The Interrogator (39 page)

‘F’ Wing at Brixton clattered like an empty dustbin. British fascists and Irish nationalists, spies and murderers, their shouts and groans in the night, their boots on the stairs and the landings, the rattle of keys in security gates and the heavy slamming of doors. A Victorian hell of steel and bare brick and chipped and dirty whitewash. His cell was four metres by two, a barred window high in the wall, a bucket and a bed. That night as he lay on his thin damp mattress, the cold echo of the prison shackling his mind, Mohr knew he was a prisoner in a way he had not been before.

At slopping-out the next morning he saw Dietrich and Schmidt further down the landing in the same prison browns, heads bent over their shit. And he felt a contempt for their stupidity that was matched only by the contempt he felt for himself. Then at eleven o’clock there were footsteps and voices outside his cell and someone pressed an eye to the slot in the door. A moment later it opened and Lindsay stood there, a prison warder at his back.

‘I’ve brought you a newspaper,’ he said in English and tossed the
Daily Mail
on to the bed. ‘Now you’re a celebrity here too.’

Mohr looked at it for a moment, then picked it up and opened it on his knee. His own picture was at the bottom of the front page beneath the latest news of the war in the Soviet Union. It must have been taken in Liverpool when the crew was escorted off the ship. And the bold headline beneath it:

U-boat Commander to be Charged with Murder

He flinched and closed his eyes for a moment as if someone had caught him hard in the stomach. It was public knowledge, perhaps in Germany too. Humiliating. The copy beneath the picture said that a man had been ‘brutally’ murdered at a camp for enemy officers in the north of England. A number of German prisoners were being held, including a ‘senior Nazi U-boat Commander’ and it mentioned him
by name. And he was also to be ‘charged’ with conducting an ‘illegal court-martial hearing’.

Mohr looked sideways at Lindsay: ‘Have you read this?’

‘Of course.’

‘. . .
this ruthless Nazi officer is responsible for the deaths of many British seamen and now with equal ruthlessness he has turned against one of his own
. . .’ Who is this person?’

‘You, Mohr, you,’ said Lindsay contemptuously. ‘You will be brought before a court in the next few days. You and your lynch mob: Dietrich and Bruns and Schmidt and Koch and the others too. You will be found guilty and hanged.’

‘You are the one who should be in court.’ Mohr’s voice shook with repressed fury.

Why had Lindsay done this to him? He was going to dress it up as a dirty little crime, Mohr the murderer, the mindless Nazi thug. It was more than just an intelligence trick, it felt personal in some way, an assault on his integrity, his reputation. But he was caught, a fly in a web.

He tried to collect himself: ‘No one has taken a statement from me.’

‘You look worried. We don’t need a statement. We have witnesses. I heard you myself.’

‘I want to give a statement.’

Lindsay shook his head, then; half turning to the prison warder behind him, said: ‘Look after him. I don’t want to give him the opportunity to make a complaint about his treatment to the court.’

The warder nodded.

Lindsay had reached the door and was on the point of closing it when he turned to look at Mohr again. There was something close to a sneer on his face: ‘I would feel sorry for you but I saw Lange swinging there. The crimes of one man can bring dishonour to many. To think that man would be you, a hero of the Reich.’

The door slammed shut and the empty echo bounced round the hard walls of Mohr’s cell and reverberated in his mind.

Lieutenant Samuels was the sort of man it was easy to spot in a crowd, even in an undistinguished business suit. He arrived in a hissing cloud of steam and smoke on the three o’clock from Doncaster. It was half an hour late. Lindsay saw him at once rolling awkwardly along the platform, a space opening about him, head a little bent, his face pasty and earnest. He managed a warm smile when he saw Lindsay at the barrier, grateful no doubt to be back in ‘the Smoke’ and to the man who was making it possible.

‘How was the racecourse, Charlie?’ Lindsay asked, taking his bag.

‘Heavy-going,’ he said with another weak smile. ‘I didn’t expect you to be here to meet me.’

‘We need to talk. We haven’t got long. Admiral Godfrey wants this wrapped up in twenty-four hours. He’s fending off a lot of people at the War Office who want to know about the riot at the camp.’

