An Officer and a Spy (48 page)

Behind me the soldier says, “We really ought to be going, Colonel, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes, of course. Just let me finish this.”

I flick through to the end.

I fold up the paper and clamber back into the carriage.

The elderly colonel says, “Anything interesting?” Without waiting for my reply he adds: “I didn’t think so. There never is.” He thumps the roof of the carriage. “Drive on!”

Mont-Valérien is a huge square-fronted fortress on the western edge of the city, part of the ring of defensive garrisons around Paris. I am escorted up a winding staircase to the third floor of a wing reserved for officers. I am the only prisoner. Day or night there is little to hear in winter except the wind moaning around the battlements. My door is kept locked at all times; a sentry guards the foot of the stairs. I have a small sitting room, a bedroom and a lavatory. The barred windows offer panoramic views across the Seine and the Bois de Boulogne to the Eiffel Tower, eight kilometres to the east.

If my enemies on the General Staff imagine that this represents some kind of hardship for me, they are mistaken. I have a bed and a chair, pen and paper, and plenty of books—Goethe, Heine, Ibsen. Proust kindly sends me his collected writings,
Les Plaisirs et les Jours;
my sister a new French–Russian dictionary. What more does a man want? I am imprisoned and I am liberated. The solitary burden of secrecy that I have carried all these months has been lifted.

Two days after my arrival the government is obliged to accept the challenge that Zola has thrown down to it, and lodges a charge against him of criminal libel. This will have to be heard not in secret, in some poky chamber controlled by the army, but in public in the Court of Assize inside the Palace of Justice. The case is pushed to the top of the waiting list so that the trial can start as soon as possible. The fortress commander refuses to allow visits from anyone who is not a serving officer, but even he can’t prevent me from seeing my lawyer. Louis brings me the subpoena. I am summoned to give evidence on Friday, 11 February.

I study it. “What will happen if Zola is found guilty?”

We are sitting in the visitors’ room: bars on the windows, two plain wooden chairs and a wooden table; a guard stands outside the door and pretends not to listen.

Louis says, “He’ll go to prison for a year.”

“It was a brave thing he did.”

“It was a damned brave thing,” agrees Louis. “I only wish he’d tempered his bravery with a little prudence. But he got carried away and couldn’t resist putting in this sentence at the end about the Esterhazy court-martial—‘I accuse them of knowingly acquitting a guilty man in obedience to orders’—and it’s for that the government are going after him.”

“Not for his accusations against Boisdeffre and the others?”

“No, all that they ignore. Their intention is to restrict the trial to this one tiny issue on which they can be certain of winning. It also means that anything to do with Dreyfus will be ruled inadmissible unless it relates strictly to the Esterhazy court-martial.”

“So we’ll lose again?”

“There are occasions when losing is a victory, so long as there is a fight.”

In the Ministry of War they are clearly nervous about what I might say. A few days before the trial an old comrade of mine, Colonel Bailloud, comes out to Mont-Valérien to “try to talk some sense” into me. He waits until we are in the yard, where I am allowed to take exercise for two hours each day, before delivering his message.

“I am empowered to tell you,” he says pompously, “on the highest authority, that if you show some discretion, your career will not suffer.”

“If I keep my mouth shut, you mean?”

“ ‘Discretion’ was the word that was used.”

My first response is to laugh. “This is from Gonse, I take it?”

“I prefer not to say.”

“Well, you can tell him from me that I haven’t forgotten I’m still a soldier and that I’ll do my best to reconcile my duty of confidentiality with my obligations as a witness. Is that sufficient? Now clear off back to Paris, there’s a good fellow, and let me walk in peace.”

On the appointed day I am taken by military carriage to the Palace
of Justice on the Île de la Cité, wearing my uniform as a Tunisian rifleman. I have given my word that I won’t attempt to leave the precincts of the palace and will return to Mont-Valérien with my gaolers at the end of the day’s session. As a quid pro quo I am allowed to walk into the building freely, without an escort. In the boulevard du Palais there is an anti-Semitic demonstration. “Death to the Jews!” “Death to the traitors!” “Yids to the water!” My face is recognised, perhaps from some of the vile caricatures that have appeared in
La Libre Parole
and similar rags, and a few ruffians break away from the rest and try to pursue me into the courtyard and up the steps of the palace, but they are stopped by the gendarmes. I can understand why Mathieu Dreyfus has announced he will not be attending the court.

The high vaulted hall of the palace, ablaze on this dull February day with electric light, is crowded and noisy like the concourse of some fantastical railway station: clerks and court messengers hurrying with legal documents, lawyers in their black robes gossiping and consulting with their clients, anxious plaintiffs and defendants, witnesses, gendarmes, reporters, army officers, poor people seeking shelter from the winter cold, ladies and gentlemen of high fashion who have managed to acquire a ticket to the Zola sensation—the whole of society throngs the Salle des Pas-Perdus and the endless Galerie des Prisonniers. Bells ring. Shouts and footsteps echo on the marble. I pass more or less unnoticed apart from the occasional nudge and stare. I find my way to the witness room and give my name to the usher. Half an hour later I am called.

First impressions of the Assize Court: size and grandeur, space, heavy wooden panelling and gleaming brass fixtures, the density of the crowd, the buzz of their conversation, the silence that falls as I walk up the aisle, my boots clicking on the parquet floor, through the little wooden gate in the railing that separates the judge and jury from the spectators, towards the semicircular bar of the witness stand in the well of the court.

