The Lost Mata Hari Ring

by Elyse Douglas

  The impossible, staggering thought of his being gone forever seemed a treacherous act of a God who lacked any reasonable compassion. What would she do without his warm, rich love, his boyish humor and enthusiasm; his all-encompassing love for her?

  She moved to the window, parted the thin curtains and peered out into the cloudy, rainy day, at the foggy bistros and cafés and the people strolling by under black umbrellas, the scuffle of their footsteps sounding like a threat. The day hung heavy over the streets, the autumn air chilled her; her circling, brittle thoughts mocked her, her life in the future beckoned to her. What would she do now for money? She had very little left. How she longed to leap from that window and fly away—to flee this time of 1916.

  Later, Trace sat slumped in a café booth over a plate of cheese, over-ripe fruit and a cup of coffee. She was oblivious to the people who came and went, the muted conversations about the lousy weather, and the ever-present cursing of the war and the deprivations it had caused.

  Before her lay a daily paper on the marble top, left by a previous patron. An article caught her eye and she slid the paper toward her and began to read. It took several careful readings before the French became clear, and the story revealed itself.

  The article reported that a French cavalry unit dressed in red caps, blue feathers, glossy black boots and polished brass buckles, had bravely ridden their horses into battle, armed with only lances, against German machine guns. Of the nearly two hundred who charged, not one of the cavalry survived. The writer blasted the political leaders, the commanders and the generals for their clumsy, incompetent prosecution of the war, and for the senseless deaths of nearly 900 soldiers every day.

  Trace slid the paper aside. What insanity this war is, she thought, and in her time in the future, she’d known so little about the sacrifices people made in World War I.

  At first, she didn’t hear the voice standing over her and, when her swollen red eyes slowly lifted to the sound, she saw three men, one standing directly next to her and two behind. They were policemen.

  The man who spoke to her had a little mustache, a thin face and bleak narrowed eyes. The two policemen behind him were stiff and somber.

  Outside, rain tumbled down.

  “Are you Mrs. Tracey Rutland Bishop?” the mustached policeman asked, in nearly perfect English.

  A tremor shook her. In a small voice, she said, “Yes…”

  “Will you come with me, please?”

  Oddly, the first thing Trace thought was, Bad things come in threes… First was having to leave Nonnie, then Edward’s death, and now this, whatever it was, and it couldn’t be good.

  “What’s this about?” Trace said, in an automatic response.

  “That is not for me to say, Mrs. Bishop. Will you please come with me?”

  A sick misery arose in her. “May I pay my bill, please?”

  He nodded. “By all means.”

  Outside, a policeman held an umbrella for her as she climbed aboard the car that had POLICE printed on its side in bold yellow.

  They drove through the rainy, gaslit streets, slicing through the morning mist, rolling along the wide cobblestoned boulevards. Trace was sitting next to the very upright officer who had arrested her, while the other two sat in front, one as the driver.

  Trace shut out thoughts and emotions. She did not have the strength to speculate. She would have to save what little energy she had to confront what was ahead.

  CHAPTER 28

  Captain Georges Ladoux's office was airless and spare, located at the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police at 36, quai des Orfèvres. Captain Ladoux was short and stockier than Trace recalled, with a square face, a broad black mustache, and a severe manner. He glared accusingly at Trace from across his desk. She sat on a hard, wooden, uncomfortable upright chair.

  Of course, Trace knew that Captain Ladoux was head of the Deuxième Bureau, French military intelligence. She knew everything about him, and she knew she was in serious trouble.

  “Do you know who I am, Mrs. Bishop?” he said in a thick accent, pronouncing her name as Beeship.

  “Yes…”

  He then continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “I am Captain Georges Ladoux, an intelligence officer charged with organizing counter-espionage against the Germans.”

  Trace took in a breath, sat on the edge of her seat, and smoothed out her dress, one made of gold and pastel colored threads, with a spray of pastel rose buds and velvet foliage. The long sleeves matched the front, and the dress lay around her in graceful folds.

  She’d purchased the dress for Edward, just before they were married, and she wore it now in his memory.

