Femme Fatale

by Pat Shipman

  On the eighteenth, she went twice to see her old friend Henri de Marguérie, secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at his office, to ask for advice about Ladoux and about spying for France. De Marguérie warned her that accepting an espionage mission from Ladoux was very dangerous but told her that if anyone could render services to his country, it was she. He picked Mata Hari up at her hotel at about 7 p.m. in a taxi. They promptly lost the inspectors—or perhaps the inspectors decided it was more discreet to become lost when the secretary of foreign affairs went out with Mata Hari. The couple had not returned by 11 p.m. when the inspectors called off the surveillance for the night, after intercepting two letters addressed to Vadime and an expedited pneumatique to Hallaure.

  The next day, August 19, she told the hotel that she would be moving out after she returned from Vittel. The implication that de Marguérie exercised some influence on her behalf, after spending a romantic night with her on August 18, is supported by his later testimony. She also went with Hallaure to look at apartments to rent after she returned from Vittel, and signed a lease for number 33, avenue Henri-Martin.

  A few days later, August 21, she went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to see de Marguérie, and then went back to the Commissariat of Police on rue Taitbout. Late in the afternoon, she went to the Deuxième Bureau. On this occasion, her last visit before leaving for Vittel, she told Ladoux, “Captain, in principle, I accept.” Her terms were that she would go first to Vittel for her cure and that she would come to see him when she returned. She also asked if it was possible to send “an expedited telegram to the front to a Russian officer.” Apparently refused this service, she went to the post office and sent the telegram to Vadime. She had not heard from him, and she was growing very worried. When no word came, she stopped at both the Russian embassy and the Russian mission on August 24, inquiring about Vadime’s well-being. On the twenty-ninth, she picked her permit up at the Police Commissariat. On the thirty-first, Hallaure called to see her and was insulted to find her occupied with a British officer.

  She left by train for Vittel the next morning, September 1, and arrived there in the late afternoon, followed by the inevitable duo, Tarlet and Monier. The doctor who was to attend her “cure” had been called up, and she did not consult with another for over a week. She checked into the Grand Hotel of the Baths, booking the room adjacent for Vadime, for propriety’s sake. On September 3, her beloved Vadime arrived and they were reunited. She saw, to her horror, that he had been injured and wore a bandage covering his left eye. Mata Hari talked about her stay in Vittel during her interrogation.

  [Vadime] had been gravely injured by the asphyxiating gas, had completely lost the vision in his left eye and was in danger of going blind. One night, he said to me: “If this terrible thing comes to pass, what will you do?”

  “I will never leave you,” I responded to him, “and I would be to you always the same woman.”

  “Would you marry me?” he asked me.

  I responded affirmatively, then I began to reflect: Here my life is well laid out, I said to myself, I must ask Captain Ladoux for enough money that I never have to deceive Vadime de Massloff with other men. I will let go of the marquis of Beaufort, I will let go of the Colonel Baron [van der Capellan], I will go to Belgium to do what the captain asks, I will reclaim my furniture and my precious objects in Holland. I will go to Paris and live in the apartment that I have rented; Captain Ladoux will pay me, I will marry my lover and I will be the happiest woman on earth.

  Not every woman during World War I remained faithful to a fiancé or husband who came home seriously wounded; often the psychological wounds and the realities of their disabilities were too much to be borne. Mata Hari was very much in love with Vadime and ready to settle down. She was perhaps tired of her constant work to earn enough money to live in the style she felt necessary. Besides, Vadime was much younger than she and from an aristocratic family who were likely to regard her with horror as a potential daughter-in-law. But if he went blind, they might not be so dismissive of a potential wife with money, even if she had a notorious reputation. And if he went blind, she may have thought, he would always remember her as beautiful and would not see her aging.

