An Officer and a Spy

report. Benefactor’s still on leave at his wife’s place in the Ardennes. The embassy’s quiet, half shut up for the summer – no sign of either of our men for weeks. And your friend Monsieur Ducasse has had enough and gone to Brittany for a holiday. I tried to stop him but he said if he stayed in the rue de Lille much longer he’d go crazy. I can’t say I blame him.’
    ‘You sound frustrated.’
    ‘Well, Colonel, it’s been five months since I started investigating this bastard – if you’ll excuse me – and I don’t know what else we’re supposed to do. Either we pick him up and sweat him for a bit, see if we can make him admit something, or we suspend the operation: that would be my proposal. Either way, the weather’s turning colder and we ought to pull those speaking-tubes out within a day or two. If the Germans decide to light a fire, we’ll be in trouble.’
    ‘Well, for once let me show you something,’ I say, and pass the photographs of Esterhazy’s letters face-down across the table. ‘Benefactor is trying to get a position on the General Staff.’
    Desvernine looks at the letters and immediately his expression brightens. ‘The bastard!’ he repeats happily, under his breath. ‘He must owe more than we thought.’
    I wish I could tell him about the bordereau and Dreyfus and the secret file, but I daren’t, not yet – not until I have official clearance from Billot to broaden the scope of my inquiry.
    Desvernine says, ‘What do you propose to do about him, Colonel?’
    ‘I think we need to become much more active. I’m going to suggest to the minister that he actually agrees to Benefactor’s request and gives him a position on the General Staff, in a department where we can monitor him round the clock. We should let him believe he has access to secret material – something apparently valuable, but which we’ve forged – and then we should follow him and see what he does with it.’
    ‘That’s good. And I’ll tell you what else we could do, if we’re indulging in a little forgery. Why don’t we send him a fake message from the Germans inviting him to a meeting to discuss the future? If Benefactor turns up, that’s incriminating in itself. But if he turns up carrying secret material, we’ll have caught him red-handed.’
    I think this over. ‘Is there a forger we could use?’
    ‘I’d suggest Lemercier-Picard.’
    ‘Is he trustworthy?
    ‘He’s a forger, Colonel. He’s about as trustworthy as a snake. His real name is Moisés Lehmann. But he did a lot of work for the section when Colonel Sandherr was there, and he knows we’ll come looking for him if he tries to pull any tricks. I’ll find out where he is.’
    Desvernine leaves looking much happier than he did when I arrived. I stay to finish my drink, then take a taxi home.
    The next day it suddenly starts to feel like autumn – a threatening dark grey sky, windy, the first leaves blowing off the trees and chasing down the boulevards. Desvernine is right: we need to get those sound-tubes out of the apartment in the rue de Lille as soon as possible.
    I arrive at the office at my usual time and quickly scan the day’s papers laid out ready for me by Capiaux on my table. Le Figaro ’s description of Dreyfus’s conditions on Devil’s Island has stirred up the sediment of opinion again, and everywhere Dreyfus is widely denounced: ‘Make him suffer even more’ seems to be the collective view. But it is a story in L’Éclair that brings me up short – an anonymous article headlined ‘The Traitor’ which alleges that Dreyfus’s guilt was proved beyond doubt by ‘a secret file of evidence’ passed to the judges at his court martial. The author calls on the army to publish the contents in order to put an end to the ‘inexplicable sense of pity’ surrounding the spy.
    This is the first time the existence of the secret file has been mentioned in the press. The coincidence that it should happen now, of all times, just as I have taken possession of the dossier, makes me uneasy. I march down the corridor to Lauth’s office and drop the newspaper on his desk. ‘Seen this?’
    Lauth reads it and looks up at me, alarmed. ‘Somebody must be talking.’
    ‘Find Guénée,’ I order him. ‘He’s supposed to be monitoring the Dreyfus family. Tell him to come over here now.’
    I walk back to my office, unlock my safe and take out the secret file. I sit at my desk and make a list of everyone who knows about it: