The Information Officer (7 page)

Max’s third-floor apartment at the end of Vilhena Terrace afforded a bird’s-eye view of these contests, and in the evening he would sometimes sit and observe the antics from his balcony, Grand Harbour and the Three Cities providing the backdrop. It was a corner
apartment, and the other view, from the bedroom window, was to the northeast, across the open area of ground that separated Floriana from Valetta. Both towns occupied the peninsula, and both were well protected from the water by a bewilderment of bastions, but the mighty ditch on the landward side of Valetta proclaimed Floriana’s role as a first line of defense. The Knights of Saint John had engineered things this way against the possibility of another Turkish invasion of the island, and, four centuries on, the residents of Floriana were still left with the slightly uneasy feeling that they were disposable, that even in retreat the gates of Valetta, the all-important citadel, might not be thrown open to them. As things had turned out, the Turks never recovered from their first failed assault on Malta—a mere stepping-stone to mainland Europe, or so they had assumed—and the impressive fortifications built by the knights had never been put to the test. Not till now. Now they were useless. What good were soaring battlements against an enemy who assaulted you from the air with bombs? All you could do was cower and pray. The cowering had helped a little, saved a few lives, but the prayers had fallen on deaf ears.

In the past month, German bombs had laid waste to much of what mattered in Valetta, obliging the governor to flee his palace for his summer residence at Verdala, and causing extensive damage to the Auberge de Castille, the military and administrative hub of the island. The various departments had scattered like chaff before a stiff wind, seeking shelter wherever they could. Max no longer walked to work in Valetta. The Information Office had been relocated twice, from the museum in the Auberge d’Italie to the old audit offices at the top of the general post office building, and then to Saint Joseph’s, an orphanage for boys in Fleur-de-Lys, up on the hill beyond Hamrun. It was ten minutes inland by motorcycle on a good day, considerably more when the carburetor was clogged with rust from the old gas tank he’d been forced to scavenge from another machine.

He missed the bustle and activity of Valetta, the snatched lunches with friends at the Union Club or Monico’s, but there were far worse places to work than Saint Joseph’s. An ancient palace where, according to local lore, Napoléon had stayed during his brief dominion over
the island, it had a spacious courtyard at its heart, planted with cypresses, which lent it the calm air of a convent or monastery. The rooms were large and light, the residents welcoming and unobtrusive. To ease their passage into the world, the orphan boys were taught a variety of skills and professions, one of which was printing, and a modern printing press filled a room on the ground floor of the south wing. This was the real reason the Information Office had been assigned to Saint Joseph’s; it allowed them to run off their daily and weekly bulletins for distribution around the island. The close proximity of the lieutenant governor’s office, which had been moved to the Vincenzo Bugeja Conservatory right next door, was an undeniable irritant—snooping and meddling came naturally to the penguins of the LGO. However, it was a small price to pay for personal safety. The Luftwaffe might have developed an uncanny knack for divining the exact whereabouts of key military departments, but for now at least, Saint Joseph’s was anything but a first-strike target.

Max glanced at his watch. He should have been at his desk an hour ago, and he could see the papers already piling up in the wire basket on the desk. Maria, his long-suffering secretary, would be fielding the calls and making excuses for his absence. Both the papers and the calls would have to wait. There was something else he needed to do first.

His motorcycle was propped against the wall of his apartment building, the kickstand having rusted away during the hard, wet winter. She was in a temperamental mood this morning, but after much cajoling, the engine finally fired. Some of the sweat from his exertions dried off in the wind during the short ride up the hill into Valetta.

Lilian wasn’t at the office. Or rather, she had come in early, and then she had gone out again, chasing up some story or other. Rita couldn’t be more specific, or didn’t wish to be.

Rita manned the front desk at the newspaper offices. She didn’t like Max. This wasn’t paranoia on his part. Lilian, with characteristic candor, had told him that Rita didn’t like him.

“Well, if you could tell her I dropped by …”

Rita leaned forward, placing her meaty forearms onto the desk. “Of course,” she said.

