0200
15 September
‘F’ Wing, Brixton Prison
‘ It’s almost a year to the day since my ship was sunk…’
‘Is that why we’re here?’
‘No. We’re here because you and your officers committed two despicable crimes.’
‘Revenge?’
‘War.’
‘And your guilt?’
Lindsay leant across the table to offer him a cigarette. Mohr looked at it for a second or so then took it, rolling it thoughtfully between thumb and forefinger. He was a swarthy man but his skin had turned U-boat grey, as if he had spent weeks in the hull of his submarine, and there were dark rings about his eyes. It was a noisy landing at night with heavy-booted warders and the slamming of doors: that had been simple to arrange.
‘Don’t you want to smoke it?’ Lindsay sent his lighter spinning across the table. ‘There is more than one kind of death, don’t you agree?’
Mohr snapped the lighter and held the long yellow flame to his cigarette. It flickered in the draught from the ventilation grille above, cutting sad lines in his face. Then he inhaled deeply and with obvious pleasure.
‘Many men died on my ship,’ said Lindsay quietly, ‘Most of them. But their names will be remembered with pride and honour. That is one kind of death.’ He paused to fold his arms comfortably on the table in front of him in a way that suggested he was reflecting on this thought.
‘A man’s reputation for a hundred years can depend on a single moment. To lose it is another kind of death.’
Mohr watched him closely through the haze of cigarette smoke that hung over the table, his face quite empty of emotion.
‘What will people say about you and the others do you think? That you brought honour to your Navy and to your families in that washroom? Will your name be spoken in anything above a whisper?’
Still the quiet steady stare. Mohr’s elbow was on the table, the side of his face in his hand, his shoulders hunched wearily over the ashtray, and there was ash on the sleeve of his shit-brown uniform. He seemed older and diminished, as if after slopping-out with the cons at Brixton there was nowhere further to fall. If that was what he was thinking, he was wrong.
‘I’ve spoken to someone here and they say you’re given your own clothes and a glass of brandy to steady your nerves — I would ask for the bottle. Then the hangman visits your cell to strap your hands behind your back. A “T” is chalked on the trap-door for your feet and there are warders on the boards on either side in case you faint. White cotton hood, the noose, the hangman’s assistant straps your ankles.’
Lindsay paused to flick ash from the end of his cigarette.
‘Then bang…’
And he wrapped his knuckles on the table.
‘… the door opens and down you go. Very efficient. Twenty seconds from the condemned cell to the drop. I believe when they take you down they measure your neck and it’s usually an inch or two longer. Then they bury you in an unmarked grave in the prison yard. Not a place of pilgrimage and a long way from the sea.’
Mohr sat there motionless still, his face stiff and white like a marble Buddha, as if determined to live up to the name he was known by in the U-boat messes.
‘There is a choice you know,’ said Lindsay slowly. ‘An honourable one.’
‘An honourable one?’ Mohr laughed harshly.
‘I think so.’
‘I didn’t want those men to die. You know that, don’t you?’ He lifted his right hand to his brow for a moment, a small troubled gesture. The mask was cracking a little. ‘Heine took his own life. And with Lange, well, I let it be known that no one was to speak to him, he was to be isolated, ostracised, and that was all.’
For a few seconds Lindsay stared at him with an expression close to contempt, then he pushed back his chair and got to his feet. There was a yellow file on the table. He picked it up and took a few steps towards the door, his back to Mohr: ‘That is for the court to decide but I am confident they have enough to reach the correct verdict.’
There was an early-morning chill and the corners of the cell were in shadow. It was the large one they had used for the interrogation of Dietrich, gloomy, lit by only a single bulb.
‘Do you recognise the file? It’s the one your men handed to Heine when he was forced to sign a confession.’
‘I know nothing of that.’
‘Well, I thought it was appropriate to use it again for the statements your officers have given to me. They all agree, you know. They’re very clear that they were carrying out your wishes. Here, Dietrich:… the Altestenrat found him guilty of aiding the enemy.. we were carrying out Kapitan Mohr’s orders as senior officer.. ’
Mohr shook his head but said nothing.
‘Are you afraid of death, Mohr?’
‘No.’
‘And your family? Your lady friend, Marianne, isn’t it? What are they going to think of you when they hear how you died?’
‘Can I have another cigarette?’ His strange high-pitched voice cracked a little.
Turning back to the table, Lindsay placed his silver cigarette case and lighter in front of him. Mohr picked up the case and turned it over in his hands thoughtfully. As he put it down again the small gold crown and letter ‘M’ on the face of Lindsay’s watch caught his eye.
‘My Grandfather’s,’ said Lindsay, drawn by his gaze. ‘The cigarette case belonged to him too. He served in the Imperial Navy.’
‘Your cousin Martin mentioned him to me once — he was on Admiral von Hipper’s Staff?’
‘He’s of the old school. You know, he would think very poorly of what has been done in your name.’
The jibe found its mark, the colour rushing back to Mohr’s face: ‘That was an easy shot. I trusted people… and there was a certain madness. But what would he think of you?’
‘That I was doing my job, I hope.’
