Femme Fatale

by Pat Shipman

  When she returned from Vittel, Mata Hari went to see Ladoux because her financial situation was dire. The Hotel Meurice, where she had stayed in 1913, was hounding her for 1,300 francs (almost $4,000 in modern currency) that she still owed them. She owed money to many of her favorite shops and had not settled her bill with the Grand Hotel, either. She also needed to furnish the flat at 33, avenue Henri-Martin, where she hoped to live with Vadime.

  According to Ladoux, his plan was unfolding perfectly. In his memoirs he wrote:

  From the beginning of June 1916…the Sûreté and the Prefecture of Police were advised and a surveillance was organized which shadowed her in Spain and followed her to Paris, where it did not cease until the end of August.

  This surveillance has revealed numerous signs of the indiscreet curiosity of Mata Hari, but no proof that she was in the service of the German intelligence agency. To get this, it was necessary to gain her confidence and to propose to her a mission on behalf of France. The interviews which she had with me had no objective except to diminish her fear that all the shadowing of her had given her, at precisely the same time that she was in contact with German [intelligence].

  Astonishingly, Ladoux admitted that constant surveillance of her meetings, telephone calls, mail, and telegrams for two months yielded no evidence that she was working for German intelligence—the surveillance had not uncovered even a vaguely suspicious contact—and yet he remained convinced that Mata Hari was working as a German agent “at precisely the same time” that she was being watched. Even more peculiar is the fact that he had called off her surveillance for a month. Why?

  At their meeting, Ladoux made an explicit offer to Mata Hari of a great deal of money if she would spy for France. Ladoux remembered that he said to her:

  “Be serious. You really wish to enter into our service? Take care; the profession is dangerous.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “And next, that is not all…. Let’s say that you succeed. But when you have your information, what will you do? It is necessary that we receive it in our turn.”

  “Oh! You must have a means of doing that. An agent…in Amsterdam…for example?”

  “But no, alas! We have no one in Holland and it is for that reason that you would be precious to us. You do not know how to use invisible inks?”

  “No, but I will learn…. They have a pretty name [in French they are known as “sympathetic inks”].”

  “Yes, but if one is pinched, it is the end.”

  “Nobody pinches Mata Hari, she knows how to protect herself.”

  “So we have observed!”

  “What! Always these vile suspicions?”

  At this juncture, according to Ladoux, he got up and looked her in the eye, saying:

  “Listen well, I am certain, absolutely certain, that you are an agent in the service of Germany. But I will overlook that at this moment, because you have come to make me this proposition which will put you in such a situation, if I accept, that you will proceed to betray either Germany or us.

  “You are a gambler, Mata Hari, and you must play. Rouge et noir…. Red, it is us, over the line that you see there, that of the front, where the blood flows night and day, for two years already. Black, it is your German friends.

  “I warn you, red wins, black loses. Reflect well before placing your bet. Tomorrow it will be too late. I will leave you this night to think it over.”

  “I have thought it over. I will play red. I am a gambler, but I am superstitious also, and I am sure, in coming to you, that it would bring me happiness!”

  The dialogue is melodramatic and inaccurate. Even the small details, such as her alleged willingness to use invisible ink, ring false. She refused to use invisible ink to communicate with Kroemer, though she had no intention of communicating with him anyway. She objected to it as a matter of style. And she testified that she refused to use invisible ink for Ladoux as well. What’s more, it would have been ludicrous for Ladoux to tell her he thought she was a German agent—how could he trap her then?—and stupid of her to agree to work for him to spy for France in light of that accusation.

  Mata Hari’s version of the meeting is significantly different. She said that Ladoux asked her if she had thought about spying for France and how she intended to operate. She replied, “Do I go to Germany or to Belgium?”

  She did not want to go to Germany, for fear that German intelligence would capture her and ask what she had done with their twenty thousand francs.