  Edward had complimented her in it. He had kissed her, passionately, and he had adroitly helped her out of it one delightful afternoon before he’d returned to war.

  “First, let me offer my condolences over the death of your husband.”

  Trace nodded, silently, her face impassive. He didn’t give a damn about Edward’s death, and she knew it.

  To say that the moment held catastrophic possibilities was a gross understatement. To say she was scared to death of this corrupt and evil man was also an understatement. To realize that she had been flung back into time to find herself in the very same horrifying situation she’d found herself in, in a past life, was debilitating and devastating.

  But this time, she was not Mata Hari, she was Trace. Despite her fear and the present danger that the moment presented, Trace felt a steely obstinacy and a burning resolve to fight back. She would not ignore the danger, as Mata Hari had, nor assume she could use her feminine charms to escape it. She was going to face the challenge, no matter what the cost.

  Captain Ladoux was the product of an age when women were not only subservient to men, they were also at their mercy. Any woman who didn’t play by their rules—obedience, marriage, bearing children and keeping a home—was suspect. Men controlled the money. Men controlled the politics. Men controlled the military. Men had careers. Men had mistresses. Men had power. Women had to be pliant, understanding and longsuffering.

  Trace was a product of her time, despite her memories of being Mata Hari. She sat as erect as a soldier, feeling as combative as a soldier.

  “You weren’t married very long, were you, Mrs. Bishop?” he said, flatly, shaping the inference to hint at something more important.

  “The war took care of that. It makes one wonder if thousands of men have died needlessly because of military incompetence.”

  He bristled, sitting straighter, lifting his head in offense, his eyes turning cold on her.

  “You, madam, should learn to curb your tongue.”

  “Why am I here, Captain Ladoux? Why haven’t you contacted the American Embassy?”

  The muscles in his face tightened. He reached down, picked up Trace’s passport and held it high, shaking it. “Your passport is a fake, Mrs. Bishop.”

  Trace didn’t flinch. “You still haven’t answered my question, Captain Ladoux. Why haven’t you contacted the American Embassy? I am an American citizen, and thus I am entitled to all the protection that the United States government offers.”

  “You do not ask questions here!” he shouted. “I ask the questions and you answer them. Do you understand?”

  “I will answer, sir, when I have a United States representative here with me.”

  He slammed a fist down hard on the desk. “You are spying for the Germans, Mrs. Bishop. You are not entitled to anything. Do you understand?”

  She kept her voice even. “Forgive me, Captain Ladoux, but I am not a spy of any kind, and your charge is utterly and absolutely ridiculous.”

  He shot up, his face flushing red with anger, his voice gritty and threatening. “Do not insult my intelligence, Mrs. Bishop. Do not insult me, Mrs. Bishop. The charges before you are serious, and they are conclusive. Make no mistake about that.”

  Trace’s stomach knotted. What conclusive evidence could he have?

  She struggled to keep her nerves o
ut of her voice. “And what is this evidence you have, Captain Ladoux? Present it. Show it to me.”

  He eased back down in his chair, his mouth tight, his eyes bold with accusation. He opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a small square envelope. He tossed it on the desk before her, squinting back at her with an animal suspicion.

  When Trace’s eyes fell on it, she felt the fire of panic. It was the envelope the limping man had given her at the hotel in De Steeg. The envelope he had asked her to give to Mata Hari. Trace had forgotten all about it. Where had Captain Ladoux found it?

  “Mrs. Bishop, two nights ago, the night your husband died, you took a taxi to Montparnasse. You exited that taxi and entered Café La Coupole. While there, you were observed talking with two British soldiers. I suggest, Mrs. Bishop, that you became quite drunk, perhaps to drown out your pain over your husband’s death, perhaps because this is your habit. In any case, one of those soldiers thought it was bizarre that you spoke of things, like the future, and how the war would end. You seemed to have a lot of knowledge about the war, Mrs. Bishop, and this soldier found it disturbing. He said you spoke about Mata Hari and, more interestingly, you spoke about me, and how I would be tried as a double agent.”

