"Also, the 101st Fleet wants to borrow our new long-range FXH helicopter"
This is a fictional helicopter.
"They'd simply send their most seductive Mata Hari to the nearest bar and let you pick her up."
Mata Hari was the stage name of Margaretha Geertruida "M'greet" Zelle (7 August 1876, Leeuwarden - 15 October 1917, Vincennes), a Dutch exotic dancer, courtesan, and accused spy who was executed by firing squad in France under charges of espionage for Germany during World War I.
During World War I, the Netherlands remained neutral. As a Dutch subject, Margaretha Zelle was thus able to cross national borders freely. To avoid the battlefields, she travelled between France and the Netherlands via Spain and Britain, and her movements inevitably attracted attention. In 1916, she was travelling by steamer from Spain when her ship called at the English port of Falmouth. There she was arrested and brought to London where she was interrogated at length by Sir Basil Thomson, Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard in charge of counter-espionage. He gave an account of this in his 1922 book Queer People, saying that she eventually admitted to working for French Intelligence. Initially detained in Canon Street police station, she was then released and stayed at the Savoy Hotel. A full transcript of the interview is in Britain's National Archives and was broadcast with Mata Hari played by Eleanor Bron on the independent station London Broadcasting in 1980.
It is unclear if she lied on this occasion, believing the story made her sound more intriguing, or if French authorities were using her in such a way, but would not acknowledge her due to the embarrassment and international backlash it could cause.
In January 1917, the German military attaché in Madrid transmitted radio messages to Berlin describing the helpful activities of a German spy, code-named H-21. French intelligence agents intercepted the messages and, from the information they contained, identified H-21 as Mata Hari. Unusually, the messages were in a code that German intelligence knew had already been broken by the French, leaving some historians to suspect that the messages were contrived.
Trial and execution
On 13 February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested in her room at the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Paris. She was put on trial, accused of spying for Germany and consequently causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers. Although the French and British intelligence suspected her of spying for Germany, neither could produce definite evidence against her. Secret ink was found in her room, which was incriminating evidence in that period. She contended that it was part of her make-up. She wrote several letters to the Dutch Consul in Paris, claiming her innocence. "My international connections are due of my work as a dancer, nothing else [...]. Because I really did not spy, it is terrible that I cannot defend myself." She was found guilty and was executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917, at the age of 41.
Pat Shipman's biography Femme Fatale argues that Mata Hari was never a double agent, speculating that she was used as a scapegoat by the head of French counter-espionage. Georges Ladoux had been responsible for recruiting Mata Hari as a French spy and later was arrested for being a double agent himself.
The facts of the case remain vague because the official case documents regarding the execution were sealed for 100 years, although in 1985, biographer Russell Warren Howe managed to convince the French Minister of National Defense to break open the file, about 32 years early. It was revealed that Mata Hari was innocent of her charges of espionage.
[edit] Legend and popular cultureThe fact that almost immediately after her death questions arose about the justification of her execution, on top of rumours about the way she acted during her execution, set the story. The idea of an exotic dancer working as a lethal double agent, using her powers of seduction to extract military secrets from her many lovers fired the popular imagination, set the legend and made Mata Hari an enduring archetype of the femme fatale.
Much of the popularity is owed to the film titled Mata Hari (1931) and starring Greta Garbo in the leading role. While based on real events in the life of Margaretha Zelle, the plot was largely fictional, appealing to the public appetite for fantasy at the expense of historical fact. Immensely successful as a form of entertainment, the exciting and romantic character in this film inspired subsequent generations of storytellers. Eventually, Mata Hari featured in more films, television series, and in video games, but increasingly, it is only the use of Margaretha Zelle's famous stage name that bears any resemblance to the real person. Kurt Vonnegut's novel Mother Night is dedicated to her. Many books have been written about Mata Hari, some of them serious historical and biographical accounts, but many of them highly speculative.
They salvaged the New Century off Libya, the Southwind in the Black Sea, the Tari Maru within sight of the lights of China.
These are all fictional ships, invented for the purpose of the book.
"Why all the cloak and dagger?"
Cloak and dagger is a term sometimes used to refer to situations involving intrigue, secrecy, espionage, or mystery.
The phrase has two possible origins. One dates from the early 19th century and is a translation from the French de cape et d'épée and Spanish de capa y espada (literally "of cloak and sword"). These phrases referred to a genre of drama in which the main characters literally wore these items. In 1840, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, "In the afternoon read La Dama Duende of Calderón - a very good comedy of 'cloak and sword'." Charles Dickens subsequently used the phrase "cloak and dagger" in his work Barnaby Rudge a year later as a sarcastic reference to this style of drama. The imagery of these two items became associated with the archetypical spy or assassin: The cloak, worn to hide one's identity or remain hidden from view, and the dagger, a concealable and silent weapon.
In historical European martial arts, the term can be taken literally, and refers to wielding a dagger in one hand and a cloak in the other. The purpose of the cloak was to obscure the presence or movement of the dagger, to provide minor protection from slashes, to restrict the movement of the opponent's weapon, and to provide a distraction. Use of the cloak and dagger was considered a "dishonest" method of combat because of its deceptive tactics. Giacomo di Grassi, in "His True Art of Defense" (1570), included a section called "The Rapier and Cloake".
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