s
Dépêche
has been placed carefully, pointedly, on my armchair, folded to a story on the front page.

I have never before had my name printed in a newspaper. I picture all the people I know, my friends and family in France, coming upon it unawares. What will they think? I am supposed to be a spy, a man in the shadows. Now a searchlight has picked me out.

And there is more:

By the time I finish reading and look round, the clubroom is empty.

That evening I receive another telegram: I find it pushed under my door. But this one is quite unambiguous:
Evacuate your quarters in Sousse immediately on assumption you will not be returning and report to me at General Headquarters. Signed Leclerc
.

In Tunis I am given a small room on the second floor of the main barracks. I lie on the bed and listen to the symphony of male institutional life—the shouts and sudden bursts of whistling, the clanging of doors and heavy footsteps. I think about Pauline. She has gone very quiet over the last few weeks. I wonder what she will have made of the references to me in the press—that I am in the pay of the Jews; that I was shipped off to Tunisia “in disgrace.” I write her a letter.