  Trace nearly collapsed in shock, defeat and anguish. Why had she been so stupid? She often rattled on when she’d drunk too much, but now she couldn’t recall what she had said. Her only memory was of a fiery outburst about Edward not being released from the damned war long before his PTSD took hold.

  Trace managed to sit tall, her face not betraying the earthquake that was going on inside her—her inner crumbling state.

  Captain Ladoux held up the envelope. “Mrs. Bishop, this little envelope dropped to the floor from your coat. One of the British soldiers found it after you left. Those two honorable British soldiers did the right thing, Mrs. Bishop. They handed this note over to the French police.”

  Trace stared hard, not moving, as Captain Ladoux continued, looking smug and confident, enjoying his trap.

  “For your information, Mrs. Bishop, the man who gave you this is working for French Intelligence. The note is of no real importance here, except that it confirms that you and Mata Hari are spying for the Germans.”

  “I didn’t open the note. I had no idea what was inside.”

  “Mrs. Bishop, we have suspected you for some time. You have aroused our suspicions during your and Mata Hari’s travels in and out of the war zone. For your further information, Mrs. Bishop, I have contacted the U.S. Embassy, and have inquired about you. They have no record of you whatsoever, and they stated quite conclusively that they did not issue you this passport, nor any other passport. So far, we have been unable to learn anything about your past—where you came from, how you got here or why you came to France. But I suggest to you that you are most likely a spy, recruited, trained, and operating out of Antwerp, in occupied Belgium, as part of the espionage network run by the infamous Elsbeth Schragmuller, better known as Fraulein Doktor, one of the more shadowy figures in German Intelligence.”

  Trace’s face was blank with shock. “What? I am not. I’ve never even heard of the woman. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It won’t do you any good to deny it, Mrs. Bishop. This is a very serious charge. Very serious indeed.”

  Captain Ladoux stood, squaring his shoulders, as if ready to pass sentence. “As such, I hereby inform you that you are under arrest for espionage against France. You will be escorted to Saint-Lazare, a prison for women, where you will remain until you can be interrogated further at the Palais de Justice, by the investigating magistrate, Pierre Bouchardon.”

  Trace was as still as a statue. Her eyes shifted down and away; an icy chill arose that nearly stopped her heart.

  CHAPTER 29

  At the Prison Saint-Lazare for women, Trace was cruelly placed in solitary confinement in a padded suicide cell, under 24-hour supervision. The cell was dark and dank, and smelled of mold and human waste.

  Saint-Lazare had originally been built in the twelfth century as a leper colony, and it became a prison five centuries later. Since it stood on the boundary of marshland on the banks of the Seine, the prison was notoriously cold and damp.

  Within days, Trace became deathly ill and was taken to the infirmary, where she was slowly nursed back to moderate health. She was then assigned cell number 12; ironically, the same cell Mata Hari would occupy after her arrest in January 1917.

  Trace’s cell was dusky and close, and like most cells, it was populated by fleas, lice, bedbugs, cockroaches and the occasional rat. The lavatory was a metal bucket, and her washing had to be done with the single bowl of cold water she received every morning. The food was minimal and of poor quality: bad coffee, stale bread and thin soup with tired vegetables. A small portion of meat was served once a week.

  Trace soon developed a chronic cough and was placed under the care of Soeur Leonide, the venerable superior of the Soeurs de Marie-Joseph, who staffed the prison. As such, a nun arrived twice a day to check her medical condition and pray for her.

  Trace spent most of her time in bed, beating away the bugs, struggling for sleep and sanity. She developed a body rash that never went away. She lost track of time and was never told when she would be interrogated by the investigating magistrate, Pierre Bouchardon. It finally became evident to her that Captain Ladoux’s plan was simply to leave her in prison to rot and die. After all, who would know? Obviously, no one had come for her—not Mata Hari or Captain Vadime, and they were the only people she knew. In 1916, she was a nobody who had arrived from nowhere. She had no discernable background and no family; therefore, she would not be missed when she died.