‘And if I told you what you want to know, if I betrayed the Reich, what would your grandfather say then?’
‘He will never know.’
Mohr snorted and shook his head.
‘If you tell me in confidence I guarantee there will be no record kept of the source. You and your men will be returned to the camp and in due course sent on to another in Canada. The charges will be dropped and a verdict of suicide recorded in both cases. These things are easy to arrange.’
‘And my honour, my duty to the Fatherland?’
‘Honour will mean nothing at the end of the rope. Disgraced. A murderer. And what about your officers?’
Lindsay dropped the yellow file and bent over the table on outstretched arms so that his face was only a few feet from Mohr’s and when he spoke it was no more than an earnest whisper:
‘They trusted their commanding officer. Weeks in the U-boat, the hardships they endured for you, their commander, their captain, with their blind faith in your judgement. Are you going to desert them now? You are the one who has brought them here to this place. And their lives hang in the balance. It is your duty to return them some day to their families, to their loved ones.’
Slowly Lindsay stood up, his fingertips slipping across the tabletop: ‘I want you to think about their families, about your family. No one will ever know, no one.’
Mohr’s dark eyes were roving about Lindsay’s face in search of some clue to his sincerity: ‘Why should I believe you?’
‘It has been cleared with those who are able to make these things happen.’
‘Who?’
Lindsay picked up the file again and walked to the door. He knocked on it sharply and it opened almost at once. Then, turning quickly back for a moment, he asked: ‘Would you like some tea?’
Ten minutes at most. A short time only for reflection but enough for the shadows in Mohr’s mind to lengthen. Lindsay had sent for tea and was waiting on the landing, his hands on the rail. In the well below him, the squeak of a warder’s shoes, someone shouting in his sleep, the restless echo of the prison, of confused, damaged people. And he was not so different. Perhaps Mohr was the same. Prisoners too, held by memories and guilt as securely as the men behind those heavy steel doors. Prisoners of war.
What would Mohr say when in a few minutes he stepped back into the cell? It was unreasonable, perverse, but he could not escape the thought that his own freedom was hanging in the balance too. Another condemned man in hope of a reprieve. They had met only a few times but he had lived with Mohr for months, rolling the man and the codes round and round in his mind like a stone until they were one and the same. A strange and dangerous obsession. And now the point of decision. He glanced at his watch, it was half past two and the warder was by the door with the tea. It was time.
Mohr was standing at the far wall, his face and shoulders in shadow. The door closed behind Lindsay and he stepped forward to place the mugs on the table. They were alone again, to dance, to fence, studying every word, every gesture.
‘Sit down please. They give you two sugars here whether you like it or not.’ Mohr did not move a muscle.
Lindsay pulled out his chair and sat, then reached across the table for the cigarette case. Two were missing. Two in ten minutes. He could sense that Mohr was watching him closely, like a cat, a cat in a shit-brown uniform. He took a cigarette and lit it.
‘Sit down please.’
But Mohr stood there still.
The seconds passed in edgy silence. Mohr’s chin slipped to his chest as if he was close to sleep. There was a loud metallic rattle on the landing outside, someone must have dropped a tray, footsteps, voices, then silence again.
‘I was the Staff officer responsible for communications.’
Lindsay could feel the pulse thumping in his neck. He took a deep shaky breath to steady himself.
‘Designation, A4.’
Silence again. More footsteps outside the door. Lindsay picked up his mug to sip the hard, tannic, sweet tea. Mohr was teetering on the edge. A small push would send him tumbling over. Slowly, he lowered the mug back to the table.
‘Sit down, please, Herr Kapitan.’
And this time Mohr stepped forward to pull out the chair, his face white and drawn.
‘How long were you on the staff at U-boat Headquarters?’
‘Can I have another?’ And he pointed to the cigarettes.
Lindsay nodded and pushed the cigarette case back to him.
‘A little over six months.’
‘And you joined?’
‘For the second time, in the autumn of last year.’
‘The second time?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are reading our signals?’
Mohr drew on his cigarette and looked away. Then, planting his elbow on the table, he bent his head to cover his face as if in prayer. A few seconds more and he muttered something that Lindsay did not catch.
‘Are you reading our signals?’
‘Yes. Yes, damn it.’
‘How many?’
‘Most of them.’
‘Most of them?’
‘Most of them.’ He lifted his head from his hand and there was a small tight-lipped smile on his face. An involuntary smile, the pleasure of revealing a shocking secret.
‘I will talk to you here and now in this room. That is all. And to no one else. Do you agree?’
‘Yes.’
‘Only in this cell.’
‘And there will be no mention of the source?’
‘No.’
Mohr gave a painfully heavy sigh and leant forward, his hands clasped in the middle of the table: ‘You changed the Naval Cipher last summer. It didn’t take the B-Dienst long to break into the new one. And the other one — the Naval Code — you introduced two basic books. We broke into those in just six weeks. Old habits. Too many short signals sent the same way. Your codes changed but the word patterns and most of the wording remained more or less the same. So it was simple.’
