Chapter Fifty Nine
As the weeks turned into months, Lukas became less afraid of betraying his country and more concerned that the monotony and isolation of the work would send him mad. Clearly he was translating the conversations of German prisoners of war but in all the months he’d been working, he hadn’t come across anything that particularly struck him as classified.
Most of the time he was translating grumbles about the likelihood of the invasion or the number of crew killed carrying out raids. The scripts didn’t give the speakers’ names, just code numbers, but he could work out if he was translating the words of a submariner, a soldier or a pilot.
Occasionally Lukas winced when he read transcripts boasting about the number of kills, some stories so fantastic they just couldn’t be true, but when the Luftwaffe pilots talked about their air battles, he recognised the respect they had for their enemy counterparts and he was glad of that.
His shift was ending. Down in the basement, it was impossible to tell what time of day it was but he could hear the commotion outside in the corridor that heralded the end of the day.
He’d worked out over the months that Sergeant Thalhaüser had a small team of translators in the other rooms but to maintain segregation, Lukas knew he had to wait until the corridor cleared before he was taken back to his quarters for his solitary supper. He could hear the congenial chatter moving away and he sighed.
Before the war he was no stranger to solitude, growing up without brothers or sisters, but his time with the Jugend and the years with his fellow cadets had softened him because now he missed companionship powerfully. It wasn’t so acute when he was working – in a way, he could hear the voices of his colleagues in some of the transcripts – but during the lonely evenings, he pined for company.
He finished off the sentence he was typing and folded his papers neatly away for the following morning. When the door opened, he was surprised to see Sergeant Thalhaüser.
‘Good evening, Oberleutnant Schiller.’
Lukas sprang to his feet and came to attention with a click of his heels.
‘Good evening, Sergeant Thalhaüser.’
‘How’s it all going?’ Lukas couldn’t think of an appropriate answer. ‘I wonder if I could borrow you for half an hour before you go back upstairs.’
‘I am at your disposal,’ Lukas said, seeing an opportunity to delay the return to his empty room.
‘Yes, I suppose you are. Come along then.’
The sergeant led him further down the corridor. Lukas could see two guards standing on either side of a door. When he reached them, the sergeant swung the door open and gestured Lukas inside.
The room smelt of dust and human bodies but there was another smell, pleasant and oddly comforting. Lukas couldn’t quite place it but then he got it – the mixture of shellac and warm cloth reminded him of the gramophone player his aunt had in Heidelberg.
There were half a dozen desks, each with a disc player and a small switchboard unit on them, headphones discarded beside them. For a moment Lukas wondered what sort of music the clerks listened to but then he realised, of course, they were listening to the conversations of the prisoners. For the first time since his arrival, he felt a building sense of anxiety that his complacency had been terribly misguided. This building was filled with listening equipment and he was down here, in the basement, spying on his fellow Germans along with all the other intelligence officers.
Sergeant Thalhaüser walked across to the far side of the room and beckoned to Lukas.
‘We have a recording here which has rather foxed us. You can see the transcript,’ he said, indicating a pad of pencil-written notes, ‘but one of the speakers has some sort of strong regional accent. I believe you spent some time in Heidelberg.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I thought it could be Franconian but I’m not that well travelled. I wasn’t sure. Whatever it is, we can’t make out some of the words,’ and the sergeant looked at Lukas and shrugged. ‘Would you listen and see if you can fill in the gaps in the transcript?’
Lukas sat down and picked up the headset. The sergeant leant forward and turned the machine on. Lukas recognised an Alsatian dialect.
‘We weren’t trained to shoot planes if they were flying straight at us,’ the voice said. The speaker sounded young, as if his voice had hardly broken.
Was this a pilot? Lukas thought.
‘We were above a much larger gun and when it fired there was such a big flash, I was blinded. Couldn’t see a thing.’
Probably not a pilot, Lukas thought. A gunner of some sort.
Another voice spoke.
‘By this time you were what? Drifting?’
