The Interrogator (10 page)
Authors: Andrew Williams
‘Oh God, no,’ he muttered.
Bright red arterial blood rose in an arc from the ragged stump of a sailor’s leg. The boy – he was no more than eighteen – was watching it in silent disbelief. Lindsay recognised his white-blond hair and delicate features – he had pulled one of the whaler’s oars. People were running along the quay now and someone shouted to him, ‘Give us a hand here.’
He stumbled forwards in a daze and a medical orderly thrust a large cotton pad into his hands: ‘Hold it firmly against the stump.’ Blood was seeping across the stones and into the dock. He pressed down hard and the young sailor screamed. Then he was conscious of grinding heavy metal and a deep hissing. He turned his head a little. Steam was rising in a cloud from the bows of His Majesty’s destroyer
White
as she slipped slowly down, down to the bottom of the dock.
In his cell, a hundred yards along the quay, Kapitän Jürgen Mohr could hear frightened voices and the gonging of an ambulance bell. The explosions had crept closer and the last had shaken the walls and floor until the light flickered and died. He was sitting in impenetrable blackness, so black he felt he could touch it. And he could imagine he was in the control room of his U-boat again, surrounded by the pale, anxious faces of his men. But he felt calm, completely calm. Their lives were no longer in his hands. There were no orders he could give, he was powerless to shape events.
He heard raised voices in the corridor and someone hammered angrily on the cell door: ‘Bastard.’
‘Can I have some light in here?’ he shouted back in English. But there was no answer.
Seconds later another explosion shook the building, throwing him
from the bench to the stone-flagged floor. He picked himself up, gritty brick dust in his nose and throat.
Did his family know the
112
was lost? he wondered. Admiral Dönitz would be concerned that the British had managed to capture such a senior officer. But perhaps the senior officer would not last the night.
12
‘
ou look exhausted, old boy.’ Lieutenant Tim Cooper was slumped in the burgundy plush of the Exchange Hotel’s bar, a plate of the chef’s own sandwiches in front of him.
‘Is this the best they can manage?’ He peeled back the top of a damp triangle and carefully examined its contents: luncheon meat.
‘I’ve had breakfast but . . .’ He glanced hopefully at Lindsay who waved a careless hand at the plate. There was almost nothing in his appearance to suggest that a few hours before he had been squatting in smoke and blood beside a dying man. The hotel staff had worked a small miracle on his uniform and his shoes were polished to perfection. But there was a weary frown on his face and a more observant man than Cooper might have noticed the distant look in his eyes.
‘It’s been a bad night,’ said Cooper mechanically, ‘What a pounding Liverpool’s taken.’ He glanced at his watch, it was eleven o’clock. It had taken him two hours to make the short journey from the mess at Orrell Hey. Burning streets, flooded streets, streets choked with rubble and unexploded bombs. He had seen a parachute mine lying in the front garden of a neat little semi, huge and uninvited.
‘The Central Library’s still burning, and the GPO, and there’s a steamer loaded with ammunition on fire in the Huskisson Dock. If that goes up, they’ll hear it at the Admiralty,’ he said. ‘Did you hear about the
White
? The buggers managed to sink her. Thompson, her captain, was at the mess last night. Very tight. He climbed up on to the roof and stood there brandishing a pipe at them. Bombs dropping everywhere and there he was shouting, “Come on you buggers”.’
Lindsay said nothing.
Transport for Mohr and the other prisoners from the
112
would be difficult to arrange but Cooper was hopeful of a train from Lime Street later in the day.
‘It was sickening,’ he said. ‘You should have seen them together.’
‘Who?’
‘Thompson and Mohr – yesterday. You would have thought Thompson was entertaining Marlene Dietrich.’
‘You don’t like Commander Thompson,’ said Lindsay drily.
‘He doesn’t like me, which is unforgivable. But he’ll like you.’ Cooper glanced down at the medal ribbon on Lindsay’s uniform. ‘But Mohr’s a clever bugger. He spent time here as a boy. Must have run rings round Thompson.’ He paused and began to examine his nails.
‘Well, what is it?’ asked Lindsay impatiently.
‘I’m afraid I’ve bad news . . .’
‘Bad news?’ Lindsay gave a short humourless laugh.