  Over the next few weeks, she grew rail thin, exposing sharp cheekbones. Her eyes sank into her ashen face. She forced herself to eat, although she had no appetite.

  While Trace slipped in and out of sleep, she pondered her fate. Why had she returned to this time? What had been the purpose? To rot and die in prison so far away from her own time and place that no one in either time would ever know what had happened to her?

  On one drowning day, a nun brought Trace a mirror. She stared into it. Her whole face was a ruin, her short hair a tangled nest, her eyes filled with wide madness.

  As the days passed and she grew increasingly frail and listless, she began to lose all hope. She often spoke to Edward, her lips moving soundlessly. There were times she felt his kiss and heard his warm voice, encouraging her to take heart, and never give up.

  Nonnie, too, often appeared in Trace’s vague and wandering dreams, her daughter’s face springing up into Trace’s consciousness like a blessing. She relived those delightful days in the sunny piano room in De Steeg, as she and Nonnie sang and laughed and sometimes danced a waltz, whirling about the room, happiness all about them.

  Trace longed to write Nonnie, but she had neither the strength nor the will to do so. And, anyway, what would she say? “Here I am, Nonnie, rotting away in Saint-Lazare Prison, accused of being a spy.” If Captain MacLeod saw the letter, and he certainly would, there would be no hope of ever seeing Nonnie again.

  As the days and nights blurred by, Trace comforted herself with the grateful thoughts that despite her dire circumstances and certain death, being with Nonnie had made it all worthwhile. Edward’s love and their brief marriage had made it all worthwhile.

  On one aggressively cold morning, Trace awoke, shivering. Every muscle seemed to ache, her teeth chattered, and her stomach was a boiling knot of agony. In that broken, shattering moment, she glanced up through swollen, slitted eyes and saw the first light of morning streaming in from a high narrow window. She couldn’t pull her eyes from it, even though her eyes burned and twitched. The light poured in and formed a yellow column of light, bright, sturdy and constant. Suddenly, something in Trace awakened: a memory, a stirring of desire. Her breath deepened. Tears filled her eyes. She did not want to die. She wanted to live! She wanted to see her family and friends. She wanted to sing
again, to feel her body move in time with music; she wanted to dance with a chorus and feel the exaltation that follows a curtain call.

  In a flash, she realized she had to act, she had to do something. No one had come to help her, and no one would—not unless she took action now. She had to contact the one person who might be able to help.

  Trace forced her heavy body up onto her feet, her legs rubbery, her head reeling. She leaned over the bed, inhaling deep breaths, willing new strength to enter her body.

  When the cell door opened, Trace angled her body toward it. Sister Constantine entered, a young, pious woman, who had never looked Trace in the eye.

  Sister Constantine froze when she saw Trace struggling to stand.

  “What are you doing up, Mrs. Bishop? You must lie down. You are sick, very sick.”

  “No,” Trace said so sharply that Sister Constantine flinched.

  Trace lowered her voice, speaking slowly and deliberately. “Sister Constantine, I want to dictate a letter to you, and you must promise me that it will be delivered.”

  Sister Constantine’s expression turned fearful, and she whispered. “I don’t think I can do that, Mrs. Bishop. It’s not allowed.”

  Trace stared at the woman with pleading eyes. “If you do not help me, Sister, I will die, and I am sure that God does not want me to die. I am innocent of all charges, and it is in your power to save my life. Not in the angels’ and not in God’s. It is in your power to save me. Please help. You are my last hope.”

  Trembling, Sister Constantine bowed, making the sign of the cross.

  CHAPTER 30

  Sir Alfred Kenyon Bishop was a tall, straight, balding man, who possessed a tenacious personality and a regal air of authority. He had that stiff-upper-lip quality that many British are known for, and he was also known for his shrewd, calculating intelligence and quick, biting wit. His legs were long, his gait assured and his eyes lively and observant.

  At 58 years old, he was a member of the Liberal Party and had been a respected member of Parliament since he was 52. He enjoyed a close relationship with David Lloyd George, who was the current War Minister and who, in December 1916, would become Prime Minister of England.