The Interrogator (18 page)

Short and thin. But there were those little signs that meant so much
to an experienced eye that never made it into a report. He wondered if he should have included a few:

. . .
the prisoner Brand kept touching his lip . . .

. . . Kapitän zur See Mohr lost his composure when codes were mentioned and refused to make eye contact . . .

All this was evidence too but it counted for nothing because the Section’s work was not respected in the Division. You had to have friends to put your case. He would send Winn a copy and Fleming too.

‘How was it?’ Charlie Samuels was standing beside his desk: ‘You’ve been hammering that typewriter without mercy.’

Lindsay glanced beyond him into the body of the room: even Dick Graham was busy.

‘I’m preparing my defence,’ said Lindsay quietly.

‘I thought you might be. Checkland wants to see me again,’ Samuels looked at his watch, ‘in ten minutes.’

His eyes were roving restlessly in every direction but Lindsay’s, and he was nibbling a thumbnail like an anxious schoolboy summoned to his headmaster’s study.

‘Rest easy, Charlie, it’s my fault, he knows that,’ said Lindsay.

‘Yes, well . . .’ He sounded uncertain.

‘Here.’ Lindsay pulled the sheet from the typewriter and offered it to him: ‘Read it, it might help.’

Samuels smiled weakly and shook his head: ‘Not on your Nelly. Surrender followed by an abject apology. Section 11 suits me very well. I hate the sea, and I have family to look after in London.’

‘You’ve never mentioned them.’

‘You’ve never asked.’

It was true. Lindsay felt a little ashamed.

‘Time up,’ said Samuels. ‘Wish me luck.’

Lindsay was still at his desk an hour later, his thoughts flitting from Mohr to Winn to Mary to Mohr. Rich golden light was streaming low through the south-facing windows, casting twisted shadows across the floor as the trees swayed in the gentlest of evening breezes. The
office was empty but for the duty Wrens. The other interrogators were sipping pink gins in the mess. The late courier had taken Lindsay’s report to the Admiralty and by now Checkland would have his copy too. He wanted to ring Mary but she would be at her desk in Room 41. Better to ring later and from the privacy of his home.

Turning to the window, he was struggling into his jacket when the door opened behind him. With strange certainty, he knew the person he least wanted to speak to had just stepped into the room.

‘Lindsay, a word.’ There was an ominously satisfied note in his voice.

‘Here?’ asked Lindsay, turning to face him.

Henderson looked at the Wrens; one was bent low over her desk, no doubt keen to impress with her industry, the other busy at a filing cabinet by the door.

‘I say, would you mind leaving us alone? We’ll answer the telephones.’

Lindsay settled into his chair and concentrated on appearing more relaxed than he felt. The last thing he wanted was another unpleasant encounter. The Wrens swept a few personal things into their bags and left without saying a word.

‘You know why I’m here?’

Lindsay leant forward and shook a cigarette from the packet on his desk.

‘Samuels is going. The Director is sending him to a POW camp in the north, an old racecourse. He can’t do much harm there.’

Poor Samuels. Lindsay had the uncomfortable feeling he had presented Checkland with the excuse to get rid of him. He drew deeply on his cigarette, then said: ‘Pleased?’

Henderson coloured a little: ‘Not at all pleased. Two officers in the Section disciplined, intelligence sources put at risk . . .’

‘Are you sending me to the races too?’

‘I knew that first week you were shadowing me that we had made a mistake.’ There was something like a triumphant ‘told you so’ in Henderson’s voice.

Lindsay could not help smiling; he had begun to find the man’s unrelenting hostility grimly amusing. It was an unfortunate smile. The expression on Henderson’s face changed in an instant from complacent
triumph to fury. He made a noise like a bull, half grunt, half moan, and slipped from the edge of the desk he was leaning against as if preparing to charge. Rough words tumbled from him instead: ‘You’re arrogant. You think your decoration allows you to behave just as you like. You’re wrong. You see only a small part of the picture. I wish my sister . . .’ He was struggling for something sufficiently insulting; ‘. . . you’re an arrogant German bastard.’

‘Finished, sir?’ Leaning forward a little, Lindsay ground the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray. He did not feel anger, he felt contempt.

‘And what was the Colonel’s message, sir?’