  Ladoux told her she’d go to Belgium. She remembered an important contact she knew there, a rich Belgian banker and importer, Monsieur Wurfbain, who worked very closely with the German occupiers of Belgium. Wurfbain had indicated his interest in Mata Hari and invited her to his mansion in Brussels, but she had disliked him and declined. However, she knew he was close to the military general of occupied Belgium, Ferdinand von Bissing, and would provide a useful entrée. She improvised:

  “Here is my plan: From my house in The Hague, I will write a little note to Wurfbain to offer him a cup of tea. I will go to Brussels dressed in wonderful clothes, I will frequent the headquarters and I will not say more than that. My character is a little outspoken and very spontaneous. I don’t intend to laze around there for several months picking up tidbits of small information. I will make a grand coup, one only, then I will quit.”

  The captain was enthusiastic. He asked me right away why I wanted to serve France, adding that he asked always this question of those he employed.

  “I have no other interest,” I told him, “except that of becoming able to marry my lover and be independent.”

  “The reward will be worth the trouble,” he observed. “And the question of money? Have you thought of it?”

  “I ask a million francs,” I said, “but you can pay me afterward when you have recognized the value of my services.”

  “Oh! Oh! That is a great deal of money,” remarked the captain, “but if you truly render us a service that we ask of you, then we will pay it. Once we gave someone two and a half million.”

  Ladoux began questioning her about Antwerp, asking if she had been there and claiming he had a photograph to prove it, which he did not. Antwerp was the location where, it was rumored, a mysterious blonde, a German Ph.D. known as Fräulein Doktor Schragmüller, ran a spy-training school. It was said that her agents were given code names using the initial A for Antwerp, the place of their training, and a second initial for the country in which they operated—in this case F for France—followed by a number. Apparently Ladoux believed that Mata Hari was both a German agent known as H21 and one known as AF44. There is little evidence that such a spy school existed and none that Mata Hari ever attended it. During the period in which she was supposed to have been training in Antwerp, she was actually living in The Hague.

  After she left Ladoux’s office, Mata Hari began to think of the practicalities of spying for France as only a woman of her nature would. She was far less concerned with a means of communicating with her spymaster than she was with the true essentials of her task: a wardrobe suitable for seduction.

  Once again, Mata Hari’s life took on the aura of a French farce. Her approach to the problem was delightful and most unclandestine. Two days after meeting with Ladoux, she sent him an uncoded letter through the regular mail, informing him that she must have an advance on her payment to buy new clothes, explaining she could hardly expect to seduce the military general of Belgium or any other man of taste and power without a stylish wardrobe.

  She waited two days for an answer from Ladoux and, when he failed to reply, went to his office again on September 20. She asked if he had received her letter, and he admitted that he had. She urged him to hurry, then, as it took time to make up an expensive wardrobe and there were only two ships per month going to Holland, where she was to start following her plan.

  Ladoux, astonishingly, did not reprimand her for doing something so stupid as sending him an incriminating letter en clair that anyone mi
ght have intercepted and read. Instead, he told her that his superior, André Goubet, had decided she was not to be given an advance.

  She reminded him that she could not expect van der Capellan to pay for everything and that if he suspected anything, he would drop her and she would have no income, no safe haven in Holland. Reluctantly she agreed to delayed payment, no doubt confident that she would find some man to pay for her.

  Ladoux asked her to use invisible ink, and again she refused: “No. That sort of trickery goes against my nature.” In that case, he instructed her, she must await further instructions from a person who would come to her in The Hague. She would recognize his agent by the number AF44. He asked if she did not recognize the number, as it was “hers.”

  Mata Hari was flatly annoyed by Ladoux’s crude game playing. She exclaimed, “Captain, I beg you once more, drop these insinuations that irritate me, with the information from your little agents and all these dirty tricks, this will only harden my character, there will come a moment when I will no longer want to do anything [for you].”

  She refused to denounce other spies—a practice she regarded as disgusting—but only to pass along military or diplomatic information. Mata Hari might be a woman who lived off men, and a spy, but she had standards that she would not betray. At Ladoux’s direction, she went to the office of Henri Maunoury at the Prefecture of Police, where she obtained a visa to return to Holland via Spain.

