It was not quite midnight when they returned to his studio. Another fog had risen. She leaned against the cold plaster as he slipped the dress past her shoulders. She shut her eyes when she kneeled to remove her stockings. When he drew her to the bed she pressed his hand against her breast. When he momentarily left her for a cigarette, she called out his name.

De Massloff sat in his room in the darkness with a bottle of cognac and a cheap cigar. He had extinguished the lights an hour ago, and had remained all but unmoving ever since. Earlier, when he had realized that he would not be dining with his friend tonight, he had wandered into the outer streets looking for a prostitute. He had only found a bar, then returned to his room to become this uneasy figure in the darkness.

Margaretha Zelle . . . could he believe her? She talked about a previous marriage but never said who her husband had been. She also talked about children but never showed a photograph, and although she claimed that she had traveled extensively throughout the Far East, she actually knew little or nothing of the culture except a few Indonesian dance steps and the words Mata Hari—Eye of the Dawn.

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

IN her fantasy she had been born on the coast of Malabar, in the holy city of Jaffnapatam. Her father had been called Assirvadam, the Blessing of God. Her mother had been a ministrant of the temple. Her world extended no further than the cloistered gardens and moss-encrusted stone, while beyond lay a jungle humped in silence. At fourteen she had danced for the Elders, naked under the torchlight, deep within Siva's recess. At night she was chained to a wall and whipped.

Finally one evening among the suspended vines her eyes met the eyes of a young English officer. Although neither spoke, something clearly passed between them, an impossible union in the lucid stillness. He came to her again in the dead of night and carried her off to a snow-capped mountain retreat high above the caravan routes.

In the spring a son was born, with his father's fair hair and his mother's elusive gaze. For three years they lived in unbroken contentment until a jealous servant poisoned the child with venom drawn from a cobra. Then lying down with a broken heart, her husband also died, which finally left Mata Hari in a twilight world, moving from city to city.

Like other stories she would later tell, this one had a grain of truth. As the wife of a garrison commander in Java, she had indeed spent time in the East. As a mother in Sumatra, she really had lost a child at the hands of a malicious servant. Finally, she actually had seen the temple dancers, but only briefly and from a distance.