An Officer and a Spy

photograph of the bordereau .
    Once again I am surprised by how quick on the uptake he is. Ancient he may be – a captain of infantry before I was even born – yet he looks from one to the other and grasps the implications immediately. ‘Well I’ll be blessed!’ He makes a clicking sound with his tongue. ‘You’ve had the handwriting checked, I presume?’
    ‘By the original police expert, Bertillon, yes. He says it is identical. Naturally I’d like to get other opinions.’
    ‘Have you shown this to General Boisdeffre?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What’s his opinion?’
    ‘He referred me to General Gonse.’
    ‘And Gonse?’
    ‘He wants me to abandon my investigation.’
    ‘Does he, indeed? Why’s that?’
    ‘Because he believes, as do I, that it would almost certainly set in train a process that would lead to an official revision of the Dreyfus affair.’
    ‘Heavens! That would be an earthquake!’
    ‘It would, Minister, especially as we would have to reveal the existence of this . . .’
    I hand him the secret file. He squints at it. ‘“D”? What the hell is this?’ He has never even heard of it. I have to explain. I show him the contents, item by item. Once again he goes straight to the heart of the matter. He extracts the letter referring to ‘that lowlife D’ and holds it close to his face. His lips move as he reads. The backs of his hands are flaking like his scalp, and mottled with liver spots: an old lizard who has survived more summers than anyone could believe possible.
    When he gets to the end he says, ‘Who’s “Alexandrine”?’
    ‘That’s von Schwartzkoppen. He and the Italian military attaché call one another by women’s names.’
    ‘Why would they do that?’
    ‘Because they are buggers, Minister.’
    ‘Good God!’ Billot pulls a face. He holds the letter gingerly between finger and thumb and passes it back to me. ‘You have a pretty tawdry job, Picquart.’
    ‘I know that, General. I didn’t ask for it. But now I have it, it seems to me I must do it properly.’
    ‘I agree.’
    ‘And in my view, that means investigating Esterhazy thoroughly for the crimes he’s committed. And if it transpires that we have to fetch Dreyfus back from Devil’s Island – well, I say it’s better for us in the army to rectify our own mistake rather than be forced to do it by outside pressure later.’
    Billot stares into the middle distance, his right thumb and forefinger smoothing down his moustaches. He grunts as he thinks. ‘This secret file,’ he says after a while. ‘Surely it’s against the law to pass evidence to the judges without letting the defence have a chance to challenge it first?’
    ‘It is. I regret having been a party to it.’
    ‘So whose decision was it?’
    ‘Ultimately, it was General Mercier’s, as Minister of War.’
    ‘Ha! Mercier? Really? I suppose I might have guessed he’d be in there somewhere!’ The staring and the moustache-smoothing and the grunting resume. Eventually he gives a long sigh. ‘I don’t know, Picquart. It’s a devil of a problem. You’re going to have to let me think about it. Obviously, there would be consequences if it turned out we had locked up the wrong man for all this time, especially having made such a public spectacle out of doing it – profound consequences, for both the army and the country. I’d have to talk to the Prime Minister. And I can’t do that for at least a week – I’ve got the annual manoeuvres in Rouillac starting on Monday.’
    ‘I appreciate that, General. But in the meantime do I have your permission to continue my investigation of Esterhazy?’
    The massive head nods slowly. ‘I should think so, my boy, yes.’
    ‘Wherever the investigation leads me?’
    Another heavy nod: ‘Yes.’
    Filled with renewed energy, that evening I meet Desvernine in our usual rendezvous at the gare Saint-Lazare. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since the middle of August. I am slightly late. He is already sitting waiting for me in a corner seat, reading Le Vélo . He has stopped drinking beer, I notice, and gone back to mineral water. As I slip into the chair opposite him, I nod to his newspaper. ‘I didn’t know you were a cyclist.’
    ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Colonel. I’ve had a machine for ten years.’ He folds the paper up small and stuffs it into his pocket. He seems to be in a bad mood.
    I say, ‘No notebook today?’
    He shrugs his shoulders. ‘There’s nothing to