  On October 14 the Hotel Meurice got a court order to seize some of her trunks in payment of her debt to them. She paid the hotel two hundred francs and then, irritated, went to plead with the manager to relinquish her possessions. Eventually she paid another three hundred francs—and then hid her trunks in the avenue Henri-Martin apartment to prevent their seizure yet again. She also wrote to the Dutch consul in Paris, Otto Bunge, asking him to write Anna Lintjens, her longtime servant, and ask her to communicate to Baron van der Capellan that she urgently needed six thousand francs (about eighteen hundred dollars today). She never wrote to the baron directly, because he was married, so this roundabout means of communication was normal.

  She visited Ladoux and sent him a pneumatique on October 17; this pattern of visit and pneumatique was repeated on October 19. She moved into cheaper rooms at the Grand Hotel and began seeing more men, doubtless to make money. In late October, she made frequent visits to her bank, in hopes that money from van der Capellan had arrived.

  Before embarking on her first mission as a spy, Mata Hari longed to see Vadime again. He had a brief leave and came to Paris on October 23. She took him first to view their new home at 33, avenue Henri-Martin, and then they began a round of dining out, strolling in parks, and spending time alone together. On October 26 he left on the train. Two days later Mata Hari sent Vadime three letters by express mail; these were intercepted and sent to Ladoux.

  She met with Ladoux again on October 31 and begged fruitlessly for an advance. Fortunately, van der Capellan had sent her money, which arrived on November 4. She collected it and sent Vadime a money order for five hundred francs. Vadime is the only man known to have received money from Mata Hari rather than vice versa. If any proof of her complete devotion to Vadime were needed, this was it.

  On November 5, 1916, Mata Hari left Paris on the night train for Madrid. Ladoux’s men at the Deuxième Bureau sent telegrams warning of her arrival to border towns and secret service agencies. Ladoux’s new spy would be spied upon every step of the way—and given every opportunity to incriminate herself.

  14

  Stepping into the Trap

  AS LADOUX HAD ORDERED, Mata Hari proceeded to Vigo, where on November 9 she boarded the S.S. Hollandia bound for the Netherlands. On November 14 the Hollandia docked at Falmouth to be checked by British authorities, a usual procedure even for a ship from a neutral nation. Mata Hari explained:

  Upon our arrival in this English port, the boat was invaded by marine officers, police, soldiers, and suffragettes, the last charged with searching the women. Two suffragettes searched my trunks and my cabin with an unheard-of thoroughness. They were unfastening the mirror from the walls and looking under my bed with an electric lamp. Then an officer submitted me to a formal interrogation. He asked me if I indeed carried the names written in my passport and if I never traveled under another identity. Then, he stared at me fixedly for at least two minutes. Seeing that I did not lower my eyes, he took from his pocket an amateur photograph, representing a woman dressed in Spanish style, with a white mantilla, having a fan in her right hand and her left hand on her hip. The portrait resembled me a bit. Overall, the woman was a bit too small and more strongly built than I. I laughed, but my protestations did not convince the officer. He told me that the photo was taken in Malaga where I swore I had never been. The captain of the boat and certain Dutch passengers were kind in attesting to my identity, but nothing doing. The officer made me disembark and sent me to London with my baggage.

  The officer was George Grant. Grant and his wife, Janet, were special agents of MI5, stationed at Falmouth. Although in 1915 the British had issued a circular stating that Mata Hari (Margaretha Zelle-MacLeod) was to be arrested if she set foot in the United Kingdom again, neither of them recognized her name. She was instead mistaken for Clara Benedix, about whom a notice had been circulated in May 1916 with a photograph attached. Benedix, like Mata Hari, was to be arrested and brought to Scotland Yard if she appeared in Britain.

  A couple from the ship was also seen as suspicious and taken in for questioning.

  Grant remembered the occasion vividly in 1964, when he was interviewed by Sam Waagenaar. “She was one of the most charming specimens of female humanity I had ever set eyes on,” Grant enthused, and spoke of her “commanding carriage.” Janet Grant strip-searched Mata Hari while Grant and his men tore her cabin apart. “We found absolutely nothing incriminating in her luggage,” Grant remembered. Grant sent a message to London saying that among the passengers who arrived from Vigo was

  MARGARETHA ZELLE MacLEOD, traveling on Dutch passport No 2603, issued at The Hague, 12-5-16…. It is believed that she is the woman “CLARA BENEDIX,” a German agent, circulated by MI5 E and DID.