24

B

ig Ben began to strike half past seven and before its closing chime Mary Henderson was on her feet and walking with brisk purpose through the park. Before her was the Citadel, forbidding even on a warm summer evening, a masterpiece of its kind, featureless and impartial. Inside it, the wheels of the machine were turning still, churning out an endless stream of paper. A cheery word to the guards at the Mall entrance then on into the Admiralty’s cool marble hall. A group of crisply dressed Staff officers had just left the Director’s office and were chatting noisily at his door. Mary slipped past, head bent, anxious to catch no one’s eye.

‘Dr Henderson . . .’

It was the Director’s Assistant. She turned to greet him:

‘Ian, how are you?’

Fleming reached for her hand, then kissed her warmly on both cheeks: ‘Lovely, even in your customary academic dress, and do you know, I was just thinking of you.’

Mary raised her eyebrows sceptically. She had known Ian Fleming since childhood, an old family friend who had been at Eton for a time with her brother. But he was an adventurer – fine words had been followed more than once by a direct challenge to her virtue. A handsome thirty-three, Fleming was tall, immaculate, with wavy hair, tired close-set eyes, a strong jaw and a severe mouth that turned down a little disdainfully at the corners. She had always stoutly resisted his attempts to seduce her – that was why they were still on good terms.

‘I’ve just left the Director. We were talking about your chap. Your name was mentioned too,’ he said, squeezing her hand gently between both of his.

Mary coloured a little and slipped free: ‘Why on earth . . .’

‘It isn’t a secret, is it? Don’t academics take lovers?’

‘Only sensitive ones.’

Fleming gave her a small dry smile: ‘Have you spoken to him today?’

Mary shook her head.

‘Then come with me.’ He guided her by the elbow into a transept off the main corridor, then through a green baize door into a small office. ‘You don’t, do you?’ he asked, waving a packet of Morland cigarettes at her. ‘Very wise, they’re rather strong,’ and he gestured towards a chair in front of the desk. The room was thick with the smell of stale tobacco, well ordered, bright, unremarkable but for the view across Horse Guards to the Foreign Office and the garden of Number 10 Downing Street.

‘You know I found Lindsay and introduced him to the Division . . .’ Fleming settled into the chair beside her, his back to the door. ‘Has he told you anything about his work?’

Mary shifted a little uncomfortably. ‘Only what I need to know. Rodger asked him to brief me,’ she said cautiously.

‘Brief you?’ He gave a short laugh, ‘I see. And what have you told him about your work?’

‘Only what he needs to know.’

Fleming’s eyes narrowed as he scrutinised her face for a moment, then said: ‘Section 11 wants rid of him. Colonel Checkland doesn’t trust him and I suppose you know what your brother thinks?’

Mary frowned angrily and opened her mouth to speak but he held up his hand: ‘. . . the Colonel says he has a bee in his bonnet about our codes, that he asks dangerous questions. It hasn’t gone down well here. He might give away more than he discovers. You know how careful we have to be. Has Lindsay discussed this fellow Mohr with you?’

‘No,’ she lied.

Fleming drew on his cigarette, the tip rasping and glowing, then he blew a sceptical stream of smoke at the ceiling: ‘And his family?’

‘What about them?’

He looked a little haughtily down his nose at her: ‘The Director doesn’t want to take any chances. He wants to send Lindsay back to sea. I’m going to try and persuade him not to. There are things a clever German speaker can do for me. But you should both be careful . . .’

She interrupted him crossly: ‘Careful?’

‘Yes, very, very careful,’ he said firmly, ‘and you most of all. You are one of the few who knows of special intelligence. Listen to me, it’s good advice.’

Mary looked down at her hands, tightly balled in her lap. Were pieces of paper marked ‘Very’ or ‘Most Secret’ circulating in the Division, their pillow talk a subject for comment?

‘Did we meet by chance?’ she asked, and her voice shook a little.

‘Yes. But I’m glad we did.’ Fleming smiled and leant across to give her hand a gentle squeeze.

Mary stayed for only a couple of minutes more, to exchange a few strained pleasantries. Then Fleming’s door clicked shut behind her and she stood outside it, breathing deeply. She was cross with him but crosser still with Lindsay. He was fighting his own little war, careless of orders and the opinions of others. And now their relationship was a security matter, their conversation a subject for speculation, what was private and special between them common currency. She shuddered at the thought. A phone began to ring in Fleming’s office. It was almost eight o’clock and she was expected at her desk.

