On one such occasion, I enlisted as my assistant a young Belgian man who had managed an efficient system of counter-espionage among Belgian patriots. One of my most highly trusted recruits was dispatched to France on a mission that had entailed much careful preparation. He was arrested the moment he arrived in France. When I received the news, I sent for my Belgian assistant and reminded him that there were only two people in the world who could have jeopardised the mission: me and him. I told him it wasn’t me. I told him that whoever had betrayed my recruit would have to suffer the consequences. By the expression on his face, I knew he wasn’t sure what to expect. I drew out an automatic pistol from the drawer of my desk and shot him once through the heart.
After spending two years in Antwerp, I was recalled to Lörrach, where I met Mata Hari for the second time. I was to instruct new recruits in preparation for the war. These recruits were mainly chosen from the army and navy reservists, but not exclusively. Occasionally, the academy would receive individuals, like myself, who had been recommended by agents already working in the field. Mata Hari was recommended by von Jagow. None of the recruits had any specific qualifications. We were looking for particular kinds of men and women, rather than for particular experiences. We looked for signs of independence. We wanted people who displayed discretion, patience, resource and industry, but also people who could act quickly in moments of emergency. Most of all, they had to have no strong political affiliations or aspirations. They had to have an easy conscience. Most of the people we eventually recruited were officers – espionage was considered honourable in those days. The hall porter at the Hôtel des Indes in The Hague, for example, was the brother of Baron von Wangenheim, the Ambassador to Turkey.
There were four main areas of instruction. The first, and most important, was the methods of passing on information. Contrary to what one imagines, the main difficulty facing an agent isn’t the acquisition of information, but the relaying of it. So, they were shown ways to do that and encouraged to invent their own. They were taught how to invent codes, ciphers and cryptograms. We used examples of already existing codes, such as the fruit code. One agent in England had used an ingenious code involving the sale and purchase of fish. A dreadnought was a cod with head, whereas a large cruiser was just a cod, and so on. He would then send this information using picture postcards of the naval towns in which these ships were docked. The date and time written on the postcard referred to the date and time of sighting. With just a dozen postcards, we had an accurate sense of naval ship layout.
We taught them how to use invisible inks. There was a laboratory in Antwerp that specialised in their production. The most useful type was a mixture of perchloride of iron and water, which looked like cognac. Information was written en clair on the lining of envelopes or under postage stamps. We taught them how to prepare their own reagents, using easily available substances such as powdered oxide of copper, alcoholised water, iodine vapour, heat, even tobacco smoke.
The other main area of training was in technical knowledge. Recruits had to be able to calculate heights, distances and angles without the use of instruments. They were taught to measure distances by accurate pacing and heights by the length of shadows in relation to the position of the sun. Using these methods, it is easy to calculate angles to a relatively accurate degree and get the dimensions of a bridge, for example. Nothing could be written down, everything had to be carried in the head.
This was the main body of their instruction. The recruits were then ‘finished’. This involved learning to adopt the etiquette, mannerisms and traits of the country to which they were being sent. To illustrate this, I told them the story of how we were able to trap a very skilled Allied agent through a very small detail. This agent was travelling as a fully accredited representative of an established Berlin commercial house. While having lunch one day in Munich, he said ‘Thank you’ each time the waitress served him a course of his meal. The waitress grew suspicious, because German salesmen tend not to be so courteous to waitresses. She reported her suspicions to the police who, in turn, informed us. We immediately arrested him, much to the embarrassment of the Deuxième Bureau.
Finally, the academy gave them a run-through of basic acting techniques. We found this to be invaluable. The authenticity of their performance depended entirely on how far they were willing to enter into the role. The deeper they entered into it, the less likely they were to be exposed. The French have a word for this willingness, they call it disponibilité. I taught my recruits never to think of themselves, never, as anything other than what they appeared to be. Spying is the highest form of acting. This was the last thing they learnt. They were then ready to be sent out.
We knew where each agent was to be sent even before they arrived at Lörrach. It was most important that the agent already knew someone in that country, and that they were sent there via a place that would attract the least attention. Agents going to England, for example, were sent via Holland, Spain, Scandinavia or America. Once they arrived, they began their work procedure. Their instructions were to act independently, and not under any circumstances with other agents or friends in the locality. They were told to frequent workplaces – factories, railways, and other places like bars and cafés – where they would come into contact with officials, military personnel or even soldiers. Above all, they had to travel as much as possible and enlist the unconscious help of everyone they met. We never saw them again. From the moment they were sent abroad, no agent was ever known, even to the highest officials, by name, only by a codename.
Mata Hari’s codename was H21. She was instructed by me, so the letter ‘H’ referred to my surname, and she was my twenty-first woman recruit to graduate from the academy. Mata Hari was a perfect student in every way, except for the fact that she was a parvenue – it was her only weakness. She talked a lot about the British Royal Family and we were aware that, in the past, she had pretended to be related to Edward VII. When she was at the academy, she heard of his death and became positively hysterical. We knew the social connections she boasted of were nonsense and we had to stop this, so we did. We informed her that she would fail at Lörrach if she persisted. If recruits failed during training, they were sent to either Königsberg or Spandau prison. She never mentioned Edward VII again.
