(Formerly known by the name chosen by her parents, Margaretha Zelle, and then forced to adopt her married name, Madame MacLeod, and finally convinced by the Germans, in exchange for a measly twenty thousand francs, to sign everything as H21.)
Part III
PARIS, OCTOBER 14, 1917
Dear Mata Hari,
Although you do not yet know it, your request for pardon was denied by the president. Therefore, early tomorrow morning I will go to meet you and this shall be the last time we will see each other.
I have eleven long hours before me and I know I will not be able to sleep a single second tonight. Therefore, I am writing you a letter, which will never be read by the person for whom it was intended, but I plan to present it as a final piece of evidence in the investigation; even though this may be absolutely useless from a legal standpoint, I hope to at least recover your reputation while I am still alive.
I do not intend to prove my incompetence with this defense, because I was not in fact the terrible lawyer that you often accused me of being in your many letters. I just want to relive--if only to absolve myself of a sin I did not commit--my ordeal of the past few months. It is an ordeal that I have not lived alone; I was in every way trying to save the woman I once loved, though I never admitted it.
This is an ordeal that is being lived by the entire nation; these days there is not a single family in this country who has not lost a son at the battlefront. And because of that, we commit injustices, atrocities, things I never imagined happening in my country. As I write this, several battles with no end are being waged just two hundred kilometers from here. The biggest and bloodiest of them began with a naivete on our part; we thought two hundred thousand brave soldiers would be able to defeat more than a million Germans who marched with tanks and heavy artillery toward the capital. But despite having resisted bravely, despite massive bloodshed and thousands of dead and wounded, the war front remains exactly where it stood in 1914, when the Germans initiated the hostilities.
Dear Mata Hari, your biggest mistake was having found the wrong man to do the right thing. Georges Ladoux, the head of counterespionage, who contacted you as soon as you returned to Paris, was a marked man by the government. He was one of those responsible for the Dreyfus case, a miscarriage of justice that still shames us today--condemning an innocent man to degradation and exile. After he was unmasked, he tried to justify his actions by saying his work "was not limited to knowing the enemy's next steps, but preventing him from undermining the morale of our friends." He sought a promotion, which was denied. He became a bitter man who urgently needed a cause celebre to make him well regarded once again in government halls. And who better for that than a well-known actress, envied by officers' wives and hated by the elite who, years before, used to deify her?
The people cannot think only of the deaths taking place in Verdun, Marne, Somme--they need to be distracted by some kind of victory. And Ladoux, knowing this, began to weave his degrading web the moment he first saw you. He described your first meeting in his notes:
"She entered my office as someone enters a stage, parading around in formal wear and trying to impress me. I did not invite her to sit, but she pulled up a chair and settled in across my desk. After telling me the proposition the German consul made her in The Hague, she said she was ready to work for France. She also ridiculed my agents that were following her, saying, 'Can't your friends downstairs leave me alone for a while? Every time I exit my hotel, they go in and turn the entire room upside down. I can't go to a cafe without them occupying the next table and this has frightened away the friendships I've cultivated for so long. Now my friends no longer want to be seen with me.'
"I asked her how she would like to serve the country. She replied petulantly: 'You know how. To the Germans I'm H21. Perhaps the French have better taste in choosing names for those who secretly serve the country.'
"I countered in such a way that my words had a double meaning: 'We all know you have a reputation for being expensive in everything you do. How much will this cost?'
" 'All or nothing' was her answer.
"As soon as she left, I asked my secretary to send me the 'Mata Hari dossier.' After reading all the material collected--which had cost us a fortune in man-hours--I could not find anything incriminating. Apparently, the woman was smarter than my agents and had managed to well conceal her nefarious activities."
In other words, even though you were guilty, they could find nothing to incriminate you. The agents continued to file their daily reports; when you went to Vittel with that Russian boyfriend blinded by mustard gas in one of the German attacks, the collection of "reports" bordered on the ridiculous.
People at the hotel tend to always see her accompanied by the war invalid, possibly twenty years her junior. By her exuberance and way of walking, we are certain she uses drugs, probably morphine or cocaine.
She mentioned to one of the guests that she was a member of the Dutch royal family. To another, she said she had a chateau in Neuilly. Once when we went out for dinner and returned to work, she was singing in the main hall for a group of youth and we are almost certain her sole objective was to corrupt those innocent girls and boys who, by then, knew they were before the woman they deemed the "great star of the Parisian stage."
When her lover returned to the front, she stayed in Vittel for two more weeks, always going for walks, lunching, and dining alone. We could not detect any contact by an enemy agent, but who would stay at a spa hotel by themselves unless they had dubious interests? Although she was under our watch twenty-four hours a day, she must have found a way to circumvent our surveillance.
