The Interrogator

by Andrew Williams

  Winn took Mary’s education upon himself. Calling her into his office, he roughed out the structure of the Naval Intelligence Division on a blackboard. ‘At the top, the Director or DNI, that’s Admiral Godfrey in Room 39, entrance behind the statue of Captain Cook on the Mall. Under the Director, nineteen sections dealing with everything from the security of our own codes to propaganda and prisoners of war.’ For more than an hour, he shuffled back and forth in front of the board, presenting the facts with the austere clarity of a High Court barrister. ‘We’ll only win the war at sea if we win it here in the Citadel first,’ he told her.

  The Citadel was the heartbeat of the Division, where threads from fifteen different sources – enemy signals, agents in the field, photographic reconnaissance – were carefully gathered. A thousand ships had been lost in 1940 and with them food, fuel, steel and ore. The country was under siege. The Germans held the coast from Norway to the Pyrenees and were busy establishing new bases for their U-boats. ‘They’re playing merry hell with our convoys. If we can’t stop them, they’ll cut our lifeline west to America and the Empire and we’ll lose the war.’ Winn was not a man to gild the lily.

  Mary settled behind her desk and lifted a thick bundle of signals and reports from her in-tray. The first flimsy was from HMS Wanderer in the North Atlantic. At 0212 the destroyer had registered a ‘strong contact’ with a submerged submarine on her echo detector. Two hours later and fifteen miles to the west, HMS Vanoc reported another. Was it the same U-boat on a north-westerly course? Perhaps the enemy was preparing a fresh pack attack on convoys south of Iceland. A timely warning would save ships and lives. Mary’s task was to pursue the German U-boat as mercilessly on paper as a destroyer might at sea. It was careful work that called for a trained mind and the memory of an elephant. My sort of work, she thought with the self-conscious pride of a novice.

  A few feet from her, Wilmot was dictating the night’s ‘headlines’ to a typist and at the far end of the room, the plotters were clucking around a wall chart of the British coast. Room 41 was long and narrow, bursting with map tables and filing cabinets, too small for the fifteen people who would be weaving up and down it within the hour. It resembled a shabby newspaper office with its rows of plain wooden desks covered in copy paper, black Bakelite phones and typewriters. The main Atlantic plot was laid out on a large table in the centre of the room: a crazy collage of cardboard arrows, pinheads and crisscrossed cotton threads. At times the enemy’s U-boats could be tracked with painful certainty – a distress call from a lone merchant ship or a convoy under attack – but at other times the plot was marked with what the section called ‘Winn’s Guess’.

  ‘Good morning to all. A quiet night I hope?’

  Rodger Winn had shuffled through the doorway, peaked cap in one hand, brown leather briefcase in the other. He blinked owlishly at the room for a moment, then began to struggle out of his service coat. The well-tailored uniform beneath was embroidered with the swirling gold sleeve-hoops of a commander in the volunteer reserve. He was in his late thirties, short, stocky, with powerful, restless shoulders, twinkling eyes and a good-humoured smile. Wilmot stepped forward with his clipboard to hover at his elbow: ‘Good news, Rodger – Berlin has confirmed the loss of the U-100.’

  ‘I heard that on the BBC,’ replied Winn brusquely.

  Mary bent a little closer to the signals on her desk in an effort to disguise an embarrassingly broad smirk.

  ‘It’s the only good news. I was trying to spare you the rest.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  Wilmot led Winn to the plot and began to take him through the night’s business. A tanker and three freighters had been sunk in the North Atlantic and four more ships damaged. ‘But here the news is worse.’ Wilmot’s hand swept south across the table to a cluster of pinheads off the coast of West Africa. ‘Homebound convoy from Sierra Leone – SL.68. Six more ships sunk – three of them tankers – that’s twelve ships in three days.’

  Winn groaned and reached inside his jacket for his cigarettes. He shook one from the packet and lit it with a snap of his lighter: ‘Any idea how many U-boats they’ve sent into African waters?’

