An Officer and Spy – and a good movie in
the making?
Robert Harris has written a number of good
novels exploring history and alternative history. Some have been turned into films; Fatherland, set in a modern Germany after the Nazis won WWII (the USA did not
join in), Enigma, set in Bletchley Park, Archangel in Soviet Russia
(Stalin had a secret son and some want him to take over), and The Ghost, in which it seems
that a 21st century British Prime Minster may have played – or have
been played – into the hands of the CIA. He has also written about classical Rome, in the voice
of Cicero in Imperium and Lustrum, and also Pompeii.
Harris has also written non-fiction biographies and books of
political analysis.
Harris has the skills of a forensic journalist,
sifting through masses of information
in order to provide a reliable – or deliberately unreliable –
narrative. And now he has
written a book about a man who had similar skills, plus considerable determination and physical and moral courage. This is the real life Georges Picquard, a French Army Officer
and Intelligencer, who for
ten years pursued the truth about the guilt or innocence of Captain Alfred
Dreyfuss, the man found guilty of treason in 1895 and sent to Devil’s
Island. In order to
conduct this investigation – which he believed was simply his job and a matter
of honour – Picquard faced treachery, threats, persecution and
imprisonment. Harris
tells the story in his protagonist’s
voice and paints a deeply convincing portrait of the man and his
times.
So I wonder, could this be the next Harris film? Sadly I hope it wont be,
because the tale he tells, though admittedly simplified, may still be too complex
to reduce to a film script.
I remember the recent attempt to turn Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
into a movie.
I thoroughly enjoyed the film, but that was
because I know the original novel’s plot from the book and the famous BBC six
part adaptation.
That meant that I knew what was missing. This was principally the back-ground and
character of the MI6 officers, one of whom was the mole, the traitor. But as this was about treachery
the character and motives of the suspects was crucial.
But Tinker, Tailor was a novel.
Harris’ book is a retelling of a true story, and a hugely important one
at that. The Dreyfuss
Affair (as it is often called, as if this
diminishes it as a matter of
limited importance) is still
relevant today, involving – as the
book cover says – ‘an intelligence agency gone rogue, justice corrupted in
the name of national security, a newspaper witch-hunt of a persecuted minority,
and the age-old instinct of those in power to cover up their crimes’. We
only have to consider the British Government’s current refusal to inquire into
the death of Alexander Litvinenko,
or the evidence gathered – and revealed – that profoundly questions the
Lockerbie conviction, to admit the
scale of GCHQ and NSA’s searches of web archives and their hacking of mobile
phones and emails, or to release terrorist ‘suspects’ who have never been
charged, in order to see
parallels.
