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?'

'Oh, I can demonstrate it. In big wars and little ones. Although I imagine you would prefer to finish your drink and have a good night's sleep before you hear me on the origins of the last war between France and the Germans. But I was there, I saw it all. And the next time will be little different.'

'But in that case, I believe, the Emperor decided to go to war and everyone backed him.'

'True. But why did he decide? Why then? Especially as a limited amount of study would have demonstrated that the Prussians would roll all over them. Because it was in the air. It was necessary. The gods had decreed it.'

He drank down his brandy in one go and nodded ironically. 'A marionette, as are we all. Your job is to report the doings of puppets to other puppets. A worthy and useful employment.

'For which you need a good night's sleep. I am going to make your life miserable tomorrow. So don't stay up writing your diary. You don't write a diary, do you?'

'No.'

'That's a blessing.'

CHAPTER 4

His loquacity and virtual good humour did not last long, alas. The next day began what I consider to be one of the most miserable, and extraordinary, six weeks of my life. He woke me at dawn and announced that my task for the day was to get bread from a town some five miles into the occupied part of Alsace. However, I was to accomplish this without any papers to give me free passage over the border, without any money and without any maps. Then I was told to steal the bust of Marianne from the town hall in the next city. Then to spend two nights in complete hiding, counting the number of people who crossed the border. Then to leave a package on a bridge crossing the Rhine, high up in the girders of the ironwork. Then to retrieve a file of papers from a bank, detailing the accounts of a man whose name he gave me. And we did it again, and again, and again. How to follow a man so he does not know you are there. How to lose a man who is following you; we chased each other around different towns for days until I became almost as good at it as he was. Then he would set me to trailing an army officer selected more or less at random. Then again, with a German officer over the border. Then to burgling his house. In between these bizarre activities, he would take me into the forests with a gun, and teach me how to shoot. This was something I never became proficient at, nor ever enjoyed. I would rather be captured by an enemy than have that noise going off in my ears. Or we would spend an evening in a soldiers' bar, buying drinks and listening to their complaints and bravado. Or he would show me how to persuade someone to become an informer; a traitor to their friends and country.

This last was, in many ways, the most terrible of all the skills he made me learn. To my surprise, I was surprisingly good at them. Although I had never before considered myself a natural criminal, it appeared that I had an aptitude in that direction. Robbing a bank or town hall was not really that different from the one-boy raids I had launched at school, and I had learned young that immense walks in the far more rugged terrain in Wales or northern England – a hundred miles or more, spread over several days, camping out at night where I could – was an effective salve for the troubles of adolescence. I discovered later that the all-seeing Mr Wilkinson knew of these activities of mine – he knew my old headmaster well – and added them all into his calculations. Schoolboy criminality, evidently, was a better qualification for his esteem than the more normal virtues associated with the civil servant.

All, bar shooting, I could do, and do well. But the evening with Virginie was different entirely. It was where Lefevre and I began to part company, and I started thinking for myself about this task which others wanted me to perform.

She was a seamstress, so Lefevre told me, of the sort that abound in the thousands throughout eastern France, eking out a small living with their hands, permanently in danger of hunger, and willing to trade all they possess for a little security. Those who are lucky find a companion, a bourgeois student perhaps, and set up house. The foolish dream of marriage, the more practical realise the liaison will be of short duration, and that eventually the respectable world will reclaim their protector. Most will then be left to fend for themselves once more, unless their former lovers can be persuaded to pay for any children that might have been produced.

Others are less fortunate and drift into a life of whoring, and the huge numbers of soldiers along the border provide ample business. Their lives are brutal and often short. It is remarkable how many remain human nonetheless; the spark of humanity is not so easily extinguished, even when there is often little to sustain it. The woman Lefevre took me to was one such. She was probably an illegitimate child who would one day generate more such as she was. She found herself in Nancy and was inevitably turning to soldiers for protection.