Slowly, with a distant smile for familiar faces, she made her way down brown lino-covered steps into the dim corridors of the Citadel, Fleming’s ‘careful’ playing roughly through her mind. Outside Room 41, she hesitated then walked a few steps further to stand at a different door. It opened almost at once and a large bundle of files began to totter unsteadily out. Mary could see just enough short dark hair to be sure that one of the watch-keepers, Lieutenant Sutherland, was somewhere beneath them.

‘Is that you, Dr Henderson?’ There was a note of desperation in his voice. ‘Are you coming in?’

‘Yes, yes, I want to try . . .’

But Sutherland was concentrating too hard on his files to care what she wanted. And what did she want? It was a foolish notion – certainly not what Fleming meant by ‘careful’ – but it had taken hold of her in the corridor. She wanted to speak to Lindsay.

‘Well, go on, take the door,’ said Sutherland sharply.

Mary held it open for him then stepped inside.

Room 30 was a little larger than its neighbour across the corridor but just as smoky, with the same droplights and shabby office furniture. It had its own plot table too and on it a mad cat’s cradle of thread and cardboard arrows tracked the enemy’s small fleet of ships. A clerical assistant at the plot smiled warmly at Mary, another looked up from her desk for just a moment, but neither said anything to her. The room was unusually quiet. That was unfortunate. Personal telephone calls were strictly forbidden but at busy times no one noticed you, or wanted to be noticed.

In the far right-hand corner, an anonymous blue door led to the Teleprinter Room – the home of ‘the secret ladies’. One of them, dumpy in brown lambswool and tweed, was standing over a teleprinter coiling a coded message around a spool. She was too lost in her world of printer’s ribbon and tape to notice Mary enter and there appeared to be no one else in the room. At times, it was full of the harsh mind-numbing chatter of a dozen teleprinters sending and receiving signals. The ladies would hover about them like acolytes of a strange mechanical oracle, ready to rip, read, and distribute. To the right of the door, a long table was subdivided into six desks and on a shelf above there were a number of heavy black telephones. After just a moment’s hesitation, Mary walked to the far end of the table, picked one up and placed it on the desk in front of her. The Admiralty switchboard connected her without question.

‘Lindsay.’ He sounded very weary.

‘It’s me.’

‘Darling, I was hoping you’d ring.’

‘Were you?’

‘Is something the matter?’

‘You’re such a fool, Douglas. Why didn’t you listen to me?’

‘You know then? Thank you for your support,’ he said frostily.

‘Ian asked me what I know about your work and what I’d told you about mine.’

Lindsay said nothing.

‘Well?’ asked Mary.

‘Well what?’

‘Say sorry.’

‘For what? No please don’t answer that. Sorry. Satisfied?’

‘No.’

The tense silence was filled by the brutal rhythm of a teleprinter.

‘Where on earth are you?’

‘Never mind. What’s going to happen to you?’

Lindsay must have caught the note of anxiety in her voice because his tone softened too:

‘I don’t know. Your brother says I’ll be sent somewhere I can’t cause trouble.’

‘Ian says we have to be careful and . . .’

There was a flash of tweed between desk and shelf – one of the ladies was on the move.

‘I have to go, Douglas.’

A round and very stern face appeared above the telephone shelf: ‘Miss Henderson, what are you doing?’

Mary cupped a defensive hand over the mouthpiece: ‘Dr Henderson, if you please.’

It was time to insist on full academic dignity. She raised the phone: ‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant, we can discuss this tomorrow. Please send me a note.’

And without waiting for a reply she put the receiver down.

The clerical assistant’s face was pink with confusion: ‘Dr Henderson, no one is supposed to make calls from . . .’ And after a deep breath: ‘I’ll have to report this to the Officer of the Watch.’

Pushing her chair back smartly, Mary stood to face her. The clerical assistant was clearly younger than she looked – no more than twenty, with a minor public school voice, too finely cut.

‘You must do as you see fit, Miss . . .?’

‘Barnes.’

‘. . . I was looking for a clerical assistant and the room was deserted.’

‘But I was here —’

Mary broke in: ‘Really, you must be more careful. I won’t mention it this time, Miss Barnes.’