I have barely finished dressing when there’s a knock at the door. Janet Grant opens it and I count six men in uniform.
“Miss Benedix,” one of them says, “we ask that you come with us.”
I am almost uncertain if I am awake or dreaming. “My name is Mata Hari and I—”
“We’ll let Scotland Yard determine that.”
Despite my protests, I’m removed from the ship. The other passengers watch as six men escort me away like a wily criminal capable of executing an ingenious escape. They take me to a car waiting beyond the dock.
“Where are you taking me?”
“London,” one of the men says.
“I can’t go there. I don’t have the time to go there.”
No one listens.
“Do you hear me? Is anyone listening? I have somewhere else to be! It is important—”
“Tell that to investigators at Scotland Yard.”
The driver starts the car and when I see the railway station in the distance, I begin to panic. “You understand you’re making a big mistake. No one in London is going to believe this. My photograph is in every newspaper!”
“Miss Benedix, it would be better for you if you simply stop -talking.”
“I’m not Miss Benedix!” I say, ice in my voice.
I’m taken directly to Scotland Yard. I feel both humiliated and enraged. If I live to be a hundred, I will never set foot in England again.
Everyone turns to look at me as I’m marched through the building. Is it possible that not a single person—at Scotland Yard of all places!—can recognize me? I can’t fathom the odds. It is absurd. Who is so removed from day-to-day news that they can’t instantly spot that I’m not Miss Clara Benedix—whoever she is. I acknowledge the onlookers, imagining that any moment this charade will end. It must. But then we pass into a windowless hall and I am led to a cell that contains nothing but a single bed and a chair.
“You can’t leave me in here,” I say, distraught. “I’m not Clara Benedix! For God’s sake, go outside and pick up a newspaper!”
The men retreat without a single word.
*
I’m left without food or water, without a place to relieve myself. Hours pass. No one will believe this. I can’t believe it myself. I sit on my chair and simmer with anger. Clara, I think with contempt. I already have negative memories associated with that name. At the Haanstra School, we were meant to “be useful” in the evenings—expected to sit in the parlor under the steel gaze of Van Tassel and knit or sew.
“Concentrate, Miss Zelle,” Mrs. Van Tassel snaps at me.
“I’m sorry,” I apologize. “I never learned how to knit.”
“If that is true, your parents did a woeful job raising you. What kind of a girl doesn’t learn how to knit?”
“I doubt Clara knows how to knit or sew,” I counter, speaking without thinking, and all eyes shift to Clara, who is reading. She blushes to the roots of her long, blonde hair.
“Clara comes from a family with means,” Mrs. Van Tassel clarifies. “She has no need to learn trivial things. You must be trained to knit and sew properly, Miss Zelle. A girl like you requires such skills to earn her way in the world.”
Sitting in this uncomfortable cell, I wonder about Clara, my fellow inmate at the Haanstra School. She married an old man she didn’t love. Is she as miserable as I am right now?
*
“I’m taking you to see Sir Basil Thomson in the Interrogation Room.”
“I’m sorry,” I say to the officer, so grateful to see another human being after so much time alone. “That name doesn’t mean anything to me. Who is Sir Basil Thomson?”
The man stares at me. Then he says simply, “Interrogation Room.”
*
Sir Basil Thomson is dressed in a suit and a long woolen scarf. His thin face is drawn. The door shuts behind me and he gestures to a seat. Like the cell, the Interrogation Room is gray and windowless. It is also colder.
“I told them, I’m not Miss Benedix,” I say, taking the seat he has indicated.
“I’m told that you claim you are Mata Hari. Is that your true name?”
“Yes,” I say, as the door opens and a man with a stenograph appears. I clarify my answer. “It’s my stage name. My birth name is Margaretha Zelle.”
The stenographer sits and Sir Basil instructs him to write, “The woman named Clara Benedix insists her name is Margaretha Zelle.”
“I insist because I am!” I am tired and cold and hungry and this is infuriating. “My name is Margaretha Zelle! I was married once and my name changed to MacLeod. But now I go by Margaretha Zelle and my stage name is Mata Hari. This is easily verified. Why isn’t anyone listening to me? I want to register a complaint. Who is in charge?” I desperately conjure von Schilling’s list of names in my mind’s eye. Is there anyone in England I can call?
“You are a German spy. Your name is Clara Benedix.”