  Georges Ladoux was the head of the Deuxième Bureau, the espionage unit in Paris. He recruited Mata Hari to spy for the French but may have been a double agent himself. (Collection Roget-Viollet)

  Of course, the effects of phosgene gas were only beginning to be known; it had been introduced by the Germans into battle use at Verdun in early July. The terrible mixture turned into hydrochloric acid when it was inhaled into the moist atmosphere of the lungs, producing immediate coughing, searing pain, and permanent lung damage that made a vigorous life difficult. When a soldier’s eyes were exposed to the gas because his gas mask leaked or was not put on fast enough, his eyeballs were burned by the acid too. Permanent blindness, disability, and disfigurement were common aftermaths.

  This lovers’ portrait of Marina and Vadime was probably taken in Paris in 1916. After Vadime was blinded in his left eye by phosgene gas, Mata Hari drew the patch on this photo.

  None of this seemed to spoil the romance of the brief interlude they spent together. Vadime and Mata Hari strolled in the park, took the waters, had their picture taken, dined together, and spent a great deal of time in their hotel. It was a wonderful lovers’ holiday. On the back of one of the photos they had taken of themselves, Mata Hari inscribed: “Vittel, 1916—In memory of some of the most beautiful days of my life, spent with my Vadime whom I love above everything.” She drew an eye patch on that particular photograph perhaps covering a wound. Vadime was wearing a St. George’s Cross and two other medals, which may have been the Croix de Guerre and the Knight of the Legion of Honor. One photograph he had given her showed himself with one of his horses and was signed “To my dear little Marina—your Vadime.”

  She and Vadime made some acquaintances among the other hotel guests, including Brigadier General Jules Le Loup de Sancy de Rolland. According to the inspectors, Mata Hari was trying to ingratiate herself with other guests and enter into their social circles. She was at all times an intensely social creature. A few days after making his acquaintance, Mata Hari asked the brigadier general to introduce her to Madame Pauline de Fleurian, wife of the French ambassador in London. He asked; de Fleurian declined. While in Vittel, Tarlet and Monier questioned the brigadier general and Madame de Fleurian about Mata Hari and warned them against her. The burgeoning friendship turned to social snubs.

  Later, when the brigadier general was questioned formally about Mata Hari, he expressed extreme doubts about her character, but what his attitude might have been without the intervention of the police is unknown. De Sancy said:

  I was at Vittel [in 1916] for the season, when in the room of the restaurant of the hotel, I remarked upon a Russian officer in uniform who, knowing without a question my rank, gave me a military salute. We immediately entered into conversation, I questioned the officer on the military situation, as he was assigned to the French front, and wished him well for the grave eye wound which he had received in the service of France. I knew immediately that I was in the presence of one of those brave young Russian officers, as was indicated by his decorations.

  We were conversing when a tall woman came to sit at the table with the officer, a woman whom he presented to me as his fiancée. The person gave the impression of being too old for him and I smelled right away an adventuress and I distanced myself from the false fiancée, showing the greatest reserve. What I saw next did nothing but confirm my assessment.

  For six years I was the premier military attaché at the embassy of France in Berlin. I was in the habit of judging women of this type for I saw the enemy used them for the worst and I could tell you that the companion of the Russian officer had to me so clearly the bearing of a spy that I notified the Special Commissionaire at the station when I left Vittel.

  Everything about her indicated that she wished to make the Russi
an officer her dupe in all regards. I knew then that she was trying to satisfy an indiscreet curiosity. It is thus that she made herself very lively and asked to visit hospitals, as I told Madame de Fleurian. It is Madame de Fleurian who unmasked her by recognizing that she was a former dancer of the Folies Bergère. The former dancer did not approach me on subjects of a military character. I always kept myself on my guard.

  Ironically, de Sancy’s testimony shows that he asked indiscreet questions of the Russian officer about military matters but Mata Hari did not.

  De Fleurian also gave formal testimony after Mata Hari had been arrested. She was a society matron well past her years of youth and beauty and perhaps jealous of one still beautiful but no longer young. De Fleurian was class-conscious, pompous, and scandalized by the presumption of a dancer passing as a respectable person. Like de Sancy’s, de Fleurian’s view of Mata Hari was doubtless prejudiced by the warning they were given by Tarlet and Monier.

