‘There are always more Spitfires coming. When was the last time there weren’t more Spitfires coming?’
Her eyes narrowed, seeing through his evasiveness, but she let it go unchallenged. Max sat himself on the corner of her desk and lit a cigarette.
‘You have to run this story.’
‘I don’t know, Max.’
‘Let’s see the photos.’
She pulled a folder from a pile of papers and spread a handful of black-and-white photos on the desk. They were almost identical. In a couple of them Vitorin Zammit was shaking the hand of the downed Italian pilot, whose parachute was piled up at his feet, and in all of them a rag-tag band of grinning Maltese stood stiffly behind.
The young Italian was ridiculously handsome, and knew it; he had run his fingers through his thick hair to give his fringe some lift as Max was preparing to take the first shot. Old Zammit’s suit was powdered white with dust from their breakneck dash up into the hills. Wedged in between Max and Pemberton on the back of the motorcycle, he had complained all the way about his abduction, and had only ceased his moaning when they spotted the black smoke billowing from the wreck of the Macchi. It had piled into the base of a low escarpment just south of Ghargur, the pilot drifting to earth in a rock-strewn field nearby, where he had been promptly surrounded by a mob of blue-chinned and bare-footed labourers brandishing sickles and hoes. His relief at the arrival of two uniformed officers on a motorcycle was patent—although he must have known that the Maltese weren’t the lynching kind—and when it was finally conveyed to him through a series of gestures that the old man in the suit had shot him down, he put his pride in his pocket and laughed along heartily with everyone else.
‘This is the best one,’ said Lilian.
She was right. Zammit’s hand was resting on the Italian’s shoulder—a protective, almost tender gesture—and the younger man’s expression was an endearing picture of amused resignation. It was exactly the sort of image the Maltese would respond to—quietly triumphal and tinged with humour.
‘Yes,’ Max concurred.
He could see from Lilian’s face that she was still hesitating, and he knew why. She had crossed swords with the authorities enough times in the past to have developed a reputation as something of a trouble-maker. When the siege was in its infancy, she had fought for the rights of the islanders to dig their own shelters on public property, and she had unsuccessfully championed the cause of the Maltese internees—Italian sympathizers, or so it was claimed—who had been locked up like common criminals at the outbreak of hostilities and who had recently been shipped off to Uganda.
Running a story which might promote illegal behaviour among the islanders could have consequences for her. She was thinking of her job.
‘What he did might have contravened regulations, but look at it—’ Max handed her the photo. ‘This is what we all need right now. A hero. An improbable hero.’
‘I know that. You know that.’
‘Then I’ll report it in the Weekly Bulletin, and you’ll have your excuse to run it. The worst I’ll get is a slapped wrist. Believe me, even the Lieutenant-Governor will see the logic of putting it out there at a time like this.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you doing this?’
Mistrust, antagonism even, was part and parcel of their professional relationship, and they’d stopped pretending it wasn’t. The Information Office and the only Maltese-language newspaper on the island might make for natural bedfellows, but Lilian’s loyalties were to her own people, whose interests were not always best served by the British policy which Max was bound to promote. This made for an uneasy collaboration, a tentative trade of services. Lilian advised Max on how best to pitch the tone of his publications and broadcasts to appeal to a Maltese audience, and in return she received access to the kind of information she couldn’t hope to get from anyone else. And both remained sceptical about the motives of the other.
Lilian was right to be wary in this instance. Max couldn’t tell her the truth: that he knew a German invasion was imminent, and the signals from the summit were that they’d be fighting to the last man. If they were to stand any chance of turning back the Nazi tide, they needed the islanders at their side, willing and eager to take up arms. Vitorin Zammit in his dusty suit could do more to foster the necessary spirit of resistance than any number of pious speeches put out over the Rediffusion by the Governor.
‘Look, I’m just saying a story like this is good for everyone.’
Lilian wasn’t convinced. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’
If you only knew the half of it, thought Max, images of the dead girl stretched out on the gurney in the mortuary suddenly crowding his thoughts, tightening his stomach.
He crushed out his cigarette against the sole of his shoe, anything to avoid her eyes. ‘There are a lot of things I don’t tell you—can’t tell you—you know that.’
He kept grinding away at the dead cigarette.
‘Max, look at me.’
I can’t, he thought. Because if I do, I’ll see her in you, you in her, and I won’t be able to pretend that it doesn’t matter. I won’t be able to walk away from it.
She waited for him to look up. ‘You’re wrong,’ she said gently. ‘You can tell me. As a friend.’
Oh Christ…
‘You should get going,’ he suggested.
Now she was offended, and he tried to make amends.
‘I’ll give you a lift to Sliema on the motorcycle if you want.’
‘People will talk.’
‘And we can’t have that, can we?’
‘It’s easy for you to say. When you are gone they will still be talking.’
They parted company in front of the building, though not before Lilian announced that he’d been invited to dinner again at her aunt’s.
‘Really?’
‘She liked you.’
‘I can’t think why. I ranted at her for most of the evening.’
‘I know. She said.’
Lilian hurried for St Salvatore bastion in search of a dghaisa to row her across Marsamxett Harbour, and he watched her till the slope of the street had swallowed her up.
He didn’t do too badly. Determined thoughts of the papers piling up on his desk successfully carried him all the way to the Porte des Bombes. But it was here that he found himself swinging the motorcycle around and doubling back into the grid-like streets of Floriana.
He located it almost instantly, which was a relief; he would have been hard pushed to explain what he was doing scrabbling around in the ruins of a wrecked building. It was wedged in a crack between two bomb-spilt cubes of Malta rock. An inch or two to the left and it would have slipped away deep into the rubble, well beyond reach and any hope of recovery.
He dusted off the shoulder tab and stared it, so light in his hand, so inconsequential. It was hard to believe that a shred of cloth could have so much destructive power locked away in it.
High overhead, tall pencils of light stabbed and swept the night sky, sightless, searching for the drone of the lone bomber. Maybe it would drop an egg or two before returning to Sicily, or maybe it would hold back its high explosive for another day. Either way, a different aircraft would take up the baton before long, a relay designed to keep the defenders at their war stations and away from their beds, wearing them down.
Whatever you thought of the Germans—and he was still divided in