  ‘Perhaps three,’ said Wilmot with a doubtful shrug of his shoulders. ‘A French source in the naval dockyard at Lorient thinks one of them is the U-112. The crew was issued with warm-weather clothes.’

  Winn half turned from the plot to blink over his glasses at Mary: ‘Dr Henderson, what do we have in the index?’

  Mary reached up to a small box on top of the battered filing cabinet beside her desk. She flicked through it, found the 112’s file card and handed it to Winn.

  ‘Kapitän zur See Jürgen Mohr: a very capable commander,’ he grunted. ‘What’s our source – can you check?’ He paused to remove a thread of tobacco from his lip. ‘The most senior U-boat officer still at sea. The darling of the newsreels. They’ve credited him with twenty five of our ships – perhaps after last night’s attacks, a few more.’

  Winn handed Mary the card: ‘You’ll need to update this.’

  He turned back to lean over the plot, resting his weight on his hands. He had suffered from Polio as a boy and found it uncomfortable to stand unsupported for long. The pile of signals and reports on Mary’s desk seemed to have mysteriously grown. She would have to work her way through it before the midday conference.

  ‘He’s winning, Mary. Winning.’

  She looked up in surprise. Winn was gazing intently at a small portrait photograph on the wall above the plot table. It was of a thin, severe-looking man who sat primly upright, hands held tightly in front of him. He was wearing the rings and star of a German admiral and the Ritterkreuz – the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross – hung at his throat. It was the face of the enemy, their particular enemy, the commander of the German U-boat arm:Karl Dönitz.

  ‘Always a step ahead of us.’ Winn drew heavily on the last of his cigarette, then squeezed it into an ashtray at the edge of the plot. ‘A step ahead.’

  Mary did not speak to Winn again that morning but she was conscious of his presence at the plot. He shuffled out of his office three, perhaps four times, to stand beside it, stroking his cheek thoughtfully, cigarette burning between his fingers. After an unpleasant lunch in the Admiralty canteen, she returned to her desk to find a note from him in her in-tray.

  An interrogator from Section 11 visiting tomorrow at 1100. He says he has something for us. Talk to him.

  Mary groaned and glanced resentfully at Winn’s office but he was out. She pushed the note away. Who was this interrogator and what was so important that he could not send in a report like the rest of his Section?

  2

  MI5 Holding Centre

  Camp 020

  Ham Common

  London

  T

  here was a sharp grating noise on the flagstones and the interrogator’s head bobbed out of the light. He had lost patience. On the other side of the desk Helmut Lange hunched his shoulders. His right knee was trembling and his mouth was sticky dry. This time the blow drove him to the floor, a crushing tide of pain breaking through his body. The room was hot with confused, brilliant light. Something was dripping on to the stone in front of him.

  ‘Get up. Get up.’

  The words seemed to echo down a long tunnel. Then someone grabbed his arm tightly, pulling him to his feet.

  ‘I know you’re a spy, Leutnant Lange. Help me and you will help yourself.’ Lange could feel the interrogator’s breath on his cheek, smoky stale. He was an elderly man, softly spoken and with strangely sympathetic eyes, an army officer of some kind. His German was thickly accented. There were two more soldiers in the room, younger, harder.

  ‘I’m a navy journalist,’ Lange croaked, ‘I’ve told you. It was my first war patrol.’ His lips were salty with blood.

  ‘The U-500 was going to land you in Scotland. Who were you to contact?’

  Lange tried to shake his head. Shapes swirled before his eyes: highly polished shoes, well-cre
ased trousers – someone was wearing gloves – crimson spots, there were drops of blood on his prison overalls. He felt guilty about the blood.

  ‘You speak English,’ said the interrogator.

  ‘A little,’ groaned Lange.

  ‘And you’ve been trained to use a wireless transmitter.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not the first, Herr Lange. We were expecting you. Another of Major Ritter’s men. You were trained in Hamburg?’ There was a note of quiet menace in the interrogator’s voice.

  ‘I was writing a feature piece,’ said Lange. ‘Why won’t you believe me? Please, please ask the crew. Ask the commander, he’ll tell you.’

