An Officer and a Spy

Mercier, Boisdeffre, Gonse, Sandherr, du Paty, Henry, Lauth, Gribelin, Guénée; to these nine, thanks to my briefing yesterday, can now be added Billot – that’s ten; and then there are the seven judges, starting with Colonel Maurel – seventeen – and President Fauré, and the President’s doctor, Gibert – that’s nineteen – who was the man who told Mathieu Dreyfus – who makes twenty; and after that – who knows how many more Mathieu has told?
    There is no such thing as a secret – not really, not in the modern world, not with photography and telegraphy and railways and newspaper presses. The old days of an inner circle of like-minded souls communicating with parchment and quill pens are gone. Sooner or later most things will be revealed. That is what I have been attempting to make Gonse understand.
    I massage my temples, trying to think it through. The leak ought to vindicate my position. But I suspect it is more likely to make Gonse and Boisdeffre panic and strengthen their determination to limit the investigation.
    Guénée arrives in my office towards the end of the morning, jaundice-yellow as usual and smelling like the inside of an old tobacco pipe. He has brought with him the Dreyfus surveillance file. He looks around nervously. ‘Is Major Henry here?’
    ‘Henry’s still on leave. You’ll have to deal with me.’
    Guénée sits and opens his file. ‘It’s the Dreyfus family who are behind it, Colonel, almost certainly.’
    ‘Even though the tone of the L’Éclair article is hostile to Dreyfus?’
    ‘That’s just to cover their tracks. The editor, Sabatier, has been got at by them – we’ve monitored him meeting both Mathieu and Lucie. This is part of a pattern of increased activity by the family lately – you may have noticed. They’ve hired the Cook Detective Agency in London to dig for information.’
    ‘And have they got anywhere?’
    ‘Not that we know of, Colonel. That may be why they’ve changed their tactics and decided to become more public. It was a journalist employed by the detective agency who planted the false story that Dreyfus had escaped.’
    ‘Why would they do that?’
    ‘I suppose, to get people talking about him again.’
    ‘Well then, I’d say they’ve succeeded, wouldn’t you?’
    Guénée lights a cigarette. His hands are shaking. He says, ‘You remember a year ago, I told you about a Jewish journalist the family were talking to – Bernard Lazare? Anarchist, socialist, Jewish activist?’
    ‘What about him?’
    ‘He now seems to be writing a pamphlet in defence of Dreyfus.’
    He searches through the file and gives me a photograph of a heavyset, youngish man in pince-nez with a huge balding forehead and a heavy beard. Clipped to it is a selection of newspaper cuttings authored by Lazare: ‘The New Ghetto’, ‘Anti-Semitism and Anti-Semites’, a series of recent articles in La Voltaire attacking Drumont of La Libre Parole ( you are not invulnerable, neither you nor your friends . . . ).
    ‘Quite the polemicist,’ I say, flicking through it. ‘And now he’s working with Mathieu Dreyfus?’
    ‘No doubt of it.’
    ‘So he’s another who must know about the secret file?’
    Guénée hesitates. ‘Yes, presumably.’
    I add Lazare’s name to the list; that makes twenty-one; this is becoming hopeless. ‘Do we know when this pamphlet is likely to appear?’
    ‘We haven’t picked up anything from our sources in the French printing trade. They may be planning to publish abroad. We don’t know. They’ve become much more professional.’
    ‘What a mess!’ I toss the photograph of Lazare back across the desk towards Guénée. ‘This secret file is going to become a real embarrassment. You were involved in its compilation, isn’t that right?’
    I don’t ask the question in an interrogatory way, but entirely casually. To my surprise Guénée frowns and shakes his head, as if making a great effort at memory. ‘Ah no, Colonel, not I.’
    The stupid lie puts me on immediate alert. ‘No? But surely you provided Major Henry with a statement from the Spanish military attaché? It was a central part of the case against Dreyfus.’
    ‘Did I?’ Suddenly he looks less sure.
    ‘Well, did you or didn’t you? Major Henry says you did.’
    ‘Then I must have.’
    ‘I have it here, in fact: what you said Val Carlos told you.’ I take the secret file from my desk drawer, open it and extract Henry’s deposition. Guénée’s eyes widen in