Lindsay’s jeep was parked at the front of King’s Cross Station. He did his best to brief Samuels as he ground up and down the gears through the London streets. If they could not break Mohr quickly, then the police would take him off their hands: ‘And after the shambles at the camp, I will be hung out to dry somewhere.’

Samuels grunted: ‘Again.’

‘For good.’

They drew up at some lights in Fleet Street and Lindsay reached down for his cigarettes: ‘I saw Mohr this morning and showed him his picture in the paper. I think he was upset. Very gratifying.’

‘So the papers have it?’ Samuels was surprised.

‘No, no. We’re trying to keep it from the papers. It was my own special edition of the
Daily Mail
. The tricks people at MI5 came up with the idea.’

The Security Service had tried the same thing on their prisoners. It was in the papers so it must be true. The
Daily Mail
had replaced a front-page story with the one that put Mohr on a murder charge, then run off half a dozen copies for Lindsay.

‘And Five are helping us with three of their chaps.’ He paused, then almost as an afterthought: ‘Two of them work for a man called Colonel Gilbert. They look a little rough.’

Samuels frowned.

‘. . . Oh and we’ve got Dick Graham from the Park.’

They stopped at a greasy-spoon café in Pimlico for precious eggs and some tomatoes, accompanied by bread and cups of tea. It was going to be a busy night. ‘Our last chance, really,’ said Lindsay, putting down his knife and fork and reaching for his cup.

‘You seem quite calm.’

Did he feel calm? Perhaps something harder. Harder, yes. He knew he would risk anything. It felt almost as if life hung in the balance, hope and happiness, perhaps even his sanity in one scale and Kapitän Jürgen Mohr in the other. This was the time. There was no turning back.

‘We’ll try the Cross Ruff on all the prisoners but Mohr – play one off against another.’ He put his cup back on the table, then caught the waiter’s eye for the bill. ‘Oh and congratulations. You’ve been promoted to Captain. Your new uniform is waiting for you at the prison.’

Samuels groaned, then laughed: ‘Do you think it will work, a Jewish captain?’

‘My God, it had better.’

It was their own little Court of Honour. A badly lit windowless room at the end of the wing with the necessary degree of discomfort. The new captain – Samuels – was in the chair. Nazi officers showed slavish respect for rank and Oberleutnant zur See Dietrich was one of the true believers. He seemed a hard case, the chief interrogator of Heine, the leader of the little washroom band, not afraid to take the rope in his own hands. But a man who needed things to be simple, easily led so easy to confuse, and brittle. And he was not one
of Mohr’s men but the first officer of the
U-500
and Lindsay sensed he had not been schooled to keep his mouth shut as well as some of the others. Above all, if anyone was going to hang it would be Dietrich and he knew it. His fear was transparent in his face the moment the prison warders led him into the room. He stood before the table, his chin raised, his lips pursed in a show of defiance that was compromised by a clownishly baggy prison uniform. Perhaps it was a deliberate attempt by the warders to undermine his sense of self-importance and dignity. The bottom of his trousers hung in rolls over his shoes and he was obliged to keep a firm hand on the waist to prevent them from falling down altogether.

Lindsay had asked one of Gilbert’s MI5 officers to be the other member of their court, a large muscular man called Robbins who looked as if he would ask most of his questions with his fists. He sat at the table in his dark suit with the face of a hanging judge. It was Samuels who began the interrogation in German: ‘You know why you’re here, Dietrich. You’ve been charged with the murder of two men.’

There was a cold crisp authority in his voice that would not have been out of place on a parade ground: ‘Tomorrow you will appear before a court. If convicted – and you will be – you will be taken to a prison like this and you will be hanged. Do you understand?’

Dietrich did not say anything but stared at a stretch of wall above Samuels’ right shoulder. He was struggling to keep his composure.

‘Do you understand? Answer me,’ Samuels barked.

‘Yes, Herr Kapitän.’

‘Your only hope of seeing Germany and your family again is if you co-operate. I make no promises, will strike no bargains but there is a possibility, I put it at no more than that, if you answer our questions the court will take your attitude into account. Do you understand?’

Dietrich nodded.

‘Do you understand?’ asked Samuels sharply.

‘Yes, Herr Kapitän.’