  “MI5” was the British secret service unit and “DID” was the Department of Interior Defense. Grant mentioned that she claimed to have been living in Paris and was engaged to a Russian officer. She denied being Clara Benedix but admitted she had met her once on a train. Grant’s report concluded: “As Madame MacLeod’s story seems altogether very strange, it was decided to remove her and to send her to London for further examination. She is being sent to C.O. tonight under escort.”

  He and his wife took her by train to London that night. Mata Hari was terrified, weeping and refusing to eat. She asked repeatedly, “What do you want from me?” Despite her fear, her legendary charm was still effective. By the time the Grants took her to Scotland Yard and turned her over to Chief Inspector Edward Parker, she and Janet Grant had become very friendly. She had given Janet Grant her visiting card, some photographs of herself, and a small glass or crystal dog. The Grants had also permitted her to go to a hotel so she could bathe and change clothes before her interrogation.

  At that time, Sir Basil Thomson was assistant commissioner of police and head of the Special Branch (Scotland Yard). He was impeccably upper-crust and had held a number of impressive civil service jobs. Nonetheless, neither his reports at the time nor his reminiscences are notable for their accuracy. Though he knew that Margaretha Zelle-MacLeod was Mata Hari—and knew she was an exotic dancer like Clara Benedix—he wrote in one report that her passport was French, not Dutch, and spelled her name variously as MacLeod and McLeod.

  Mata Hari immediately asked to communicate with the Dutch legation and was given pen and paper. She wrote a letter dated November 13, 1916:

  May I beg Your Excellency politely and urgently to do everything possible to help me. A terrible accident has happened to me. I am the divorced Mrs. Mac-Leod [sic], born Zelle. I am traveling from Spain to Holla
nd with my very own passport. The English police claim that it is false, that I am not Mrs. Zelle.

  I am at my wits’ end; am imprisoned here since this morning at Scotland-Yard and I pray you, come and help me. I live in The Hague at 16 Nieuwe Uitleg, and am well known there as well as in Paris, where I have lived for years.

  I am all alone here and I swear that everything is absolutely in order. It is a misunderstanding, but I pray you, help me.

  Sincerely,

  M.G. Zelle McLeod [sic]

  As ever, Mata Hari’s handwriting on this document is bold, large, and stylish; her mistaken date (it was November 14), her emphatic underlinings, and her different spellings of “MacLeod” reveal her anxiety. Thomson held on to her letter until he had questioned her for two days, not notifying the Dutch authorities until November 16.

  Her interrogation was begun in Dutch, but this soon proved unsatisfactory. Mata Hari intensely disliked her translator. She remembered: “For four days, three men in uniform interrogated me. They questioned me in Dutch through a Belgian who had a visible horror of the people of my country. He spoke my language like a dirty Flamand and he had the audacity to say to the three men that I had a German accent. Then he asked me insidious questions about Dutch cities where I had lived, trying to catch me out.”

  At some point, the language switched to French, which Thomson almost certainly spoke. Two other men were present, Captain Reginald Hall and his assistant, Lord Herschell, both of whom worked for DID and, as well-educated Englishmen of the day, would have known French. The man transcribing the interrogation, whoever he was, did not know French and struggled mightily with the spelling of non-English names and places.

  Thomson accused her of altering her passport and of being Clara Benedix, both of which she consistently denied. He asked her about her parents, her childhood, her marriage, interspersing critical questions with more routine ones in hopes of provoking a lie. As she was wont to, she told a few small lies—saying she had been in Italy when war broke out, not Germany, and that Norman had died in India—but on the whole, she told the truth. She said her father had been dead since 1913 and that she hadn’t seen her daughter, Non, in ten years. She admitted her father had written a book about her and that she was embarrassed by it.