‘Completely helpless,’ the first voice said, ‘and with night falling. Everyone was utterly worn out, waiting for the end. You didn’t know how or when but you knew it was coming.’
‘But you also knew she was unsinkable.’
There was a silence. All Lukas could hear was the hiss and crackle of the needle on the record, then a sniff. Was one of them crying or just composing himself? The boy with the strong accent began to talk again, his voice husky with emotion.
‘They came out of the fog. I don’t know what colour they were, but they looked black, really sinister, and then the firing began. It was a slaughterhouse. The shells sounded like trains when they went over us and when they hit us – my God. The bridge went, the cranes went, the gun turrets went. Shrapnel was clattering all round us and they just kept firing more and more and we were firing less and less.’
‘How long did it go on for?’
‘Oh, God. I don’t know. It seemed like hours. The noise, it does something to your head. You can’t think. I took shelter behind the turret. The gun was gone, useless. And everything was shot to pieces. Everything shaved clean off the ship. Piles of dead bodies. It was a terrible sight and still the shells came. And do you know what? I actually wanted to go below deck to fetch my girl’s photograph,’ – the boy began to laugh – ‘but I decided not to.’
The other man laughed and said, ‘What did you do?’
‘She was beginning to roll. I blew up my life vest and jumped.’
‘You were told to abandon ship?’
‘I think so.’
You weren’t, Lukas thought. You jumped to save your life and you don’t want to admit it. But God, who could blame you?
‘The others were yelling to jump,’ the boy continued. ‘I told you, the bridge had gone. We were on our own.’
‘So you ended up in the water?’
‘God, it was cold. And the oil. Everywhere, oil. I still smell of it. Do I still smell of it?’
‘Not really. Did they scuttle her?’
‘I don’t know. I think so. I was rescued with another sailor, a man called Rebold, Theodor Rebold. He was deep down in the hull and was given the order to abandon ship much earlier. He thought they were going to scuttle her. Otherwise he’d never have got out. He just kept climbing, up, up, up until he saw the light. But I saw her go down. I could draw it. Down she went, like this, vertically by the bow. It took about five minutes. Then, God, it was so quiet. Just the wind and men crying out in the water. I just thought I wanted to see my girl. You don’t ask how or why. You just want to.’
‘Who pulled you out?’
‘A British cruiser came among us. There were hundreds of us.’
‘Hundreds?’
Lukas didn’t know if the other speaker was a stool pigeon but he could tell by the tone of his voice that he was horrified by the sailor’s story. Clearly a huge battleship had gone down – how many men? Two thousand at least must have perished.
He stared at the disc, watching the grooves peeling away as the turntable spun, but his head was filled with the image of burning oil on the freezing ocean, thousands of bodies floating among the debris of the ship, a handful of men crying out for help.
‘Only hundreds,’ the lad said, ‘and we were still dying. We were swimming towards the ship and the w
aves kept pulling us back and then smashing us against the hull. It was like a cliff above us. I got hold of a rope from above but someone else got hold of my feet from below and I fell down again. It was terrible. But they treated us like brothers, the British. They’d been firing at us half an hour before and now they were trying to pull us out of the water.’
‘Did they get everyone?’
‘No. Half of them were smashed against the hull and dropped back into the water and drowned. And then we had to leave.’
‘Before they were all rescued?’
‘Yes. One of our bloody U-boats was somewhere out there, they said…’
Lukas heard the rhythmic tick as the needle retraced the last groove again and again. He imagined the sailors left behind, lifted by the great Atlantic rollers, the dizzying depth below. When did this boat sink? Could they still be out there, floating in their life vests. No, surely the cold would have killed them by now. Not a bad way to go, hypothermia. But the ocean, that’s not such a good place to die.
The Luftwaffe didn’t like their pilots carrying service weapons – some who had ditched in the sea were found with a single shot to the head. Not good for morale. But Lukas had kept his. He was haunted by the horror of floating on an endless sea, nothing but horizon and sky. Those poor, poor men. He took the headphones off and looked up at the sergeant.
