An Officer and a Spy

‘The colonel has no time for your nonsense. You can get out of here now. Wait for me in the lobby.’
    The forger grins at me. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Colonel.’
    ‘It’s mutual. And I’d like my sheet of handwriting back, if you please.’
    ‘Oh yes,’ he says, pulling it out of his pocket. ‘I almost forgot.’
    After he’s gone, Desvernine says, ‘I thought you ought to know that Esterhazy seems to have done a runner. He and his wife have moved out of the apartment in the rue de la Bienfaisance – and left in a hurry, by the look of it.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘I’ve been inside. Don’t worry – I didn’t have to do anything illegal. It’s up for rent. I pretended I was looking for a place. They’ve taken away most of their furniture, just left a few bits of rubbish. He burned a lot of paper in the hearth. I found this.’
    It is a visiting card, singed at the edges:
    Édouard Drumont
    Editor
    La Libre Parole
    I turn it back and forth. ‘So Esterhazy’s a contributor to that anti-Jewish rag?’
    ‘Apparently. Or perhaps he just gives them information – plenty in the army do. The thing is, Colonel – he’s gone to ground. He’s not in Paris. He’s not even in Rouen any more. He’s moved out to the Ardennes.’
    ‘Do you think he knows we’re on to him?’
    ‘I’m not sure. But I don’t like the smell of it. I think if we’re going to lay our trap we need to do it quickly.’
    ‘Have we done anything about those speaking-tubes yet?’
    ‘They came out yesterday.’
    ‘Good. And how soon before the flues can be bricked up again?’
    ‘We have a man going in tonight.’
    ‘All right. Leave it with me.’
    Billot is my only hope now. Billot: the old lizard, the old survivor, the two times Minister of War – surely he will realise not just the immorality but the political insanity of the General Staff’s policy?
    He is due to return from the manoeuvres in the south-west on Friday. That morning Le Figaro publishes on its front page the text of a petition sent by Lucie Dreyfus to the Chamber of Deputies, pointing out that the government hasn’t denied the stories about the secret file:
And so it must be true that a French officer has been convicted by a court martial on a charge produced by the prosecution without his knowledge, which therefore neither he nor his counsel was able to discuss.
It is the denial of all justice.
I have been the victim of the most cruel martyrdom for almost two years – like the man in whose innocence I have absolute faith. I have remained silent despite the odious and absurd slanders propagated amongst the public and the press.
Today it is my duty to break that silence, and without comment or recriminations I address myself to you, gentlemen, the only power to whom I can have recourse – and I demand justice.
    In the narrow, gloomy passages and stairwells of the Statistical Section there is silence. My officers shut themselves away in their rooms. Hourly I expect to be summoned over the road by Gonse for an explanation of this latest bombshell, but the telephone never rings. From my office I keep half an eye on the back of the hôtel de Brienne. Finally, just after three o’clock, I glimpse uniformed orderlies with dispatch cases passing behind its tall windows. The minister must be back. The topography works in my favour: Gonse, sitting in the rue Saint-Dominique, will not yet know he has returned. I go down into the rue de l’Université, cross the street and take out my key to let myself into the minister’s garden.
    And then something odd happens. My key does not fit. I try it three or four times, dully refusing to believe it won’t work. But the shape of the lock is entirely different to what it used to be. Eventually I give up and walk the long way round, via the place du Palais Bourbon, like any ordinary mortal.
    ‘Colonel Picquart to see the Minister of War . . .’
    The sentry lets me through the gate but the captain of the Republican Guard in the downstairs lobby asks me to wait. After a few minutes, Captain Calmon-Maison comes downstairs.
    I hold up my key to show him. ‘It doesn’t work any more.’ I try to make a joke of it. ‘Like Adam, I appear to have been expelled from the garden for an excess of curiosity.’
    Calmon-Maison’s face is deadpan. ‘I’m sorry, Colonel. We have to change the locks occasionally – security, you understand.’
    ‘You don’t have to explain, Captain. But I still need to brief the