by Pat Shipman
By the end of April, Mata Hari was terribly nervous, often weeping uncontrollably. Bouchardon told her that he intended to question Vadime, with whom Mata Hari had been forbidden to communicate and whose letters, intercepted by the police, had not been given to her. The thought of his feelings increased her anxiety. She wrote:
I thank you very much for the information about Captain de Massloff [that he had been hurt and was in the hospital] but I do not understand. Captain de Massloff has nothing to do with the Third Council of War. Does he even know that I have been arrested? Because you have forbidden me to write to him, he thinks I have left [Paris, without telling him]. Wouldn’t you let me write to him now?
Captain de Massloff was my lover. He knows nothing of my life or my projects. He knows nothing of my visits to Captain Ladoux. I have never spoken to him of that. We amused ourselves together and that was all. I beg you likewise never to ask him to appear before the council of war. He is a very brave officer, who has before him too beautiful a career to let it be the least bit damaged by this.
But I desire absolutely and I beg you again to permit me to let him know what has happened to me by a word from me. I do not want him to think of me things that are not true. He could think I have left Paris without saying anything to him. He does not deserve to suffer because of me in any way.
Though she honorably tried to spare her lover embarrassment, he did not reciprocate by coming to her assistance. In testimony, Vadime downplayed the importance of their affair. He did not appear at her trial. In his defense it must be said that the First Regiment of the First Brigade, in which he served, was in open and dangerous mutiny against its officers at the time of her trial. Disheartened by enormous losses on the western front and confused by the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in March 1917, the common soldiers of the First Brigade rioted, refused to obey orders, and demanded to be returned to Russia. Even if Vadime had wanted to attend Mata Hari’s trial, he may not have been able to do so.
19
Telegrams and Secrets
THE INVESTIGATION WAS STALLED, so Ladoux decided to assist Bouchardon by producing some evidence. That the evidence he produced was manufactured or at the very least enhanced by him is quite possible. On April 21 he sent a report to Lieutenant General Dubail, the military governor of Paris who had been routinely rejecting requests for Mata Hari’s provisional liberty, informing him of the existence of a series of intercepted and decoded telegrams from Kalle addressed to Berlin. These secret telegrams were instrumental in Mata Hari’s conviction.
Ostensibly, the first telegrams in the series had been intercepted in December of 1916, but even allowing for bureaucratic inefficiency, word of their content should have reached Dubail and Bouchardon months earlier. It was not until late April that either Dubail or Bouchardon or anyone associated with the investigation heard about the telegrams. The delay is flatly inexplicable unless Ladoux, the only man who seemed to know much about these telegrams, was manipulating the situation to his advantage.
In his report to Dubail, Ladoux offered information about fourteen incriminating telegrams. However, he sent transcripts of only nine, as if this were the entire series, to Bouchardon. Today Mata Hari’s dossier contains only twelve copies and no originals. Ladoux never told Bouchardon that the telegrams were written in a broken code that the Germans knew the French were able to decipher, raising questions about their authenticity. Neither Bouchardon nor anyone associated with Mata Hari’s trial ever examined either the original encrypted telegrams or the unencrypted versions of those telegrams in the original German. No originals of these telegrams, in any form, are in the archives in Paris. Further, some of the unencrypted, translated telegrams are missing—if they ever existed.
According to Ladoux’s report, the first telegram was sent on December 31, 1916, from Kalle to the Berlin headquarters. Since the first two telegrams (decoded and translated) are dated December 13, his writing “31” instead of “13” may have been an ordinary transcription error. But this is only one of numerous peculiar and rather suspicious errors and inconsistencies in the telegrams, as noted by Russell Howe in his book.
The first telegram notified Berlin that
AGENT H21 FROM THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE IN COLOGNE, SENT IN MARCH FOR THE SECOND TIME TO FRANCE, HAS ARRIVED HERE. SHE HAS PRETENDED TO ACCEPT OFFERS OF SERVICE FOR FRENCH INTELLIGENCE AND TO CARRY OUT TRIPS TO BELGIUM FOR THE HEAD OF THE SERVICE.
