A guard opens the doors and spectators rush to get inside.
“At least I have Vadime,” I say, searching the crowd for him. Va--dime knows the true me. He will set these men straight.
“Vadime de Massloff declined as well. I’m sorry.”
This can’t be true. In my mind’s eye I see him, wrapping his scarf around my neck, pulling me toward him. “I love you, Mata Hari. I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you.” Who will I live with in New York? All of my hope for the future rests with you, he said.
Edouard sees my devastation. “I’m told his superior officer forbade him to speak on your behalf. Don’t let this undo you, M’greet. Stay strong. This is the performance of your life.”
“Are you certain—”
“We believe in you, Mata Hari!”
I am cut off by the noise and excitement of hundreds of people scuffling to find a seat; the commotion is so great that the prosecutor starts shouting, “These civilians must be removed!”
There is absolute mayhem for several minutes and the room threatens to dissolve into chaos. The judges enter and confer and it’s immediately decided that the trial will proceed huis clos.
Edouard looks at me. Behind closed doors. Without a single reporter watching the trial with a critical eye, anything might happen. I look up at the image of Justice holding her heavy scales and wonder which way they will tip. Is justice truly blind? The Roman goddess is depicted as impartial, meant to uncover the truth, and to do so objectively, without fear or favor, no matter the wealth or weakness of the person who is standing before her. I look at the judges and they stare straight back at me.
*
Andre Mornet has been detailing the case against me. He has revealed that French agents spent more than fifteen months following me from Berlin to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam to Madrid, and back again to Paris.
I have racked my memory but I cannot recall any moment when I thought I was being followed.
He has detailed my liaisons with men in every city—during many years, not only for the past fifteen months. He knows where we went to eat, where we went to dance, and always where we were intimate. Most of these men I barely remember. He has spent a great deal of time speaking about past lovers who are German: officers, captains, colonels. But the man who interests him most is Russian: Vadime de Massloff. Hearing his name makes me want to weep, and I can barely listen as he describes our relationship and the importance of the airbase in Vittel. None of what he says is true in the way he describes what happened, and why it happened. But now I recognize that it is damning all the same. I can see the terrible picture that the best prosecutor in France is painting, stroke by stroke.
“Can you tell me about Vadime de Massloff?”
“Are you accusing me of something? Because not even these monsters think I was spying in Vittel.”
“Are you sure?”
“The English understood that this woman cannot be trusted,” Andre Mornet says. He describes how they arrested me, and I am stunned to learn that while they were paying for my stay at the Savoy the British informed Commandant Ladoux of their belief that I was working with the Germans. Now I understand why I heard nothing from Ladoux beyond that terse telegram telling me to return to Madrid. This revelation leads directly to the most damning evidence Mornet has: Arnold Kalle and the coded telegram he sent from Madrid to Berlin, identifying me as asset “H21” and crediting me with passing “significant information” about French military operations to Berlin.
Due to the “sensitive nature” of the information decoded in these missives, the contents are not described to me in any detail. I cannot defend myself against the unknown.
When, at last, Mornet calls me to the stand, my legs are trembling; I hope it isn’t obvious. I sit and try to compose myself as he instructs me to answer every question as briefly as possible. “There are to be no histrionics, no drama, no performing, Margaretha Zelle. Mata Hari’s audience has left. So, shall we begin?”
I nod and he says, “Is it true that you were invited to observe army maneuvers in Silesia and that this invitation was extended by a German cavalry officer by the name of Alfred Kiepert?”
“Yes, but—”
“Answer only with a yes or no, Miss Zelle.”
I glance at Edouard. He nods. “Yes.”
As he describes the importance of an invitation I never accepted, I look at the seven men who sit in judgment of me. They are old and humorless. Men who were probably alive and even fighting during the Siege of Paris.
There is a pause, and I realize that Mornet has asked me something. “I didn’t accept his invitation,” I say.