Read An Officer and a Spy Online
Authors: Robert Harris
An Officer and a Spy (10 page)
Fred to Lucie:
The few moments I passed with you were full of joy to me, though it was impossible to tell you all that was in my heart
(14 February). Lucie to Fred:
What emotion, what a fearful shock
we both felt at seeing each other again, especially you, my poor beloved husband
(16 February). Fred to Lucie:
I wanted to tell you all the admiration I feel for your noble character, for your admirable devotion
(21 February). Hours later, Dreyfus was on a warship, the
Saint-Nazaire
, steaming out into the Atlantic.
Up to now, most of the letters in the file have been copies, presumably because the originals were delivered to the addressee. But from this point on the majority of the pages I turn are in Dreyfus’s own hand. His descriptions of the voyage—in an unheated cell on an upper deck, open to the elements, through violent winter storms, watched night and day by warders with revolvers who refuse to speak to him—have been retained by the censors in the Colonial Ministry. On the eighth day the weather began to grow warmer. Still Dreyfus did not know his destination and no one was allowed to tell him; his guess was Cayenne. On the fifteenth day of the voyage he wrote to Lucie that the warship had at last anchored, off
three small humps of rock and vegetation in the middle of the ocean’s wastes:
Royal Island, St. Joseph’s Island and (tiniest of all) Devil’s Island. To his astonishment, he discovered that the latter was intended for him alone.
Dearest Lucie … My darling Lucie … Lucie, dearest … Darling wife … I love you … I yearn for you … I think of you … I send you the echo of my deep affection …
So much emotion and time and energy expended in the hope of some connection, only for it to end up in the darkness of this file! But maybe it is better, I think, as I skim the increasingly desperate complaints, that Lucie doesn’t read all of this: isn’t aware that after the
Saint-Nazaire
dropped anchor in the tropics, her husband had to spend four days locked in his steel box under the ferocious sun without once being allowed on deck, or that when eventually he was landed on Royal Island—while the old leper colony on Devil’s Island was demolished and his new quarters prepared—he was locked in a cell with closed shutters and was not allowed out for a month.
My dear
,
At last, after thirty days of close confinement, they came to remove me to Devil’s Island. By day I am able to walk about in a space a
few hundred metres square, followed at every step by warders with rifles; at nightfall
(
six o’clock
)
I am locked in my hut, four metres square, closed by an iron grille, before which relays of warders watch me all night long. My rations are half a loaf of bread a day, one third of a kilo of meat three times a week and on other days tinned bacon. To drink I have water. I must gather wood, light a fire, cook my own food, clean my clothes and try to dry them in this humid climate
.
It is impossible for me to sleep. This cage, before which the guard walks up and down like a phantom in my dreams, the torment of the vermin that infest me, and the agony in my heart all conspire to make rest impossible
.
There was a deluge of rain this morning. When there was an interval I made the round of the small portion of the little island which is reserved to me. It is a barren place; there are a few banana trees and cocoa palms, and dry soil from which basaltic rock emerges everywhere, and that restless ocean which is always howling and muttering at my feet!
I have been thinking much of you, my dear wife, and of our children. I wonder whether my letters reach you. What a sad and terrible martyrdom is this for both of us, for all of us! The guards are forbidden to speak to me. Days pass without a word. My isolation is so complete that it often seems to me that I have been buried alive
.
The conditions under which Lucie is allowed to write are strict. She is not allowed to mention the case, or any events relating to it. She is instructed to deposit all letters at the Colonial Ministry by the twenty-fifth of each month. These are then carefully copied and read by the relevant officials in that ministry and in the Ministry of War. Copies are also passed to Major Étienne Bazeries, chief of the cipher bureau in the Foreign Ministry, who checks to see if they may contain encoded messages. (Major Bazeries also scrutinises Dreyfus’s letters to Lucie.) I see from the file that the first batch of her letters reached Cayenne at the end of March, but was returned to Paris to be checked again. Only on 12 June, after a four-month silence, did Dreyfus finally receive word from home:
My darling Fred
,
I cannot tell you the sadness and the grief I feel while you are going further and further away. My days pass in anxious thoughts, my nights in frightful dreams. Only the children, with their pretty ways and the pure innocence of their souls, succeed in reminding me of the one compelling duty I must fulfil, and that I have no right to give way. So then I gather strength and put my whole heart into bringing them up as you always desired, following your good counsels, and endeavouring to make them noble in heart, so that when you come back you will find your children worthy of their father, and as you would have moulded them
.