When I had to give Mata Hari her instructions after she graduated from Lörrach, I realised she was a rather special case because she had already been in contact with many high-ranking military or public figures. I decided that she ought to resume her career as a vaudevillian so that she could be sent to various cities and continue being a courtesan for these men. We arranged many performances for her – Madrid, Milan, Monte Carlo – but mainly Paris, as that was where she was best known. Her situation was ideal. The preeminence of these men made it very difficult for the Allies to prove any allegations of Mata Hari’s espionage activities.
On the last of their eight days at the academy, I gave a speech to the graduating recruits, including Mata Hari. I told them that, when I had first been recruited by Abteilung III, I had had a magnificent instructor. He was a life-long student of and expert in physiognomy. He had told me that I would experience many difficulties in the profession, but that I was exactly the kind of person who would excel at it. He had taught me to be intuitive, but circumspect. He had also taught me to be a student of character – other people’s as well as my own. He had said I would receive no credit if I was successful and no mercy if I failed. The ultimate accolade as a spy was not to be known. I told them that all this was potent and sophisticated to a seventeen-year-old and I never forgot his words. I urged them all to heed his words too and, with that, I said goodbye. After she left the academy, I never saw Mata Hari again.
18
Virgula Divina
Ancient Chinese manuscripts refer to army generals plunging their swords into the ground in order to find water. If they were successful, an encampment would be set up around the water source. Chinese Buddhist monks, living in the same age, us
ed to carry tin canes with them. The canes were also driven into the ground and, if a water supply was found, the spot was used for the establishment of a new monastery. This physical link between settlement and water is also a semantic one in the Chinese language: the expression ‘to plant one’s tin’ came to mean ‘to stop’.
Europe has a similarly long tradition of water divination. Central to the foundations of Norse myth is Yggdrasil, the ‘world tree’ that linked together heaven, earth and hell with its roots and branches. It is an evergreen ash with three wells at its base, one of which is the source of all wisdom. Odin, the lord of all gods, was willing to lose an eye in order to obtain the powers of its waters. Subsequently, the ash has always been the preferred tree from which to cut dowsing rods in Scandinavia.
But of all the trees attributed with divining powers in Indo-European culture, none has been assigned as much as the hazel. According to Vedic lore, rods cut from hazel trees were carried by the Brahman priests of ancient India. The first European account of the use of hazel was recorded in the first century ad by Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman historian, who noted its use by Germanic tribes along the boundaries of the Roman Empire. It is a specifically European feature that twigs used for water divination had to be cut only from hazel trees that bore fruit or nuts.
Tacitus was the first known person to use the term virgula mercurialis, the ‘wand of Mercury’, for a divining rod. It wasn’t until the Middle Ages that the term virgula divina, or ‘divine wand’, first appeared. In 1518, Martin Luther condemned the practice of dowsing as Black Magic and therefore the work of the Devil.
Condemnation from the church, however, didn’t stop Elizabeth I from using dowsing in her pursuit of wealth and power. She elicited the help of German dowsers and sent them to the West Country, and Cornwall in particular, to assist in the location of lost tin mines. The first English term for dowsing, ‘deusing’, came into use during her reign. The roots of this word are unclear, but it is probably a loan word from German mining parlance, or a mining word from the old Cornish, which was related to Gaelic. In Cornish, dewys meant ‘goddess’ and rhodl meant ‘tree branch’, a combination that gives us the modern English equivalent ‘dowsing rod’.
The veracity of dowsing has always been questioned by scientists. One of the most famous experiments to help solve this problem was held in Paris in 1913. Armand Viré, a biologist who specialised in the life of subterranean animals, published a book which stated: ‘Anything concerning dowsing seemed to me wholly cock-eyed and unjustifiable. The art was practised mostly by simple countrymen who operated on the basis of more or less unfathomable instructions which they ill-understood or seemed unwilling to explain.’
One evening, while in his laboratory in the catacombs beneath the Jardin des Plantes, Viré was visited by a geographer named Henri Mager, whose book on dowsing Viré had read and dismissed. Mager explained that the Second Congress on Experimental Psychology being held in Paris wished to hold a dowsing test and wanted Viré to organise it. Intrigued, Viré agreed.
After some research into an appropriate site for such a test, Viré found that the quarries dug under Paris during Roman times had been recorded on large-scale maps, which had remained unpublished. None of the dowsers could possibly know of the existence of these quarries and so Viré decided to use them for the test. He told Mager to assemble his dowsers at the Daumesnil Gate a few mornings later.
The test site was an area of lawn, just inside the gate, under which the criss-cross of quarries lay at depths of between sixteen and twenty metres. Viré instructed the three dowsers to lay stakes in the lawn where they located any voids or waterways. He watched in astonishment as they walked across the lawn in large S shapes, laying stakes exactly on the boundaries of all the quarries and connecting tunnels. One of the dowsers even found a previously undiscovered gallery.
