The Lost Mata Hari Ring

by Elyse Douglas

  Edward had been true to his word. He had sent more money to the hotel—a lot of money—and even though she was not comfortable taking it, fearing it sealed her fate as Edward's mistress, she felt she had no other option at the present. So, she had come to the Café de la Rotonde, where she hoped to see Picasso. Trace did not want to visit his studio. She was not interested in becoming two men's mistresses, even if one was Pablo Picasso—but she did want his contacts—modeling contacts. She wanted to be independent and on her own. She was, after all, a modern woman, and not an early 20th-century Parisian woman, who had little choice but to take advantage of her looks for as long as they held out.

  When Mata Hari arrived, Trace noticed the clumsy policeman glance over, his eyes alert, body stiff with recognition, like a wolf spotting his prey.

  Mata Hari sat down heavily. Her face was flushed, her expression weary. Trace smelled her rich, smooth, heady perfume.

  “I’m sorry I’m late, Trace. You have no idea what I have been through. These people are so rude and incompetent. My contact, Henry de Marguérie, helped get my travel request to Vittel approved by the Commissioner of Police, and I’m sure it has arrived at the military authority by now. I went to that so-called authority again today, but there is a different lieutenant every day. So I will have to go there again tomorrow morning to ask that they move on this, so we both get the papers we need. Vadime could be dying and I am not there. I am so tired and disgusted with all these démarches in the police office. I told them that if they need references, I’ll ask Maitre Clunet to supply them. He is my lawyer, after all. He has known me for ten years and has had my marriage and divorce certificates in his hands. He knows everything about my whole existence. Why all this waiting? It is intolerable.”

  “If it’s difficult for you, Mata Hari, it will be impossible for me without a passport.”

  Mata Hari gave a flick of her hand. “No. No. We will get you a passport. Anyway, they all know me. I’m famous. But there is something going on with them, and I don’t like it.”

  Trace stole a quick peek at the policeman. His face was hidden in his newspaper. He’d removed his hat.

  After Mata Hari ordered a steak frites and a glass of red Burgundy, Trace spotted Picasso and another taller man edging in from the street. She sat up.

  “What is it?” Mata Hari asked.

  “It’s Picasso. Do you know him?”

  Mata Hari shrugged, unimpressed. “I met him at a party once. He's short and I don't like his paintings. To me, his paintings are a muddle of shape and color. There is no reality in his work.”

  Picasso spotted Trace. He gave a little wave, tugged on his companion’s coat, and they started over.

  At the table, Picasso offered a little bow. His smile was small but assured.

  “Trace and Mata Hari, I bid you a good day.”

  Trace knew what he was thinking. Since Mata Hari was a high-priced courtesan, surely Trace was too—guilty by association.

  “My dear Picasso,” Mata Hari said, offering her hand. He leaned and kissed it. Trace followed suit, and he kissed hers.

  What would the game be? Trace wondered.

  “Let me present my good friend, Sevuk Andranikian. Do not expect him to smile because he never smiles. In Armenian, his first name Sevuk means black, gloomy and sad. Isn’t that right, Sevuk?”

  Sevuk Andranikian shrugged a shoulder, resigned and bored. He was tall and thin, with sober intelligent eyes, a sad mouth and thinning hair. Perhaps he was closing in on 40 years old. “Gloomy is the way of this world these days, is it not?” he said slowly, in a thick accent, pronouncing every word carefully, so that he was easily understood.

  “It certainly is gloomy,” Mata Hari said. “This awful war has killed off all the fun.”

  Trace noticed Mata Hari's poor choice of the word “killed” but no one else seemed to notice or care.

  Sevuk nodded his sad greeting to the women and then glanced about. “I need a cognac,” he said. “And you, Picasso, must have your absinthe.”

  “May we join you?” Picasso asked the ladies.

  Trace saw Mata Hari’s meager smile, but her manners took over and she indicated toward the two vacant seats.

