The Interrogator (25 page)

He stood aside to reveal a small dark room lit only by the low circle of light from an anglepoise lamp. The lamp stood on a plain wooden table in the centre of the room. A silver-haired man in a dark suit sat behind the table and a single empty chair had been placed in the light in front of it. A second man, younger, solid, was standing in shadow against the wall.

‘Please identify yourself.’

Lindsay took a step into the room and handed his papers to the man at the table: ‘Lindsay, Lieutenant Douglas Lindsay.’

The door clunked to behind him.

‘My name is Colonel Gilbert.’

His voice was smoky and hard. He glanced at Lindsay’s papers, then leant back in his chair and spread his large hands on the empty table in front of him. He was in his late fifties with a worn, angular face, his hair was white but his eyebrows were bushy black and he had sharp little blue eyes.

‘You’ve come to pick up a package?’

‘Yes.’

‘It will be here soon. Sit down, Lieutenant. Cigarette?’

The Colonel slipped a cigarette case from his jacket pocket and offered it to Lindsay. He took one and Gilbert lit it with a snap of his lighter.

‘I’m sorry we’ve dragged you out here. The shop used to belong to Russian anarchists. It’s ours now.’

‘Do you have many customers?’

‘Some. The bottom end of the market.’

Gilbert stared at Lindsay for an uncomfortable, unblinking few seconds, then said: ‘You’ve family in Germany, haven’t you, Lieutenant?’

Lindsay drew deeply on his cigarette, then blew the smoke in a steady stream towards the ceiling. He was conscious of the Colonel’s creature, the younger man, close to his shoulder.

‘Is there a package?’ he asked quietly. ‘And if there is, will you give it to me?’

‘In good time,’ said Gilbert coolly. ‘Tell me about your cousin Martin. Are you close?’

Lindsay closed his eyes for a second, a forced smile on his face.
He opened them again and said: ‘Lindsay. Lieutenant, Royal Navy. JX 634378.’

‘I have the authority to talk to you, you know. Commander Fleming sent you to me.’

‘To collect a package.’

‘Do you have something to hide?’

‘Are those your men outside my home?’

‘A prisoner called Lange sent you a note. He wanted to thank you, didn’t he – why?’

Lindsay stretched forward and pressed the end of his cigarette into the tabletop. The stub lay there looking almost obscene beside the small black ring it had burnt in the varnish.

‘If you don’t have what I want, I’ll leave.’

Gilbert brushed the stub on to the floor with the back of his hand and leant across the table, his hair a strange yellow-white in the light of the anglepoise: ‘Is there something you’re not prepared to tell us?’

‘Lots of things, Colonel,’ said Lindsay quietly. ‘Perhaps – if there is a package – you will make sure it reaches Commander Fleming.’ And he pushed back his chair as if to rise. Tight little frown lines had appeared on Gilbert’s face. Slowly, deliberately, he looked over Lindsay’s shoulder at his large silent companion and nodded his head.

Almost unconsciously, Lindsay stiffened, braced for a blow from behind.

‘Don’t worry, Lieutenant. This is just a chat.’ Gilbert must have seen him flinch. There was a supercilious little smile on his face.

‘No unpleasantness,’ then, as if an afterthought, ‘for now.’

The door opened behind Lindsay and light from the landing crept across the floor and under the table. Lindsay turned his back on Gilbert and walked towards it.

‘Goodbye, Lieutenant. We will be seeing each other again, I’m sure. Oh, and there is a delivery – pick it up on the way out, would you.’

Lindsay did not reply but brushed past the thug at the door and began to thump down the wooden stairs. The angry rhythm of his feet echoed through the shop.
Verdammter Mist!
He gripped the banister and muttered it to himself. What a mess.

It took him more than an hour to walk home. He was glad of the time and the cool air and the darkness of the blackout, its emptiness and anonymity. It felt unfamiliar, as if he was walking through a New World city, roughly planned, a vast building site of half-finished streets, the sidewalks criss-crossed in the moonlight by broken shadows. At the Tower of London he was stopped by a policeman who wanted to know his business at that hour. More than once he looked back to see if he was being followed, without expecting to see anyone. And slowly the anger he felt, with Gilbert, with Fleming, with Checkland, with the Navy, was replaced by a sadness that glowed deeper, like the wooden heart of a fire.

