The Interrogator

more, no less significant to the secret ladies than any of the other signals. It dropped into the duty officer’s tray in the tough hours of the middle watch between three and four o’clock, when the brain swirls like sea mist. And Lieutenant Freddie Wilmot considered it for a minute or two before leaning over the plot table to press a shiny new black pin into the Atlantic. Another ship lost — eight were reported that night — but a definite fix on the U-115. Then he clipped the piece of flimsy signal paper to his board and moved on.

And it was still on his board when Mary Henderson stepped through the door of the Tracking Room at a little after seven that morning. Winn’s hat and coat were already hanging on a hook and she turned to look at his office. He was bent over his desk, his back towards her, smoke curling through his fingers, preoccupied with the night’s traffic. A grey and bleary-eyed Wilmot was talking to one of the Wren plotters in front of the German grid map that hung on the wall at the far end of the room. The U-boat gave its position in signals at sea as a lettered and numbered square on the map. Somehow — Mary was not sure how or when — the Division had acquired its own copy. Two of the clerical assistants were perched on the edge of their desks enjoying a few precious minutes of calm and conversation that was nothing to do with convoys or casualties or the deadlines of the day. It would be another hour before the first visitor, before the ringing of the telephones and the clatter of the typewriters and teleprinters reached its customary infernal pitch. Time enough for breakfast. Mary glanced guiltily at her desk where a bundle of signals and reports was sitting at the top of the in-tray. But her stomach was urging her in a most unladylike manner, much to the sly amusement of the clerical assistants.

‘The needs of the flesh, Dr Henderson.’

‘Yes I’m sure you’re quite an authority, Joan,’ she replied. ‘If Commander Winn asks, I’ll be back at my desk in twenty minutes.’

The queue at the Admiralty canteen was painfully slow and Mary was obliged to bolt her too thinly buttered toast and abandon her tea, although its hard tannic taste was with her until lunch-time. The frantic dash back to the Citadel and through the traffic in its narrow corridors left her feeling a little nauseous. Winn was standing by her desk, his head bent in concentration, shoulders hunched, arms tightly folded, a brooding presence. She had seen him like that a hundred times and yet she sensed there was something wrong today. He was wrestling with some great emotion, anger or perhaps pain. And there was a strange hush in the room, the plotters whispering at the back wall, the trilling of a single telephone. Wilmot was perched on a desk close by, anxiously biting the quick of a nail. He shook his head a little as Mary approached the desk and cast a warning glance at Winn’s back. But Winn heard the squeak of her shoes on the linoleum floor:

‘You were at breakfast…’ He did not turn to face her ‘…and Lieutenant Wilmot was keeping it to himself.’

‘But Rodger…’

Winn waved a hand to silence him: ‘The Germans have sunk the Imperial Star.’ He took two stiff steps towards the plot and pointed to the little pin with U-115 on its head just off the coast of West Africa: ‘Here.’

The Imperial Star. Mary felt a tight lump in her throat. She covered her mouth with her hand and for a moment she was sure she was going to be sick. Those poor people. Oh God: ‘I’m… sorry… its my fault…’

That was all she could stammer, a few words of regret, but she knew if she tried to say more she would be lost. The rest, the questions, the explanations, the excuses caught in her throat, choking inarticulate guilt. She licked a salty drop from her lip then quickly wiped the rest from her face with the back of her hand.

‘Sorry…’

But Winn’s hand was at her elbow now: ‘Come with me. Can you arrange some tea, Freddie?’

And she allowed him to guide her gently from the plot and round the desks into his office.

‘What an exhibition. I’m sorry, Rodger,’ she said after a moment.

‘No need to apologise. It hurts. But remember, it was my decision in the end.’ He shook a cigarette from a packet and lit it with an angry snap of his lighter.

‘How can you do this job without the comfort of tobacco?’

‘But you asked me to check her course…’

‘And you did and there was nothing to suggest she was going to be in any danger,’ he said firmly. ‘Here,’ and he pushed the flimsy signal paper he had rescued from Wilmot’s board across the table to her. Special decrypt message from Station X, number 206/T85.

TOP SECRET U

CX/MSS/T18/206

TOO 08/2130Z/08/41 ZZZ

SUNK IMPERIAL STAR. TOTAL 18, 500 TONS. GRID SQUARE FF 71. SURVIVORS IN BOATS. COURSE NORTH WEST.

It was an immediate priority — ZZZ — signal from U-boat to headquarters where no doubt it was a source of much rejoicing.

‘And is there…’ Mary’s voice cracked a little, ‘…is there any news of the survivors?’

Winn shook his head then picked up a piece of paper from the desk in front of him: ‘Two or three families, fifty nurses, some RAF mechanics — specialists — thirty or so, 250 Army and Navy personnel, more than three hundred crew members with the ship’s gunners, and the cargo — aircraft parts and some ammunition. The RAF at Ascension is searching the area…’

He hesitated and glanced down at his desk as if to prepare Mary for distressing news and she felt the tight lump rise into her throat again.

‘I’m afraid no one picked up her distress signal and it was some time before they began the search… The weather was pretty bad. But they’re still looking…’

Mary’s hand was at her mouth, her bottom lip was trembling. She let her hand drop to her skirt and digging her nails into the brown wool she pinched her thigh until her eyes watered with the pain.

‘Are you all right?’ Winn asked.

‘Yes.’

‘We made the right decision with the intelligence we had on U-boat movements at the time. It’s not the first mistake we’ve made, Mary, and it won’t be the last… still…’

Pulling his small black-framed glasses from his face he placed them carefully on the desk, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. The smoke from his cigarette was curling up lazily from a glass ashtray and over the desk like a burnt offering before a temple Buddha. Mary sat and watched him lost in thought and the noise of telephones and raised voices in the Tracking Room filled the little office.

‘You know, we’ve had this sort of coincidence before and we’ve always dismissed it as cruel luck…’ His eyes were still closed, his face crumpled in a frown. ‘And perhaps it is, but I think we need to investigate this a little more…’ He reached for the last of his cigarettes.

‘The Imperial Star left the convoy on 31 July on her own course and was making good progress, travelling at something like fifteen knots. She maintained total wireless silence. The U- 115 — the only enemy submarine south of the equator as far as we know — sank her six days later. Now the U-boat would not have had the fuel to follow her at that sort of speed for long, it must have come upon her almost at once. Imagine, many thousands of square miles of ocean — what sort of odds would you get on that happening? Unless…’

He picked up his glasses and slid them back on his nose with his forefinger.

‘Unless of course the U-boat knew where to find her…’

Mary leant forward, her right hand gripping the edge of his desk: ‘Do you believe that?’

‘I don’t believe anything until we’ve checked all we have on the U-115’s movements and been through the special intelligence for July and August. And we must speak to the Naval Section at Bletchley.’

Slowly, deliberately, he ground the last of his cigarette in the ashtray. The restless hum of activity from the Tracking Room washed into his office again. It was after eight and Hall from Trade would be with them soon. At