The Dancer and the Firing Squad

Margaretha Zelle, known as Mata Hari, alleged double agent

You were born Margaretha Zelle in the Netherlands, married badly, divorced, and reinvented yourself as Mata Hari, the exotic temple dancer who captivated prewar Paris. Lovers came from the highest ranks of European military and aristocratic society. When the war began, your connections made you valuable to both sides. Captain Ladoux of the Deuxieme Bureau recruited you to spy on the Germans. Major Kalle of German intelligence claims you have been their Agent H-21 since 1915. The truth is murkier. You passed some information to the French, you accepted German money, and you told everyone what they wanted to hear. Now intercepted German wireless messages reference Agent H-21 in terms that the French believe identify you. Your accounts are frozen, your friends have distanced themselves, and you sense the walls closing in.

Paris in the third year of the Great War. The city is exhausted, its boulevards dimmed by blackout regulations, its hospitals overflowing with wounded, its population divided between those who demand victory at any cost and those who whisper about mutiny and peace. The French army has just suffered catastrophic losses in the Nivelle Offensive, and entire regiments have refused to advance. The Deuxieme Bureau, French military intelligence, is desperate for scapegoats and successes. German intelligence operates through neutral embassies and coded wireless transmissions. In this atmosphere of paranoia and desperation, a former exotic dancer who has been passing between French and German intelligence services finds both her handlers turning against her.