  ‘You’re a fool not a hero, Herr Lange, and we’re losing patience with you.’ The interrogator paused, then added in almost a whisper: ‘If you won’t co-operate we’ll take you to Cell Fourteen. The mortuary is opposite Cell Fourteen.’

  Lange knew he couldn’t stand any more, but how could he make them believe him? He had been in the room for hours, the same questions over and over, questions he could not answer. He knew nothing of U-boats or spies. It had been his first war patrol.

  And then he was on his knees again, gasping for air, a deep throbbing pain in his side. He was going to be sick. One of the other men was shouting at him now: ‘Cell Fourteen, Lange, Cell Fourteen . . . oh Christ he’s . . .’

  There was a bitter taste of bile in Lange’s mouth. He retched again. His knees felt wet. The interrogator said something in English he could not understand. Then shadows began to move across the floor.

  The door opened and he heard the sharp click of leather-soled shoes. Were they taking him to Cell Fourteen? He felt dizzy and he was shaking. There was a murmur in the room, his interrogator’s voice raised sharply above the rest. They were arguing. Lange caught no more of their conversation than his name. It was important not to speak or move. He felt so tired, tired enough to fall asleep there on the floor.

  For a moment, he thought he had been struck again. The room was full of painful light. But a soft voice he did not recognise said in perfect German,‘You can get up now, Herr Leutnant.’

  He was suddenly conscious that he was kneeling in a pool of vomit. There were five men in the room and they were all looking at him. He felt no better than a dog, broken and humiliated. He lifted a trembling hand to his swollen face. One of his eyes had closed.

  ‘Let me help you.’ It was the same calm, reassuring voice and instead of khaki this man was wearing the blue uniform of a naval officer. Lange began to cry quiet tears of shame. The naval officer reached down and hoisted him up on to unsteady legs.

  ‘My name is Lieutenant Lindsay. I want you to come with me.’

  Confused, Lange followed him out of the interrogation room and slowly, head bowed, along a dark corridor with cell doors to left and right. Footfalls echoed behind them and his heart beat faster. Perhaps it was a trick and they were going to drag him back. But at the end of the corridor, a guard opened the steel security gate and Lindsay led him down a short flight of steps into the rain. He stood in front of the cell block, cool drops falling gently on his face. Smoky London rain, he could taste it, smell it. To his right there was a large yellow-brick Victorian villa; opposite, a collection of Nissan huts and the perimeter wire. A wooden screen had been built a few yards beyond it to shield the camp from passers-by.

  ‘Where is this place?’

  ‘Do you smoke?’ Lieutenant Lindsay offered him a silver cigarette case. Lange tried to take one but his hand was still shaking uncontrollably. ‘Here.’ Lindsay held a cigarette to his lips. The smoke made him giddy, numbing the pain in his face and sides.

  Lindsay waved to a large black official-looking car that was parked in front of the house. It moved forward at once and a few seconds later pulled up in front of the cell block. The soldier behind the wheel stepped smartly out and opened the rear doors. Lange shuffled across the red leather seat, his trousers clinging unpleasantly to his knees.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, conscious of the sickly-sweet smell.

  The heater was on and the air was hot and stale. An opaque glass screen separated them from the driver and blinds were pulled down over the rear windows. It looked and felt like a funeral car. The engine turned again. Lange glanced across at the British officer sitting impassively beside him, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He wanted to say, ‘Thank you, thank you for saving me,’ but the tight anxiety of the last four days was draining from him and his head began to nod forwards. He was just conscious of stammering, ‘Where are we going?’ but if there was an answer he did not hear it.

  3

  Room 41

  The Citadel

  London

  I

  t was a little after eleven and Mary Henderson had just begun to hack her way through a report from the Admiralty’s technical branch when a shadow fell across her desk. She raised her eyes to its edge, to the doeskin sleeves and gold hoops of a reserve lieutenant.

  ‘This is Dr Henderson.’ Rodger Winn was standing at his side. ‘Mary, I would like you to meet one of our colleagues from Section 11.’

