An Officer and a Spy

My eye is caught by something at a first-floor window: the pale face of a young boy, like an invalid confined indoors, looking down at me; an adult comes to join him — a young woman with a face as white as his, framed by dark curls — his mother, perhaps. She stands behind him with her hands on his arms, and together they stare at me — a uniformed colonel watching them from the street — until she whispers in his ear and gently pulls him away, and they disappear.

4

The following morning I describe the strange apparition to Major Henry. He frowns.

‘The first-floor window of number six? That must have been Dreyfus’s wife, and his little boy — what is he called? — Pierre, that’s it. And there’s a girl, Jeanne. Madame Dreyfus keeps the kids at home all day, so they don’t pick up stories about their father. She’s told them he’s on a special mission abroad.’

‘And they believe her?’

‘Why wouldn’t they? They’re only tiny.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Oh, we still keep an eye on them, don’t worry.’

‘How close an eye?’

‘We have an agent on their domestic staff. We follow them. We intercept their mail.’

‘Even six months after Dreyfus was convicted?’

‘Colonel Sandherr had a theory that Dreyfus might turn out to be part of a spying syndicate. He thought that if we watched the family we might uncover leads to other traitors.’

‘But we haven’t?’

‘Not yet.’

I lounge back in my chair and study Henry. He is friendly-looking, apparently out of condition but still, I would guess, underneath the layer of fat, physically strong: the sort of fellow who would be stood a lot of drinks in a bar, and would know how to tell a good story when he was in the mood. We are about as dissimilar as it is possible for two men to be. ‘Did you know,’ I ask, ‘that Colonel Sandherr’s apartment is only about a hundred metres from the Dreyfus place?’

From time to time a sly look can come into Henry’s eyes. It is the only crack in his armour of bonhomie. He says, in an off-handed way, ‘Is it as close as that? I hadn’t realised.’

‘Yes. In fact it seems to me, looking at the location, they’re bound to have met occasionally, even if only casually in the street.’

‘That may well be. I do know the colonel tried to avoid him. He didn’t like him — thought he was always asking too many questions.’

I bet he didn’t like him, I think. The Jew with the vast apartment and a view of the river. . I imagine Sandherr striding briskly towards the rue Saint-Dominique at nine o’clock one morning and the young captain attempting to fall in beside him and engage him in conversation. Dreyfus always seemed to me, when I dealt with him, to have something missing from his brain: some vital piece of social equipment which should have told him when he was boring people or that they didn’t wish to speak to him. But he was incapable of recognising his effect on others, while Sandherr, who could see a conspiracy in a pair of butterflies alighting on the same bloom, would have become increasingly suspicious of his inquisitive Jewish neighbour.

I open my desk drawer and take out the various medicines I discovered the previous day: a couple of tins and two small dark blue bottles. I show them to Henry. ‘Colonel Sandherr left these behind.’

‘That was an oversight. May I?’ Henry takes them from me with fumbling hands. In his clumsiness he almost drops one of the bottles. ‘I’ll see they get returned to him.’

I can’t resist saying, ‘Mercury, extract of guaiacum and potassium iodine. . You do know what these are normally used to treat, don’t you?’

‘No. I’m not a doctor. .’

I decide not to pursue it. ‘I want a full report of what the Dreyfus family are up to — who they’re seeing, whatever they might be doing to help the prisoner. I also want to read all of Dreyfus’s correspondence, to and from Devil’s Island. I assume it’s being censored, and we have copies?’

‘Naturally. I’ll tell Gribelin to arrange it.’ He hesitates. ‘Might I ask, Colonel: why all this interest in Dreyfus?’

‘General Boisdeffre thinks it might turn into a political issue. He wants us to be prepared.’

‘I understand. I’ll get on to it at once.’

He leaves, cradling Sandherr’s medicines. Of course he knows exactly what they’re prescribed for: we’ve both hauled enough men out of unregistered brothels in our time to know the standard treatment. And so I am left to ponder the implications of inheriting a secret intelligence service from a predecessor who is apparently suffering from tertiary syphilis, more commonly known as general paralysis of the insane.