The Interrogator (6 page)

An angry-looking crack in his lip was making it uncomfortable to speak. About his right eye, the bruising was turning from ugly green to yellow and it wrinkled into a painful, mottled pattern when he smiled.

‘Why do you think my . . .’ Lindsay looked down at the packet of Players he was turning slowly in his hand, ‘my colleague thought you were a spy?’

‘I don’t know. I’m a journalist, a navy journalist.’

Lindsay nodded.

‘You believe me?’ His face was broadcasting relief.

‘Yes.’

It had been a mistake. They seemed to happen often. By some mysterious process the possibility that Leutnant zur See Lange was a spy became a probability the moment he was handed over to the Security Service – MI5. Spies had to be broken. Five had given the task to Major Cunningham, a prickly veteran of the Great War known for his ‘robust’ interrogation style.

‘I think the man you call your colleague wanted to kill me’, said Lange with feeling. ‘I prayed to the Virgin Mary that it would stop. Then you came.’

‘I just hope . . .’ Lindsay sighed and held his hand reflectively to his lips for a moment, ‘I just hope we can hold on to you, Herr Leutnant.’

The suggestion in his voice that this was by no means a foregone conclusion was not lost on Lange. Anxiety was written in thick lines across his brow: ‘But you can send me to join the rest of the crew now.’

‘First I must convince my colleague that I’m right about you and he’s wrong.’

‘I don’t know any secrets. Speak to the crew of the 500 – they will tell you.’ Lange was picking distractedly at the peeling varnish of the tabletop. He was a short man, muscular with close-cropped brown hair and a heavy shaving shadow that made him appear older than his twenty-three years. His round face was peculiarly expressive, almost guileless.

Lindsay opened the briefcase at his feet and took out a magazine with a photograph of a sinking ship on the cover. It was the German Navy’s
Signal
: ‘I read it as often as I can. Do you remember this one?’ He pushed it across the table to Lange. ‘There’s a piece on page five about “the disintegrating poison of Jewry”.’

Lange wriggled uncomfortably: ‘That was written in Berlin.’

‘I see. And are you worried about this Jewish “poison” too?’

‘I’m a reporter, I write about the Navy,’ said Lange defensively.

Lindsay stared at him for several seconds, the silence full of blackbird song. Shadows were dancing across the bare white walls of the interrogation room as the wind shook the branches of a large cedar growing close to the window. The officers of
U-500
had described Lange as good-natured, religious, an unlikely ideologue and a
Landratte
– uncomfortable at sea. He knew no more about U-boats than he needed for a morale-boosting feature piece. But Lindsay sensed that with a little coaxing he would talk freely and a clever, inquisitive prisoner could be put to good use.

‘You’re from Bavaria, aren’t you?’ he said at last. ‘I can tell by your accent – Munich?’

‘Yes, Munich.’

‘And your father’s a teacher.’

Lange shifted anxiously in his seat again. ‘How did you know?’

‘I’ve picked up a few things.’

‘I’ve told you I don’t know any secrets.’

‘Yes, so you say.’ Lindsay leant forward earnestly to look Lange in the eye: ‘I believe you, really I do. But the other interrogator, the soldier, he doesn’t, you see. You must help me convince him.’

7

B

y the time Lindsay had collected his papers, the prisoner had gone. Three hours’ gentle probing and he knew Helmut Lange’s life story. Only time would tell if it was worth the effort. He could still hear prisoner and guard clumping up what was once the private staircase to the top of the house. Trent Park was too grand and airy for anything as mean as a cell block. The chinoiserie and old masters had been replaced by camp chairs and wall charts but an air of bright elegance lingered yet. It was a strangely self-conscious air. The house was not what it seemed. The grand Palladian façade had been built only ten years before with eighteenth-century bricks salvaged from Devonshire House in Piccadilly; the portico was from Chesterfield House, the obelisks from Wrest Park: stones, stairs and statues, almost everything, had come from somewhere else. Trent Park had acquired its history. It fascinated Lindsay because it spoke eloquently to him of its creator: Sir Philip Sassoon – Eton and Oxford, Member of Parliament and Under-Secretary at the Air Ministry – the lisping, swarthy scion of Jewish merchant princes.

