The Interrogator by Andrew Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

Lindsay because it spoke eloquently to him of its creator: Sir Philip Sassoon – Eton and Oxford, Member of Parliament and Under-Secretary at the Air Ministry – the lisping, swarthy scion of Jewish merchant princes.
    Sassoon was reputed to have lured anybody who was anyone in fashionable society to his home. The newspapers listed politicians, princes, even the King of a small country. Their cars had swept up the long drive and on to the forecourt where a Union flag was picked out in pink-and-white stone rescued from the old Westminster Bridge. But Sassoon was an outsider. No one Lindsay knew personally had been on the guest list but he often wondered if all that blue blood had whispered, ‘Nice fellow but a little foreign.’ Sassoon had died in the summer before the war and the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre – CSDIC – had taken his home. Now young Nazis lived under his roof and strolled under escort through his gardens.
    It was a little after four o’clock when Lindsay made his way down the grand oak staircase into the entrance hall. A low shaft of sunlight was pouring through the west-facing window, its smoky brightness shifting and swirling about the guards at the security desk.
    ‘Lindsay, I’ve been looking for you.’
    Lieutenant-Commander James Henderson was squeezing his broad frame through the half-closed porch door: ‘May I have a word.’ His voice bounced roughly about the elegant plaster ceiling and pillars: ‘Let’s walk.’
    Lindsay followed him out of the hall and through the security fence on to the broad brick terrace at the east end of the house. They stopped by the gate to the swimming pool, once the heated height of luxury, empty now but for last autumn’s curling leaves.
    ‘I haven’t wished you a happy birthday,’ said Lindsay, offering Henderson his hand.
    ‘You’re coming tonight, aren’t you?’
    ‘Yes. Thank you.’
    Henderson began to push at a loose piece of brick paving, edging it backwards and forwards with his shoe. He was an awkward-looking man, an inch or so shorter than Lindsay but broader and heavier, an East Anglian farmer even in his well-tailored blue uniform and an unlikely recruit to Naval Intelligence.
    When he lifted his chin at last, there was a dark frown on his face and his lips were tightly pursed. There was clearly something difficult he wanted to say.
    ‘Cards down, Lindsay, Colonel Checkland is cross because you went behind his back to the Citadel. It wasn’t your place to speak to Winn about our codes.’
    Lindsay almost smiled – Checkland was always cross with him. The Colonel was the head of Section 11 and had been for as long as anyone could remember. But Naval Intelligence was changing. Reserve officers twenty years his junior called the shots, clever amateurs with an academic contempt for rank and naval discipline – men like Rodger Winn and Ian Fleming. It was Ian Fleming who had found Lindsay his job as an interrogator and Checkland was certainly not going to forget that.
    ‘The Colonel wants you to drop it,’ said Henderson firmly. ‘It was just idle talk, gossip. The right people at the Admiralty have looked into it and they’re satisfied there is nothing to suggest any of our codes are compromised.’
    ‘Did they interrogate my prisoner, Zier, the wireless operator?’
    ‘Drop it. It’s nothing. You’ve been here four months, you’re good at your job but you’re wrong about this, and there are important security issues at stake here.’
    ‘Of course there are – the security of our codes,’ said Lindsay crossly.
    ‘I don’t mean that.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘It’s not important for you to know.’
    Henderson paused to make eye contact and when he spoke his voice was cold:
    ‘Do you think you know better than everyone else? Don’t rub people up the wrong way. Look, we’ve taken a chance with you. Don’t give us reasons to doubt you. The Director of Naval Intelligence has instructed interrogators