Samuels glanced across at Lindsay who, taking his cue, opened the file in front of him and pushed a sheet of paper across the table towards Dietrich.

‘Was it your decision to interrogate Heine?’

‘No.’

‘Who gave the order?’

Silence. Dietrich shifting his weight awkwardly.

‘Who?’

Still nothing.

‘Who ordered you to interrogate Heine?’

‘I am not sure . . .’

‘Who?’

The hand Dietrich lifted to his mouth trembled a little.

‘Your life may depend upon your answer. Who?’

His lips seemed to form the words but there was no sound.

‘Who?’

‘. . . I don’t . . .’

‘Who ordered you to interrogate Heine?’

‘The Ältestenrat.’ Barely more than a whisper but Lindsay pounced:

‘Write this,’ and he leant across the table to place his fountain pen on the paper.

‘Write: “The Ältestenrat instructed me to interrogate Leutnant Heine.” Write it now.’

Dietrich looked down at the paper. To speak it softly in a dark room was one thing; to commit it to paper in your own hand was an entirely different matter.

‘Don’t try our patience, Dietrich. We have the evidence to hang you.’

Dietrich’s hand hovered above the paper for two, three, four seconds before he lifted it to cover his mouth once more.

Samuels cleared his throat and began gathering the papers into the file in front of him. ‘All right, that’s enough. We know the answers to these questions. This was your opportunity to do something to help yourself, Dietrich.’

And he lifted his hand to beckon the prison warders standing at the back of the room.

But the pen was in Dietrich’s hand before they could take a step.

As his head bent over the paper, Samuels caught Lindsay’s eye and gave a slight nod and a smile.

‘Did Kapitän Mohr instruct you to extract a confession from Heine?’

Dietrich muttered something Lindsay did not catch: ‘What did you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Write it down.’

He wrote standing over the table, in an awkward schoolboy hand: the interrogation of Heine, the torture, his confession, the names of those who had played a part with him.

‘And after that you strung Heine up from the pipe.’

‘No. No.’ It rang round the room and out to the landing. ‘No.’

Dietrich denied murder. And he was not to be shaken. He was adamant that Heine took his own life.

‘I was shocked.’

‘You all but handed him the rope,’ said Lindsay coldly. ‘And then, Lange. Tell me, did Kapitän Mohr order you to execute him?’

Dietrich looked down at the paper and said nothing. The stuffing had been pulled from him, he was a sad figure, deluded, a weak man in the hands of the strong, a victim too in a way. And Lindsay could not help feeling some pity for him – a little. ‘Well?’

He looked up at Lindsay and his eyes were a watery blue, then he shook his head slowly.

‘You can’t protect him. It’s too late for that.’

‘Kapitän Mohr gave no such order.’

‘But that’s what he wanted you to do.’

Again a slow shake of the head: ‘No. We took the propaganda man.’

‘You’re protecting him.’

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘No. We only wanted to scare Lange. He was going to give evidence against us. Somehow it got out of hand when the soldiers, when you broke the door down.’

‘I heard Kapitän Mohr give you the order myself.’

‘No.’

Lindsay sat down at the table again and looked at Samuels who gave him a knowing look. Was he betraying his disappointment? But what difference if Mohr did give the order? His guilt or innocence was neither here nor there. It would have been neater, that’s all.

‘All right take him away,’ said Samuels, signalling to the prison warders.

Dietrich looked surprised and a little distressed: ‘And you will speak to the judge? It was an accident, a mistake. We didn’t mean to hurt Lange. Just an accident. That’s the truth.’

Samuels gave him a withering look and turned to one of the guards: ‘Get him out of here.’

The door slammed behind them and Samuels got to his feet rubbing his hands with satisfaction, then leant across the table for the statement. Two sheets and Dietrich’s signature.

‘That went rather well. I like Captain Samuels, don’t you? Who’s next?’

‘I think I’ll see the navigator from Mohr’s boat on my own,’ said Lindsay, collecting his papers together. ‘Why don’t you take a break? There’s a small hotel a few hundred yards from the prison.’

Samuels looked puzzled: ‘But it worked well. Don’t you want to try again?’

‘Not with Bruns. I’ve spoken to him before. I want to see him alone in his cell. I think that will be better, Charlie.’