  The interrogator; she had forgotten all about him. She pushed her chair back and looked up at a curiously striking face, thin, with prominent cheek-bones and a nose that looked as if it had been broken on the rugby field. The lieutenant was at least six feet tall, upright, with wavy fair hair, youthful but for the dark shadows about his blue eyes.

  ‘Douglas Lindsay.’ He held her hand firmly in his for a moment.

  Winn was fiddling impatiently with one of the pencils on Mary’s desk, clearly itching to extricate himself: ‘Lindsay’s going to take you through some of the things he’s wrung from the crew of the U-500. One of the prisoners – the engineer – claims they can dive deeper than we thought possible – below six hundred and fifty feet.’

  Without waiting for a reply, Winn turned back to his little glass office, leaving Lindsay standing awkwardly at Mary’s desk.

  ‘I don’t suppose Rodger offered you tea?’

  ‘No but no thank you.’

  She watched him struggle like an ungainly spider into a chair that was uncomfortably close to the desk. Glancing up in some confusion, he caught her smile.

  ‘You’re enjoying my discomfort, Dr Henderson,’ he said in mock outrage, delivered with a twinkle in the primmest of prim west-of-Scotland accents. ‘I’m glad to have been of some service.’

  She laughed: ‘Great service. Rodger seems impressed with your report.’

  ‘It’s not Rodger I need to impress,’ he said with a weak smile. ‘Our own submarine people refuse to believe us and if they don’t, the Admiralty staff certainly won’t.’ He held her gaze for an uncomfortable, unblinking moment, then glanced down at his hands: ‘Perhaps you’re wondering why the Navy bothers with interrogators if it doesn’t trust them to distinguish fact from fiction. I’ve asked myself the question every day for the last four months.’

  ‘My brother works for Section 11 too.’

  ‘Henderson?’ Lindsay shook his head a little: ‘How foolish of me – Lieutenant-Commander Henderson.’

  Mary nodded. Her brother had joined Naval Intelligence a few weeks before the outbreak of war. Everyone in the family had been surprised. Their father was a gentleman farmer, prosperous, conservative, but with a keen armchair interest in the world. He was encouraged by Mary’s mother to educate them well but with James it had been, a struggle. They were not close. He was only four years older than Mary but paternalistic, insufferably so, with conventional views on women and work. And yet, remarkably, he had mentioned her name to the Director’s Assistant, Ian Fleming, and that had secured her the position in the Division.

  Lindsay reached down to his briefcase and took out a red cardboard file marked ‘U-500.’ Placing it on the edge of Mary’s desk, he opened it to reveal a sheaf of closely typed flimsies.

  ‘The commander, Kapitänleutnant Fischer, was quite a decent sort, although his officers th
ought he was too familiar with the men – drank with them, enjoyed the same brothels, that sort of thing. There was a propaganda reporter on board but I haven’t had a chance to question him yet. The other officers were Nazis, an ignorant bunch with no knowledge of history or literature. They were insulted when I asked them if they were religious . . .’

  Mary leant forward as if to touch Lindsay’s sleeve: ‘Why were they insulted?’

  ‘They are devout Deutschgläubig – German-believers. Their creed is pure blood, strong leadership – immeasurably superior to faith in a God they call a “Jewish Jehovah”.’

  ‘Do you ever meet prisoners who are just ordinary Christians?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Lindsay, glancing at his watch. ‘I can tell you more, but perhaps some other time.’

  It sounded a little like a brush-off. Mary flushed with embarrassment. She eased back into her chair, twisting her body towards the desk and away from him: ‘I’m sorry, curiosity – it’s just that the enemy is not much more than a name and number here.’

  She glanced up at Lindsay and was surprised by his playful smile. ‘No, I’m glad you’re interested and I would be happy to talk to you about the prisoners in a little more detail, if you think it would be useful. There are a few sketchy observations here.’ He rested his hand on the cardboard file. ‘But this is just the crew of the U-500.’