Mata Hari's Last Dance(72)
“No.” He tells the lie without hesitation.
“I’m glad to know that.”
“She was innocent, in my opinion.”
“Then . . . why?” Non’s voice begins to rise. “Why did they execute her?”
“Publicity. During war, sacrifices are made.” Ancel knows how bitter he sounds. “The story of a femme fatale betraying France could only end in death.” His guilt is gnawing at him: Without Mata Hari he wouldn’t have a large office overlooking the Seine. Without him, the sensation that was Mata Hari might never have existed. Fueled by his articles, France had built her up and then tore her down.
Non doesn’t open the folder. “Do you know why she abandoned me?” she asks.
“She was afraid of your father. Afraid that he would kill you if she came for you.”
“She tried to take me once,” the girl whispers. “She didn’t succeed. When we got home, my father beat me so badly I wasn’t able to walk for two months.”
Ancel doesn’t know what to say.
“I live with him. If he knew the two of us were meeting here, he would kill me. But don’t worry. I won’t give him that chance.”
If there was any doubt, Ancel is now certain this is Mata Hari’s daughter. “She left you this,” he says, reaching into his coat pocket and handing her a locket. It’s silver, and he had Non’s initials engraved on the front. He purchased it the day Mata Hari clipped off a lock of her hair and handed it to him through the prison bars. He wanted to create a nicer presentation than hair wrapped in paper.
Non is weeping now, clasping the locket to her chest. Other customers have started to stare; Ancel wonders what this scene looks like to them. Non opens the locket and sees her mother’s hair. “It’s unfair,” she manages to say.
It is. Ancel can’t spin the story any other way. He watches as she fastens the locket around her neck and he thinks of how similar mother and daughter are in their body language. Were.
“You quit your job,” he observes. “What will your father say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. He won’t be able to find me where I’m going.”
*
She stands at the rails of the ship Outlandia and closes her eyes, imagining the warmth of Java. No one on this ship knows who she is. She had been afraid that her father was having her followed, but now, with the sea air to clear her head, she can think better.
She is finally free. At last.
She has memorized every article given to her by the journalist from Le Figaro. She has weeks, possibly even months, before her money runs out and she has to find employment. Until that happens, she will visit the cities where her mother once lived and meet the women her mother once knew. She plans to fit together the broken pieces of her childhood, putting faces to the names that echo in her mind: Norman, Laksari, Mahadevi. And, of course, the most important name of all: Mata Hari.
After so many years, finally, she is going home.
Author's Note
On October 15, just before dawn, Captain Bouchardon woke Mata Hari from her sleep and ordered her to dress. She was given several minutes to compose herself, then driven from the Conciergerie to the Chateau de Vincennes where reporters and military officers were waiting. Among those present was Edouard Clunet. Witnesses said that as they embraced for the last time, Edouard became hysterical.
At 5:45 a.m., Mata Hari was taken behind the chateau and tied to a wooden stake that had been placed in the ground. Twelve men aimed rifles at her chest. She nodded her head when she was ready and, at 6:00 a.m., the twelve men fired. Only three of the trained riflemen hit their mark, but one of the bullets pierced her heart. Mata Hari died at 6:06. She had refused a blindfold. When the execution was over, no one was allowed to claim her body. In accordance with tradition, an officer emptied his pistol into Mata Hari’s ear. Afterward, her body was brought to the University of Paris for medical research and experimentation.
Mata Hari’s daughter, Jeanne Louise MacLeod, did sail to Java a few weeks shy of her twenty-first birthday. Shockingly, she died while en route, and her cause of death is uncertain. Her early passing guaranteed that she would never learn the truth about her mother’s arrest.
Many more years would pass before the world would learn that Arnold Kalle had sent his “secret” messages from Madrid to Berlin in a code that the British had already cracked. Recognizing Mata Hari for what she was—a very amateur spy working for France—Arnold Kalle neatly orchestrated her downfall. He sent a series of telegrams to Berlin written in this broken code, fully anticipating that the British would share the contents with their French allies, and that France would then indict Mata Hari.
If the French knew that Mata Hari was set up, they weren’t interested in seeing the truth revealed. In 1917, there was one thing the Germans and French agreed upon: Mata Hari was most valuable dead. Germany likely resented the hoodwinking of Consul Cramer; seeing Mata Hari killed by the French would have been a victory. France was in dire fear of losing the war and desperate to convince her citizens that the government could swiftly destroy all enemies. Mata Hari’s sensational execution answered the same need that the deaths of three hundred other French “spies” accomplished: The wartime propaganda machine was fed.
If Mata Hari did “pray for a quick end to this war” in the hope of saving herself, her prayers were answered too late. The truce that halted fighting went into effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Today, that day is commemorated in the United States as Veterans Day.