The Interrogator

by Andrew Williams

  Slowly Lindsay stood up, his fingertips slipping across the tabletop: ‘I want you to think about their families, about your family. No one will ever know, no one.’

  Mohr’s dark eyes were roving about Lindsay’s face in search of some clue to his sincerity: ‘Why should I believe you?’

  ‘It has been cleared with those who are able to make these things happen.’

  ‘Who?’

  Lindsay picked up the file again and walked to the door. He knocked on it sharply and it opened almost at once. Then, turning quickly back for a moment, he asked: ‘Would you like some tea?’

  Ten minutes at most. A short time only for reflection but enough for the shadows in Mohr’s mind to lengthen. Lindsay had sent for tea and was waiting on the landing, his hands on the rail. In the well below him, the squeak of a warder’s shoes, someone shouting in his sleep, the restless echo of the prison, of confused, damaged people. And he was not so different. Perhaps Mohr was the same. Prisoners too, held by memories and guilt as securely as the men behind those heavy steel doors. Prisoners of war.

  What would Mohr say when in a few minutes he stepped back into the cell? It was unreasonable, perverse, but he could not escape the thought that his own freedom was hanging in the balance too. Another condemned man in hope of a reprieve. They had met only a few times but he had lived with Mohr for months, rolling the man and the codes round and round in his mind like a stone until they were one and the same. A strange and dangerous obsession. And now the point of decision. He glanced at his watch, it was half past two and the warder was by the door with the tea. It was time.

  Mohr was standing at the far wall, his face and shoulders in shadow. The door closed behind Lindsay and he stepped forward to place the mugs on the table. They were alone again, to dance, to fence, studying every word, every gesture.

  ‘Sit down please. They give you two sugars here whether you like it or not.’ Mohr did not move a muscle.

  Lindsay pulled out his chair and sat, then reached across the table for the cigarette case. Two were missing. Two in ten minutes. He could sense that Mohr was watching him closely, like a cat, a cat in a shit-brown uniform. He took a cigarette and lit it.

  ‘Sit down please.’

  But Mohr stood there still.

  The seconds passed in edgy silence. Mohr’s chin slipped to his chest as if he was close to sleep. There was a loud metallic rattle on the landing outside, someone must have dropped a tray, footsteps, voices, then silence again.

  ‘I was the Staff officer responsible for communications.’

  Lindsay could feel the pulse thumping in his neck. He took a deep shaky breath to steady himself.

  ‘Designation, A4.’

  Silence again. More footsteps outside the door. Lindsay picked up his mug to sip the hard, tannic, sweet tea. Mohr was teetering on the edge. A small push would send him tumbling over. Slowly, he lowered the mug back to the table.

  ‘Sit down, please, Herr Kapitän.’

  And this time Mohr stepped forward to pull out the chair, his face white and drawn.

  ‘How long were you on the staff at U-boat Headquarters?’

  ‘Can I have another?’ And he pointed to the cigarettes.

  Lindsay nodded and pushed the cigarette case back to him.

  ‘A little over six months.’

  ‘And you joined?’

  ‘For the second time, in the autumn of last year.’

  ‘The second time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are reading our signals?’

  Mohr drew on his cigarette and looked away. Then, planting his elbow on the table, he bent his head to cover his face as if in prayer. A few seconds more and he muttered something that Lindsay did not catch.

  ‘Are you reading our signals?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, damn it.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Most of them.’

  ‘Most of them?’

  ‘Most of them.’ He lifted his head from his hand and there was a small tight-lipped smile on his face. An involuntary smile, the pleasure of revealing a shocking secret.

  ‘I will talk to you here and now in this room. That is all. And to no one else. Do you agree?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Only in this cell.’

  ‘And there will be no mention of the source?’

  ‘No.’

