An Officer and a Spy

few officers, who give me sidelong looks. None tries to stop me. I go out through the cathedral-like door and into the place Vendôme. My exit is so unexpected that most of the journalists don’t notice me hurrying past them and I am almost at the corner before I hear them shouting – ‘There he goes!’ – and then the sound of their feet running over the cobbles after me. I put my head down and increase my pace, ignoring their questions. A couple scramble to get ahead of me and try to block my path, but I push them aside. On the rue de Rivoli I spot a taxi and flag it down. The reporters fan out along the street searching for cabs to follow me; one athletic fellow even tries to keep up with me on foot. But the driver cracks his whip, and when I look back he has given up the chase.
    The rue Yvon-Villarceau runs north to south between the rue Copernic and the rue Boissière. Directly opposite my apartment building, at the northern end, the foundations are being sunk for a new block. As we pass the entrance I scan the street for reporters and police, but all I can see are workmen. I tell the driver to pull up round the corner, then pay the fare and walk back.
    The double doors are glazed and barred. I cup my hands and peer through the dusty glass into the empty vestibule. At my feet, mud and rubble have turned the cobblestones into a country lane; the smell of freshly dug earth seasons the cold rain. I feel like a visitor returning after a long interval to the scene of an earlier life. I open the door and am halfway to the stairs when I hear the familiar faint click of a latch. But whereas before the concierge would always scuttle from her lair to engage me in conversation, now she keeps her distance, watching me through a crack in her doorway. I pretend not to notice and mount the steps, carrying my suitcase up to the fourth floor. On the landing there is no sign of forced entry: she must have given the authorities her key.
    The moment I open the door I am shocked by how thoroughly the place has been searched. The carpet has been rolled back. All my books have been removed from their shelves, shaken out and replaced in haphazard order; bookmarks litter the floor. The chest in which I keep my old letters has been forced and emptied; the drawers of the escritoire also forced; even my sheet music has been taken out of the piano stool and sifted for clues; the piano lid has been removed and propped against the wall. I switch on the desk lamp and pick up a photograph of my mother that has fallen to the floor; the glass is cracked. Suddenly I visualise Henry standing in this very spot – Colonel Henry, as I must now learn to call him – licking his clumsy butcher’s fingers as he turns the pages of my correspondence, reading aloud some intimate endearment for the amusement of the men from the Sûreté.
    The image is intolerable.
    A faint sound comes from the other room – a creak, a breath, a groan. Slowly I draw my revolver. I take a couple of steps across the bare boards and cautiously push open the door. Curled up on the bed, looking up at me through eyes bruised and swollen by crying, still wearing her coat, her hair dishevelled, her face white, as if she has fainted or suffered an accident, is Pauline.
    ‘They told Philippe,’ she says.
    She has been here all night. She read in the papers that I’d been brought back to Paris so she came round at midnight assuming I’d be here. She stayed, waiting. She didn’t know where else to go.
    I kneel beside the bed, holding her hand. ‘What exactly has happened?’
    ‘Philippe has thrown me out. He won’t let me see the girls.’
    I squeeze her fingers, momentarily speechless. ‘Have you slept?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘At least take off your coat, my darling.’
    I stand and pick my way through the damage in the drawing room. In the kitchen I heat a saucepan on the gas ring and make her a drink of cognac, hot water and honey, all the while struggling to comprehend what is happening. Their methods stagger me – the ruthlessness, the speed. When I take the glass through to her, she has undressed to her shift and got into bed and is lying half raised on the pillows with the sheet drawn tight around her neck. She looks at me warily.
    ‘Here. Drink this.’
    ‘God, it’s disgusting. What is it?’
    ‘Cognac. The army cure for everything. Drink it.’
    I sit at the bottom of the bed and smoke a cigarette and wait until she is suffiently revived to start telling me what