But she didn’t have to.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?”

It was Lilian, entering from the street. Her long black hair was pinned up in an unruly mess, and she was rummaging for something in her shoulder bag.

“I just wanted to check that you got the film.”

“She got the film,” said Rita flatly.

Max had dropped the film off with Rita the previous evening, Lilian having already left for the day.

“How did the photos turn out?”

“Good,” said Lilian. “You want to see them?”

“Have you got time?”

“Of course. Come.”

When Lilian made for the staircase, Max followed, glancing at Rita as he went. She peered back at him over the top of her spectacles with an impassive expression.

Max trailed Lilian up the narrow stone staircase to the newsroom. She was wearing a short linen skirt, fraying at the hem, which revealed the full glory of her legs. They had an aesthetic dimension, long and slender, tapering to ankles so narrow they looked as though they might break at any moment.

A sudden urge made him reach out a hand and run his fingertips down her left calf.

She gave a small yelp and spun round, glaring down at him.

“What do you expect if you insist on leading the way?”

“Then you go first,” she said.

He squeezed past her. “You’ve changed your tune since last weekend.”

“I was drunk last weekend.”

“Oh, that’s why you slurred your words when you said, ‘Don’t stop’?”

It had been their first kiss, and it had taken place under an orange tree in the garden of her aunt’s palace in Mdina.

“Well, I hope you enjoyed it, because it was the last time.”

As deputy editor of
Il-Berqa
, Lilian was entitled to her own office. It was a small box of a room, and it had somehow acquired a view of Grand Harbour since Max’s last visit. It took him a moment to realize why. He wandered to the window and peered down at what remained of the church. The dome and the roof had collapsed into the nave, the pillars and arches of which were still standing, as was the greater part of the apse. Despite the destruction, the altar had been cleared of rubble and a priest was dressing it for Mass.

“Close,” said Max.

“No one was killed.”

“That’s good to hear.”

He turned back in time to see her unpin her hair and shake it out. It fell like silk around her shoulders.

“Better?” she asked.

“You could shave it all off and you’d still be beautiful.”

She cocked her head at him, deciding whether to accept the compliment.

“It’s true,” he said.

It was. She could get away with it, with her large almond eyes, the sharp high-bridged nose, and full lips. She was of mixed parentage—half-Maltese, half-British—although her temperament owed considerably more to her Mediterranean blood. He still smarted when he remembered some of the words she’d directed at him, but he’d also shared many a full and proper belly laugh with her. He suspected that when it came to pure intellect there were few to match her on the island. He knew for a fact that he struggled to keep up.

“We don’t have long,” she said. “I have to be in Sliema at twelve o’clock and there are no buses.”

“Sliema?”

“To talk to Vitorin Zammit.”

“You’re going to run the story?” he said hopefully.

“Felix isn’t sure.”

Felix was the editor, a plump and ponderous little character who didn’t seem to do a whole lot around the place. It was common knowledge that Lilian effectively ran the show.

“What the old man did is not legal,” Lilian went on. “We don’t want half the island shooting at planes.”

“I don’t know. The artillery could do with all the help it can get right now.”

She smiled. “True. But they’ll shoot at everything, even our own planes.”

“They’ll have to find one first.”

“But there are more Spitfires coming.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Is it true?” she asked.

“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 ragtag 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 had been 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’d spotted the black smoke billowing from the wreck of the Macchi. It had piled into the base of a low escarpment just south of Gharghur, the pilot drifting to earth in a rock-strewn field nearby, where he had been promptly surrounded by a mob of blue-chinned and barefooted laborers brandishing sickles and hoes. His relief at the arrival of two uniformed officers on a motorcycle had been patent—although he must have known that the
Maltese weren’t the lynching kind—and when it had finally been conveyed to him through a series of gestures that the old man in the suit had shot him down, he’d 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 humor.

“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 British authorities enough times in the past to have developed a reputation as something of a troublemaker. 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’d also 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 that might promote illegal behavior 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 that 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 skeptical 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 …