‘He was rescued from the Bismarck,’ Sergeant Thalhaüser said.
‘God. I remember when they launched her.’
‘So do I.’
There he sat, on the edge of a desk, this handsome Jew in an English uniform, his arms folded across his chest and yet they shared a very specific national memory. Lukas picked up the headphones again.
‘I will fill in the gaps,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’
The sergeant got up as if to leave but he came to a halt by the door and stood, deep in thought. Lukas waited, the arm of the recorder poised above the record. Sergeant Thalhaüser turned round and said, ‘I should tell you we received some news today.’
His tone was so ominous, Lukas felt his guts plunge. Millie was his first thought. Something had happened to Millie.
‘It was all over the papers this morning,’ Sergeant Thalhaüser said and Lukas felt himself beginning to relax. It couldn’t be anything to do with Millie. ‘Early yesterday morning, German forces invaded the Soviet Union.’
‘Good heavens,’ Lukas said, aware that his tone sounded light with relief. ‘That is surprising news.’
The sergeant frowned.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll leave you to your work. Just tap on the door when you’re finished and one of the guards will see you back to your room. Good evening.’
Lukas worked with a light heart. Millie had become so much his world, international news had little effect on him but later on that evening, when his supper arrived, the guards left him an English newspaper.
Mighty Armies Clash.
A colossal and incalculable adventure.
Hitler, the bloodthirsty gutter-snipe, says Mr Churchill.
A bottomless pit of human degradation over which the diabolic emblem of the Swastika flaunts itself.
Behind these inflammatory headlines a much more worrying picture emerged. The new front was vast. It stretched from the North Cape to the Black Sea. Some sources thought as many as three million Germans were committed to the invasion and although Lukas was confident that German weaponry and tactics were vastly superior to the Red Army’s, the Führer’s decision to invade Russia seemed utter madness.
Lukas tossed the paper aside and stared out of the window. An overcast summer day was nearing the end. He wondered if Millie had read the news, if she was thinking the same as him. Germany wasn’t going to invade Britain any time soon.
Chapter Sixty
By the time Constable Hanratty got back to the nick, the desk sergeant had left for the evening.
‘You’ve got the red-eye shift,’ Grey had said with great satisfaction.
‘What? I wasn’t down for that tonight. I’ve been on duty all day.’
‘I swapped.’
Hanratty was thumping around the empty nick in a fury when Jimmy James, one of the ARP Wardens, dropped in for a cuppa.
‘Look, Jimmy,’ Hanratty said, ‘While I make a brew, pop over to the Queen’s Arms and see if they’ll rustle up a bully beef sandwich or something for me, would you? I wasn’t meant to be covering tonight and I haven’t had a crumb since lunchtime.’
‘All right,’ Jimmy said. ‘No point me trying to spot a light showing much before ten this evening. Not much point then to be honest, seeing as most people have gone to bed.’
He came back with a doorstep sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper.
‘Potato sandwich spread,’ he said, handing it over. Hanratty pulled a face. ‘It’s not too bad – got a bit of onion in there and some parsley.’
‘It’s not bully beef,’ Hanratty said morosely.
‘No. But I’ve also got some news,’ Jimmy said as he pulled a paper out from underneath his arm and dropped it onto the front desk. ‘Hitler’s invaded Russia.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Hanratty said, spinning the paper round and reading the headlines.
‘Surely he’s bitten off more than he can chew, hasn’t he?’ Jimmy James said. ‘Russia’s defeated greater generals than him.’
‘Wouldn’t that be the pip? Perhaps he’s decided England isn’t the most important country to invade after all,’ Hanratty said.
After Jimmy James left, Hanratty lit up a cigarette and flicked through the rest of the paper. His attention was caught by a story about a merchant sailor who’d been kowtowing with the Krauts. Never mind that he was a British citizen. They strung him up by the neck in Wandsworth gaol. That’s the way to deal with bloody traitors.