  After the men ordered, they spoke of the gloomy gray day, of the gloomy war and the gloomy state of Paris. After the drinks were served, Trace watched an agile waiter hurry by, balancing three mugs of foaming beer on a circular tray. Mata Hari turned the conversation toward her travel problem. The men listened, patiently, nodded, drinking, smoking.

  “And poor Trace here cannot even manage to get a passport.”

  Sevuk turned his unhappy eyes on Trace. “And why is that, mademoiselle? Why won’t the officials grant you a passport?”

  Picasso joined in. “And why don’t you already have one, Trace?” he asked.

  Trace inhaled a breath. “Let’s just say, as you once said, Picasso, I am a woman in pieces.”

  “And what does that mean?” Mata Hari asked, searching faces. She gave a quick shake of her head. “On second thought, I don’t want to know what it means.”

  “Passports are easy to come by in this market,” Sevuk said, nonchalantly.

  Trace perked up. “Easy?”

  “Yes… For a price, of course.”

  Picasso laughed, pointing a finger at his friend. “Mr. Andranikian is also a man in pieces,” he said. “And one of his pieces is money. He is never without lots of money.”

  “Money is also easy to obtain,” Sevuk said.

  Trace and Mata Hari perked up, all ears. Trace spoke, measuring her words and lowering her voice to a near conspiratorial whisper. “Is it something that can be done fast? Will it cost a lot of money?”

  Picasso sipped his absinthe, his warm, dark eyes on Trace. “I believe you can afford Sevuk, Trace.”

  Trace didn’t like Picasso’s implication, but she ignored it, adjusting her gaze back to Sevuk. “Can you help me?”

  Sevuk looked her over, speculatively. “Me personally? No. I am, how do you say in English, a connector. Or is it contractor?”

  “A broker,” Mata Hari tossed in.

  Sevuk nodded, in recognition. “Yes, yes, a broker of sorts. That is what I am and what I do best.”

  “Can you help me with my traveling papers?” Mata Hari asked, anxiously.

  “You, Mata Hari, no. You are being watched, you know.”

  Mata Hari stiffened, glancing about. “Watched? By whom? Where?”

  “Don’t look around, Mata Hari,” Trace snapped. “Don’t!”

  Mata Hari glared at Sevuk. “What is all this?” she asked, irritated.

  Sevuk was unfazed. He looked directly at Trace. “You…young lady, can be helped, but, as I said, for a price.”

  “Who is watching me?” Mata Hari persisted, her eyes holding sudden alarm.

  Sevuk slid his gaze toward her. “The police, Mata Hari. Surely, you are aware of that.”

  “And how do you know this?” Mata Hari demanded.

  Picasso leaned forward. “Sevuk is Armenian, Mata Hari. For years, the Armenians have been brutalized by the Turks. In 1914, when the Turks entered World War I on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Turkish military leaders argued that the Armenians were traitors.”

  Sevuk lowered his eyes onto the table, and when he spoke, his voice was filled with low anger and pain. “On April 24 of last year, the Armenian genocide began. On that terrible day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals. Soon after, ordinary Armenians were thrown out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water. The genocide continues. My entire family was killed. I alone escaped, thanks to a kind woman and her husband. I ran and hid for days, with killers after me. Now, I smell a policeman only a few feet away. I know their moves, their tactics. I know their evil, killing minds.”

  They sat in a troubling silence. Trace was thinking that not much had changed in the world, and that was depre
ssing. Of course, none of the people sitting there knew the future as she did. They did not know of the crushing depression that would occur right after World War I, or the awful destruction and loss of life that would happen during World War II, or of the violent terrorism that would stun the world in her lifetime.

  She decided to be bold. “Sevuk, I need a passport. I’ll pay whatever I have to pay. Can you help me?”

  He raised his watery, miserable eyes. “Yes…but we will not speak of it again until I contact you.”

  “When will that be?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? Now, let us drink and talk about life in better days to come. I mean, my friends, life must get better than this, no?”

  They toasted and drank, and then fell into their own somber thoughts.

