I heard you used to say you had slept with "Prince W----," the son of the kaiser. I have my contacts in Germany and all are unanimous that you never came within a hundred kilometers of the palace where he stayed during the war. You boasted you knew many people in the German High Commission; you said it loud enough for all to hear. My dear Mata Hari, what spy in their right mind would mention such barbarities with the enemy? But your desire to call people's attention, at a time when your fame was in decline, only made matters worse.
When you were on the stand, they were the ones who lied, but I was defending a publicly discredited person. From the beginning, the charges listed by the prosecutor are absolutely pathetic, mixing truths you told with lies they decided to interweave. I was shocked when they sent me the material, after you finally understood you were in a difficult situation and decided to hire me.
Here are some of the accusations:
1. Zelle MacLeod belongs to the German intelligence service, where she is known by the name H21. (Fact.)
2. She went twice to France since the start of hostilities, surely guided by her mentors, in order to acquire intelligence for the enemy. (You were followed twenty-four hours a day by Ladoux's men--how could you have done that?)
3. During her second trip, she offered her services to French intelligence when, in fact, as demonstrated later, she shared everything with German espionage. (Two mistakes there: You phoned from The Hague to arrange a meeting; this meeting took place with Ladoux on your first trip and absolutely no evidence of secrets "shared" with German intelligence was ever presented.)
4. She returned to Germany under the pretense of collecting the clothes she had left there, but returned with absolutely nothing and was arrested by British intelligence, accused of espionage. She insisted they get in touch with Captain Ladoux, but he refused to confirm her identity. With no argument or evidence to stop her, she was dispatched to Spain and immediately our men saw her heading to the German consulate. (Fact.)
5. Under the pretext of holding confidential information, she presented herself soon after at the French consulate in Madrid, saying she had news of the landing of ammunition for enemy forces, which was under way that moment by the Turks and Germans in Morocco. As we already knew of her role as double agent, we decided not to risk any man on a mission that everything indicated was a trap...(???)
And so on and so forth; a series of delusional points not worth enumerating, culminating in the telegram sent via open channel--or deciphered code--so as to forever smear a woman who, according to what Kramer later confessed to his interrogator, had been "the worst among our poor choices of spies to serve our cause." Ladoux even claimed you had invented the name H21 and your real nom de guerre was H44, who underwent training in Antwerp, Holland, at the famous spy school of Fraulein Doktor Schragmuller.
In a war, the first casualty is human dignity. Your arrest, as I said before, would serve to show the ability of the French military and divert attention from the thousands of young men dropping dead on the battlefield. In peacetime, no one would accept such delusions as evidence. In wartime, it was all the judge needed to have you arrested the next day.
Sister Pauline, who has acted as a bridge between us, tries to keep me updated on everything that happens at the prison. Once she told me, a little flushed, that she had asked to see your scrapbook with everything that was published about you.
"I was the one who asked. Don't go judging her for trying to scandalize a simple nun."
Who am I to judge? But from this day I have also decided to keep a similar album about you, though I never do that for any other client. As all of France is interested in your case, there is no shortage of news articles about the dangerous spy sentenced to death. Unlike Dreyfus, there is no petition or popular demonstration asking to spare your life.
My album is open next to me, to the page where a newspaper gives a detailed description of what happened the day after the trial. I only found one error in the article, regarding your nationality.
Ignoring the fact that the Third War Council was judging her case at that very moment--or pretending she was not worried about what was happening, since she considered herself a woman above good and evil, always aware of French intelligence's steps--Russian spy Mata Hari went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ask permission to go to the front to meet her lover, whose eyes had been seriously wounded and, even then, was forced to fight. She gave the city of Verdun as her location, a guise meant to show she did not know at all what was happening on the eastern front. She was told that the papers in question had not arrived, but that the minister himself was in charge of it.
The arrest warrant was immediately handed down at the end of the closed session, which was sealed to reporters. Details of the case will be made known to the public as soon as the trial is over.
The minister of war had issued and sent the arrest warrant three days prior to the military governor of Paris--office 3455 SCR-10--but had to wait until the charge was formalized before such a warrant could be executed.
A team of five people, led by the prosecutor of the Third War Council, went immediately to room 131 of the Hotel Elysee Palace and found the suspect in a silk robe, still taking her breakfast. When asked why she was doing that, she claimed she had had to wake up very early and go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at that moment she was famished.
While they asked the accused to get dressed, they searched the apartment and found a vast amount of material, mostly women's clothing and accessories. Also found were a permit to travel to Vittel and another to perform paid work in France, dated December 13, 1915.
Claiming it was all just a misunderstanding, she demanded they make a detailed list of what they were taking so she could sue them if they did not return everything to her room in perfect condition that same evening.
Only our newspaper had access to what took place at her meeting with the prosecutor of the Third War Council, Captain Pierre Bouchardon, via a secret source who used to provide us with information about the fate of people who had infiltrated and were later unmasked. According to this source--who provided us with the full transcript--Captain Bouchardon handed her the charges hanging over her head and asked her to read them. When she finished, he asked if she wanted a lawyer, which she categorically denied, and answered only:
"But I'm innocent! Someone is joking with me, I work for the French intelligence, when they ask me for something, which has not happened very often."
Captain Bouchardon asked her to sign a document that our source wrote and she did so willingly. She was convinced she would return that same afternoon to the comfort of her hotel and would immediately contact her "immense" circle of friends who would eventually clarify the absurdities of which she was accused.
As soon as she signed the declaration in question, the spy was led directly to Saint-Lazare prison, repeating constantly, already on the verge of hysteria: "I'm innocent! I'm innocent!" while we managed to secure an exclusive interview with the prosecutor.
"She wasn't even a beautiful woman, like everyone claimed," he said. "But her complete lack of scruples, her complete lack of compassion, led her to manipulate and ruin men, leading to at least one suicide. The person standing before me was a spy with her heart and soul."
>
From there, our team went to the Saint-Lazare prison, where other journalists had already gathered to speak to the director general of incarceration. He seemed to share the opinion of Captain Bouchardon, and also ours, that Mata Hari's beauty had already faded with time.
"Only in her photos is she still beautiful," he said.
"The debauched lifestyle she maintained for so long meant the person who came in here today had huge dark circles under her eyes, hair that was already beginning to discolor at the roots, and very peculiar behavior. She said nothing, except, 'I'm innocent!' always shouting, as if she were back in those days when women, because of their nature, were unable to control their behavior properly. I'm surprised at the bad taste of some friends of mine who had more intimate contact with her."
This was confirmed by the prison doctor, Dr. Jules Socquet, who, in addition to testifying that she was not suffering from any disease--she had no fever, her tongue showed no signs of stomach problems, and auscultation of her lungs and heart showed no suspicious symptoms--released her to be placed in one of the cells of Saint-Lazare after asking the sisters in charge of that wing to provide a stock of sanitary napkins as the prisoner was menstruating.