‘Not me.’ His voice was shaking.
Unfolding his arms, Lindsay walked to the edge of the table and leant across it until he was only a foot from him:
‘Look at me, Herr Leutnant. Look at me. It was you. You know it was.’
‘I… please…’ He was very frightened.
‘Tell me and he will never know. But you must tell me, tell me now.’
Heine was hugging himself, rocking to and fro on his chair, close to tears.
‘Herr Leutnant, tell me at once.’
It was an order.
‘I can’t…’
‘Was Kapitan Mohr on Admiral Donitz’s staff?’
Heine said nothing but gave the slightest of nods.
Is that yes?’
‘Yes.’
The break. It had been easy. Heine would answer their questions. Lindsay took a deep breath then glanced reluctantly across at Brown. His face was very pale, his jaws clenched tight with fury. Without losing eye contact, he pushed a scrap of paper across the table. Two words were written on it in pencil: ‘You bastard.’
16
Brusque orders and the clump of heavy boots forced Jurgen Mohr from a satisfyingly deep sleep back to the close darkness of his room. Someone was rattling keys at the door, cursing loudly.
‘Get your trousers on.’
A guard shone a torch in his face.
‘The switch is in the corridor, to the right of the door,’ said Mohr tartly.
Blinking sleepily in the light, he swung his legs off the bed and reached for his shirt and trousers. It was a little after midnight. His interrogator was hoping that in the stillness before morning the threats would seem more real. Mohr wondered whether it would be the uncertain Jew or that effete academic, Graham? Perhaps, this time, the lieutenant he had met in Liverpool. He smiled at the thought.
They led him down the back stairs and halfway along a dimly lit corridor on the first floor. The bare white walls of the interrogation room were lit by a single shadeless bulb, there was a plain wooden table with a metallic green ashtray at its edge and just one chair.
‘The prisoner stands in front of the table,’ said the sergeant, addressing a spotty youth in a private’s uniform. ‘Make sure he doesn’t move.’
The door slammed shut and Mohr was alone with his guard. He walked slowly over to the barred window at the far end of the room.
‘Come away from there,’ said the soldier nervously, but Mohr ignored him.
Through a crack in the blackout shutters, he could see the moon, white and full and uncomfortably bright. He had been betrayed by just such a moon. The British escort ships had seen the silhouette of
‘Herr Kapitan Mohr.’ Lieutenant Lindsay was standing by the desk.
‘Sorry, Lieutenant, I was dreaming. I often dream at this hour.’
Lindsay said nothing but sat down and took a notepad from the briefcase on his knee, opened it and began to write. For a full minute, the silence was broken only by the scratching of his pencil.
‘Your crew has been very helpful,’ he said at last in German. ‘There are just a few small points to clear up, some biographical details.’
He glanced up from his notebook: ‘You’re thirty-two, single, from East Prussia — your family owns a small estate near Tapiau. Correct?’
Mohr stared down at the lieutenant impassively.
‘You were educated in Germany and for a time in England too — Bristol. You joined the Reichsmarine in 1929 and served on the light cruiser
Mohr smiled.
Lindsay paused for a second and ran his forefinger down his notebook: ‘You transferred to the U-boat arm a few months before Donitz took command of it and saw active service in Spanish waters during the Civil War and at the beginning of this one. You’ve had a good war, haven’t you — until now. The Knight’s Cross from Hitler himself.’
‘A good war,’ said Mohr thoughtfully. ‘Have you had a good war, Lieutenant?’ He nodded at the ribbon on Lindsay’s chest.
‘How many ships have you sunk?’
‘A lot.’
‘And there was a dinner at the Reich Chancellery in your honour.’
‘A bad dinner. The Fuhrer is a vegetarian,’ said Mohr with a shake of the head.
Lindsay smiled weakly, then, half turning to the door, shouted:
‘Chair for the prisoner.’
A guard stumbled in and placed one in front of Mohr.
‘How kind,’ said Mohr drily, ‘My reward?’
‘For what?’
He shrugged. They were the table’s width apart now, close enough for their knees to touch beneath it. Lindsay took a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket and pushed them across to him. Mohr took one, lit it and inhaled gratefully.
‘Was Admiral Donitz with you?’
Mohr directed a thick stream of smoke away from the table: ‘At the Fuhrer’s dinner, you mean? Of course.’
Their eyes met for just a moment, but long enough for Mohr to register the shadows about Lindsay’s eyes: ‘You look tired, Lieutenant. You’re working too late.’
‘You know the Admiral well, don’t you? Did you visit U-boat Headquarters often?’
Mohr gave a small smile and drew on his cigarette.
‘Did you visit the Admiral at U-boat Headquarters?’ This time there was a hard edge to Lindsay’s voice.
‘Let me ask you a question.’ Mohr leant forward a little, his hands on the table. ‘Where did you learn to speak German?’
Lindsay frowned and picked up his cigarettes. He took one out slowly, tapping it deliberately on the packet. ‘I think you’re forgetting yourself.’
Mohr laughed, shifting in his chair excitedly: ‘How can I? I’m your prisoner. But what do you think — a game? The rules are simple. Answer my questions and I’ll answer yours. Where did you learn to speak such perfect German?’
‘University. What were your operational orders?’ Lindsay snapped back at him.
‘You know those — to sink British ships off the African coast.’
‘And how did you plan to do it — your personal tactics?’
‘That’s your second question.’
Lindsay ignored him: ‘You spent time ashore last year, where?’
Mohr felt a frisson of anxious excitement. Simple biographical details were unimportant, most of them were to be found in newspaper cuttings, but this was of a different order. It was an ambush.
‘You haven’t been very truthful,’ he said with a deliberate shake of the head. ‘You must have been to
