Interrogation Room 4
The Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre
Trent Park
Cockfosters
Lindsay looked up from his pad with a deliberate smile and reached for his cigarettes.
‘Would you like another, Herr Leutnant?’ he asked in German. He slid the packet across the shabby wooden table to Helmut Lange who pounced on it like a man possessed: ‘Thank you.’
An angry-looking crack in his lip was making it uncomfortable to speak. About his right eye, the bruising was turning from ugly green to yellow and it wrinkled into a painful, mottled pattern when he smiled.
‘Why do you think my…’ Lindsay looked down at the packet of Players he was turning slowly in his hand, ‘my colleague thought you were a spy?’
‘I don’t know. I’m a journalist, a navy journalist.’
Lindsay nodded.
‘You believe me?’ His face was broadcasting relief.
‘Yes.’
It had been a mistake. They seemed to happen often. By some mysterious process the possibility that Leutnant zur See Lange was a spy became a probability the moment he was handed over to the Security Service — MI5. Spies had to be broken. Five had given the task to Major Cunningham, a prickly veteran of the Great War known for his ‘robust’ interrogation style.
‘I think the man you call your colleague wanted to kill me’, said Lange with feeling. ‘I prayed to the Virgin Mary that it would stop. Then you came.’
‘I just hope…’ Lindsay sighed and held his hand reflectively to his lips for a moment, ‘I just hope we can hold on to you, Herr Leutnant.’
The suggestion in his voice that this was by no means a foregone conclusion was not lost on Lange. Anxiety was written in thick lines across his brow: ‘But you can send me to join the rest of the crew now.’
‘First I must convince my colleague that I’m right about you and he’s wrong.’
‘I don’t know any secrets. Speak to the crew of the 500 — they will tell you.’ Lange was picking distractedly at the peeling varnish of the tabletop. He was a short man, muscular with close-cropped brown hair and a heavy shaving shadow that made him appear older than his twenty-three years. His round face was peculiarly expressive, almost guileless.
Lindsay opened the briefcase at his feet and took out a magazine with a photograph of a sinking ship on the cover. It was the German Navy’s Signal: ‘I read it as often as I can. Do you remember this one?’ He pushed it across the table to Lange. ‘There’s a piece on page five about “the disintegrating poison of Jewry”.’
Lange wriggled uncomfortably: ‘That was written in Berlin.’
‘I see. And are you worried about this Jewish “poison” too?’
‘I’m a reporter, I write about the Navy,’ said Lange defensively.
Lindsay stared at him for several seconds, the silence full of blackbird song. Shadows were dancing across the bare white walls of the interrogation room as the wind shook the branches of a large cedar growing close to the window. The officers of U-500 had described Lange as good-natured, religious, an unlikely ideologue and a Landratte — uncomfortable at sea. He knew no more about U-boats than he needed for a morale-boosting feature piece. But Lindsay sensed that with a little coaxing he would talk freely and a clever, inquisitive prisoner could be put to good use.
‘You’re from Bavaria, aren’t you?’ he said at last. ‘I can tell by your accent — Munich?’
‘Yes, Munich.’
‘And your father’s a teacher.’
Lange shifted anxiously in his seat again. ‘How did you know?’
‘I’ve picked up a few things.’
‘I’ve told you I don’t know any secrets.’
‘Yes, so you say.’ Lindsay leant forward earnestly to look Lange in the eye: ‘I believe you, really I do. But the other interrogator, the soldier, he doesn’t, you see. You must help me convince him.’