  CHAPTER 17

  Trace and Mata Hari arrived in the resort town of Vittel nearly two weeks later, on Wednesday, July 26th. Trace now had a passport, thanks to Sevuk Andranikian. Mata Hari had finally received her traveling papers, only two days before. Trace had asked Mata Hari how she received them, but she had refused to answer, saying it was none of Trace's business. She said that she'd done what she had to do to see her wounded lover.

  For her part, Trace had met Sevuk near the Seine, a few days after they’d met at the café, and he’d handed her an address where she was instructed to go. She didn’t hesitate. Sevuk told her to lose the policeman who was following her, and he gave her clear instructions how.

  An hour later, Trace ducked into a certain fashionable women’s shop just off the Champs-Élysées near the Arc de Triomphe, handed a piece of paper to a certain female sales clerk whom Sevuk had described, and then Trace was promptly escorted to a side room that led to a back door.

  Trace exited the shop through the door to an alleyway. There, a big man with a grim expression, powerful chest and massive arms was waiting, just as Sevuk had said he would be. With her heart pounding, the big man took her arm gently, as a lover would, and led her to the Avenue Victor Hugo. From there, they climbed into a taxi and started off to Montmartre, arriving at a little row house between a sad looking café and a

  brothel.

  Trace was led up a dim narrow staircase into a sparsely furnished room, with a single unmade bed, a rickety chest of drawers and a small dining table.

  “Wait here,” the big man said, gruffly, and then he was gone. She stood rigid, feeling the saliva thick in her throat, hearing the toots of car horns outside, hearing coarse arguing voices next door.

  Minutes later the door burst open, and Trace pivoted, making a surprised, fearful sound. A stocky man in a black coat and beret entered, camera in hand, suspicious dark eyes darting about the room. He was a sour, stern man, with a cigarette dangling from thin lips. He shut the door behind him and barked at her.

  “Are you alone?” he said, in feisty French.

  Trace nodded.

  He looked her over with sullen pleasure. “We work fast. Stand against that wall, the gray one.”

  Clouds of cigarette smoke encircled his head as he puffed away, grunting commands, adjusting and checking the lens. Trace wondered if he’d make a grab for her, throw her onto the bed. His menacing eyes wandered there more than once. Her fingers tightened into fists.

  He clicked away, mumbling at her to move from left to right. He was ugly, sinister and rude.

  And then he said something in French she didn’t understand. He stared hard at her for a moment, shook his head, and then, to her total relief, he left, slamming the door.

  Trace had paid Sevuk a lot of money for the forged passport—more than half the money Edward had sent—but four days later, just as Sevuk had promised, the passport arrived at Trace’s hotel in a manila folder marked PERSONAL.

  Upstairs in her room, she impatiently tore open the envelope and tugged out the leather passport. When she saw the American Eagle and her photograph—a very flattering likeness—she smiled with relief and pleasure.

  United States Of America Department Of State.

  The Undersigned Secretary Of State Of

  The United States Of America

  Hereby Requests All Whom It May Concern To Permit

  The Citizen National Tracey Peyton Rutland,

  To Pass Without Delay Or Hindrance, And In Case Of Need, To Be Given

  All Lawful Aid And Protection

  The passport was dated April 1916, and there was a French stamp with the date May 16, 1916. All that remained to make it legal was Trace’s signature. For the first time since she’d arrived in 1916, Trace felt a crashing relief, as if all the windows and doors had been flung open, and bright sunlight was streaming in. She was free now. Free to travel wherever she wanted. Free to travel to the Netherlands to see Nonnie.

  Trace had agreed to travel with Mata Hari to Vittel for two reasons: one, she wanted to see Edward, because she had missed him, and because she sensed some mysterious connection with him that she wanted to explore; and, two, she was sure Mata Hari carried the ring that had somehow, miraculously and regrettably, brought Trace to this time of 1916. Trace planned to steal the sapphire ring at the first opportunity, travel to De Steeg to see Nonnie, and then use the ring to return to her own time—back to her own life.

  But what about Edward? Could she tell him the truth? Probably not. Would he believe her? Of course not. She was still grappling with the weird truth of it every day. But she could not stay in this time. She was not born to it. As Picasso had said, she was in pieces and she felt that she was in pieces, a little more each day.