The telegram then recapitulated her voyage on the Hollandia, her arrest in Falmouth, and her intention to proceed to Holland via Paris and Switzerland. H21 was allegedly sent back to Spain by the British, not by Ladoux’s orders, which the French knew to be the case. Kalle promised to forward her “very complete” reports by letter or telegram. Though H21 had been paid 5,000 francs (roughly $15,000 today) in Paris, she asked for an additional 10,000 (about $30,000), the telegram said; Kalle asked for instructions.
The story of the Falmouth arrest would seem to positively identify H21 as Mata Hari. The agent’s request for an additional large sum of money lent a nice touch of verisimilitude to the telegram for anyone who knew Mata Hari.
Other telegrams furnished more and more damning details: information (inconsequential) that Mata Hari had allegedly furnished to Kalle; a demand for 3,000 francs that corresponded loosely to the 3,000 francs sent to Mata Hari by van der Capellan; a purported payment of 3,500 pesetas to H21 by Kalle that Mata Hari explained as a payment for her “services” from a lover; instructions to send funds via Consul Kroemer in Amsterdam; a reference to H21’s servant, Anna Lintjens, in Roermond; a statement indicating the exact date upon which H21 left Madrid for Paris (which was incorrect). Who else could this H21 be except Mata Hari?
And yet, how could such incriminating pieces of evidence against Mata Hari have gone unnoticed until mid-April? The first had been sent and intercepted the previous December, four months earlier, and the last sent March 8, 1917. Decoding them was hardly difficult, since the French had already broken the code. And, once decoded and translated, even the first telegram was more convincing evidence of Mata Hari’s espionage than anything else that Ladoux or Bouchardon had been able to turn up. Some of them—such as the one that mentioned Anna Lintjens—were undeniably persuasive.
If Ladoux had access to these telegrams as they were deciphered, why did his men expend so much time and energy in early 1917 tailing Mata Hari night and day and finding nothing suspicious? Surely the telegrams alone were sufficient to warrant her arrest months earlier.
Similarly, from the time of Mata Hari’s arrest in February, Bouchardon had struggled manfully to uncover some solid evidence against her, having many witnesses questioned, dispatching inquiries all over France, analyzing the contents of her hotel room at the time of arrest, studying the reports of the surveillance, and trying to break down Mata Hari’s defenses. In his memoirs, Bouchardon declares that these telegrams broke the case wide open, when it was going nowhere. Why was all of his effort necessary when these telegrams were so incriminating?
The argument that the information contained in them was secret and had therefore been withheld from Bouchardon is inadequate. There is nothing of military importance in the telegrams, except the fact that the Germans knew the French had broken their code. One possible answer is that these telegrams did not exist—or did not exist with the alleged contents—until shortly before they were turned over to Bouchardon in April.
Some or all of these telegrams may have been deliberate disinformation, falsehoods intended to distract French attention from investigating genuine double agents working for Germany. The most likely author of that disinformation—the most probable individual to have inserted false telegrams into the series or altered words in the transcripts—was Ladoux. It was Ladoux who “authenticated” these telegrams, Ladoux who failed to mention that the telegrams were written in an old code the Germans knew was broken, Ladoux who denied and ignored Mata Hari’s information about the codes, Ladoux who inexplicably canceled surveillance on M
ata Hari several times, and Ladoux who would look like a terrible fool for hiring Mata Hari in the first place if she were a double agent.
While Bouchardon studied the telegrams and planned his attack on Mata Hari, she continued to write detailed, almost frenzied letters. On April 29 she wrote demanding that Bouchardon question Lieutenant Hallaure and Colonel Denvignes, certain that Hallaure would verify her claim that he directed her to 282, boulevard Saint-Germain and that Denvignes would affirm that she had reported the information she had gleaned from Kalle to him. She had not yet realized how quickly and definitively most of her former lovers would abandon her, even if they had to lie in order to do so.