  Mohr gave a painfully heavy sigh and leant forward, his hands clasped in the middle of the table: ‘You changed the Naval Cipher last summer. It didn’t take the B-Dienst long to break into the new one. And the other one – the Naval Code – you introduced two basic books. We broke into those in just six weeks. Old habits. Too many short signals sent the same way. Your codes changed but the word patterns and most of the wording remained more or less the same. So it was simple.’

  ‘And that means you know . . .’

  ‘Convoy routes, lone ships, battleships, any kind of ship, times of arrival, times of departure. I expect we knew all about your convoy . . .’

  Lindsay looked at him and for a desperate moment he wanted to cry. Madness. Why? He must take control of himself. He reached down to the briefcase at his feet to search for his notepad. As he lifted it to the table he noticed that his hand was trembling.

  ‘All right. Let’s start at the beginning.’

  ‘Do you know why I’m telling you this?’

  ‘Please tell me.’

  ‘For my men. I don’t care for myself. Believe me. I don’t care. But they deserve better than to . . .’ He swallowed hard, then coughed in an effort to disguise the emotion that was written plainly enough on his face. ‘Heine is enough. A terrible, tragic mistake. But no more, I don’t want any more deaths . . . and . . .’

  Again he could not finish. For a few seconds they sat there in silence looking everywhere, anywhere but at each other. But in an hour, maybe less, Mohr might regret his decision. It was important not to give him the time to reconsider it : ‘I want to start with the first code-breaks.’

  ‘Your Merchant Navy Code was the easiest. We use it like a railway timetable, convoy departure and arrival times, call signs, and the routes.’

  ‘How many Merchant Navy signals are you decrypting?’

  ‘Sometimes two thousand a month with only a short delay.’

  Lindsay wrote it down. Questions, then more questions. And notes in a small neat hand, the pace quickening as the minutes ticked by, sweet tea and cigarettes, and occasionally Mohr would push back his chair to walk about the cell. He spoke of code books captured from British submarines, and of the signals that had betrayed the Navy in Norway the year before, of Atlantic convoy traffic and lone ships tracked and sunk in African waters. At a little before four o’clock he was escorted to the lavatory and Lindsay stood by the door watching the second hand on his watch as if waiting for Cinderella to come home from the ball.

  ‘And your mission to Freetown, what was its purpose?’

  ‘It was my idea. Ha.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I’ve only myself to blame. I wanted to leave the Staff and return to my boat. So it was agreed I would co-ordinate attacks off Freetown. The wireless operators spoke English and were trained to intercept and decode the signals. I would then direct the nearest U-boat to attack, more than one if it could reach the convoy in time. It was happy hunting there.’

  It was at a little before six o’clock when Lindsay put down his pencil. Doubt and fear were crystallising in Mohr like frost and for almost an hour he had refused to say much more than ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. The emotional effort had left him exhausted, slumped on his chair like a sack of potatoes.

  ‘You will honour your promise to release my men? And no one will know I’ve spoken to you?’

  Lindsay picked up the pad and began slowly turning the pages of cream paper carefully covered with his pencil notes. Mohr had given much. One of the promises he had made to him would be easy to keep.

  ‘Yes, your men will be sent back to the camp. They won’t be charged with murder.’
/>   ‘We aren’t murderers, you know that.’

  It was feeble-sounding from such a man.

  Lindsay stared across the table at him. Why had he done it? Was it loyalty to the crew or vanity and a fear of disgrace and death? Perhaps a deep, deep weariness. It was impossible to be sure because there was often no answer to the difficult questions, the things that really mattered – duty, loyalty, love – only a confusing tangle of feelings and thoughts pulling in many different directions. Mohr would reflect on it for the rest of his life, the answer always different, changing year on year.

  ‘No. You aren’t murderers,’ he said coolly. ‘You won’t be taken to court. You are not murderers because no one was murdered.’

  Mohr frowned and leant forward a little to study his face: ‘But Lange was . . .’

  ‘Leutnant Lange is recovering in hospital.’

