The Interrogator

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

The 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. ‘Kapitan 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?’

‘Jurgen Mohr. I want you to conduct 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