‘And that means you know…’
‘Convoy routes, lone ships, battleships, any kind of ship, times of arrival, times of departure. I expect we knew all about your convoy
…’
Lindsay looked at him and for a desperate moment he wanted to cry. Madness. Why? He must take control of himself. He reached down to the briefcase at his feet to search for his notepad. As he lifted it to the table he noticed that his hand was trembling.
‘All right. Let’s start at the beginning.’
‘Do you know why I’m telling you this?’
‘Please tell me.’
‘For my men. I don’t care for myself. Believe me. I don’t care. But they deserve better than to…’ He swallowed hard, then coughed in an effort to disguise the emotion that was written plainly enough on his face. ‘Heine is enough. A terrible, tragic mistake. But no more, I don’t want any more deaths… and…’
Again he could not finish. For a few seconds they sat there in silence looking everywhere, anywhere but at each other. But in an hour, maybe less, Mohr might regret his decision. It was important not to give him the time to reconsider it: ‘I want to start with the first code-breaks.’
‘Your Merchant Navy Code was the easiest. We use it like a railway timetable, convoy departure and arrival times, call signs, and the routes.’
‘How many Merchant Navy signals are you decrypting?’
‘Sometimes two thousand a month with only a short delay.’
Lindsay wrote it down. Questions, then more questions. And notes in a small neat hand, the pace quickening as the minutes ticked by, sweet tea and cigarettes, and occasionally Mohr would push back his chair to walk about the cell. He spoke of code books captured from British submarines, and of the signals that had betrayed the Navy in Norway the year before, of Atlantic convoy traffic and lone ships tracked and sunk in African waters. At a little before four o’clock he was escorted to the lavatory and Lindsay stood by the door watching the second hand on his watch as if waiting for Cinderella to come home from the ball.
‘And your mission to Freetown, what was its purpose?’
‘It was my idea. Ha.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I’ve only myself to blame. I wanted to leave the Staff and return to my boat. So it was agreed I would co-ordinate attacks off Freetown. The wireless operators spoke English and were trained to intercept and decode the signals. I would then direct the nearest U-boat to attack, more than one if it could reach the convoy in time. It was happy hunting there.’
It was at a little before six o’clock when Lindsay put down his pencil. Doubt and fear were crystallising in Mohr like frost and for almost an hour he had refused to say much more than ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. The emotional effort had left him exhausted, slumped on his chair like a sack of potatoes.
‘You will honour your promise to release my men? And no one will know I’ve spoken to you?’
Lindsay picked up the pad and began slowly turning the pages of cream paper carefully covered with his pencil notes. Mohr had given much. One of the promises he had made to him would be easy to keep.
‘Yes, your men will be sent back to the camp. They won’t be charged with murder.’
‘We aren’t murderers, you know that.’
It was feeble-sounding from such a man.
Lindsay stared across the table at him. Why had he done it? Was it loyalty to the crew or vanity and a fear of disgrace and death? Perhaps a deep, deep weariness. It was impossible to be sure because there was often no answer to the difficult questions, the things that really mattered — duty, loyalty, love — only a confusing tangle of feelings and thoughts pulling in many different directions. Mohr would reflect on it for the rest of his life, the answer always different, changing year on year.
‘No. You aren’t murderers,’ he said coolly. ‘You won’t be taken to court. You are not murderers because no one was murdered.’
Mohr frowned and leant forward a little to study his face: ‘But Lange was…’
‘Leutnant Lange is recovering in hospital.’
The nails of Mohr’s right hand cut into the fist he had made of his left. He closed his eyes, his jaws were clenched, his face stiff with anger. Picking up the pad, Lindsay pushed back his chair and stepped over to rap once on the door: ‘All right, take him away.’
Mohr was still sitting at the table, his head bent back a little, his eyes closed, breathing deeply. Keys tinkled in the lock and the door began to open.
‘The two of us are the same, you know.’ Mohr’s eyes were still shut. ‘You are a hunter.’
A prison warder was standing at the edge of the table waiting for him to get to his feet. He opened his eyes, the mask back in place, he was ‘the Buddha’ again.
‘Come on.’ The warder took his arm but he shook it free impatiently and, pushing his chair away, he got quickly to his feet.
At the door he stopped and turned to stare at Lindsay again, an outstretched arm apart. For a few seconds his dark eyes roved about Lindsay’s face as if searching for some common feeling or warmth. He looked sad and tired and almost desperate. Then he was gone. And Lindsay listened to the disciplined beat of his footsteps retreating along the landing until they were lost in the echo of the prison.
And he was alone in the cell with the table and the chairs and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. Triumph? No. A little quiet satisfaction, perhaps. Above all, bone-numbing exhaustion and a deep sadness. Pulling the door to, he walked over to the table and sat down. His eyes were swimming so he closed them and bent to rest his head on his arm. Almost at once he began to slip into that half-world between sleep and consciousness, to a place that was always the same, a cold place where the wind whistled and hissed and cut at the skin. And floating in darkness, a shape spinning and bobbing towards him, he touched it again and it turned its black burnt face to him, its eyes dull and empty. And as he pushed it away he wondered if it would ever be different.
‘Oh sorry, sir.’ A prison warder was standing at the door. ‘I thought you’d finished in here.’