knew that Dreyfus was being framed by the Army General Staff, so it’s true some would have wanted them dead. Perhaps the dead man was one of them.”
I took another swallow of coffee, suddenly aware of Jack’s breathing on the other end. It was slightly wheezy as if Jack had asthma from time to time.
“Do me a favor, Frances, I don’t have much time; try to unspool the rest of the Dreyfus film.”
“Would you like to come in and see the first minute? That’s all I’ve worked on so far.”
There was a pause filled by a little more wheezing.
“I thought that’s what you wanted, to see the film.” I really wanted him to show up but was trying not to say so. It would have been very simple, just ask, but I was afraid he would outright refuse if I did.
“I do, yes, that’s the idea, but I need to be alone with it. I know how to work a Steenbeck.”
“I can’t allow that. Why can’t we meet? Have we already met? Do I know you?” I leaned back in my chair, put my feet on the editing table.
“I’ll call you soon to arrange a time for me to view the film,” he repeated.
“Impossible without me present.” I enjoyed having what I thought was the upper hand and, now intrigued, wanted to goad him into a meeting, but he was also beginning to make me feel nervous.
“Then this is the last time I’ll be able to telephone you.”
The second, much thicker note arrived a few days later. It was leaning against my door.
Dear Frances,
Some notes:
At the beginning of the affair Dreyfus was nearly released for lack of evidence. History hangs by a drying thread. Meeting at the Section of Statistics the generals covered up for the real spy by inventing documents, and they blocked evidence that would have been damaging to them by claiming that national security was at stake. National Security is a phrase one hears echoed over and over. Let me give you some examples. (Note: what was eventually to be located down the street from the Section of Statistics on the rue de Lille? The famous waiting rooms of Jacques Lacan.)
1972 Break-in at the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. At first that case, too, looked insignificant: a matter of small potatoes, lack of evidence to prove otherwise. The trail that led to the president began with initials written in the burglars’ address books: HH and WH. It was difficult to get anyone to talk. “There was a pattern in the way people said no.” The bungled felony appeared to be just a case of five flat-footed burglars, and there was no need to investigate further. But as history now knows, secret cash funds whose purpose was to sabotage the candidates and activities of the other party were eventually traced. The expression “dirty tricks” enters the language in a new way. Also the words “double-cross” and “ratfuck.” The trial goes beyond middle-class lawyers and irked FBI agents. Connections revealed through an examination of checking accounts, telephone and hotel bills led to the Committee to Re-Elect the President and from there to Mitchell and Haldeman. Nixon supervised extensive cover-ups, had documents fabricated, lists shredded, and so the unmasking of bigwigs required a great deal of perseverance. Again secrecy was maintained on the basis of the claim that national security would otherwise be at risk. The notion of shredding became linked to the word cover-up. HH stood for Howard Hunt, who besides working for the CIA, wrote spy novels.
1981 El Mozote, El Salvador. American-trained soldiers massacred over seven hundred civilians, mainly women and very young children. The Reagan administration denied the story and tried to discredit the New York Times and Washington Post reporters who visited El Mozote and wrote about the murders. No one in the State Department ever asked to see their photographs, and so with a clear conscience they were able to release a statement that declared that “no evidence of a systematic massacre” had been found. Because it was necessary for American military assistance to continue, every attempt was made to smear the reporters. They were accused of invention, of hallucination, of being dupes of guerrillas who didn’t speak English. Years later forensic anthropologists found the bodies of 131 children under twelve years of age who had been bayoneted, shot, and hung. The anthropologists determined that the children had been lying on the floor while someone stood over them. Few, if any, had been buried.
One can, as in the Dreyfus case, manufacture anything, and create the context, the circumstances necessary for a story to be believed, and in a lake of whitewash submarines will float. So while The Dreyfus Affair languished in its can turning into jagged crumbs, residue, and grit, forgers were at work producing letters, doctoring photographs, smearing Zola, who publicly accused the generals of being “diabolical artisans” who “committed outrages against humanity.” His language may sound overblown and heavy handed (in fact it was said in criticism of his writing: “A naked crime is a hundred times more horrible than a crime clothed in adjectives”) but he got the result he was after: attention. When a judge who had been in the army’s pocket convicted him on charges of libel he fled to England during the night under the name Mr. Pascal.
Perhaps the murdered man at the end of The Dreyfus Affair was the man who knew too much. It’s a fact that Zola had many enemies who desired his death, but the murdered man isn’t EZ — that isn’t how he died. Was the man a friend of Zola, someone who might have aided and abetted him in his escape and therefore became a target?
1987 Iran-Contra Affair or Contragate. The National Security Committee operated as a kind of parallel government, setting up illegal deals to continue funding the Nicaraguan contras or “freedom fighters” who burn fields, starve out families, murder children. The hearings revealed an “underworld of arms dealers and financial brokers into which Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North and his fellow National Security Council staff members descended” (“Reagan’s Band of True Believers,” Frances Fitzgerald, the New York Times, May 10, 1987).
1897 Felix Gribelin covered his googly eyes with dark blue glasses. He was about to enter a public urinal in the Parc Montsouris. A man whose long, drooping moustache would not have set him apart from any number of other middle-aged men in the Paris streets that spring, he didn’t need much of a disguise but felt the dark glasses were important, if not essential. Gribelin was the archivist of the Section of Statistics, an agency something like the FBI, but he didn’t approach the arranged meeting with Count Esterhazy as if it were all in the course of an ordinary day, because it wasn’t. He had been summoned by the General Staff for this appointment, and he had to carry out their wishes.
Gribelin was startled to see a large woman exiting the small stone building just as he was about to enter. Her face was veiled, and she opened an umbrella to shield herself from the rain. He turned to look at her back and the folds of her skirt as she disappeared, making her way through the park. Despite the somber tailoring of the woman’s clothing there was something gaudy about the way she put herself together. Her green brocade jacket was very bright as well as close fitting, and he had seen many rings on her gloved hands before she opened the umbrella in his face. He assumed she was a prostitute, but what he didn’t know was the woman was actually Major General du Paty de Clam. Once she was out of sight, Felix entered the urinal to find the Count leaning against a tiled wall, coat unbuttoned, humming a tune, waiting for him.
As long as they were determined to condemn Dreyfus, the real spy, Esterhazy, had only a slight chance of being convicted, and he was arrogant with the knowledge that although guilty he was almost untouchable. They needed him, and the deeper the General Staff dug in asserting Dreyfus’s guilt, the more they needed him. The Count was fortunate that the letter signed D found in the garbage at the German embassy had been misattributed to Dreyfus. Had the D been assigned to a Drumont or Deroulede or d’Ormescheville, Christians all of them, the