Sassoon was reputed to have lured anybody who was anyone in fashionable society to his home. The newspapers listed politicians, princes, even the King of a small country. Their cars had swept up the long drive and on to the forecourt where a Union flag was picked out in pink-and-white stone rescued from the old Westminster Bridge. But Sassoon was an outsider. No one Lindsay knew personally had been on the guest list but he often wondered if all that blue blood had whispered, ‘Nice fellow but a little foreign.’ Sassoon had died in the summer before the war and the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre – CSDIC – had taken his home. Now young Nazis lived under his roof and strolled under escort through his gardens.

It was a little after four o’clock when Lindsay made his way down the grand oak staircase into the entrance hall. A low shaft of sunlight was pouring through the west-facing window, its smoky brightness shifting and swirling about the guards at the security desk.

‘Lindsay, I’ve been looking for you.’

Lieutenant-Commander James Henderson was squeezing his broad frame through the half-closed porch door: ‘May I have a word.’ His voice bounced roughly about the elegant plaster ceiling and pillars: ‘Let’s walk.’

Lindsay followed him out of the hall and through the security fence on to the broad brick terrace at the east end of the house. They stopped by the gate to the swimming pool, once the heated height of luxury, empty now but for last autumn’s curling leaves.

‘I haven’t wished you a happy birthday,’ said Lindsay, offering Henderson his hand.

‘You’re coming tonight, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

Henderson began to push at a loose piece of brick paving, edging it backwards and forwards with his shoe. He was an awkward-looking man, an inch or so shorter than Lindsay but broader and heavier, an East Anglian farmer even in his well-tailored blue uniform and an unlikely recruit to Naval Intelligence.

When he lifted his chin at last, there was a dark frown on his face and his lips were tightly pursed. There was clearly something difficult he wanted to say.

‘Cards down, Lindsay, Colonel Checkland is cross because you went behind his back to the Citadel. It wasn’t your place to speak to Winn about our codes.’

Lindsay almost smiled – Checkland was always cross with him. The Colonel was the head of Section 11 and had been for as long as anyone could remember. But Naval Intelligence was changing. Reserve officers twenty years his junior called the shots, clever amateurs with an academic contempt for rank and naval discipline – men like Rodger Winn and Ian Fleming. It was Ian Fleming who had found Lindsay his job as an interrogator and Checkland was certainly not going to forget that.

‘The Colonel wants you to drop it,’ said Henderson firmly. ‘It was just idle talk, gossip. The right people at the Admiralty have looked into it and they’re satisfied there is nothing to suggest any of our codes are compromised.’

‘Did they interrogate my prisoner, Zier, the wireless operator?’

‘Drop it. It’s nothing. You’ve been here four months, you’re good at your job but you’re wrong about this, and there are important security issues at stake here.’

‘Of course there are – the security of our codes,’ said Lindsay crossly.

‘I don’t mean that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s not important for you to know.’

Henderson paused to make eye contact and when he spoke his voice was cold:

‘Do you think you know better than everyone else? Don’t rub people up the wrong way. Look, we’ve taken a chance with you. Don’t give us reasons to doubt you. The Director of Naval Intelligence has instructed interrogators not to question prisoners about codes. This is not for you. Leave it alone. Oh, and that’s an order, an order from the Director.’

It was unambiguous, final, and it needled. Code and Cipher Security at the Admiralty had slammed the door shut without taking the trouble to interview Lindsay or Prisoner 530.

‘It’s a pity Colonel Checkland isn’t prepared to back the judgement of his interrogators,’ he said with a bitter shake of the head.

Henderson sighed pointedly. ‘If you want to take it up with him in person, be my guest, but I would hate to see you have to go.’

Lindsay knew that was a lie. There was no love lost between them. But what was the point of brow-beating the messenger when in three hours’ time he would be standing, glass in hand, at his party. Henderson must have read the resignation in his face. Touching his elbow, he began to propel him gently along the terrace in pursuit of the sunshine. A couple of well-dressed clerical assistants were perched on the stone balustrade at the far end, chatting animatedly beneath a vigorous lead statue of Hercules. He stopped well short of them and turned to face Lindsay. ‘You’re
doing a good job, Douglas,’ he cooed. ‘Don’t spoil it. Look, I need to be away. I promised Uncle I would be at his house by seven.’ He hesitated, then said: ‘I can’t take you all the way – things to collect – but I’ll drop you at the station.’