The apartment in St James’s Square was empty. He had given Mary a key but she never used it and there was nothing to suggest there had been uninvited visitors. Lindsay flung MI5’s parting gift – a large manila envelope – on to the couch and walked over to the mahogany sideboard to pour himself a whisky. Before he could reach it the telephone on the desk by the window began to jangle. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning, late even for Mary to call.

‘Douglas?’

His father’s voice was strained with anxiety.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘The police were here to speak to your mother. I’m afraid she’s in a bit of a state. They want to know about our family.’

Two of Glasgow’s finest had presented themselves at the engineering works and accompanied his father home. They wanted photographs of the Clausen family, their ages, occupations, correspondence and last contact details.

‘They were especially interested in Martin. They knew a good deal about him already.’ There was a cautious note in his father’s voice and Lindsay wondered if it had occurred to him too, that someone might be eavesdropping. His mother had told them she had heard nothing from her nephew for two years but that was not enough to satisfy them. They had wanted to know if anyone in the family was in contact with Martin.

‘They asked about you in particular, Douglas.’

‘Yes.’

‘They were a little unpleasant to your mother.’

‘How unpleasant?’

His father did not answer.

‘How unpleasant?’

‘Very unpleasant. But I will speak to the Chief Constable about it tomorrow.’

There was some concern about ‘Mrs Lindsay’s status’, they said. ‘Nazi connections’, they said. She was a ‘low-risk Category C’ alien but that might change and they had spoken of new restrictions.

‘The wee buggers had the nerve to talk of internment.’ His father’s voice shook with emotion. ‘I pointed out that our sons were fighting for their country.’

‘They threatened her?’

‘In so many words. Honestly, Douglas, we are beginning to behave like the Nazis.’ His father had asked the policemen to leave at once and they went without protest.

Lindsay did his best to be calm and reassuring, to talk of ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘silly mistakes’, but there was no mistake. When his father hung up he lit a cigarette and sat at the desk with his glass. He had heard that the Security Service interrogators at Camp 020 called it ‘the game’. One old player had told him that ends always justified means in war. His rules permitted everything but the rack and the thumbscrew and perhaps there would be a time when those would be necessary too. And in such a game your friends could sometimes become enemies.

The little carriage clock on the chimneypiece struck two. He got wearily to his feet, took off his jacket and draped it over the couch. It slipped down the back on to the envelope he had been given at Five’s little shop. It was addressed to Room 39 and stamped MOST SECRET. Lindsay picked it up, rubbing the rough paper between his fingers. Then, on an impulse, he reached over to the desk for a paperknife and slit it open with ruthless precision. There were two sheets of foolscap inside. The first was a cover page with a circulation list that included DNI – the Director of Naval Intelligence. Subject: ‘A Breach of Security in the Division’. He turned to the second page.

1. The following extracts are from a letter sent by a German prisoner at Number One Officer’s Camp. The prisoner, Captain Mohr, is well known in his own country and has achieved some notoriety in this. In the early months of the war he sent a signal to the First Lord of the Admiralty with the position of survivors from a ship his U-boat had sunk. He is the most senior Kriegsmarine officer in our hands and a possible source of important intelligence
.

2. The letter was sent on 12
^th
July 1941 and is addressed via the usual channels to a Marianne Rasch. From its tone and content it can be assumed that Miss Rasch is intimate with Captain Mohr
.

3. It contains the following passage
:

‘By an extraordinary coincidence I have had the unexpected pleasure of conversing at length with a cousin of my old comrade Schultze. Do you remember Schultze? His cousin is an interesting young man who shares many of our ideas. He entertained one of our officers at a jazz club and introduced him to his girlfriend. My meetings with him made me even more convinced that this war between Germans and Anglo-Saxons is some sort of madness. It will be over soon, I am sure. In the meantime, please write to Schultze and let him know his cousin prospers, although he looks tired and must be working too hard.’

Lindsay gave a short humourless laugh. It was impossible not to admire the audacity of the man. He closed his eyes for a moment and rumpled his fingers through his hair. Mohr had the instinctive cunning of the true hunter. It had let him down only once and he had become a prisoner but now it was serving him well.

