Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

He could see sailors moving about her foredeck. There was a small yellow flash of light — one of them must have lit a cigarette.

‘A thousand metres.’

He heard a sharp intake of breath at his side and his heart leapt into his throat. Was she beginning to turn?

‘Steady, steady, there’s still time.’

Final bearing check, final distance check, and with his eyes still on the target he reached for the firing handle and pressed down with the full weight of his body.

‘Tube one: fire!’

The first torpedo was on its way.

‘Ready tube three: fire!’

And the second in its wake. Steel fish they called them for’ard, seven metres long, contact detonation and enough explosive to blow a hole in the side of the ship a bus could drive through.

‘Hard rudder right.’

The 115 began to turn sharply away but Hartmann’s eyes didn’t leave the ship.

‘Two minutes. One minute. Thirty seconds. Twenty seconds. Ten.’

Had he made a mistake? No. A hard little explosion, a column of white smoke and water rising like a glorious fountain up her side and cheering, he could hear the men cheering in the control room below. Thank God. Then the second torpedo burst through her plates and almost at once she began to heel to starboard. It was a small miracle. Twenty thousand tons of steel and wood brought to a standstill in seconds. The first torpedo must have struck her amidships in the hold — he could see the ragged hole in her side — and the second in or close to the engine room. A cold inexorable tide of water surging into her hull: the ship was surely doomed. He lifted his head from the glasses and leant over the tower hatch.

‘Has she given her name yet?’

‘No, Herr Kaleu.’ It was his first officer, Werner. ‘Will she need a third?’

‘No, she’s finished. Let’s take the boat a little closer and pick up her captain if we can.’

‘Perhaps we’ve bagged a regiment of British soldiers with two torpedoes.’

‘Perhaps.’

The sea was still building, the weather turning for the worse and with the ship listing heavily, swinging out and filling the lifeboats would be no easy task. But he could see the first of them slipping slowly down her side. There was the urgent ring of boots on the tower ladder behind him and he turned to find the chief wireless operator climbing on to the bridge, his signal board in hand.

‘Well, Weber?’

‘The liner’s sent a distress signal, Herr Kaleu. SSS. 06.54° south, 7.35° west. She’s the Imperial Star . Lloyd’s lists her as 18, 480 tons, built in 1913.’

‘Damn them.’

If the British picked up ‘SSS’ they would know the ship had been torpedoed and would assume the enemy submarine was still close by.

‘All right. Ready tube two. Let’s send her on her way.’

It clattered off a printer in Room 29 at the Citadel with the rest of the rip-and-read, no more, no less significant to the secret ladies than any of the other signals. It dropped into the duty officer’s tray in the tough hours of the middle watch between three and four o’clock, when the brain swirls like sea mist. And Lieutenant Freddie Wilmot considered it for a minute or two before leaning over the plot table to press a shiny new black pin into the Atlantic. Another ship lost — eight were reported that night — but a definite fix on the U-115 . Then he clipped the piece of flimsy signal paper to his board and moved on.

And it was still on his board when Mary Henderson stepped through the door of the Tracking Room at a little after seven that morning. Winn’s hat and coat were already hanging on a hook and she turned to look at his office. He was bent over his desk, his back towards her, smoke curling through his fingers, preoccupied with the night’s traffic. A grey and bleary-eyed Wilmot was talking to one of the Wren plotters in front of the German grid map that hung on the wall at the far end of the room. The U-boat gave its position in signals at sea as a lettered and numbered square on the map. Somehow — Mary was not sure how or when — the Division had acquired its own copy. Two of the clerical assistants were perched on the edge of their desks enjoying a few precious minutes of calm and conversation that was nothing to do with convoys or casualties or the deadlines of the day. It would be another hour before the first visitor, before the ringing of the telephones and the clatter of the typewriters and teleprinters reached its customary infernal pitch. Time enough for breakfast. Mary glanced guiltily at her desk where a bundle of signals and reports was sitting at the top of the in-tray. But her stomach was urging her in a most unladylike manner, much to the sly amusement of the clerical assistants.

‘The needs of the flesh, Dr Henderson.’

‘Yes I’m sure you’re quite an authority, Joan,’ she replied. ‘If Commander Winn asks, I’ll be back at my desk in twenty minutes.’

The queue at the Admiralty canteen was painfully slow and Mary was obliged to bolt her too thinly buttered toast and abandon her tea, although its hard tannic taste was with her until lunch-time. The frantic dash back to the Citadel and through the traffic in its narrow corridors left her feeling a little nauseous. Winn was standing by her desk, his head bent in concentration, shoulders hunched, arms tightly folded, a brooding presence. She had seen him like that a hundred times and yet she sensed there was something wrong today. He was wrestling with some great emotion, anger or perhaps pain. And there was a strange hush in the room, the plotters whispering at the back wall, the trilling of a single telephone. Wilmot was perched on a desk close by, anxiously biting the quick of a nail. He shook his head a little as Mary approached the desk and cast a warning glance at Winn’s back. But Winn heard the squeak of her shoes on the linoleum floor:

‘You were at breakfast…’ He did not turn to face her ‘…and Lieutenant Wilmot was keeping it to himself.’

‘But Rodger…’

Winn waved a hand to silence him: ‘The Germans have sunk the Imperial Star .’ He took two stiff steps towards the plot and pointed to the little pin with U-115 on its head just off the coast of West Africa: ‘Here.’

The Imperial Star . Mary felt a tight lump in her throat. She covered her mouth with her hand and for a moment she was sure she was going to be sick. Those poor people. Oh God: ‘I’m… sorry… its my fault…’

That was all she could stammer, a few words of regret, but she knew if she tried to say more she would be lost. The rest, the questions, the explanations, the excuses caught in her throat, choking inarticulate guilt. She licked a salty drop from her lip then quickly wiped the rest from her face with the back of her hand.

‘Sorry…’

But Winn’s hand was at her elbow now: ‘Come with me. Can you arrange some tea, Freddie?’

And she allowed him to guide her gently from the plot and round the desks into his office.

‘What an exhibition. I’m sorry, Rodger,’ she said after a moment.

‘No need to apologise. It hurts. But remember, it was my decision in the end.’ He shook a cigarette from a packet and lit it with an angry snap of his lighter.

‘How can you do this job without the comfort of tobacco?’

‘But you asked me to check her course…’

‘And you did and there was nothing to suggest she was going to be in any danger,’ he said firmly. ‘Here,’ and he pushed the flimsy signal paper he had rescued from Wilmot’s board across the table to her. Special decrypt message from Station X, number 206/T85.

TOP SECRET U

CX/MSS/T18/206

TOO 08/2130Z/08/41 ZZZ

SUNK IMPERIAL STAR. TOTAL 18, 500 TONS. GRID SQUARE FF 71. SURVIVORS IN BOATS. COURSE NORTH WEST.