  Would she ever be whole again? By the time she arrived back to her own time, would she have merged the misshapen, interlocking pieces of her two lives and arranged them into a complete and healthy picture of herself? Was that the reason she had come here?

  As she and Mata Hari traveled to Vittel on a crowded, smoke-filled, rattling train, Trace knew full well how Mata Hari had finally managed to receive her papers. As was consistent with history, Captain Georges Ladoux, the expert in counter-espionage, had agreed to grant Mata Hari her traveling papers to see her lover, Vadime, only if she agreed to spy for the French. Mata Hari had agreed. Of course she had.

  It was a good thing that Sevuk was able to obtain a passport for Trace, because the French authorities had denied her any papers, whatsoever. She only hoped that Captain Ladoux hadn’t flagged her as a possible spy by association with Mata Hari.

  Trace knew about Captain Ladoux, and whenever she thought of him, it gave her shivers. Captain Georges Ladoux was a career army captain who had come out of St. Cyr, the West Point of France. He was a short, black-bearded man with a waxed mustache and brilliantined hair. He was also a protege of the overall commander of French forces. His job involved organizing counter-espionage—despite his modest rank of captain. The intelligence service at that time was in the embryonic stage, and Trace found it interesting that Ladoux, at 42, was still only a captain, despite a devastating war that offered rapid and easy promotions to fill dead-men’s shoes. It was obvious to Trace that this man had a troubled military career. He’d been tucked away, and he knew it. He wanted to prove himself and, of course, he would prove himself, being the small, troubled man, he was.

  But Mata Hari had refused to discuss with Trace anything about how she'd received the traveling papers. “I am going to see Vadime, and that is all that matters, Trace. I will not discuss any more about it.”

  Okay, so Mata Hari was acting according to history, and maybe there was no way to stop that, but Trace herself had free will, and she did not intend to get caught up in the intrigues, traps and tragedy that had befallen her as Mata Hari.

  Trace had observed that she and Mata Hari had been followed onto the train. Two grim-faced men were in different seats and in separate compartments. They were not good detectives. Trace had spotted them easily, and maybe they wanted to be seen. Maybe that was all part of the threat.

  These were the same two men who had been following Mata Hari around Paris as she taxied to her various restaurants,
designer shops and hair salons, as she prepared to see Vadime. A separate policeman had been following Trace, although she didn’t see him now, on the train.

  A taxi was waiting for them as they exited the train at Vittel and, thankfully, Mata Hari had brought only two trunks and not her usual dozen or more. As Trace and Mata Hari bumped along the road that led into the spa and resort town, Trace gazed out the taxi window to see a grassy field with parked ambulances and brown hospital tents that held the wounded. She saw busy nurses, their white headscarves flapping in the wind as they entered and emerged from the tents.

  The taxi suddenly lurched to a stop, stuttered forward and then pulled over to the shoulder of the road to allow four ambulances to pass. They were blocky, clumsy-looking vehicles, with green canvas on wood frames and a white circle with a bold red cross in the center. They were filled with the wounded from some battlefield and Trace noticed, with great interest, that one of the drivers was a woman.

  An ambulance in front stopped, and a gray-clad nurse in a navy cape left the rear of an ambulance and waved another to pass. Trace surmised that those soldiers had the more serious wounds and needed immediate attention.

  The two women in the taxi watched with sober, compassionate expressions as the ambulance turned onto the open field and bumped along the rutted ground toward the tents and waiting doctors. As the ambulances came to a stop, nurses and white coated orderlies rushed to help the soldiers, some borne on stretchers, others wearily stumbling along, figures in khaki, wrapped in blankets or coats, bandaged or splinted. Some were stiff with mud, or caked with blood and dust, salt and sweat. Trace felt sick to her stomach. Even from this distance, she could see that these men were young, but with old faces pinched in pain, shock and exhaustion.

  Mata Hari fought a rising panic. At this horrible sight, she feared the worst for Vadime.

  She leaned forward toward the driver.

  “Can you get us out of here?” she snapped.