I was, accordingly, all the more fascinated by a man like Lefevre who, whatever his natural desire to stay alive, clearly approached life in a very different fashion. Not for him the caution of respectability, the fear of poverty or the desire for comfort. He was like a member of a different species, although whether superior or inferior to mine I could not tell. My sensible self told me that my way was the more responsible, that I was fitted for the age and environment in which I lived. But part of me was drawn to the irresponsibility, the recklessness of Lefevre's way. It was a contradiction in my being and, it seemed, one which Henry Wilkinson had both spotted and decided to exploit. A man more comfortable with his choices would never have been on that train.
An odd thing, memory. I remember almost every moment of that interminable train ride – the flat countryside, the stops to pick up and set down passengers, the fields of vines and crops passing by, the smell of the carriage, the lunch in the dining car, the reluctant conversation. What followed thereafter can only be recalled with an effort. It is not that I have forgotten, but that I think of it in abstract, while my memory of the journey takes me back to that carriage as if I was still there.
And yet what passed after we left the train was far more interesting, in the usual way of reckoning. Lefevre – I will continue to call him so until a more appropriate moment – began to teach me the business of self-preservation in a far more real sense. And if I never mastered all his skills, it was because never in my wildest dreams and nightmares did I ever imagine I might need them. He took me to Nancy, then a frontier town very much closer to the German border than it wished to be. Also, as he said, a good starting point for all that we had to do.
The frontier was not that closely guarded, but the area on both sides of the border was stiff with soldiers, as it was generally anticipated that the next round of the eternal conflict between France and Germany would begin there. But when? How? Would it be a considered policy, decided on high by one side or another, or would it be an accident, a few words spoken in haste, a riposte, fisticuffs, a few shots – and then whole armies on the march, the generals and politicians trailing behind, desperately trying to control a situation that had run on before them.
'People make the mistake of assuming far too many things about armies,' Lefevre told me one evening. 'They assume, for a start, that generals know what they are doing and know what is going on. They assume that orders pass down from top to bottom in a smooth and regulated fashion. And above all they assume that wars start only when people decide to start them.'
'You are going to tell me that is not the case?'
'Wars begin when they are ready, when humanity needs a bloodletting. Kings and politicians and generals have little say in it. You can feel it in the air when one is brewing. There is a tension and nervousness on the face of the least soldier. They can smell it coming in a way politicians cannot. The desire to hurt and destroy spreads over a region and over the troops. And then the generals can only hope to have the vaguest notion of what they are doing.'
'So what is the point of all this intelligencing?'
'To most people – those who even admit a man like myself exists – I am as you saw me the other night in Paris. Little better than a crook, a thief and maybe worse. In fact, very much worse. You are invited to become scum, the loathed of society. Only by disguising what you are will you maintain a respectable place in society. But you will also probe your way into the soul of this terrible continent. Think of the doctor. You do not go along to him and say, I am going to die next Tuesday, and hope he can do something about it. No; you present yourself, feeling a touch off-colour. And he looks at you, checks your heartbeat, takes your blood pressure, asks questions about your sleeping and your appetite. Do you have trouble climbing stairs? Are you eating? Having headaches? And from these fragments of individually meaningless information, he pieces together his conclusion: you have a heart condition. It may not stop you from dying next Tuesday, but it is some comfort to know.
'And that is your – our job. Do not think you will ever come across a memorandum saying "We invade next week." What you get is a sense of nerves in the barracks, a feeling that something is happening, for soldiers are the most sensitive people on earth to a change in atmosphere. Then perhaps you notice trains being cancelled. Perhaps more smugglers get caught slipping over borders. You hear of more fights in bars in garrison towns. Of leave being cancelled. And you put it all together and conclude that someone, somewhere is about to throw the dice.'
'And this is your idea, or can you demonstrate this to me?'
