An Officer and a Spy

retrieves one of his ubiquitous manila files. He opens it, and with some reverence retrieves from it the bordereau . It is not at all what I expected. It weighs almost nothing. The paper is flimsy onion-skin, semi-transparent, written on both sides, so that the ink from one bleeds through and shows on the other. The most substantial thing about it is the adhesive tape holding together the six torn pieces.
    I say, ‘You’d never guess it looked like this from the photograph.’
    ‘No, it was quite a process.’ Gribelin’s normally astringent tone is softened by a touch of professional pride. ‘We had to photograph both sides and then retouch them, and then stick them together and finally re-photograph the whole image. So it came out looking like a continuous sheet of writing.’
    ‘How many prints did you make?’
    ‘Twelve. It was necessary to disguise its original state so that we could circulate it around the ministry.’
    ‘Yes, of course. I remember.’ I turn the bordereau back and forth, marvelling once again at Lauth’s skill. ‘I remember it very well.’
    It was the first week of October 1894 when word began to spread that there might be a traitor in the Ministry. All four chiefs of department were required to check the handwriting of every officer in their section, to see if anyone’s matched the photograph. They were sworn to secrecy, allowed only to tell their deputies. Colonel Boucher devolved the job to me.
    Despite the restricted circle, it was inevitable that news would leak, and soon a miasma of unease infiltrated the rue Saint-Dominique. The problem lay in that five-point list of the documents betrayed, which set us all chasing our own tails. A ‘note on the hydraulic brake of the 120’ and the ‘draft Field Artillery Firing Manual’ suggested the spy must be in the artillery. But the ‘new plan’ mentioned in point two was the very phrase we used in the Third Department for the revised mobilisation schedule. Of course, the ‘new plan’ was also being studied by the railway timetable experts in the Fourth, so the spy could work there perhaps. But then the ‘note on the change to artillery formations’ was most likely to have come from the First. Whereas the plan to occupy Madagascar had been worked on by the intelligence officers in the Second . . .
    Everyone suspected everyone else. Old incidents were dredged up and picked over, ancient rumours and feuds revived. The ministry was paralysed by suspicion. I went through the handwriting of every officer on our list, even Boucher’s; even mine. I found no match.
    And then someone – it was Colonel d’Aboville, deputy chief of the Fourth – had a flash of inspiration. If the traitor could draw on current knowledge of all four departments, wasn’t it reasonable to assume that he had recently worked in all four? And unlikely as it seemed, there was a group of officers on the General Staff of whom that was true: the stagiaires from the École Supérieure de Guerre – men who were relative strangers to their long-serving comrades. Suddenly it was obvious: the traitor was a stagiaire with a background in artillery.
    Eight captains of artillery on the stagiaire programme fitted that particular bill, but only one of them was a Jew: a Jew moreover who spoke French with a German accent, whose family lived in the Kaiser’s Reich and who always had money to throw around.
    Gribelin, watching me, says, ‘I’m sure you remember the bordereau , Colonel.’ He gives one of his rare smiles. ‘Just as I remember that you were the one who provided us with the sample of Dreyfus’s handwriting that matched it.’
    It was Colonel Boucher who brought me the request from the Statistical Section. Normally he was loud and cheerfully red-faced, but on this occasion he was sombre, even grey. It was a Saturday morning, two days after we had started hunting for the traitor. He closed the door behind him and said, ‘It looks like we might be getting close to the bastard’
    ‘Really? That’s quick.’
    ‘General Gonse wants to see some handwriting belonging to Captain Dreyfus.’
    ‘Dreyfus?’ I repeated, surprised.
    Boucher explained d’Aboville’s theory. ‘And so,’ he concluded, ‘they’ve decided the traitor must be one of your stagiaires .’
    ‘One of my stagiaires ?’ I did not like the sound of that!
    I had skimmed through Dreyfus’s file the previous day and eliminated him as a suspect. Now I pulled it out again and