With my love always, my dearest husband
,
Your devoted
Lucie
The file ends here. I put down the last page and light a cigarette. I have been so absorbed, I haven’t registered that dawn has come. Behind me in the bedroom I can hear Pauline moving around. I go into my tiny kitchen to make coffee and by the time I emerge carrying two cups she is already dressed and looking around for something.
“I won’t,” she says distractedly, noticing the coffee, “thank you. I have to go but I’m missing a stocking. Ah!”
She sees it and swoops to retrieve it. She rests her instep on a chair and unrolls the white silk over her toes and heel and strokes it up her calf.
I watch her. “You look like a Manet:
Nana in the Morning
.”
“Isn’t Nana a whore?”
“Only in the eyes of bourgeois morality.”
“Yes, well I am bourgeois. And so are you. And so, more to the point, are most of your neighbours.” She pulls on her shoe and smooths down her dress. “If I leave now, they may not see me.”
I pick up her jacket and help her on with it. “At least wait while I put on some clothes, and I’ll take you home.”
“That would rather defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?” She picks up her bag. Her brightness is terrible. “Goodbye, my darling,” she says. “Write to me soon,” and with the briefest of kisses she is out of the door and gone.
——
I arrive at the office so early that I expect to have the building to myself. But Bachir, who is dozing in his chair, wakes when I shake him and says that Major Henry is already in his room. I walk upstairs, along the passage, knock briefly on his door and go straight in. My second-in-command is bent over his desk with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers; various documents are strewn in front of him. He looks up in surprise. The spectacles perched on the end of his snub nose make him look unexpectedly old and vulnerable. He seems to feel the same; at any rate he quickly takes them off as he gets to his feet.
“Good morning, Colonel. You’re in bright and early.”
“So are you, Major. I’m starting to think you live here! This needs to go back to the Colonial Ministry.” I hand him the Dreyfus correspondence file. “I’ve finished with it.”
“Thanks. What did you make of it?”
“The degree of censorship is extraordinary. I’m not sure there’s any need to restrict their correspondence quite so drastically.”
“Ah!” Henry gives one of his smirks. “Perhaps you have a more tender heart than the rest of us, Colonel.”
I refuse the bait. “Actually, it’s not that. If we were to allow Madame Dreyfus to tell her husband what she’s doing, it would save us the trouble of having to find out. And if he were permitted to say more about his case, he might make a mistake and reveal something we don’t know. In any case, if we’re going to eavesdrop, let’s at least encourage them to say something.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
“Do.” I glance down at the desk. “What’s all this?”
“Agent Auguste has made a fresh delivery.”
“When did you pick it up?”
“Two nights ago.”
I examine a couple of the torn-up notes. “Anything interesting?”
“Not bad.”
The letters have been ripped into fragments the size of a fingernail: the German military attaché, Colonel Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen, is obviously careful to shred his communications
into unusually tiny pieces. But it is stupid of him not to realise that the only secure way to dispose of paper is to burn it. Henry and Lauth are adept at piecing the scraps back together using tiny strips of transparent adhesive paper to repair the tears. The extra layer imparts to the documents a mysterious texture and stiffness. I turn them over. These are in French rather than German, and filled with romantic touches:
mon cher ami adoré… mon adorable lieutenant … mon pioupiou … mon Maxi … je suis à toi … toujours à toi … toute à toi, mille et mille tendresses … à toi toujours
.
“I take it these aren’t from the Kaiser. Or maybe they are.”
Henry grins. “Our adorable ‘Colonel Maxi’ is having an affair with a married woman, which is a very foolish thing for a man in his position to do.”
For an instant I wonder if this is a barb aimed at me, but when I glance at Henry, he is not looking in my direction but at the letter, with an expression of lascivious satisfaction.
