An Officer and a Spy

nowhere, shimmering up ahead beside the tracks. I slip my hand inside my tunic and feel the sharp edges of my posthumous letter to the President.
    When at last we arrive in Tunis, around the middle of the afternoon, I push my way across the crowded platform to the taxi rank. The heat in the city feels almost solid. The air holds soot and spices – cumin, coriander, paprika – and tobacco and horse dung in a humid suspension. Beside the taxis a boy is selling La Dépêche tunisienne , which for five centimes offers an overnight compilation of the previous day’s news as telegraphed from Paris. I skim it on the drive to army headquarters. Yet again there is nothing about Dreyfus. But it is within my power to change all that. For the twentieth time I touch the letter, like an anarchist checking his dynamite.
    Leclerc is too busy to see me, so I am left to sweat in an anteroom for half an hour. Then an aide approaches me: ‘The general would like to know what this is about.’
    ‘It’s a personal matter.’
    He goes away and comes back a couple of minutes later. ‘The general suggests you discuss all personal issues with General de Chizelle.’ De Chizelle is the senior officer of the 4th Tunisian Rifles, my direct superior.
    ‘I am sorry, but this is a personal matter that I can only disclose to the Supreme Commander.’
    Once again he withdraws, but this time he is only gone for a few moments. ‘The general will see you now.’
    I leave my suitcase and follow him.
    Jérôme Leclerc is on the veranda of his office, in his shirtsleeves, seated at a portable card table, working his way through a pile of letters. An electric fan above his head lifts the edges of the pages, which are weighted down by his revolver. He is in his middle sixties, square-jawed and-shouldered; he has been in Africa so long his skin is almost the same light brown as the natives’.
    ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘the exotic Colonel Picquart: our very own man of mystery, sent to us under cover of darkness!’ The sarcasm is not entirely unfriendly. ‘So tell me, Colonel, what is the latest secret about you that can’t be divulged to your commanding officer?’
    ‘I would like permission to go on leave to Paris.’
    ‘And why can’t you make this application to General de Chizelle?’
    ‘Because he would refuse it.’
    ‘And how do you know that?’
    ‘Because I have reason to believe there is a standing instruction from the War Ministry that I should not be allowed to leave Tunisia.’
    ‘If that is true – and I am not confirming that it is – then why have you come to me?’
    ‘Because I believe you are more likely to ignore an order from the General Staff than General de Chizelle.’
    Leclerc blinks at me for a moment, and I wonder if he might have me thrown out, but then abruptly he laughs. ‘Yes, well, that’s probably true. I’m past caring. But I’d need a damned good reason, mark you. It can’t just be that there’s some woman in Paris you want to see.’
    ‘I have unfinished business there.’
    ‘Do you, by God!’ He folds his arms and tilts back in his chair and looks me up and down a couple of times. ‘You’re a funny fish, Colonel Picquart. I don’t know what to make of you. I’d heard you were supposed to be the next Chief of the General Staff but four, and instead suddenly you’re out here in our little backwater. Tell me, what did you do? Embezzle funds?’
    ‘No, General.’
    ‘Screw the minister’s wife?’
    ‘Certainly not that.’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘I can’t tell you.’
    ‘Then I can’t help you.’
    He sits back straight in his chair and picks up a sheaf of papers. I feel a sudden desperation. ‘I’m in a kind of imprisonment out here, General. My mail is read. I’m followed. I’m not allowed to leave. It’s really very effective. If I protest, it’s been made clear to me I’ll be disciplined on trumped-up charges. Short of desertion, I’m not sure how I can escape. And of course if I do desert I really would be finished.’
    ‘Oh no, don’t desert – if you desert I’d have to shoot you.’ He gets up to stretch his legs – a big, lithe man, despite his years. A fighter, I think, not a desk man. He prowls up and down the veranda, frowning, and then stops to look out across the garden. I can’t name all the flowers – jasmine I recognise, and cyclamen, and dianthus. He notices me looking. ‘You like it?’
    ‘It’s very fine.’
    ‘I planted it myself. Prefer this country