An Officer and a Spy

by Robert Harris

This is one of the problems with a republic—at least under a monarchy no one seriously imagines he can become king.

“You really think this stuff is good, Colonel?” “No, I didn’t say that. As so often in life, it’s just better than the alternative.”

In some private corner of our minds, from the moment we first become conscious of mortality, are we not all waiting secretly for our parents’ deaths?

and we dine out of doors, to the sound of bullfrogs and cicadas, washed by the scent of the citronella candles that are driving away the mosquitoes.

And I have to assume that after more than a year in post, there is a chance that Berlin has now discovered my identity as Sandherr’s successor.

Among the students to whom I taught these skills was Dreyfus.

if you’ll allow me to correct you. You and Sandherr and Henry and Gribelin were the prosecuting authority. I was never anything more than an observer.”

A large fly knocks itself dementedly against the grimy window.

“You wouldn’t work half so hard if you had a wife and family of your own to go home to.”

“I just think it is plain wrong,” he says, “for our democratic republic to roll out the carpet for an absolute monarch who locks up people who disagree with him. That’s not what France exists for.”

There is no such thing as a secret—not really, not in the modern world, not with photography and telegraphy and railways and newspaper presses. The old days of an inner circle of like-minded souls communicating with parchment and quill pens are gone. Sooner or later most things will be revealed.

if you say nothing, nobody will ever know.”

“Listen, I don’t know whether he’s innocent or guilty, Colonel, and quite frankly I don’t give a shit, if you’ll excuse me, either way, and neither should you. I did as I was told. You order me to shoot a man and I’ll shoot him. You tell me afterwards you got the name wrong and I should have shot someone else—well, I’m very sorry about that, but it’s not my fault.”