I say, “I thought that Schwartzkoppen was homosexual?”
“Wives or husbands, apparently it’s all the same to him.”
“Who is she?”
“She signs herself Madame Cornet, which is a false name. She uses her sister’s address as a poste restante. But we’ve followed Schwartzkoppen five times now to their little assignations and we’ve identified her as the wife of the councillor of the Dutch legation. She’s called Hermance de Weede.”
“A pretty name.”
“For a pretty girl. Thirty-two. Three young kids. He certainly spreads his favours, the gallant colonel.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Since January. We’ve observed them having lunch in a booth at La Tour d’Argent—they took a room in the hotel upstairs afterwards. We’ve also followed them strolling around the Champs de Mars. He’s careless.”
“And why is it of such interest to us that we expend our resources following a man and a woman who are having an affair?”
Henry regards me as if I am a halfwit. “Because it leaves him open to blackmail.”
“By whom?”
“By us. By anyone. It’s hardly something he’d want known, is it?”
The notion that we might try to blackmail the German military attaché for an adulterous liaison with the wife of a senior Dutch diplomat strikes me as far-fetched, but I keep my counsel.
“And you say this batch came in two nights ago?”
“Yes, I worked on it at home.”
There is a pause while I weigh what I need to say. “My dear Henry,” I begin carefully, “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I really think that material as sensitive as this should come straight into the office the moment it’s collected. Imagine if the Germans found out what we’re doing!”
“It never left my sight, Colonel, I assure you.”
“That’s not the point. It’s sloppy procedure. In future I want all of the Auguste material to come direct to me. I’ll keep it in my safe, and I’ll decide what leads are followed and who handles it.”
Henry’s face flushes. Astonishingly for such a big and hearty fellow, he seems to be close to tears. “Colonel Sandherr had no complaint about my methods.”
“Colonel Sandherr isn’t here anymore.”
“With respect, Colonel, you’re new to this game—”
I hold up my hand. “That is enough, Major.” I know I have to stop him there. I can’t back down. If I don’t take control now, I never shall. “I have to remind you that this is a military unit and that your job is to obey my orders.”
He jumps to attention like a wind-up toy soldier. “Yes, Colonel.”
As in a cavalry charge, I make use of my momentum. “There are several other changes I’d like to make while we’re on the subject. I don’t want informers and other dubious characters hanging around downstairs. They should come in when we summon them, and leave immediately afterwards. We need to introduce a system of passes, and only authorised persons should be allowed upstairs. And Bachir is hopeless.”
“You want to get rid of Bachir?” A tone of disbelief.
“No, not until we’ve found him some other billet. I believe in looking after old comrades. But let’s get an electric bell system
fitted that will ring each time the front door is opened, so that if he’s asleep, as he was when I arrived, at least we’ll know someone’s entered the building.”
“Yes, Colonel. Is that all?”
“That’s all for now. Gather up the Auguste material and bring it to my office.”
I turn on my heel and leave, without closing the door. That’s another thing I’d like to change, I think, as I march down the passage to my office: this damned culture of furtiveness, with every man skulking in his own room. I try to fling open the doors on either side of me, but they are locked. When I reach my desk I take out a sheet of paper, and write a stern memorandum, for circulation to all my officers, setting out the new rules. I also compose a note to General Gonse requesting that the Statistical Section be given a new set of offices within the main ministry building, or, at the very least, that the existing premises be redecorated. After I have finished, I feel better. It seems to me that finally I have assumed command.
Later that morning, Henry comes to see me as requested, bringing the most recent delivery from Auguste. I am braced for further trouble and resolved not to give way. Despite the fact that his experience is vital to the smooth running of the section, if it comes to it I am even willing to have him transferred to another unit. But to my surprise he is as meek as the shorn lamb. He shows me how much he has already reconstructed and what remains to be done, and politely offers to teach me how the pieces are glued together. To humour him I have a try, but the work is too fiddly and time-consuming for me: besides, although Auguste may be our most important agent, I have the entire section to run. I repeat my position: all I want is to be the first to take a preliminary look at the material; the rest I am content to leave to him and Lauth.