Hanratty pulled the Luger out of his pocket and placed it on the desk in front of him. Then he settled back, lit another cigarette and considered the best way to approach Sergeant Turner in the morning.
He desperately wanted to be the man to arrest Mrs Sanger. They could do that immediately under Regulation 18B for having associations with a person of hostile origin. If there had been an armed Nazi up there for a couple of weeks, she may well have acted prejudicially to public safety too.
Either way, there was more than enough for them to undertake a thorough search of the farmhouse where they were bound to turn up enough hard evidence to get her tried, convicted and hanged, just like that ruddy traitor who’d just had his neck stretched in Wandsworth gaol.
Usually when he was on night shift Hanratty had a good kip in one of the cells but for the first time since his arrival in Shawstoke, he stayed awake. In a state of feverish agitation he smoked cigarette after cigarette until his tongue was furred and bitter in his mouth.
At seven in the morning, he cleaned himself up, tucked the Luger into the belt of his trousers and watched the road outside the station until finally he spotted the stooped figure of his sergeant trudging up the hill. He met him at the door and stood ramrod straight, his uniform buttoned and his hands clasped behind his back. The sergeant seemed taken aback.
‘I need to speak to you immediately, Sarge,’ Hanratty said.
‘Give me a minute to get through the door,’ the sergeant said with ill-concealed irritation.
A wheezy young constable arrived and pushed past them, fanning a hand in front of his face.
‘Smokier in here than the bloody shunting yard,’ he said as he began flinging open windows on the warm summer morning. ‘Can hardly see the other side of the room.’
Hanratty grabbed his note pad from the reception desk and trotted behind the sergeant as he headed for his office.
‘For the love of God, man, let me get myself a cuppa first,’ Sergeant Turner said.
‘This can’t wait, Sarge.’
Other members of staff clattered in through the front door and the phone on reception trilled. The day had begun. The constable who’d set himself the task of
airing the station, picked up the receiver and a moment later called through,
‘It’s for you, Sergeant Turner. A Captain Trevelyan on the line.’
‘He’ll have to wait,’ Hanratty snapped over his shoulder.
‘Excuse me?’ Sergeant Turner said angrily, reaching for the phone on his desk, his eyes blazing underneath his hectic eyebrows. ‘Put him through,’ he called to the constable on the desk, flicking a hand of dismissal at Hanratty. When Hanratty didn’t move he covered the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand and hissed, ‘I’ll speak to you in a minute. Now, get out of my office.’
Compressing his lips to stop himself from answering back, Hanratty backed out of the room but he didn’t pull the door completely shut. He leant against the wall, his head cocked towards the opening.
‘Good morning, sir,’ he heard the sergeant say, ‘How can we help…?’ There was a pause then, ‘Sorry, sir. If you could hold the line for a moment…’ The receiver clattered to the desk, the sergeant’s heavy footsteps approached and bang! The door slammed shut. Hanratty sighed. All he could hear now was the low murmur of the man’s voice.
He slouched back to the front office.
‘Who’s this Trevelyan then?’ he said to the lad at the desk. The boy shrugged. Hanratty paced about, puffing his cheeks out in exasperation until someone said, ‘You can knock off now, Bert.’
‘I can’t. I need to report to the sergeant.’
Finally the call ended. Sergeant Turner opened his office door and called him through.
‘Sit down, Hanratty.’
‘I’d rather stand, Sarge, if it’s all the same with you.’ He reached underneath his jacket and drew out the Luger, laying it proudly in front of the sergeant. ‘I went up to Enington Farm yesterday afternoon and retrieved this.’
Sergeant Turner stared down at the Luger, his brow knitted in a furious frown. He gave a great sigh and said, ‘Thank you, Hanratty. I’ll take it from here.’
‘I knew I was right,’ Hanratty said. ‘I could tell the moment I started questioning that woman that something was going on. I have a kind of instinct about these things and it never lets me down. I knew she’d been harbouring a Nazi. Let me go, Sarge. Let me make the collar.’
A Dangerous Act of Kindness Page 27