The Interrogator

by Andrew Williams

  She laughed. ‘You mean like you.’

  By the time they turned into Lord North Street the sky behind the broken silhouette of St John’s was a rich blue. Mary took the key from her pocket. Her hand was shaking a little.

  ‘Where’s your . . .’ Lindsay cleared his throat. ‘Where’s your uncle?’ He was nervous too.

  ‘In his constituency.’

  The door clicked behind them. Before she could switch on the light he turned her towards him, held her face between his hands and kissed her, slowly at first and then quicker, harder, with trembling urgency. She was clinging to him but he pushed her gently away and his fingers were on her face then on her breasts, loosening her blouse.

  ‘Where?’ She took his hand and kissed it.

  ‘This way.’

  And fear was gone, and reason; there was only love and a wild excitement that just for a moment made her laugh out loud.

  Later they lay together in silence, naked beneath a cotton sheet, her head resting on his chest. The steady beat of his heart made her smile. She was lying next to a man and that man had been inside her. Why had she let him make love to her? She was in love with him, she was sure of that. She had never been orthodox in her views about sex before marriage but it had happened tonight because, there in Trafalgar Square, she had wanted to draw him closer than any man had ever been to her, to give him a part of herself.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh about you, about us.’

  Her head slipped from his chest as he shuffled down the bed and on to his side to look into her eyes: ‘I love you.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ she said brusquely.

  He laughed.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to give myself to a man who didn’t.’ Lindsay smiled and stroked her face with his fingertips: ‘I was under the impression you’d taken rather than given.’

  Mary pushed at him playfully: ‘Are you accusing me of being forward?’

  ‘No, I’m grateful to you, and in love with you.’ He reached beneath the sheet to caress her.

  ‘Grateful?’ She expected him to say something flippant but his face stiffened a little and he rolled on to his back.

  ‘Grateful? Oh for bringing a little hope into my life, some love, yes some hope.’

  ‘Was it so bleak?’

  He gave a long sigh then swung his legs off the bed and stood up. She watched as he reached over to the bedside lamp and then he was lost in the darkness. A moment later she heard the clang of the shutter guard and thin white light poured into the room.

  ‘Yes, it was bleak.’ He padded back to the bed, sat on the end of it and reached under the sheet for one of her feet. ‘I don’t know. These things affect people differently but I’ve felt, well, angry, depressed, mostly guilty.’

  Mary interrupted: ‘Your ship? But you did more than your duty.’

  He gave her foot a gentle squeeze. ‘I didn’t really, you know.’

  ‘Of course you did. They don’t give medals out for nothing.’

  He snorted and shook his head vigorously. ‘Yes they do. That was nothing. Nothing.’

  Mary sat up and the sheet slipped from her as she moved down the bed towards him. She put her arms around him, pressing herself tightly against his back. They sat there in silence for a while, then she said: ‘Will you tell me what happened?’

  ‘No,’ he said abruptly.

  She felt a pang of disappointment and almost let go of him.

  ‘Why won’t you talk about it?’

  He must have heard the disappointment in her voice because he turned to face her, leant forward and kissed her gently.

  ‘I can’t, Mary. Not yet. Not tonight.’

  14

  F

  or three days Helmut Lange had watched the cedar’s shadow creep around the walls of his room at Trent Park like a giant clock marking the hours between dawn and dusk. He had followed its shifting, twisted patterns as if they were a crazy reflection of his own thoughts: memories of his home in Munich, his father the teacher, his mother on her knees in church and his friends at the St Anna Gymnasium. Darker memories too, of his time at the front in Poland and those last desperate minutes aboard the U-500. There were no magazines or books, no distractions. The room was a blank canvas for memories, empty but for two roughly sprung camp beds with army-issue blankets and a bucket.

  The other bed groaned as Leutnant August Heine rolled over to face him.

  ‘Why are you smiling, Helmut?’

  ‘Was I smiling?’ asked Lange.

  ‘You were smiling.’

  Lange had silently cursed the British for holding him with a man called Heine who possessed not an ounce of poetry in his soul.

  ‘If they don’t want to interrogate us, why are they holding us?’ Heine asked.

  Lange shrugged. Heine was a typical northerner, reserved, perhaps a little shy, nineteen, slight, greasy brown as if the engine oil of the U-112 was engrained in his skin. He seemed to have no interest in politics or religion, beer or women. He was an engineer – a small but essential cog – and U-boats were his chief, almost his only concern. At first his conversation had been limited even more by his commander’s order to say nothing of the war and the U-112. Lange had formed the firm impression that Mohr was capable of inspiring a dread which the old Jewish prophets would have envied. But slowly, patiently, he had drawn Heine from his shell. The engineer had begun to talk freely of the 112, of ships sunk and his commander’s fame, and of the feature film that had been shot aboard. It was to the U-boat that Heine’s thoughts turned again:

  ‘Admiral Dönitz came to see us sail.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lange as he hoisted himself up on to the edge of his bed. ‘Cigarette?’

  Heine reached across and took one from the packet. There were just three left.

  ‘I was there too,’ said Lange casually, ‘there when you sailed.’

  ‘You saw us leave Lorient?’ Heine asked with boyish excitement. ‘What a turnout.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The quay had been crowded with naval uniforms, the black greatcoats of the senior officers at the head of the gangway. Lange remembered the 112’s screws turning slowly in reverse, the shouts of ‘Happy hunting’, and the thump of the military band as it struck up the old favourite, ‘Wir fahren gegen Engeland’, the ‘Sailing Against England’ song. The music, the occasion, the spirit of the men on the narrow deck, flowers fastened to their olive-green fatigues – Lange had been full of pride and admiration.

  ‘Have you met the Admiral?’ Heine asked.

  ‘Three or four times. The last time a few months ago. I took some photographs for a feature. He shook my hand and he remembered my name.’

  Heine leant forward, eyes bright with excitement: ‘Three or four times?’

  ‘Four times, yes.’

  ‘He visited our boat once and spoke to me. He’s a personal friend of the commander.’

  ‘Is he?’ said Lange flatly. Almost everyone in the U-boat arm claimed Admiral Dönitz as a personal friend.

  ‘The commander knows him very well.’

  ‘Yes?’ Lange struggled to suppress a yawn. His stomach was rumbling; it would be supper soon and perhaps the guards would bring news of his transfer to a proper camp. Heine was still speaking: ‘. . . at headquarters and before.’

  Lange looked across at him: ‘Herr Kapitän Mohr was at U-boat Headquarters?’

  ‘Yes, for some time. He was . . .’

  Lange stiffened and raised his hand with a jerk. The boredom and indifference that had fogged his mind for most of the last three days had been swept away in an instant. He knew little of U-boats, and no one had ever trusted him with a secret, but he was enough of a journalist to know that their conversation was dangerously close to one. Chit-chat was one thing but Heine was forgetting himself.

  ‘I think we’d better talk of something else,’ he said quietly.

  Heine was pulling nervously at the cuff of his leather jacket, his face
blotchy red, and when he spoke again it was in barely more than a whisper: ‘I’ve been talking too much, haven’t I? I’ll say nothing more.’

  ‘I think we should change the subject, yes. Tell me, have you ever visited Munich?’

  ‘You won’t say anything to Kapitän Mohr?’ Heine’s voice trembled a little: ‘Please don’t say anything.’

  ‘No, no, don’t worry,’ said Lange. ‘No one heard you except me and I can keep a secret.’

  ‘I heard you,’ the operator in the Map Room whispered under his breath as he lifted the heavy cutting head from the disc.

  The Map Room occupied most of the first floor at Trent Park. It was not a room at all but a dozen rooms, each equipped with a recording table and a microphone amplifier. Room Three was at the dark end of the corridor. Lindsay opened the door and stepped quietly inside. The shutters were closed, the room harshly lit by a single naked ceiling bulb. It was little more than a cubicle, smoky and very close. Karl Jacob was sitting with his back to the door.

  ‘You wanted to speak to me?’

  Very deliberately, Jacob placed his headphones on the table in front of him then swung his heavy swivel chair about until he was facing Lindsay. He was an elderly man with a thin, thoughtful face, a neat grey beard and lamp-like glasses that made his light brown eyes appear enormous. He was dressed a little like a street musician in a shabby checked jacket and green flannel trousers. Once, he had been a doctor with a smart practice in Berlin – before his patients cared that he was Jewish.

  ‘Yes, I have something for you, Lieutenant,’ he said in heavily accented English.

  A twelve-inch zinc disc was revolving slowly on the unit in front of him. Lindsay could see from the concentric rings of purple filings on its surface that almost five minutes of conversation had been recorded.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s your propaganda man. There’s something he doesn’t want you to hear.’

  Jacob pushed back the steel cutting arm and lifted the disc gently from the turntable: ‘Mohr was something at U-boat Headquarters.’

  He handed the disc to Lindsay who placed it in a protective can that was lying open on the recording table. They had been listening to the crew of the 112 for nearly a week, until now, none of them had let anything slip.

  ‘Thank you, Karl. Thank you very much.’

  In the duty intelligence officer’s room, Lindsay slipped the fragile disc on to a playback machine, settled behind the desk and picked up a broken set of headphones. He smiled as Lange’s strong bass voice crackled in the single earpiece. Yes, Mohr had done a good job with his crew. Heine was very frightened. But he could use that fear.

  15

  T

  he murmur of conversation and laughter stopped as Lindsay reached the half-open door of the old library. Colonel Philip Checkland was clearing his throat purposefully. Lindsay slipped sheepishly into the room.

  ‘Good of you to join us,’ said Checkland with clumsy sarcasm. ‘I was just about to tell everyone about the Bismarck. Have you heard?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  The head of Section 11 was perched like a large grey thrush on the edge of a low desk, a heavy fifty-eight, soft brown eyes, jowls, crisp blue uniform. James Henderson was at his side and sitting in front of him were the other four interrogators and the section’s Wrens. Lindsay slumped into a threadbare armchair beside them.

  ‘The battleship Bismarck is out.’ Checkland’s voice shook a little with excitement. ‘The latest report has her somewhere in the Denmark Strait. The Prinz Eugen is with her.’

  One of the other interrogators, Samuels, caught Lindsay’s eye and gave him a discreet smile.

  ‘The Prince of Wales and the Hood are in pursuit.’ Checkland coughed and waited for a response. There was none. ‘Well now you’re all here,’ he said tetchily, ‘the U-112. Annie, can you do the honours?’

  The section’s Chief Wren, Annie Sherlock, rustled about the room with the preliminary interrogation report. She dropped one with some force into Lindsay’s lap and winked at him.

  ‘The Admiralty’s very interested in this one, shopping lists from the Tracking Room and the Anti-Submarine Warfare people,’ said Checkland. ‘Commander Henderson is going to take us through what we know already.’

  Henderson gazed about the room for a moment as if waiting for an orchestra to strike up behind him. ‘It will be obvious to all of you by now that the crew has been very well schooled,’ he said at last. ‘Kapitän Mohr was held in a room for a time with one of the stool pigeons, the Jewish refugee Mantel, but he rumbled that he was one of our stooges straight away. Frankly we’ve got bugger all so far. Graham, you’ve been working on the officers.’

  Lieutenant Dick Graham coughed nervously, ‘Yes, sir. The First Watch Officer – Gretschel – twenty-two, a Berliner, friendly.’ He was clearly at a loss to think of anything more to say: ‘Not married. Stubborn.’

  ‘I think that proves my point,’ said Henderson shortly. ‘The little we know of them is on page four of the preliminary report, if you’d like to look.’

  Lindsay turned to the page and glanced down it: Mohr, Gretschel and four more. The navigator, Obersteuermann Bruns, born in Zanzibar, aggressive, a fervent Nazi, silent on every subject but the inevitability of a German victory. The second officer, Koch, a prickly character too – a Handelsschiffsoffizier – an old merchant seaman. Then there were the younger officers – the engineer, Leutnant August Heine, and a midshipman called Bischoff who was on his maiden voyage and clearly knew nothing.

  ‘The seamen are a little more talkative – the bosun’s mate in particular. He’s Brown’s prisoner’– Henderson waved his report at a slight, owlish-looking man in his late twenties who was almost lost in a leather armchair. ‘The 112 was operating with three more U-boats. They refuelled at Las Palmas in the Canaries and were to refuel again from a German tanker. Fourteen torpedoes in the body of the boat, six in sealed tubes on the upper deck. Details on page seven of the report. Samuels, you’ve been questioning the wireless operators.’

  Reluctantly, Lieutenant Charlie Samuels got to his feet and began to stumble through his notes. Lindsay’s thoughts began to drift about the foggy yellow room, settling for a moment on a clumsy mural of mermaids above the chimneypiece. But Samuels dragged them back: ‘. . . there is one thing that puzzles me. The wireless operators seem to speak a little English, although it’s impossible to be sure how much because they are refusing to speak it to me.’

  ‘Thank you, Samuels,’ said Checkland without conviction. Lindsay raised a hand to catch his eye.

  ‘You want to say something?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Does Lieutenant Samuels have any thoughts about why the wireless operators speak a little English?’

  ‘Well, is there a “why”, Samuels?’ asked Checkland.

  ‘Not sure yet, sir. It may be nothing. A coincidence.’

  ‘It would be useful to know how much they speak, sir.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Checkland shortly, ‘and Samuels will do his best.’

  The Colonel began to work his way through the Division’s shopping list, matching interrogators with prisoners. The 112’s engineers and torpedo men to Hadfield the section’s technical expert, Charlie Samuels, to press on with the wireless operators Lieutenants Brown and Graham to finish the face-to-face interrogations with the rest of the crew. There was nothing for Lindsay.

  ‘Right, thank you,’ said Checkland. ‘Let’s hope we sink the Bismarck.’

  Lindsay got to his feet and was about to say something when the Colonel raised a hand: ‘Just a minute.’

  Then he turned to speak to Henderson. Lindsay stood close by, head bent over the interrogation report. What did Checkland want with him? Things had been particularly frosty between them since his visit to Winn at the Citadel.

  When the room was empty at last, the Colonel turned to him with a wry smile: ‘All right Lindsay. Mohr.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Jürgen Mohr. I want you to co
nduct the face-to-face interrogations.’

  Lindsay groaned inwardly. He was being handed the poisoned chalice. ‘Just Mohr, sir?’

  ‘That’s right. The Tracking Room wants something on the shift to the African coast. Any questions?’

  Lindsay wanted to ask: ‘Why me?’ But he knew the answer. Checkland was going to take him down a peg or two. There was plenty Mohr could say, especially if he had spent time on the staff at U-boat Headquarters, but he was too careful and clever to say it. Better to work on the junior officers and other ranks. It was just a pity he would have to spend fruitless hours proving it.

  ‘No. No questions, sir.’

  Beyond the security fence, a warm evening breeze rippled the daffodil stalks on the lawn at the front of the house. Lindsay stopped to light a cigarette. The camp bus was parked on the forecourt close by and a group of confused-looking Luftwaffe prisoners was being shepherded down its steps into the house. He acknowledged the half-hearted salute from the guard at the gate and walked on round the east wing to the garden terrace. For once the stately sweep of lawn between house and lake was deserted. On the hillside above, the last of the sun was creeping up the obelisk Sassoon had erected to mark a visit by members of the royal family. As he watched its steady progress, someone stepped up to the balustrade beside him.

  ‘The Colonel wants you to start on Mohr tomorrow.’

  Henderson had followed him out on to the terrace. Lindsay turned to face him.

  ‘Fine, tomorrow will be fine,’ he said a little sharply.

  Henderson raised his eyebrows and leant forward, an expression of concern on his face: ‘Is something wrong, old boy?’ The gentleman farmer had become the country parson but only for a moment: ‘Is it Mohr? Don’t you think you can handle him? We could ask your friend from MI5, Cunningham, Major Cunningham.’