The Alvis roared up to the front of the house. Lindsay stepped through the security fence and flung his coat and case in the back. It was a five-minute run from Trent Park to the station at Cockfosters but in a little under two miles they would pass from open countryside into the grimy bustle of the city. Sassoon’s great park was at the very outer edge of London: to the north, the woods and rolling hills of Hertfordshire, to the south, the steady creep of pebble-dashed suburbia. It was Hitler who had brought the city’s march to a halt at the gates of Trent Park.

‘Mary seems to have taken to you, old boy,’ Henderson roared over his engine. They were batting between the limes that led in a long avenue to the gates, the sun yellow and blinding already.

‘She’s a lovely girl. I’m a little afraid of her – a bit of a scholar – the first in our family. Not sure I approve really. She was offered a Fellowship at Oxford, you know, but turned it down to join the Division.’

‘I’ve only met her once,’ said Lindsay. ‘She wants to talk to me about the prisoners.’

‘If you say so,’ said Henderson sceptically. ‘She has some academic friends, of course, but she doesn’t invite them to parties. One of our neighbours in Suffolk took a shine to her but she frightened him away. Too bloody clever. I don’t suppose you’ll have that problem.’

The car scrunched to a halt between the puissant stone lions that flanked the gates to the Park, showering the guards with loose gravel. A cross-looking sergeant waved them on to the Cockfosters Road. Lindsay was struggling to think of something to say; for once, Henderson’s imagination was faster than his car: ‘She’s quite religious, you know. Much better than me, goes to church every Sunday. Are you religious?’

‘No.’

Pinstriped commuters brandishing copies of the
Evening Standard
were pouring out of the dull brick station. Heads turned as the car
came roaring to a halt. Lindsay squeezed out of his seat and on to the pavement.

‘See you later, old boy,’ Henderson boomed.

Rattling through the gloom towards the city, Lindsay’s thoughts turned again to Prisoner 530. It was typical of the Navy. If you stepped out of your box into someone else’s you were jumped on. An interrogator with something to say about codes was trespassing and no one in the Admiralty was interested. Lindsay had listened to the disc they had cut and there was something in Oberfunkmaat Peter Zier’s voice, a quiet assurance, that suggested he knew what he was talking about. It had been more than just a throwaway remark. Zier had refused to answer any questions about codes but the truth was there in his eyes, in the movement of his body and the little catch in his voice. A good interrogator had a sixth sense for when a prisoner was trying to hide something – Checkland had taught him that much.

‘Excuse me. You shouldn’t be reading that.’

A full-looking middle-aged woman in a heavy purple coat was leaning across the carriage towards him, her turkey neck and face flushed with indignation. She was pointing at the magazine that lay open on his lap.

‘Did you hear me?’

Adolf Hitler was spread across the centre pages under the eighteen-point Gothic headline ‘Die Mannschaft der Scharnhorst begrüssen den Führer’. The crew of the battleship
Scharnhorst
was cheering for dear life and the crooked cross flew proudly from the quarterdeck.

‘That sort of thing is upsetting.’ She was barking down the carriage now, demanding the attention of a dozen or so bored-looking passengers. Lindsay closed the magazine and reached for his briefcase.

‘I’m obliged to read this.’

The woman twittered something about being more ‘sensitive’ but his thoughts were drifting away. He had rather sheepishly looked up the Henderson family in
Debrett
: traditional squirearchy with roots in the fifteenth century, a coat of arms and a short address in Suffolk. At the bottom of a half-page entry, Mary Victoria Hobhouse Henderson, born 1916, and a brother called James, born 1911. He tried to conjure a picture of Mary in his mind, her thick black loose-curled
hair, the broad smile that scrunched and wrinkled her face, her sandy-green eyes. She had been sitting behind her desk in a ghastly tweed suit but she was tall, perhaps five foot seven, and appeared to have a good figure.

‘Are you listening to me?’

The large purple woman was still blustering.

8

Lord North Street
Westminster

T

ing. The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece at Mary’s shoulder struck half past eight. The little panelled drawing room was thick with smoke and noise, a press of navy blue and bright evening silk. She could see her Uncle David’s grey head bobbing towards the door, slipping from one outstretched hand to the next with all the effortless charm of the experienced politician. James Henderson had invited an odd assortment of naval officers, his club cronies and family friends from Suffolk. Mary recognised a good number of the men, but only one of the women. Her cousin Gillian was holding court in a corner of the room, shimmering seductively in a silver dress. She was some way through an anecdote that seemed neither interesting nor funny but her audience of junior officers was smiling devotedly none the less.