BooksBarbecue
Back The Man Who Loved Mata Hari Save as PDF
Chapters (46)
  1. The Man Who Loved Mata Hari
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. PART I: The Early Years
  5. Prologue
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. PART II: The Middle Years
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. PART III: The War Years
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-One
  29. Chapter Twenty-Two
  30. PART IV: The Last Year
  31. Chapter Twenty-Three
  32. Chapter Twenty-Four
  33. Chapter Twenty-Five
  34. Chapter Twenty-Six
  35. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-One
  40. Chapter Thirty-Two
  41. Chapter Thirty-Three
  42. Chapter Thirty-Four
  43. Chapter Thirty-Five
  44. Montserrat
  45. Author’s Afterword
  46. Table of Contents

'Agent H-21 to proceed to Paris and continue assignment. Will

receive five thousand francs from Cramer on Comptoir d'Escompte.'"

She remained silent, unmoving. Bouchardon would later note that she had been weeping, but actually the tears did not come until later. Indeed, at this point she could not have appeared more in control.

"As I told you before, captain. The five thousand francs I received upon returning from Madrid was a loan from a friend in The Hague."

"A loan, madame?"

"A gift, then."

"And precisely who is this friend in The Hague?"

"The Baron Edouard van der Capellen."

"Ah, so the Baron Edouard van der Capellen sent you five thousand francs despite the fact that you had previously left him for the arms of another man."

"He has always been very kind and understanding."

"Yes, obviously very kind and understanding. What a pity that we all can't be so kind and understanding of traitors and whores."

"I have wounded her," Bouchardon told a colleague. "I have not succeeded in bringing her down, but I have drawn the first blood."

And he was right.

She tended to live deep within herself after that critical morning in March. She lay on her cot for hours on end. She moved and spoke as if in a disconnected trance. She ate very little, slept only in short restless fits. She tended to weep without provocation and be inordinately concerned with otherwise meaningless details. Dr. Bizard noted that she seemed to have almost lost the will to survive, and prescribed a daily ration of wine coupled with twenty-five minutes of exercise in the compound. It did not seem to help.

Throughout the long afternoons and endless nights it appeared that her only comfort was that slender translation from the Bhagavad-Gita. She may not have understood such things in it as curious references to eternity as a circle, existence as an extinguished flame, time as a myth, but the essential message seemed pretty clear—they could break her legs, but they could not keep her from dancing.

Also from this same week in March was a second letter to Bouchardon, an at once penetrating and poignant letter:

I realize that your new evidence seems to resolve this case for you. But if I could examine the date and text of these telegrams I feel that I might be able to satisfy your doubts about me. I look forward to your reply, and hope to see you very soon.

Once again, however, there was no reply, and more than seven days passed before she was again brought to Bouchardon. Then it seemed that all he wanted to discuss was her systematic betrayal of British Intelligence, and her insidious affair with Rudolph Spangler.

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty