The Interrogator

‘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

For 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 Donitz 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 Donitz 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 Kapitan 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 Kapitan 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