After the experiment was over, Viré published his findings, stating: ‘I admit it was not without great inner struggle that I gradually confronted the evidence which at first sorely vexed me. But the facts stared me in the face and I was forced to proclaim, urbi et orbi, that the dowsing ability was real and that there was just cause to take dowsers seriously . . .’
19
Zermatt, Switzerland, 1911
At 8:20 a.m. on a bright January morning, Mata Hari and her ski-instructor, Jacques, came out of the Hotel Europa, put on their boots and bindings and began trudging through the snow. Although the cafés and bars had been open since first light, the town was quiet. Most of the chalets were still closed and warm with sleep.
They said little as they walked past these buildings, separated by alleys filled with snow and silent shafts of air. He walked calmly ahead, carrying two sets of skis and poles over his shoulder. She followed behind, her breath clouding in front of her and the hem of her long brown coat picking up snow.
The chalets gradually thinned out as they walked to the gondola station high above the town. The station had just started operating for the day and was empty except for themselves and a handful of others. They stood on the loading platform, watching the gondolas drift down from the mountain and into the station. An operative opened the door of one and they climbed inside. The gondola turned round and left the station as gracefully as it had come in.
As it swung clear and started climbing gently, Mata Hari looked at the town laid out below her. It was completely covered with snow and seemed much smaller than she had imagined. She saw trails of chimney smoke. A dull river wound through the town and through other clusters of villages along the valley, crossed by stone bridges all the way. Jacques told her it was called the Vispa and was a main tributary of the Rhône river, which fed Lac Léman more than sixty kilometres away.
As they climbed more steeply, Jacques pointed out the four peaks that enclosed the valley: the Weisshorn, Dom, Dufourspitz, which the Italians called Monte Rosa, and the distinctive peak of the Matterhorn, standing out against the blue sky as a broken triangle. Along with Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, Zermatt had the finest high-altitude skiing in the whole of the Alps, he said. The gondola continued its slow, pendulous climb above the hollowed-out blanket of white.
Since it was her first day of skiing ever, Jacques taught her how to snowplough. He skied backwards, in front of her, watching her as she slid slowly over the snow. The mountain air was still and cold, with nothing in it except birdsong and the swishing of skis. He told her she was doing well.
After a few trips down the same slope, they stopped at a mountain refuge for an early lunch. The refuge was a log hut, built against a rock face and buried under snowdrifts, so that it remained unnoticeable unless one stood directly in front of it.
Inside, they sat down at a long wooden bench and were served glühwein and stew by an old woman whom Jacques introduced as Mathilda. After serving them, Mathilda returned to her seat by the fire, over which hung a huge cauldron. They were alone inside the hut.
Jacques answered Mata Hari’s questions about himself. His French mother had come to Zermatt in the summer of 1881 with her mother to ‘take the air’. His Swiss-Italian father had been their mountain guide. At the end of five days of low-altitude walking, his parents had fallen in love and he had persuaded her to remain with him in Zermatt. They were married a year later and Jacques had been born in 1886.
His father belonged to the École des Guides, the famous school for guides based in Chamonix but with offices in Grindelwald, St Moritz and Nauders as well as Zermatt. When Jacques was young, it was never questioned that he would follow in his footsteps and train to become a skiguide by winter and mountain-guide by summer. His father had taught him that to be a high-altitude climber, one had to live in a horizontal world: think only of the distance to be covered, never the height to be climbed. He had also warned him never to spend too much time in the mountains, because too much snow could cause amnesia.
One night, when Jacques was seventeen, his father had been called out on a search and rescue. Two skiers had fallen down a crevasse and, wh
ile lifting them out, his father had slipped and fallen. He was never found, but the skiers had been saved. Mata Hari said she was sorry. Jacques shrugged. Like his father, he’d come to accept the risk – it was a simple exchange. He said he believed his father lived on in him, guiding him when he was unsure of which direction to take and showing him what to do in moments of difficulty.
They left the warmth of the refuge ready to ski again. Outside, Mata Hari looked across the valley and sensed the depth and breadth of the clear blue air. It seemed like the top of the world. She tied the straps of her skis and, on his signal, followed Jacques away from the hut.
They skied slowly across the mountainside to a button lift at the apex of the next valley along. From there, they were dragged uphill to the top of a large swathe of clear piste. She stood looking down the white funnel and felt her stomach tighten, a feeling she hadn’t had since her first performances at the Folies Bergère.
‘It looks much steeper than it is,’ Jacques said. ‘I’ll be behind you, don’t worry. Ready?’
He smiled to her. She put her goggles on and leant forward.
‘Good,’ Jacques said.
The snow began to slip under her skis. She felt as if she were on a moving carpet and kept her gaze fixed on the snow in front of her. As she picked up speed, she heard the wind in her ears and her stomach rose to her chest.
‘Not too fast,’ Jacques shouted behind her.
The wind blew into her open mouth and her tongue went dry. Her legs rocked as she hit small rises. She was going faster than she had done before lunch. It felt good to be slightly out of control and she became aware that her whole body was tense.
The Red Dancer Page 12