When Mata Hari was hauled into Bouchardon’s office again on May 1, he felt he had the upper hand in their duel. He questioned her mercilessly about her contacts with Kalle and her identification as agent AF44 from Antwerp, or perhaps as H21. He accused her of playing “the most audacious comedy” of counterespionage and boasted that he had material proof of this. He taunted her with the contents of the telegrams that so blatantly pointed to her identity as H21. Mata Hari steadfastly dismissed these accusations.
Von Kalle can say what he likes [in his telegrams]. It could well be that…he knew about the exchanges between my domestic in Holland and me. When I telegraph, I give the paper to the porter at the hotel without going myself to the post office. In any case, I am not agent H21, von Kalle did not give me one sou and the 5,000 francs I received in November, like that which I received in January 1917, came to me from my lover the Baron van der Capellan.
Ladoux’s men were keeping track of her telegraph messages by obtaining handwritten copies from the porter at the hotel; Kalle’s men might have been doing the same.
Bouchardon challenged her to respond to the contents of various intercepted—and probably doctored—telegrams, but she maintained her dignified denial of any involvement in espionage. Bouchardon accused her of offering her services to spy for France, and she repeated, wearily, her emphasis that it was Ladoux who asked her to spy, not vice versa. She insisted she had had no contact with German intelligence before seducing Kalle and then only as proof of her loyalty to France.
Mata Hari scored one significant point during the interrogation by mentioning that there had been a couple on the Hollandia with her who were also arrested in Falmouth; perhaps one of them was H21. Bouchardon, taken aback by this possibility of which he knew nothing, initiated inquiries on May 3. At the end of May he received confirmation of the arrest of Lisa or Elise Blume, a German, who was interned as a spy in England.
A few days later Clunet embarked on a different tactic to try to save Mata Hari. He wrote a densely reasoned legal argument to Bouchardon. He cited a 1916 law concerning the functioning of military tribunals, which stated that the counsel of an accused must be present at the first and last questioning or else the entire case was nullified. But, he observed, this law did not mean that a counsel could not be present at every questioning, a right that was guaranteed under a previous law passed in 1899. He reasoned that, since military procedure imposed more severe penalties than common law, then the accused was surely entitled to greater guarantees that his or her defense was adequate. He also pointed out that he had a right to see her entire dossier and it could not be denied to him for reasons of security. Clunet sent similar letters to Commandant Schedlin, chief of the Bureau of Military Justice of the Military Government of Paris.
His letter was a serious threat to Bouchardon’s case. Bouchardon immediately wrote a confidential memo to Major Jullien, the chief military prosecutor, enclosing Clunet’s letter. Bouchardon felt that the 1916 law completely superseded the 1899 law and that he was justified in interpreting it strictly. Further, he said he dared not let Clunet attend every questioning because Clunet—enamored of Mata Hari as he was—was blinded to the gravity of the case and could not be trusted to maintain proper discretion about the intercepted telegrams. Some facts could not be disclosed without endangering France.
The same excuse—state security—was offered as the rationale for withholding the contents of the telegrams from Clunet, as it had been for withholding their contents from Bouchardon. But nothing in the telegrams was of any military value whatsoever; no secrets were revealed, no military plans or operations confided. There was only chitchat about H21, her travels, and her payments in addition to gossip that could be found in any newspaper. Jullien responded with more legal discussion, siding with Bouchardon. He agreed that the wisest course was not to permit Clunet to attend questionings.
In early May, Mata Hari sent another undated message, via Clunet, to Bouchardon, begging him to allow her to use some of her own money to take a taxi to his office. She continued:
The frightful women in this place make such remarks about me and in front of me, I have suffered a great deal. I ask you to let me have my money quickly. I am very unhappy. I am ill.
I understand perfectly the game that Captain Ladoux has played in his profession, but he has strayed too far with his promises and his words. I believed he was sincere. An officer does not lie and I was so persuaded that my life had nothing suspect [in it], because I did not concern myself with espionage, that I could not even imagine that you would consider someone who had done nothing to be as guilty as one who had done something.
