The Information Officer (5 page)

“Christ,” muttered Freddie.

“Holy shit,” said Elliott.

Poor sods
, thought Max.

It was clear now that the airfields had been singled out for attention: Ta’ Qali, Luqa, Hal Far, maybe even the new strips at Safi and Qrendi. They all lay some way inland, beyond Valetta and the Three Cities, strung out in a broken line, their runways forming a twisted spine to the southern half of the island.

The 88s shaped up for their shallow bombing runs, and a token
splatter of shell bursts smudged the sky. Arcing lines of tracer fire from a few Bofors joined the fray. From this distance the Bofors appeared to be doing little more than tickling the underbellies of the bombers, but a shout suddenly went up.

“Look, a flamer!”

Sure enough, an 88 was deviating from its course, streaming black smoke. It climbed uncertainly toward the north, heading for home. This would normally have been the cue for a Spitfire to pounce on the stricken aircraft and finish it off, but the handful of fighters they had seen clawing for height just minutes before had probably been vectored away from the island for their own safety. It was easy to see why. The carpet bombing was well under way now, great pillars of smoke and dust rising into the sky, reaching for the lowering sun.

They all stared in silent sympathy at the remote spectacle. Earlier in the year, Max had been caught in a raid at Ta’ Qali, one of the mid-afternoon specials the Germans liked to throw in from time to time. He had spent twenty minutes lying as flat to the ground as nature would allow him in a ditch that bounded the airfield. There had been other close calls in the past couple of years—he still bore the odd scar to prove it—but nothing that even approached the deranging terror of his time in that ditch. His greatest fear at the time, strangely, had been of choking to death on the cloud of sickly yellow-gray dust, talcum-powder fine, that had enveloped everything, blotting out the sun, turning day into night. The ground beneath him had bucked like a living thing, and all around him the air had rung to the tune of flying splinters, a lethal symphony of rock and metal overlaid by more obvious notes: the whistle and shriek of falling bombs, the thump and crump of explosions, the staccato bark of the Bofors firing back blindly, and the screams of the diving Stukas.

His hearing had never fully recovered, and he suspected that something essential within him had been changed that day, almost as if he were a machine that had been rewired. It still functioned, though not quite as it had before.

He felt a light touch on his arm. It was Freddie.

“I need to talk to you,” he said in a low, confidential voice. “Not here. Alone.”

“Okay.”

“How’s tomorrow morning?”

Max nodded.

“Can you come to the Central Hospital?”

“What time?”

“Early. How does eight sound?”

“Barely acceptable.”

“Meet me at the mortuary.”

Max was obliged to curb his curiosity. Elliott had drifted toward the parapet for a better view of the raid, but he now turned to them and said, “Looks like old Zammit’s got himself a new gun.”

Vitorin Zammit lived in the house directly across the street. Well into his sixties, he was a slight and vaguely comical character who had been a regular dinner guest at Villa Marija until the death of his wife the year before. He had amassed a small fortune exporting lace, a business that had allowed him to travel the world widely, and he spoke impeccable English in the way that only a foreigner can. His wife’s passing had hit him hard, and although she had been brought down by the same diabetes that had plagued her for years, he held the enemy unreservedly to blame. He now kept his own company, when he wasn’t caught up in the activities of the Sliema Home Guard Volunteers, through whose ranks he had risen rapidly to become something of a leading light.

He owned a pistol, and when a raid was in progress, he was often to be found on his roof terrace taking potshots at the planes. Not only was this a futile gesture, it was in flagrant breach of the regulations. He should have known better, and he probably did, but no one begrudged him his bit of sport. If anyone took exception, Hugh invariably ensured that they came to see things differently.

Sometimes Zammit wore his uniform, sometimes a suit. He never went into battle in his shirtsleeves. Today he was wearing a black suit and a home guard armband, and he prowled around his roof terrace like some dark ghost, eyes on the skies, apparently oblivious to the large crowd gathered on the neighboring rooftop. Instead of his usual pistol, he carried a rifle in his hand.

“Is that a Lee-Enfield?” asked Freddie.

“Might just as well be a goddamn broomstick for all the good it’s going to do him,” replied Elliott.

The last of the bombers were making their runs now, dropping to four or five thousand feet before unloading over the airfields. Resistance was minimal, and they climbed safely away with a covey of fighters assigned to see them safely home. High above, all around, 109s blackened the sky like bees, keeping a wary guard. Their job done, the island’s artillery all but spent, they would soon descend and begin picking over the carcass, making low-level attacks on targets of opportunity. If there was a time to be scared, now was it. Even a residential district like Sliema was fair game.

Knowing this, a few people started to drift below. Most stood their ground, though, eager to see how things would play out. Freddie made a drinks run downstairs. By the time he returned with their glasses, the dockyards in Grand Harbour were under attack, the enemy fighters rising into view behind Valetta like rocketing pheasants as they pulled up out of their dives. They couldn’t hope to inflict much real damage with their cannon and machine-gun fire, but they were making a point. Max had heard from Ralph that a 109 had even made a touch-and-go landing at Ta’ Qali the other day, rubbing their noses in it.

