An Officer and a Spy

its pages two hundred francs. Then I retreat to the back row and wait. No one is around to see me, but if there was I would just look like a troubled civil servant on his way home from the office, stopping off to seek advice from his Maker.
    Yet although there is absolutely no danger in what I am doing, my heart pounds. Ridiculous! Perhaps it is the flickering candlelight and the smell of incense, or the echo of footsteps and whispered voices from the immense nave. Whatever it is, and even though I have long since lost my faith, I feel there is something sacrilegious about this whole transaction taking place on hallowed ground. I keep checking my watch: ten to nine, nine o’clock, five past nine, twenty past nine . . . Perhaps she isn’t coming? I can imagine Henry’s polite commiserations if I have to tell him tomorrow that she didn’t show up.
    But then, just before half past, the silence is broken by a clang as the door behind me opens. A squat female figure in a black skirt and shawl walks past. Halfway up the aisle she stops, makes the sign of the cross, curtseys to the altar, and then heads straight to the designated seat. I see her kneel. Less than a minute later she rises and strides back down the aisle towards me. I keep my eyes fixed on her, curious to see what she is like, this Madame Bastian, a commonplace cleaning woman, yet perhaps the most valuable secret agent in France, in Europe. She gives me a long, hard look as she passes – surprised, I suppose, not to see Major Henry in my place – and I note there is absolutely nothing commonplace in her fierce, almost masculine features, and the challenge of her stare. She is a bold one, maybe even reckless; but then she would have to be, to have smuggled secret documents out of the German Embassy for five years under the noses of the guards.
    The moment she has gone, I stand and walk to the place where I left the money. Henry impressed on me not to waste any time. Tucked beneath the chair is a cone-shaped paper sack. It rustles alarmingly as I tug it out and stuff it into my briefcase. I leave the basilica in a hurry, through the doors and down the steps, striding along the dark and empty streets that surround the ministry. Ten minutes after collecting the sack, euphoric with success, I am tipping the contents over the desk in my office.
    There is more than I expected: a cornucopia of trash – paper torn and crumpled and dusted with cigarette ash, paper white and grey, cream and blue, tissue and card, tiny pieces and large fragments, handwritten in pencil and ink, typewritten and printed, words in French and German and Italian, train tickets and theatre stubs, envelopes, invitations, restaurant bills and receipts from tailors and taxi cabs and bootmakers . . . I run my hands through it all, scoop it up and let it trickle through my fingers – mostly it will be rubbish, I know, but somewhere within it there may be gold. I experience a prospector’s thrill.
    I am beginning to enjoy this job.
    I write to Pauline twice, but guardedly, in case Philippe opens her letters. She does not reply and I don’t try to seek her out to discover if anything is wrong, principally because I don’t have the time. I have to devote my Saturday nights and Sundays to my mother, whose memory is worsening, and most evenings I am required to stay at the office late. There are so many things to keep an eye on. The Germans are laying telephone cables along the eastern frontier. There is a suspected spy at our embassy in Moscow. An English agent is said to be offering to sell a copy of our mobilisation plans to the highest bidder . . . I have to write my regular blancs . I am fully absorbed.
    I still go to the de Comminges salons, but ‘your sweet Madame Monnier’, as Blanche likes to call her, is never there, even though Blanche insists she always makes a point of inviting her. After one concert I take Blanche out to dinner, to the Tour d’Argent, where we are given a table overlooking the river. Why do I choose this particular restaurant? For one thing it’s a convenient walk from the de Comminges house. But I am also curious to see where Colonel von Schwartzkoppen entertains his mistress. I look around the dining room; it is almost entirely filled with couples. The candlelit booths are made for intimacy – je suis à toi, toujours à toi, toute à toi . . . The latest police agent’s report describes Hermance as ‘early thirties, blonde, petite, in