An Officer and a Spy

moment.’ I slip the gun into my pocket and open the door.
    He’s a morose-looking fellow in his early fifties; a drinker to judge by the filigree of blood vessels in his eyes: I should guess that plying back and forth between Tunis and Marseille three times a week must become tedious after a while. We exchange salutes. He says, ‘Arrangements have been made to take you and Monsieur Périer off the ship before we dock.’
    ‘Is that really necessary?’
    ‘Apparently there’s a crowd of reporters on the quayside, and some protesters. The Ministry of War feels it would be safer to transfer you to a tug while we’re still at sea and then land you ahead of us in a different part of the harbour.’
    ‘What an absurd idea.’
    ‘Maybe so,’ replies the captain with a shrug, ‘but those are my orders.’
    A half-hour later the throb of the engines ceases and we heave to. I climb up to the deck carrying my suitcase. We have come to a stop about a kilometre outside the harbour entrance. A tugboat lies alongside us. The weather is cold and squally but that doesn’t deter several dozen passengers from lining the rails in sullen silence to watch me depart. It is my first experience of my new celebrity, and a singularly uncomfortable one. There is a strong swell on the sea and the two vessels pitch against one another, their decks rising and falling in opposite directions. My suitcase is taken from me, flung down into the tug and caught, and then I am lowered after it. Strong arms stretch up to lift me aboard. Behind me I hear someone shout an insult; the word ‘Jew’ is whipped away in the wind. Monsieur Périer is handed down along with his luggage. He staggers to the other side of the tug and throws up. The ropes are cast off and we pull clear.
    We pass behind the harbour wall and swing to port, moving between the towering hulls of a pair of anchored ironclads, towards the western end of the harbour. Over the tug’s stern, gathered in the place where the ferries berth, I can see a crowd of people, at least a hundred or two. And this is the instance when I realise the hold that the Dreyfus affair is beginning to exert on the imagination of my fellow countrymen. The tug manoeuvres alongside a military dock where a cab is waiting. Next to it stands a young officer. As the crew jump off to tie up the boat, he steps forward and takes my suitcase. He passes it up to the taxi driver, then offers his hand to help me ashore.
    He salutes. His manner is cold but impeccable. In the back of the cab, facing me and Périer, he says, ‘If I might make a suggestion, Colonel, it would perhaps be advisable to crouch down as low as possible, at least until we are some distance clear of the port.’
    I do as he asks. And so, like a hunted criminal, I return to France.
    At the railway station, a first-class compartment at the rear of the train has been reserved for our exclusive use. Périer pulls down the blinds on the doors and the windows and refuses to allow me out to buy a newspaper. If I so much as visit the lavatory he insists on accompanying me and standing outside the door until I have finished. Occasionally I wonder what he would do if I disobeyed his orders, which invariably are delivered in a nervous, embarrassed, almost pleading tone. But in truth I am afflicted by a curious fatalism. I surrender myself to events, and to the rocking cocoon of our journey, which begins in the darkness of Marseille at five in the afternoon and ends in the darkness of Paris at five in the morning.
    I am asleep when we arrive at the gare de Lyon. The jolting of the compartment awakens me and I open my eyes to see Périer peering around the edge of the window blind. He says, ‘We shall wait here, Colonel, if you don’t mind, until the other passengers have disembarked.’ Ten minutes later we step down on to the deserted platform. A porter wheels our cases ahead of us and we walk the length of the train to the ticket barrier, where a dozen men are waiting, holding notebooks. Périer warns me, ‘Don’t say anything,’ and we hold on to our hats and hunch forward slightly, as if stepping into a headwind. Their shouted questions all come at once so that it is impossible to distinguish more than a few words: ‘Esterhazy . . .? Dreyfus . . .? Veiled lady . . .? Search . . .?’ There is a brilliant lightning flash and the whumph of a magnesium tray igniting, but we are hurrying too fast, I am sure, for any photograph to be