Today, pleasingly, this arrogance came at a price. A 109 banking over Fort Saint Elmo appeared to stagger, then its starboard wing dipped sharply and it spun away. There was no question of the pilot baling out at that height, and the aircraft hit the water, throwing up a white feather of spume near the harbor entrance.

“Welcome to Malta, you sonofabitch,” said Elliott darkly, as the cheers resounded around them.

Moments later, a couple of fighters swooped down onto Marsamxett Harbour from the direction of Floriana, flying tight down on the water, setting themselves for a strafing run at the submarine base on Manoel Island. There were no subs to be seen; they had recently taken to sitting out the daylight hours on the harbor bottom.

“Macchis,” said one of the young pilots.

He was right, they were Italian planes, blue Macchi 202s. If there had been any doubt, the showman-like flourish with which they
rolled away after releasing a couple of savage bursts of cannon fire settled the question of their nationality. The Italians were known, and mocked, for their aerobatic flair. Both aircraft made a second pass, their guns churning up the water in neat straight lines as they bore down on the base. They pulled away in a climbing turn to the left, making off to the north, skimming over the stepped rooftops of Sliema.

Their course brought them straight toward Villa Marija, the roar of their engines building quickly to a painful pitch, almost deafening, but not so loud that it drowned out the report of the first rifle shot. Or the second.

Max turned in time to see Vitorin Zammit fire off his third shot, in time to see a portion of the lead Macchi’s engine cowling fall away.

“My God, I think he hit it!” someone called.

Old Zammit had not only hit it, he had actually done some damage. The Macchi’s engine coughed, clearing its throat, then coughed again, and again, misfiring badly now, a ribbon of black smoke snaking out behind it as it climbed toward Saint Julian’s.

“Well, holy shit,” said Elliott.

The trickle of smoke soon became a raging torrent, and the Macchi started to lose height, falling well behind its companion.

“Is it possible?” Freddie asked incredulously.

“Oh yes,” replied Max. A number of enemy fighters had been brought down over the airfields by rifle fire since the long-suffering ground crews had been issued with Lee-Enfields—a gesture intended to boost their morale. No one had expected them to actually hit anything.

It came to Max quite suddenly what he had to do. He glanced over at Vitorin Zammit, who was staring in dumb disbelief at his handiwork. Then he turned and took Pemberton by the arm, leading him off through the crowd.

“Where are we going?” asked the Information Office’s newest recruit.

“To work.”

HE LAY STRETCHED OUT ON THE MATTRESS, NAKED
, staring at the ceiling and the dancing shadows thrown by the small pepper-tin lamp.

He raised his arm and examined it in the flickering light, flexing his elbow, his wrist, his fingers, enjoying the silent articulation of the joints, the play of muscle and sinew beneath the skin.

He was proud of his hands. Men didn’t notice hands. Women did. His mother had. She had always praised him for his hands. Then again, kind words had come easily to her, maybe too easily for the compliments to have had any real value. She had scattered them about her like a farmer spreading seed from a sack.

He saw her now as a young woman: the blue of her wide-set eyes; the arched eyebrows, dark and dense, which she’d refused to pluck as other women did because Father had liked them just the way they were. Or so he’d said.

My, you’re looking handsome today
.

I think that’s the best I’ve ever heard you play the piano
.

The best day of my life? When I gave birth to you
.

You’re the best boy in the world
.

She’d come from parents with low intellectual horizons, and she’d used words such as “best” a lot.

Maybe that’s what lay at the heart of everything. She had never
felt worthy of the world in which she’d found herself, not worthy of the man who had taken her by the hand and led her into Eden.
See all this? This is my world, but now it is yours too
.

But Eden didn’t come cheap—she must have learned that early on—and she had chosen to repay cruelty with kindness. She was known for her kindness. It was what defined her in the eyes of others. No one was unworthy of her selfless ministrations.

He suspected now that some baser urge had lain behind her behavior: an instinct for survival. How could her husband possibly harm such a kind and decent person, such a good wife?

It hadn’t worked, but she had kept the faith. It was hard to respect her for it, but at least it had shown a certain determination.

You’re the best boy in the world
.

He saw her now, ruffling his hair, smiling warmly down at him, her prominent incisors, the small white scar on her lower lip from the time Father had struck her with a shoe. And he saw what she was doing: one person looking to provide the love of two. The intentions had been good, if ultimately counterproductive. The more she had smothered him with maternal affection, the more Father had felt the need to counteract her “damned pampering” of him.

It was strange that she had never stopped heaping praise upon all and sundry, even after the accident, when there was no longer any need to do so. He also found it strange that she had never taken tweezers to those unruly eyebrows when she must surely have wanted to, when at last she could.

That’s what annoyed him most, he realized—that even after Father was gone, he had managed to live on in her.

He lowered his arm to the mattress and smiled at this thought, a smile of pleasant surprise. When was the last time he had cared enough about anything to be annoyed by it?

It made him feel almost human.

DAY TWO

FREDDIE WAS ALMOST AN HOUR LATE FOR THEIR MEETING
at the mortuary. When he finally appeared, reeking of iodine, from the bowels of the hospital building, he seemed surprised to find Max still waiting for him.

“I thought you’d be gone.”