4. Further investigation with the co-operation of ADNI and personnel in NID sections 8, 10 and 11 has revealed the identity of Schultze to be that of a U-boat commander, Lieutenant-Commander Martin Schultze. His cousin has been identified as Lieutenant DAC Lindsay RNVR Until recently Lieutenant Lindsay has been serving as
an interrogator at C.S.D.I.C. and he was responsible for questioning Captain Mohr. Although something of his family background was known to the relevant sections in the Division, this close connection to the German Navy was not, nor his apparent sympathy with ‘Nazi ideas’. It is the opinion of this officer that further inquiries should be carried out at once to prevent any risk of a damaging breach of security and that the Security Service should be asked to investigate
.

The report was signed by a Major Macfarlane of Military Counter-Intelligence Western Command. At the bottom, someone else – perhaps Gilbert of MI5 – had scrawled in pencil:
Concur. Recommend removal of officer at once and immediate follow-up
.

Lindsay slipped the report back into the envelope. He wondered if Colonel Gilbert had expected him to read it. Perhaps the report was part of the game too? It must stop, stop at once. This spiral of suspicion was not malicious, it was cold policy, but his mother and Mary were in danger of being caught up in it too. He dropped the envelope on the couch and walked over to the window, stepping carefully behind the heavy blackout drapes. His lip was throbbing.

The black Morris was parked in the north-east corner of the square again. It was too dark to see behind the wheel but he felt sure the same ugly driver was there. He was too tired to care any more. His file could be stamped ‘Security Risk’ and sent to the Admiralty Registry for burial.

32

Number One Officers’ POW Camp
Stapley,
Lancashire

A

shaft of soft light was pouring through a crack in the shutters on to the yellow wallpaper above Lange’s head. It was close to five o’clock. He had woken with an anxious start. His skin was damp and cold and the pulse in his neck throbbed. He pulled the rough blankets to his chin, wrapping them like a cocoon about his body. His room-mates were still sleeping, he could hear the steady rise and fall of their breathing. He could hear voices in the corridor too and a floorboard creaked close to the door. Someone was rattling the handle. Lange knew with stiff cold certainty, in a frozen second, that something was very wrong. Heads at the door, light striking a steel bed-end and the first harsh whisper.

‘Schmidt. Are you ready?’

Schmidt was ready. He was in the bed closest to the light from the door and as he pushed his blankets away Lange could see that he was dressed in the shirt and trousers of the evening before. Everyone in the room was stirring now.

‘Who’s there?’ It was Bischoff from the bed beneath the window.

‘Shut up. Shut up and stay where you are,’ someone whispered harshly.

‘Schmidt. Lange. Come with us.’

He could not move. They were going to hurt him. But if he lay with his head on the pillow he would be safe. They would leave him if he said nothing, if he did not move a muscle.

‘Come on, Lange.’ It was the first officer of the
U-500
, Dietrich. ‘Help him, Schmidt.’

Schmidt took two steps across the room and grabbed Lange’s blankets.

‘Get up,’ and he jerked them roughly from the bed. ‘Get up.’

He was lying on the bed in only his shorts. ‘Sweet Mary, help me.’ His lips moved as he chanted the prayer silently. ‘Sweet Mary, help me.’ Schmidt bent down and shook him roughly by the shoulder.

‘What’s the matter with you? Bruns, help him.’

But Lange swung his legs from the bed and reached for his shirt.

‘And quick about it,’ Dietrich hissed. ‘The rest of you – back to sleep. This is none of your business.’

There were five men in the corridor. Oberleutnant zur See Dietrich was in command. A nasty piece, short, heavily built, ideologically pure, twenty-three. He had made his contempt for Lange crystal clear in the weeks they spent together aboard the
500
.

‘May I speak to Kapitän Mohr?

Someone shoved Lange from behind.

‘Shut up.’

Where are you taking me?’

Bruns held him by the arm: ‘This way.’

They followed Dietrich quickly and quietly down the corridor and on to the landing above the hall. A Luftwaffe lieutenant Lange did not recognise was acting as lookout at the top of the stairs. He nodded curtly to Dietrich to indicate that it was safe to continue. The British guard posted in the vestibule at night must have left the house already.