  The nails of Mohr’s right hand cut into the fist he had made of his left. He closed his eyes, his jaws were clenched, his face stiff with anger. Picking up the pad, Lindsay pushed back his chair and stepped over to rap once on the door: ‘All right, take him away.’

  Mohr was still sitting at the table, his head bent back a little, his eyes closed, breathing deeply. Keys tinkled in the lock and the door began to open.

  ‘The two of us are the same, you know.’ Mohr’s eyes were still shut. ‘You are a hunter.’

  A prison warder was standing at the edge of the table waiting for him to get to his feet. He opened his eyes, the mask back in place, he was ‘the Buddha’ again.

  ‘Come on.’ The warder took his arm but he shook it free impatiently and, pushing his chair away, he got quickly to his feet.

  At the door he stopped and turned to stare at Lindsay again, an outstretched arm apart. For a few seconds his dark eyes roved about Lindsay’s face as if searching for some common feeling or warmth. He looked sad and tired and almost desperate. Then he was gone. And Lindsay listened to the disciplined beat of his footsteps retreating along the landing until they were lost in the echo of the prison.

  And he was alone in the cell with the table and the chairs and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. Triumph? No. A little quiet satisfaction, perhaps. Above all, bone-numbing exhaustion and a deep sadness. Pulling the door to, he walked over to the table and sat down. His eyes were swimming so he closed them and bent to rest his head on his arm. Almost at once he began to slip into that half-world between sleep and consciousness, to a place that was always the same, a cold place where the wind whistled and hissed and cut at the skin. And floating in darkness, a shape spinning and bobbing towards him, he touched it again and it turned its black burnt face to him, its eyes dull and empty. And as he pushed it away he wondered if it would ever be different.

  ‘Oh sorry, sir.’ A prison warder was standing at the door. ‘I thought you’d finished in here.’

  49

  T

  he Director wanted to be briefed before breakfast and the Admiralty’s code and cipher people afterwards, headlines written for the First Sea Lord by mid-morning, the full report to be on his desk by 3 p.m. and then sent to Downing Street. Lindsay floated through the day, barely conscious of the compliments paid, the questions asked and the answers he gave. Objects and people began to soften at the edges, voices to reach him like the echo in a long tunnel. At five o’clock, Fleming took him by the elbow and led him from Room 39 to the doors of the Admiralty.

  ‘Home. The rest can wait until morning. Can you make it on your own?’

  ‘Yes, I’m capable of that but I was hoping to see Mary Henderson.’

  Fleming frowned and looked away for a moment: ‘Perhaps tomorrow. Or ring her, why don’t you?’

  Drunk with exhaustion, he collapsed on his bed fully clothed and slept a long and for once dreamless sleep until the early hours of the following morning. When he woke he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, trying to bring the events of the previous day into focus. After a while the recollection of something small began to worry him. It was the slight frown on Fleming’s face when he spoke of Mary. It was surely of no importance in itself but it unlocked troubling thoughts. ‘A bad case of conscience, Doctor,’ he muttered to himself. The early-morning blues. Swinging his legs from the bed, he padded through to the kitchen in search of bread and something to put on it. A few stale crusts and a pot of his mother’s jam. He ate a little and drank some tea without milk, then took off his uniform and went back to bed. But he did not sleep again, turning restlessly until dawn. When the hour was civilised, he rang the house in Lord North Street but there was no reply.

  For once he chose to breakfast in the Admiralty canteen, half in the hope of finding Mary there. But he did not see her and the food was as she described it – greasy and tasteless. Fleming had found a desk for him in a small office close to Room 39. It was little more than a cupboard with room for no more than the desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet. No one was interested in his opinion of code security any more. And no one was interested in the opinion of the Code Security Section either. It was in the hands of the Staff and the cryptologists now. But there were some embarrassingly loose ends to tie up. Housekeeping. The Director wanted an account of the ‘shambles’ at Number One Camp and he had just begun to dictate excuses to a Wren when the door opened:

  ‘You’re not easy to find.’ Samuels stepped into the room. He sounded very unfriendly.

