Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

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?’

Big 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.