  When questioned later, de Fleurian said:

  My doctor, Dr. Boulommier, was the first to alert me that a very beautiful woman was staying at the same hotel as I and asked me with a certain enthusiasm if I had seen her. I said no. A few days later, I was taking tea in the park with…the doctor and his wife, when the person in question passed.

  I found her to be of the gaudy type which showed me her social background. I became aware that this person had inflamed the masculine element at the hotel. Most of the men found this woman elegant and pretty.

  Me, I was of a little different opinion, I noticed that she was of a certain age and that she had the air of a person who used morphine or cocaine. Her style throughout (I do not criticize otherwise her lack of propriety) rarely pleased me. For example, she said to the maid that she was a Dutch princess and I knew that this sort of title did not exist. [The Dutch royal family would be surprised to learn this “fact.”]

  For the other part, she held strange conversations with a nun, in front of several people, saying for example that she had a château in Touraine and that she had danced in Russia. I finally understood when, one evening, I found myself entering by accident into the salon of the hotel where she was finishing singing; she made a great bow as if she were in the theater. Then a name was pronounced, that of Mata Hari, and a memory came to me of a dancer spoken of by the young people, perhaps my nephews.

  This woman was most often with a young Russian officer.

  When I was leaving Vittel, one morning Brigadier General de Sancy introduced to me an officer of the gendarmerie…. We spoke of Mata Hari and he told me that this woman was under suspicion. As far as I was concerned, I had no suspicion of espionage, I had taken her for a schemer, one of the cosmopolitan women that one saw in the spa towns before the war.

  De Fleurian and de Sancy made a point of telling others in the hotel that she was a woman of “dubious morality,” and the hotel maids gossiped about her and her fiancé sharing a room. Despite all the social disapproval, even a nun who was in the hotel accompanying an invalid could not help but admire her beauty and attire. A year later, Sister Delphine Perrod remembered Mata Hari in the hotel salon, wearing “a costume all of lace and a superb hat.”

  Before Vadime left Vittel on September 7, Tarlet and Monier reported that Mata Hari gave him “a jewel of some value.” Whether this was part of or in addition to the gift of silver Monier later reported is not clear.

  Mata Hari’s idyll with her lover was over.

  13

  Maelstrom

  FROM SEPTEMBER 7, 1916, the day that Vadime left Vittel to return to the front, until the day of her death on October 15, 1917, Mata Hari was caught up in a maelstrom of events. She was manipulated, betrayed, and lied to. Admittedly, she was never one to stick close to the truth when telling an invented story suited her purposes better, but she did not lie with malicious intent, only for convenience. She was sadly ignorant of the extent of the conspiracy working to entrap and condemn her.

  After Vadime’s departure, Mata Hari remained in Vittel for several uncharacteristically solitary days, dining alone, walking alone, and spending much time on her correspondence. The summer was drawing to a close, and the hotels were soon to shut down for the season. She sometimes spoke of Vadime to others, calling him her fiancé or, sometimes, her “nephew”—this was a euphemism of the day, parallel to the phrase used by mature gentlemen who checked into hotels with young mistresses who were referred to as their “nieces.” She regarded herself as legitimately affianced, and all her plans and dreams were of life with Vadime. She consulted with her physician, presumably the Dr. Boulommier who had so enthusiastically commented upon her beauty to de Fleurian. A few times she went for promenades and dined with a couple staying at the hotel, Monsieur and Madame Roux. She retrieved the photographs that had been taken of her and Vadime, then departed for Paris, arriving on September 17.

  For mysterious reasons that have never been explained, Ladoux suspended the surveillance on Mata Hari from September 13 until October 13. The most probable rationale for this bizarre decision was that he had decided she was not an enemy spy. Alternatively, he believed she was a spy but wanted to prevent Tarlet and Monier from recording in their reports something he knew Mata Hari would be doing. This gap in the surveillance reports links up with other peculiar omissions, such as the persistent substitution of “Lieutenant X” for the name of Lieutenant Hallaure and the tactful “losing” of Mata Hari on nights she spent with important dignitaries such as Henri de Marguérie.

