Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

‘My mother hasn’t heard from her brothers.’

‘It’s different for us, and you of all the people here should know it,’ said Samuels sharply.

‘Yes, yes it is, of course it’s different.’

Samuels pushed back his chair and stood up as if to indicate that he had nothing more to say on the subject of his family. ‘I agree with you about the First Sea Lord; these U-boat commanders think quite enough of themselves as it is,’ he said brusquely. He picked up a file and thrust it at Lindsay: ‘Look at this — you wanted me to work on the wireless operators. The chief, the Oberfunkmaat, served on at least two U-boats before the U-112 . I still don’t know how good his English is — he’s stubborn and unfriendly. I haven’t got anything concrete on the other one but there is this SR transcript.’ He pointed at the file in Lindsay’s hands. ‘I’ve marked it up — page four. Our man’s Prisoner 643, Funkobergefreiter Heinz Brand.’

Lindsay turned the flimsy, closely typed pages of what was obviously a long, dull conversation between Prisoner 643, wireless operator Heinz Brand, and two others, until he found the snippet Samuels had marked in bold red.

640: Our landing craft will be able to land on the English coast easily with the help of fog or a smokescreen.

641: I don’t know how they’ll get across.

643: I don’t know what the Führer intends, but I’m sure it’ll be the right thing.

641: I’m surprised at how good our treatment is here, for instance the treatment I had for my toothache.

643: In my diary I’ve put, ‘Quantity and quality of food are sufficient.’ Actually it’s better than it was on my old ship.

640: Before you joined the 112?

643: Yes.

Samuels saw a quiet, hopeful smile appear on Lindsay’s face. ‘What do you think, is that good enough for you?’ he asked.

‘It pays to feed the prisoners well,’ said Lindsay with a short laugh and he handed the file back to Samuels. ‘So Brand was a wireless operator on a ship before the 112 . It’s something to work on. Do you think you’ll get more from him face to face?’

Samuels shrugged doubtfully: ‘I’m going to try. Want to join me? After all, Checkland thinks Aryan good looks make all the difference.’

Interrogation Room Two was just like the others — white walls, simple table, hard chairs — stripped of anything that might distract from the unvarnished truth. The man standing before them was tall, an upright six foot two, nineteen, blond with a handsome good-humoured face. He was dressed in a dirty brown boiler suit and boots. Charlie Samuels had spent many hours trying to befriend Heinz Brand and the broad smile that greeted him suggested he had done a pretty good job.

‘Are they looking after you, Heinz?’ Samuels asked him in German. ‘This lieutenant is my colleague.’

Brand saluted smartly. Lindsay did not look up from his bible.

‘I have a few more questions for you, Heinz, just a few details I would like you to help me with,’ said Samuels.

The ‘few details’ lasted for more than an hour. What did Brand know of the commander, how long had he been with the submarine, and what were the 112 ’s orders? The same questions in German over and over again. Act One of the pantomime. Lindsay listened but said nothing. Brand was forced to stand at the edge of the table, shifting his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. He said he was sorry but he was under orders not to say anything. His expression suggested that his regret was genuine, as if it was the height of bad manners to refuse to answer an enemy’s questions.

‘I know that before you joined the 112 you served on a ship. What was her name?’ Samuels asked again in German. No reply.

‘Your comrade Oberfunkmaat Henning speaks excellent English, so does the commander, and that’s why you joined the U-boat. You were on a special mission. It was important that the wireless operators spoke English. Why?’

Brand shook his head. There was a long silence. Then Lindsay spoke and it was as if his patience snapped. Turning to Samuels, he said angrily in English: ‘I’m sorry, Charlie, but you’re wrong.’

Samuels looked down for a moment, then barely above a whisper: ‘We can’t be sure.’

‘Wireless operators. English speakers. The two they landed last summer were the same. We can be sure.’

Lindsay glanced up at Brand who was anxiously biting his thumbnail. Their eyes met for a second and he shook his head a little. Lindsay ignored him and said in a very audible whisper: ‘He hasn’t answered one straight question. He can’t. He’s a spy.’

‘I don’t want him to hang because we made a mistake,’ said Samuels forcefully.

‘We haven’t,’ said Lindsay. He stood up quickly and picked up his bible and cigarettes as if preparing to leave the room. ‘Why are you concerned? He despises you, you said so yourself…’

Brand looked surprised, confused.

‘…he’s a Nazi. He hates Jews.’

‘That’s a lie,’ said Brand in English. His voice trembled slightly with emotion; ‘it’s not true.’

Lindsay turned back to look him in the eye and when he spoke his voice was menacingly loud: ‘Herr Brand, or whatever your real name is, you are very clever, very capable, but you are a Nazi and you’re a spy. You have not been able to prove that you are not a spy. Lieutenant Samuels has had less experience than me…’ Lindsay glanced down at Samuels and Brand followed his gaze. Samuels was gripping the edge of the table, a frown on his face. Lindsay ignored him: ‘I know you are a spy, Herr Brand. You and your comrade were expected to send intelligence to Berlin on our convoys in and out of Freetown. You will be executed.’ He turned towards the door but Samuels grabbed his arm: ‘I think we’d better talk about this…’

They left Brand standing anxiously before the table. Neither of them spoke until they had made their way along the corridor and down the stairs into the mess.

‘How long do you want to give him?’

‘Twenty minutes,’ said Samuels. ‘Do you think that’s enough?’

‘Your call.’ Lindsay flopped into an armchair and took a cigarette from the packet he had brought down from the interrogation room. ‘You don’t, do you, Charlie? I’ll leave these with you, Brand will certainly need one.’

Samuels sat opposite him: ‘You play the ruthless bastard well, Douglas, but was it necessary to bring up my Jewishness?’

Lindsay blew a long stream of smoke towards the mural of the god Mars over the fireplace.

‘After what you’d said, it was on my mind. I could see he liked you, so it just came out. It worked, didn’t it?’ He paused for a moment to consider the next Act. ‘Make him trust you too. Lay it on thick. Tell him I’m writing my report and you’ve got no more than a couple of hours to prove he’s not a spy. Perhaps we’ll be lucky with him and then perhaps I’ll be lucky with Mohr. Perhaps.’

When Jürgen Mohr closed his eyes the broad oil-black calm that for a time marked a ship’s end filled his mind. He opened them at once and gazed out of the window as the car ground past another parade of shops. The dreary soot-stained brick of north London seemed to stretch for miles.

‘Not far to go, sir.’ The young British officer in the front seat of the car had turned to look at him with a warm smile as if he had read Mohr’s thoughts.

‘Thank you, Lieutenant…’ he could not remember his name. A cheery soul. His escort back from the Admiralty.

It was after five o’clock and the shops along the Seven Sisters Road were closing, queues forming at the bus stops. It would be the same in Berlin with shoppers pouring on to trams in the Kurfürstendamm, Alexanderplatz and the Unter den Linden. Mohr had spent a week’s leave in the city at Christmas, walked its bustling streets alone, gazed into bright windows and tasted the cold clear air. He had enjoyed the bustle of ordinary life without feeling any need to be more than a spectator, and although he dined with friends more than once, it was in his own company that he was happiest. He had marked this growing sense of detachment in himself for some time and no doubt others had too. His family in the east grumbled that he never visited, hardly ever wrote, and it was many weeks since he had spoken and laughed with his friend Marianne. Marianne Rasch: her brother was lost on a U-boat in the first months of the war. She was younger and gayer, and always frustrated that he could not or would not show his feelings. But in war, no one could claim the right to a private life. By now Marianne would know he was a prisoner. She would know too that the Bismarck had been lost.