It never entered my head. I swear to you again that I never carried out any espionage and I never wrote a letter [with secret information in it]. Me, I am not guilty. I am Dutch. Obviously I know some Germans. I am a dancer and after the war, I will be obliged, perhaps, to take some engagements in the theater in Berlin and Vienna, as in Paris.
I am not married. I am a woman who travels and amuses herself a great deal. I can be excused for sometimes forgetting about money. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. And the money concerned is nothing but a win, as I will again.
The loss of my furs grieves me. I lost them because I was engaged in the theater in Germany. The war thus caused all these bad things and I think that [the Germans] should reimburse me, at least in part. I recall also the conversation that I had with my visitors, after my return to Paris. I will tell you about it. I beg you, my captain, to be less hard with me. I am not guilty of espionage or even attempted espionage. And now that my love for Massloff has become the sentiment that rules my life, because he is the man for whom I would do anything, and for whom I would lose everything, Captain Ladoux can calm himself.
There are appearances, it is true, but not any serious actions. I swear to you. If Captain Ladoux gives me freedom I will still keep my word. He will want and need it. I always told him true information about the Germans. Never did he wish to believe me. There are little agents who can provide little information. And since he wanted for great information, it is only the great women who can get them. There is no need for revenge because I have done nothing against his country and never even intended to.
While Mata Hari’s defenses grew more urgent and repetitive, Bouchardon’s evidence accrued very slowly. He asked the police to try to trace Mata Hari’s money, to show that she must have had a source of income beyond what the baron sent her. Clunet passed on Mata Hari’s demand to confront Ladoux, Denvignes, and Hallaure. In extreme agitation, Mata Hari wrote again to Bouchardon.
This is what I will ask of Captain Ladoux, when I see him. He arranged for me to come to his office at the Ministry of War. He asked me if I wanted to enter his espionage service. He gave me the idea to be of service to France and Germany at the same time [to become a double agent] in order to do great things. He promised me, if I succeeded on the mission completely, one million [francs] as payment. He knew that I frequented the German headquarters. He was up to date on my visit to Spain. He was not opposed to my passage across France, when I was asking for my passport at the French consulate in Madrid. He refused three times to see me when I went to the Ministry of War in Paris, in order to explain to him all that I had written. He seeks to avoid a confrontation now?
Then, my captain, it smells very much
as if he has acted against me and I beg you to give me my liberty, as he has done nothing other than assure me passage across two enemy countries, that which was impossible.
There was no answer from Bouchardon. The silence and isolation were effective tools at breaking Mata Hari down.
On May 15 she wrote again.
For three months I am imprisoned in this cell. Morally and physically, you have done me such harm that I beg you to end it. I cannot support any longer the filth, the lack of care for my body, and the disgusting food to which I am not used.
You cannot degrade a woman, day after day, as you have ordered. I am here because of a misunderstanding. I beseech you: stop making me suffer. I cannot take any more, truly, truly.
Whether the confrontation that I asked for is the cause of the waiting. Whether this wounds the vanity or another sentiment of Captain Ladoux. Beg him to give me my liberty. I will speak to no one about what has happened to me here in Paris, but let me leave this terrible prison Saint-Lazare. I cannot stand any longer this wretched life to which you have condemned me.
Stop, I beg you.
Unable to escape, unable to bear her situation, Mata Hari wrote Bouchardon again later the same day, pleading, “It has been three months that I suffer, imprisoned in this cell. I am going mad in here. I swear to you I cannot live this horrible life any longer.”
She repeated her questions about Ladoux and why he refused to see her when she returned from Spain. She repeated again that the whole mission was his idea. Her words were a meaningless prayer to a sort of god who could not or would not hear her.
I beg you, my captain. I have always been an honest woman and well received everywhere. Do not make me suffer in Saint-Lazare, it is frightful.