‘Yes. Thompson let Mohr talk to his men. He’s had three weeks to prepare them for interrogation.’
‘They didn’t keep him from the crew?’ asked Lindsay in disbelief. Lieutenant-Commander Thompson had broken the golden rule: isolate the commander.
‘Sorry. I hope someone kicks his complacent backside for you,’ said Cooper.
Lindsay lit a cigarette, and blew the yellow smoke at the bar-room ceiling. As it broke and curled, he could imagine the dancing shadows of the cedar on the walls of the interrogation room at the Park and hear the mocking whisper of its branches.
Standing on the quay above the wreck of HMS
White
, Kapitän Jürgen Mohr felt no satisfaction nor did he feel regret. It was one more act of war.
Das ist eben Schicksal
. Fate. The sinking of the
White
, the damage to city and port, these things happened in war. The country that inflicted the most pain and destruction would win.
‘Get that lot into some sort of line.’
Mohr’s men were shuffling out of a warehouse at the corner of the dock under the eye of a burly British sergeant.
‘Don’t any of you lot speak any English?’ he shouted at them, ‘Fall in now.’
‘Can I help you, Sergeant?’ Mohr’s English was a little precise but perfect in every other respect.
‘No you bloody can’t. Keep away.’ The sergeant pointed at two army trucks that were parked further along the quay. ‘Corporal, take this one up there.’
Mohr shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
‘Suit yourself? Suit yourself my arse,’ said the sergeant angrily, ‘get a move on.’
Mohr picked his way through the rubble, the tangled hoses and bloody rags, the corporal stamping aggressively at his heels. They stopped beside one of the trucks and he leant against its bonnet to watch the sergeant pushing and prodding his crew into a ragged line. Smoke was still settling in a broad grey blanket over the river and its wharves. From time to time there was a deep dull rumble from the tightly ordered streets beyond the docks, where a demolition party was making the city ‘safe’.
The crew had abandoned its line and Mohr was most of the way through his fifth cigarette by the time the small party of British officers arrived on the quay. They stopped to look down in silence at the black and twisted bridge of the
White
, fifteen feet of blasted steel breaking the oily water. Mohr recognised her captain and the fat lieutenant he had met the day before but not their companion, a tall, fair-haired officer. He dropped his cigarette, ground it beneath his shoe, then walked slowly towards Lieutenant-Commander Thompson.
‘A cruel blow, Captain, really’, he said, with as much sincerity as he could manage.
Thompson acknowledged him with a curt nod. He looked grey and careworn, his thoughts clearly somewhere close to the bottom of the dock. They stood there in foot-shuffling silence for a moment before Thompson said, almost as an afterthought: ‘Yes, unfortunate.’ A perfect piece of English understatement – Mohr just managed to suppress a smile. He listened as Thompson explained in an empty, colourless voice that the lieutenants at his side were arranging for the crew of the
112
to be transferred to a camp.
‘I regret to say that an angry crowd has gathered at the gates of the dock. There are a lot of sailors’ families in this city, but you will be quite safe with Lieutenants Cooper and Lindsay.’
Mohr smiled at him, ‘I want to thank you again for your kindness, Captain.’
The fair-haired officer, the one Thompson had introduced as Lindsay, gave a short, humourless laugh. Thompson frowned and seemed on the point of rebuking him but changed his mind. There was something in his manner that suggested the two men had crossed swords already.
After another awkward silence Lieutenant Lindsay turned to him and said sharply in German, ‘Herr Kapitän Mohr, there are some rules.’
‘I was sure there would be,’ Mohr replied in German. Then in English he said: ‘But Commander Thompson doesn’t speak German. It would be polite to speak English, Lieutenant.’
Lieutenant Lindsay stared at him coldly and Mohr was struck by the intense blue of his eyes. Then Lindsay said in German: ‘You will be travelling to the station with your officers but your guards are under orders to prevent any talking.’ He glanced at his watch, ‘And we will be leaving in ten minutes.’
Mohr watched Lindsay and the others drift out of earshot. Something was niggling him, a faint but persistent echo. What was it? There was something about Lindsay that seemed inexplicably familiar.
