An Officer and a Spy

his head round my door to say goodbye. On this occasion, he slips away without a word. In his absence the building sinks even further into the August torpor.
    And then, on the 27th, a Thursday afternoon, I receive a message from Billot’s orderly, Captain Calmon-Maison, asking if he might have a word with me as soon as is convenient. I have cleared my in-tray so I decide I might as well walk over right away: through the garden and up the stairs and into the office of the minister’s secretariat. The windows are open. The room is light and airy. Three or four young officers are working together congenially. I feel a stab of envy: how much better to be here than across the street in my dank and rancorous warren! Calmon-Maison says, ‘I have something here that General Billot thinks you ought to see.’ He goes to a filing cabinet and takes out a letter. ‘It came in yesterday. It’s from Major Esterhazy.’
    The letter is handwritten, addressed to Calmon-Maison, dated Paris two days earlier. It is a request to be transferred to the General Staff. The implications of this hit me with a force that is almost physical. He’s trying to get into the ministry. He’s trying to get access to secret material he can sell . . .
    Calmon-Maison says, ‘My colleague Captain Thévenet has received a similar appeal.’
    ‘May I see it?’
    He gives me the second letter. It is couched in almost identical terms to the first: I am writing to request an immediate transfer from the headquarters of the 74th Infantry Regiment in Rouen . . . I believe I have demonstrated the qualities necessary for work on the General Staff . . . I have served in the Foreign Legion and in the intelligence department as a German translator . . . I would be most grateful if you could bring this request to the attention of the appropriate authority . . .
    ‘Have you replied?’
    ‘We’ve sent him a holding letter – “your request is being considered by the minister”.’
    ‘Can I borrow these?’
    Calmon-Maison responds as if reciting a legal formula: ‘The minister has asked me to tell you that he can see no objection to your making use of these letters as part of your inquiry.’
    Back in my office, I sit at my desk with the letters in front of me. The writing is neat, regular, well spaced. I am almost sure I have seen it before. At first I think it must be because the script is quite similar to that of Dreyfus, whose correspondence I have spent so many hours studying lately.
    And then I remember the bordereau – the covering note that was retrieved from Schwartzkoppen’s waste-paper basket and that convicted Dreyfus of treason.
    I look at the letters again.
    No, surely not . . .
    I rise from my seat like a man in a dream and take the few steps across the carpet to the safe. My hand shakes very slightly as I insert the key. The envelope containing the photograph of the bordereau is still there, where Sandherr left it: I have been meaning for months to take it upstairs to Gribelin so he can file it away in his archive.
    The bordereau , in facsimile, is a column of thirty narrow lines of handwriting – undated, unaddressed, unsigned:
I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information . . .
     
A note on the hydraulic brake of the 120 and how that part performed
A note on covering troops (several modifications will be introduced by the new plan)
A note on the change to artillery formations
A note concerning Madagascar
The draft Field Artillery Firing Manual (14 March 1894)
    The last paragraph explains that the Ministry of War will not permit individual officers to keep possession of the Field Artillery Firing Manual for very long, therefore if you would like to take from it what interests you and afterwards leave it at my disposal, I will collect it. Otherwise I can copy it verbatim and send you the copy. I am off to manoeuvres.
    The leading handwriting expert in Paris swore that this was written by Dreyfus. I carry the photograph over to my desk and place it between the two letters from Esterhazy. I stoop for a closer look.
    The writing is identical.

10
    FOR SEVERAL MINUTES I sit motionless, holding the photograph. I might be made of marble, a sculpture by Rodin: The Reader . What really freezes me, even more than the matching handwriting, is the content – the obsession with artillery, the offer to have a manual copied out verbatim, the obsequious salesman’s tone – it is Esterhazy to the life.