  Lindsay asked the Wren to leave them alone for a few minutes. The moment the door closed behind her Samuels said: ‘You know, it was torture.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dietrich: the way you treated him, it was a kind of torture. The sort of thing the Nazis do.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have let it get out of hand.’

  ‘He was badly beaten.’

  ‘I’m sorry you’re feeling squeamish.’

  Samuels shook his head ruefully: ‘I’ve heard about Lange. Was that necessary too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t think you would have thought so a few months ago . . .’ but Samuels was interrupted by a knock at the door. It was a uniformed runner with a note from Fleming.

  ‘Perhaps we could talk later, Charlie?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that will be necessary,’ he replied coldly. ‘Oh, I almost forgot – congratulations.’

  Then he turned his back on Lindsay and walked out.

  The door to Room 39 was slightly ajar and the murmur of voices from inside suggested that Fleming had just left a meeting. He must have noticed Lindsay approaching along the corridor out of the corner of his eye because he turned from the window with a question:

  ‘The Director wants to know if there is any propaganda value to be had from Mohr. A radio broadcast.’

  ‘No. He won’t co-operate. I’m sure of it.’

  And there was the same frown that had kept Lindsay awake half the night. Clearly Fleming was taken aback by the sharpness of his response: ‘You’re not expecting us to keep your promise?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Yes, he knew he was, yes. When he had made it to Mohr he had not cared one way or the other. It was not that he had spent hours regretting it, he had not given the matter any further thought, but now suddenly it seemed important. If asked, he would be at a loss to explain why. But Fleming just looked at him sceptically, then turned to the door. ‘Wait across the corridor, Lindsay,’ he said, and he stepped inside, closing it behind him.

  The Director stood at the conference table, arms folded, head bent like an inquisitive bird, and thirty of his most senior officers were gathered in a semicircle about him. The head of Code and Cipher, a stout reserve commander in his late fifties, was addressing the room on the changes that were being considered to security. The stony faces about him suggested that difficult questions had not been answered to the satisfaction of those at the table. It would be a month before new code books were printed and distributed, he explained hesitantly, and a month more before wireless operators in the Navy and Merchant Service were able to use the
m properly. ‘I’m afraid until then we will have to continue with the current code and cipher books.’

  This information was met by awkward glances and some embarrassed shuffling of paper and feet.

  ‘The Prime Minister exploded when he was told.’ Admiral Godfrey glared about the table. ‘It’s a shambles. We’d better learn the lessons. All right. That’s all.’

  The meeting was over. The Director spoke briefly to his Assistant then picked up his papers and walked back through the green baize covered door into his office. The heads of section began to drift out of the room and after a few minutes only two men were left at the conference table. Half rising from his chair, Winn leant across the table with his cigarettes: ‘Quite a coup, don’t you think?’

  ‘No thank you,’ and Checkland held up his hand to refuse.

  ‘Do you think Lindsay will be returning to you?’

  Before Checkland was able to flannel an answer Fleming was ready to show them into the Director’s office.

  ‘It must be gratifying to know Dönitz thinks highly of your work, Winn.’ Admiral Godfrey lifted the report on the desk in front of him and turned to a section he had marked in pencil:

  Kapitän Mohr said the staff at U-boat Headquarters were often impressed by the accuracy of the daily intelligence summaries on U-boat dispositions that were produced for the Royal Navy’s ships at sea by its Tracking Room . . .’

  ‘Infuriating, sir,’ said Winn who sounded anything but in complete control of his emotions. ‘As you say, sir, a shambles. We’re reading their signals and they’re reading ours.’

  ‘Not, I hope, for much longer. But God knows what Code Security was doing. And what sort of code is it that can be broken by the enemy after only a few months? It’s cost us very dearly in ships.’

  The Director dropped the report back on the desk: ‘Lindsay’s done a fine job. The cryptologists have been to Brixton to see Mohr and they’ve got nothing else from him.’