  As soon as she was back in Paris, Mata Hari was reminded of her precarious financial situation. Van der Capellan still sent her money, though she had been away from The Hague for months, but he never sent as much as it took for her to live as she did. She had earned no money in Vittel and in fact spent a good deal on herself and Vadime. She went promptly to visit Ladoux, hoping to arrange a lucrative deal that would enable her to retire and live quietly with Vadime.

  The fullest account that exists of this meeting between Ladoux and Mata Hari is from Ladoux’s memoirs, which are in ways demonstrably inaccurate. He wrote:

  She had been the most docile and calm of sick persons [in Vittel] and never even seemed to notice the presence in her hotel of a special valet de chambre for the occasion, nor the attentions of a handsome lieutenant aviator who had never flown….

  It was in this mood that she found me when she returned to see me again, as she had promised, two days after she returned to Paris. She wore the same costume, but her beautiful face seemed to me more pale and drawn. I made a discreet remark, asking if the slightly rough treatment of the cure had not made her too tired. “It is not the treatment,” she responded…. “I am enervated and wish to see my lover again.”

  “You love him so much as that?”

  “He is perhaps the only love of my life!”

  “Then, you must marry Malzov [sic]!”

  “He wants nothing of me [but myself]. [However] he is from an aristocratic family and his father the Admiral forbids this mismatch.” A sigh, then a long silence, then: “Ah! If I only had money.”

  We shall see about that, I thought; now I would like to know something…“How much do you need?”

  “You could not pay so much…a million!”

  Ladoux was appalled at her audacity and told her that to earn such a sum, she must penetrate German military headquarters and learn many important secrets from someone knowledgeable but not too high up in the hierarchy, such as an ordnance officer. According to Ladoux, Mata Hari offered as an alternative plan that she might become the mistress of the crown prince.

  “I have already been the mistress of the Crown Prince and I can do with him what I will….

  “Listen to me and try to understand: The Germans adore me and I was treated like a queen among them, whereas among you [French] I am nothing but a tart….

  “Ah! if you had been at the orgy nights in Berlin!…When they were groveling on the ground at my naked feet, I unchained them and searched for their bestial desires. All
obeyed me. I still maintain my influence over them. I am certain…. Would you permit me only to try?” She was upright…shuddering…a marvelous artist, who created her role and played it at the moment that the ideas came to her, upon them she modeled her attitudes and even the tone of her voice.

  Her attentive regard followed mine which didn’t know where to look, for I was afraid that a word would slip out, just one word which would betray me…me and not her…for the only weapon that she knew with which she could finally strike me down…my love for my country and the passion for my profession. And the word came at last, because choking back for one last time my curiosity, I played my part well. “No one, Mata-Hari, could obtain what you will seek…and then…return to France.”

  “Yes, one man could, and he was also my lover; he is one of the biggest suppliers of the German army and could come and go as he liked at the grand headquarters.”

  “You tell me so…. And what is his name?”

  “Craemer [sic]!”

  Ladoux’s account is dramatic and self-serving but hardly accurate. Craemer was presumably Karl Kroemer, the honorary German consul in Amsterdam, who had already tried to recruit Mata Hari for Germany. Kroemer was Ladoux’s counterpart. If Ladoux already knew Kroemer had recruited Mata Hari, then his relaxing surveillance on her is truly incomprehensible. In this account, Ladoux paints Mata Hari as lascivious, immoral, and cunning, but his prejudice is too obvious. There is no evidence that Mata Hari was ever the mistress of Crown Prince Wilhelm or Karl Kroemer—and she never shied away from admitting the identities of her important lovers. And although there were cabarets in Berlin devoted to hedonistic pleasures and at which famous dancers performed, these flourished in the postwar Weimar period, not before the war. Thus, Ladoux’s description of Mata Hari’s participation in “orgy nights” in Berlin seems anachronistic and designed to emphasize her moral guilt.