“Will the witness state his name?”

“Marie-Georges Picquart.”

“Place of residence?”

“Mont-Valérien.”

That draws a laugh, and I have a moment to take my bearings: to
one side of me the box of twelve jurors, all of them ordinary tradesmen; high on his bench the big round-faced judge, Delegorgue, in his scarlet robes; beneath him a dozen lawyers in their priestlike black vestments, including the Advocate General, Van Cassel, leading for the government; seated at a table Zola, who gives me an encouraging nod, as does his co-defendant, Perrenx, manager of
L’Aurore;
alongside them their counsel—Fernand Labori for Zola, Albert Clemenceau for Perrenx, and Georges Clemenceau, who has somehow gained permission to sit with his brother, even though he is not a lawyer; and behind me, like the congregation in a church, the spectators, including a solid block of dark-uniformed officers, among them Gonse, Pellieux, Henry, Lauth and Gribelin.

Labori rises. He is a young giant, tall and broad, blond-haired and -bearded—a piratical figure: “the Viking,” as he is known, famous for his combative style. He says, “Will Colonel Picquart tell us what he knows of the Esterhazy case, of the investigation that he made, and of the circumstances that accompanied or followed his departure from the Ministry of War?”

He sits.

I grip the wooden rail of the witness stand to stop my hands shaking and take a breath. “In the spring of 1896, the fragments of a letter-telegram fell into my hands …”

I speak uninterruptedly for more than an hour, pausing occasionally to take sips of water. I draw on my training as a lecturer at the war school. I try to imagine I am teaching a particularly complicated lesson in topography. I don’t use notes. Also I am determined to keep my composure—to be polite, precise, unemotional—not to betray any secrets, nor to indulge in personal attacks. I confine myself to the overwhelming case against Esterhazy: the evidence of the
petit bleu
, his immoral character, his need for money, his suspicious interest in artillery matters, the fact that his handwriting matches that of the
bordereau
. I describe how I took my suspicions to my superiors and ended up being sent to North Africa, and the machinations that have been launched against me since. The packed courtroom listens to me in complete silence. I can feel my words striking home. The
faces of the General Staff officers, when I happen to turn and catch them, look grimmer by the minute.

At the end, Labori questions me. “Does the witness think that these machinations were the work of Major Esterhazy alone, or does he think that Major Esterhazy had accomplices?”

I take my time replying. “I believe that he had accomplices.”

“Accomplices inside the Ministry of War?”

“There certainly must have been one accomplice who was familiar with what was going on in the Ministry of War.”

“Which in your opinion was the more damaging evidence against Major Esterhazy—the
bordereau
or the
petit bleu
?”

“The
bordereau
.”

“Did you say as much to General Gonse?”

“I did.”

“Then how could General Gonse instruct you to separate the Dreyfus case from the Esterhazy case?”

“I can only tell you what he said.”

“But if Major Esterhazy is the author of the
bordereau
, the charge against Dreyfus falls?”

“Yes—that is why to me it never made sense to separate them.”

The judge intervenes. “Do you remember sending for Maître Leblois to call on you at your office?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the date?”

“He came in the spring of ’96. I wanted his advice on the issue of carrier pigeons.”

“Monsieur Gribelin,” says the judge, “will you step forward? This is not your recollection, I believe?”

I half turn to watch Gribelin rise from his place among the General Staff. He comes to join me at the front of the court. He doesn’t look in my direction.

“No, Monsieur President. One evening in October ’96 I went into Colonel Picquart’s office to get leave of absence. He was sitting at his desk with the carrier pigeon file to his right and the secret file to his left.”

The judge looks at me. I say politely, “Monsieur Gribelin is mistaken. Either his memory fails him or he has confused the files.”

Gribelin’s body stiffens. “Believe what I say: I saw it.”

I smile at him, determined to keep control of my temper. “But I say that you did not see it.”

The judge interjects: “Colonel Picquart, did you once ask Monsieur Gribelin to stamp a letter?”

“To stamp a letter?”

“To stamp a letter, not with the date of its arrival, but with an earlier date?”

“No.”

Gribelin says sarcastically, “Colonel, let me refresh your memory. You returned to your office one afternoon at two o’clock. You sent for me, and as you were taking off your overcoat, you said: ‘Gribelin, could you get the post office to stamp a letter?’ ”

“I have no such recollection.”

The judge says, “But surely you made the same request of Major Lauth?”

“Never.” I shake my head. “Never, never.”

“Major Lauth, would you come forward, please?”

Lauth rises from his place next to Henry and comes to join us. Staring straight ahead, as if on parade, he says, “Colonel Picquart asked me to remove all traces of tearing from the
petit bleu
. He said, ‘Do you think we could get this stamped by the post office?’ He also said that I should testify that I recognised the handwriting on the
petit bleu
as being that of a certain foreign gentleman. But I said to him, ‘I never saw this handwriting before.’ ”

I look at the pair of them: clearly years of running spies has made facile liars of them both. I grit my teeth. “But this was a document torn into sixty pieces,” I say, “fastened together by adhesive strips on the side where the address was written. How could a stamp have been put on that? It would have looked ridiculous.”