An Officer and a Spy

of War has evidence of his dealings with Germany. We have taken all necessary precautions.
    I copy it down in my notebook. Beyond the window, the Eiffel Tower is a cascade of tumbling light. There is one last final thunderous explosion and slowly it fades into darkness. I hear a faint roar of applause. The display is over. I estimate it would take someone roughly thirty minutes to escape from the crowds in the Trocadéro gardens and get back to the section.
    I return my attention to the glued-together documents.
    Much of the material is incomplete or pointless, its sense tantalisingly out of reach. It suddenly strikes me as madness to try to read so much meaning into such detritus: that we are little better than the haruspices of the ancient world who decided public policy by scrutinising animal livers. My eyes feel gritty. I have been stuck in my office without food since noon. Perhaps that explains why, when I do come to the crucial document, I miss it at first, and move on to the next. But it nags at my mind, and then I go back and look at it again.
    It is a short note, in thin black ink, on squared white paper, torn into twenty pieces, a few of which are missing. The writer is offering to sell Schwartzkoppen ‘the secret of smokeless powder’. It is signed your devoted Dubois and dated 27 October 1894 – two weeks after Dreyfus’s arrest.
    I delve a little further into the file. Two days later, Dubois writes to the German attaché again: I can procure for you a cartridge from the Lebel rifle that will enable you to analyse the secret of the smokeless powder. Schwartzkoppen does not seem to have done anything about it. Why should he? The letter looks cranky and I guess he could go into almost any bar in any garrison town in France and pick up a Lebel cartridge for the price of a beer.
    It is the name of the signatory that interests me. Dubois? I am sure I have just read that name. I go back to the pile of letters from Panizzardi to Schwartzkoppen. My beautiful little girl . . . My little green dog . . . Dear Top Bugger . . . Your devoted bugger 2nd class . . . And here it is: in a note of 1893, the Italian writes to Schwartzkoppen: I have seen M. Dubois.
    Attached to the letter is a cross-reference to a file. It takes me several minutes to work out Gribelin’s system and track it down. In a folder I find a brief report addressed to Colonel Sandherr by Major Henry dated April 1894 regarding the possible identity of the agent referred to as ‘D’ who has provided the Germans and Italians with ‘twelve master plans of Nice’. Henry’s conclusion is that he is one Jacques Dubois, a printer who works for a factory that handles Ministry of War contracts: it is he who has probably also provided the Germans with large-scale drawings of the fortifications at Toul, Reims, Langres, Neufchâteau, and the rest. When he sets the printing machine for a run, it is a simple matter for him to print off extra copies for his own use. I interviewed him yesterday , relates Henry, and found him to be a miserable fellow, a criminal fantasist with limited intelligence and no access to classified material. The plans he has handed over are publicly available. Recommendation: no further action necessary .
    So there it is. ‘D’ is not Dreyfus; he is Dubois.
    You order me to shoot a man and I’ll shoot him . . .
    I have made a careful note of where every document and folder originated and now I start the laborious process of putting each one back in its proper place. It takes me perhaps ten minutes to return it all exactly to where it was, to lock up the filing cabinets and wipe down the table surfaces. By the time I finish it is just after ten. I replace Gribelin’s keys in his desk drawer, kneel, and set about the tricky business of locking it again. I am conscious of the minutes passing as I try to manipulate the two thin metal tools. My hands are clumsy with tiredness and slippery with sweat. For some reason it seems much harder to close a lock than open one, but at last I manage it. I turn off the lights.
    My only remaining task is to relock the door to the archive. I am still on my knees in the corridor fiddling with the tumblers when I think I hear the front door slam downstairs. I pause, straining to hear. I can’t pick out any suspicious noises. I must be imagining things. I resume my frustrating efforts. But then comes the definite creak of a footstep on the first-floor landing and someone begins to