And that was when, my dear Mata Hari, the vilest blow of all was struck. You were also being followed by the Germans--who were more discreet and more efficient. From the day of your visit to Captain Ladoux, they had come to the conclusion that you intended to be a double agent. While you strolled about in Vittel, Consul Kramer, who had recruited you in The Hague, was under interrogation in Berlin. They wanted to know about the twenty thousand francs spent on a person whose profile could not be more different than that of a traditional spy--usually discreet and virtually invisible. Why had he called on someone so famous to help Germany in its war effort? Was he also in cahoots with the French? How, after so long, had agent H21 not produced a SINGLE report? "Every now and then she was approached by an agent--usually in public transport--who asked for at least one piece of information, but she would smile seductively and say she had not yet obtained anything."
In Madrid, however, they managed to intercept a letter you sent to the head of counterespionage, that wretched Ladoux, which recounts in detail a meeting with a German high official who had finally managed to circumvent their surveillance and approach you.
"He asked me what I had obtained, if I had sent any messages in invisible ink, and if perhaps something had got lost along the way. I said no. He asked me for a name and I said I had slept with Alfred Kiepert.
"Then, in a fit of rage, he yelled at me, saying he was not interested in knowing who I'd slept with, or he would be required to fill out pages and pages with the names of English, French, Germans, Dutch, and Russians. I ignored the attack, and he calmed down and offered me cigarettes. I began toying with my legs seductively. Thinking he was before a woman with a brain the size of a pea, he blurted out: 'I'm sorry for my behavior, I'm tired. I need to focus all of my concentration to organize the arrival of ammunition that the Germans and Turks are sending to the coast of Morocco.' Also, I demanded the five thousand francs that Kramer owed me; he said he had no authority to do so and that he would ask the German consulate in The Hague to handle the matter. 'We always pay what we owe,' he said."
The Germans' suspicions were finally confirmed. We don't know what happened to Consul Kramer, but Mata Hari was definitely a double agent who, until then, had not provided any such information. We have a radio surveillance post at the top of the Eiffel Tower, but most of the information that is exchanged between them is in encrypted form, and impossible to read. Ladoux seemed to read their reports and not believe anything; I never knew if he sent someone to check on the arrival of ammunition on the shores of Morocco. But suddenly a telegram was sent from Madrid to Berlin in a code they knew had been already deciphered by the French, and it became the centerpiece of the prosecution, even though it said nothing beyond your nom de guerre.
AGENT H21 WAS ADVISED OF ARRIVAL OF SUBMARINE ON THE COAST OF MOROCCO AND SHOULD ASSIST IN THE TRANSPORT OF AMMUNITION TO MARNE. SHE IS TRAVELING TO PARIS, WHERE SHE WILL ARRIVE TOMORROW.
Ladoux now had all the evidence he needed to incriminate you. But I was not so foolish as to think a simple telegram could convince the military tribunal of your guilt, especially since the Dreyfus affair was still fresh in everyone's imagination; an innocent man had been convicted because of a piece of writing, unsigned and undated. So other traps would be needed.
What made my defense practically useless? In addition to the judges, witnesses, and accusers that had already formed an opinion, you did not help much. I cannot blame you, but this propensity to lie ever since arriving in Paris has led you to be discredited in each of your statements made to the magistrates. The prosecution brought concrete data proving you were not born in the Dutch East Indies or trained by Indonesian priests, that you were not single, and that you had falsified your passport to appear younger. In times of peace, none of this would be taken into account, but inside the War Tribunal you could already hear the sound of bombs brought in by the wind.
So every time I argued something like "She sought out Ladoux as soon as she arrived here," he contested, saying that your only objective was to get more money and seduce him with your charms. This displays unforgivable arrogance; the captain, short and twice your weight, thought you deserved it...that you intended to turn him into a puppet in the hands of the Germans. To reinforce that fact, he brought up the zeppelin attack that had preceded your arrival--a failure on the part of the enemy, as it did not hit any
strategic location. But for Ladoux, it was evidence that could not be ignored.
You were beautiful, known worldwide, always envied--though never respected--in the concert halls where you appeared. Liars, what little I know of them, are people who seek popularity and recognition. Even when faced with truth, they always find a way to escape, coldly repeating what had just been said or blaming the accuser of speaking untruths. I understand that you wanted to create fantastical stories about yourself, either out of insecurity or your almost visible desire to be loved at any cost. I understand that in order to manipulate so many men, experts themselves in the art of manipulating others, a little fantasy was needed. It's inexcusable, but that is the reality; and that's what led you to where you are now.