An Officer and a Spy

opens his mouth to speak, but I hold up a silencing hand. I walk quietly over to the sitting-room door, which is glass-paned with lace curtains, and peer round the edge, just as Anna, smoothing her skirts, walks down the passage from the kitchen. She catches my eye, nods to show she knows what she has to do, then opens the front door.
    I can’t see who is standing there, but I can hear him – a heavy male voice: ‘Excuse me, madame, is Colonel Picquart here?’
    ‘No. Why would he be? This isn’t his apartment.’
    ‘Do you happen to know where he is?’
    ‘The last letter I had was posted in Tunisia. And who are you, may I ask?’
    ‘Forgive me, madame – I’m just an old army friend.’
    ‘Do you have a name?’
    ‘Let’s just leave it at that, shall we? You can tell him “an old army friend” was looking for him. Goodbye.’
    Anna closes the door and locks it. She glances at me. I smile. She has done well. I turn to Louis. ‘They know I’m in Paris.’
    Louis leaves soon afterwards, taking with him all my papers apart from the letter to the President, which he tells me to copy out twice. I stay up late after Jules and Anna have gone to bed, sitting at the kitchen table with pen and ink – the anarchist again, assembling his bomb. The trial of Dreyfus was handled in an unprecedentedly superficial manner, with the preconceived idea that Dreyfus was guilty, and with a disregard for due legal forms . . .
    Louis returns the following day at the same time, late in the afternoon. Anna shows him into the sitting room. I embrace him and then go over to the window and peer down into the street. ‘Do you think you might have been followed?’
    ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
    I crane my neck to look up and down the rue Cassette. ‘I can’t actually see anyone watching the house. But these people are good, unfortunately. I think it would be wise to assume that you were.’
    ‘I agree. Now, my dear friend, did you make those copies of your letter? Excellent.’ He takes them from me and puts them in his briefcase. ‘One copy can remain in my safe and the other can go to a safe deposit box in Geneva.’ He smiles at me. ‘Cheer up, my dear Georges! Now, even if they kill you and then go on to kill me, they’ll still have to invade Switzerland!’
    But another day cooped up in my sister’s apartment has not put me in the mood for jokes. ‘I don’t know, Louis. I wonder if the safest course isn’t just to give everything to the newspapers and have done with it.’
    ‘Oh no, no, no!’ replies Louis in great alarm. ‘That would be fatal – both for yourself and for Dreyfus. I’ve been doing some hard thinking about the whole matter. This letter from Major Henry,’ he says, pulling it out, ‘is really very interesting, you know – very cunning, actually. They’ve obviously prepared contingency plans in case you make public what you know, but not only that – they want you to understand broadly what those contingency plans are.’
    ‘In order to frighten me off?’
    ‘Yes, it’s good logic, if you think about it. Their primary objective is that you should do nothing. Therefore they want to show you how unpleasant they are willing to make your life if you do try to do something.’ He studies the letter. ‘As I understand it, Major Henry is alleging here, in effect, that you conspired to frame Esterhazy: first by mounting an illegal operation against him, secondly by attempting to suborn from your associates false testimony about the incriminating evidence, and thirdly by leaking classified information to undermine the case against Dreyfus. Clearly, that will be their line of defence if you go to the newspapers: that you have been working for the Jews all along.’
    ‘Absurd!’
    ‘Absurd, I agree. But a great many people will be eager to believe it.’
    I can see the truth of this. ‘Well then,’ I say, ‘if I don’t go openly to the newspapers, perhaps I should go privately to the Dreyfus family, and at least give them the name of Esterhazy?’
    ‘I have thought about that as well. Plainly the family are admirably loyal to their unfortunate captain. But I have to ask myself, as your lawyer, would they feel a similar loyalty to you? To have the name of Esterhazy would of course be immensely useful to their cause. But the real prize for them would be the fact that his name came to them from you – from the chief of the secret intelligence service himself.’
    ‘You think they