After a few minutes, Thompson walked briskly away, his trophy prisoner no longer a concern. Lindsay and Cooper turned back to Mohr, deep in conversation. They had gone no more than a few steps when there was a blinding white flash. A savage growl seemed to roll up the Mersey towards them. Mohr threw himself face down on the rough cobbles. A chunk of steel plate clanged on to the quay close by and the sky was suddenly alive with the whistle and crash of shellfire.
‘The ammunition ship.’ Cooper was lying a few feet away. ‘She must have been sent to every corner of the city.’
Mohr lifted his head a little and caught Lindsay’s eye and in that instant, in the pandemonium, it came to him where he had seen the man before and he began to laugh, laugh out loud.
13
N
Mary had spoken to Lindsay on the telephone but he had not wanted to talk of Liverpool and by then the bombs were falling on London again. She had returned home very late one night to find Lord North Street closed and St John’s Church in Smith Square burning like a torch. For more than an hour she had stood and watched the fire as if at the bedside of a dying friend, and reflected on the strange world she inhabited at the Citadel, where a church counted for so much less than a tanker.
The list of ships lost in the Atlantic was longer every week and yet the fog in which those in Room 41 had always worked was clearing a little. There were days when bold black track lines criss-crossed the main submarine plot with certainty and the enemy pinheads sported numbers like
U-552
and
U-96
. And every day the mountain of signals on Mary’s desk rose a little higher. The Citadel was a jealous master. She spoke to Lindsay on the telephone when she could but it was often after midnight and their conversations would peter out in weary frustrated silence.
At the time it had seemed like a coincidence but later, when she reflected on her exchange with Rodger Winn, she was not so sure. It was early afternoon on the day she had arranged to meet Lindsay after almost a fortnight apart. Winn had just returned from a meeting with the Director of Naval Intelligence and was talking to one of the watch-keepers in his office. Mary glanced up from the anti-submarine warfare bulletin she was reading and across at him. He caught her
eye and smiled. A few minutes later the watch-keeper, Lieutenant Herbert, tapped her on the shoulder: ‘Rodger says can you leave that for a moment, he’d like a word.’
She found Winn leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head. He sighed loudly as Mary stepped into the room.
‘You look weary, Rodger.’ She sat down opposite him. ‘Perhaps you’re pushing yourself a little too hard.’ It was more familiar than she had ever been with Winn but his smile suggested he was touched by her concern.
‘I am tired, Mary, tired of other people’s stupidity. No, no, I don’t mean you.’
‘You’re not about to give me a dressing-down?’
‘No. Whatever for? You’ve really taken to this work – much more reliable than the chaps here.’ He paused for a moment to light a cigarette, then said: ‘How much do you know about Station X?’
‘Almost nothing, except that we have a lot to thank them for. Frankly I’ve been too frightened to ask.’
‘You know, the special intelligence we’re getting now is just the tip of the iceberg,’ said Winn. ‘In the weeks to come it could alter the balance of the war at sea.’
Mary nodded.
Winn leant forward to cram the cigarette he had just lit into an ashtray already overflowing with butts. She could tell he was on edge. ‘You’re a member of a very small circle, Mary. And the members of the circle must guard its secret very closely . . .’
Mary flushed a little: ‘I know that, Rodger.’
‘Yes,’ said Winn uncomfortably. ‘This is difficult. I understand you’re seeing Lieutenant Lindsay.’
Mary stared at him, confused for a moment and embarrassed. Then a hot tide of anger began to well up inside her and it was with difficulty that she managed to steady her voice: ‘Who told you that?’
‘The Director’s Assistant. Fleming had it from your brother.’
‘Yes, I’m seeing Douglas but I can’t see what that has to do with you or him.’
‘Can’t you?’ asked Winn coolly.
‘No,’ she lied.
‘Of course you can.’
Mary was about to say something but Winn held up his hand.
‘No. Let me finish. I probably shouldn’t tell you this but the security people want to question you. Fleming has put them off. He told them I would speak to you instead.’
‘Why? Is this to do with Douglas’s family?’
‘Yes. And also his interest in our codes. He’s one of the few people fighting this war who’s face to face with the enemy every day. The interrogators are under orders to avoid any reference to signals or codes. They could let something slip, a careless observation, a badly phrased question that reveals something about our signals or theirs. It’s too risky – it could find its way to Berlin. Prisoners have their ways of passing on intelligence too. We know that.’
