The Information Officer - Mark Mills

“We can’t all do everything,” or something like that.

“I’m sorry, sir, my Italian’s a little rusty.”

Max saw a whisper of a smile appear on Elliott’s lips.

“It’s Latin. Virgil. From the Eclogues.”

“It means, just stick to your bloody job, Chadwick.” This from the fourth man in the room, the one with ginger hair and lobster-pink skin. They were the first words he’d spoken, and his accent screamed high birth, summoning up images of Henley Royal Regatta and riding to hounds and tea on the lawn at the family pile in the country. His pale blue eyes were the color of thick ice, and possibly just as hard.

“Tell me about Lilian Flint,” he drawled, with an air of cold command.

Max was momentarily thrown by the question. “What’s there to tell? She’s the deputy editor of Il-Berqa. She’s also very good at her job.”

“Well, you would know, given the amount of time you spend liaising with her.”

Max ignored the thinly veiled insinuation. “Yes, I suppose I’m better placed than most to make that judgment.”

“Her mother is in Italy, if I’m not mistaken.”

“That’s right. She was in Padua when Italy declared war. She was unable to make it home.”

“Home? I would have thought home was at her husband’s side.”

It wasn’t just the cold blue eyes, it was their steady, piercing scrutiny that was so unsettling.

“She’s not married.”

“As good as, though, wouldn’t you say?”

“I have no idea.”

“I believe he’s a professor of archaeology at the University of Padua.”

“I believe so.”

“And do you also believe it’s possible for a man to hold such a post at an Italian university if he isn’t in some way sympathetic to the regime?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Hazard a guess.”

Max generally burned a long fuse, but was struggling now to hold himself in check. He could see what was being done to him. He had boxed at Oxford; he had been on the receiving end of the irritating jabs designed to make you drop your guard and risk it all on a roundhouse.

“For what it’s worth,” he said icily, “I would stake my job, my reputation—my life, even—on Lilian’s loyalty.”

The ginger one seemed almost amused. “There’s really no need for such grandiloquence. Do you think for a moment she would be the deputy editor of Il-Berqa if we weren’t of the same mind?”

“So what, with respect, is your point?”

“My point, Major Chadwick, is this: we like her, we like what she does, we like the fact that the two of you work so well together. She’s inclined to sail a little close to the wind at times, but her readers value her forthright opinions, and it’s important that they’re permitted a vent for their frustrations. You seem to temper her more extreme tendencies.” He paused. “So you see, we’re quite content with the way things are, and it would be unfortunate if—how shall I put it?—those of a more prejudiced disposition were allowed to prevail on the question of her current employment.”

Diplomatic doublespeak, but the threat was plain and simple: back off or we pack her off.

Lilian’s job meant everything to her. She had dreamed of it since childhood; she had fought for it against the wishes of her family. It was her life, the one fixed point in her universe.

“I think I get your meaning.”

“Then you may go now.”

Max noted that Colonel Gifford wasn’t aggrieved by this man subverting his authority, as he had been with Elliott. In fact, he seemed almost in awe of him.

“I’ll see Major Chadwick out,” said Elliott, levering himself to his feet.

“There’s no need for that,” said the colonel.

“I’d like to.”

Colonel Gifford was about to object, but something in coppertop’s expression silenced him.

Max made a point of ignoring Hodges on the way out.

“That went well, don’t you think?” Elliott declared chirpily when they were alone in the corridor.

Max wasn’t in the mood for lightheartedness. “For God’s sake, Elliott, what the hell were you doing there?”

“They thought I might be in on it, knowing the two of you as I do. And I’ve got to say, I’m a little insulted I wasn’t in the loop.”

Max ignored the comment.

“They’re not going to do anything, are they?”

“I doubt it. Not with Upstanding about to leave the island.”

“And what happens when dead girls start showing up in Alexandria?”

Elliott hesitated. “I see you’ve been doing your research.”

“What happens?”

“Not our jurisdiction, old man.” He stretched out the vowels in a convincing parody of the ginger-haired chap.

“Who is he?”

“You know, under different circumstances I can see the two of you hitting it off.”

“Christ, Elliott, can’t you ever give a straight answer to a question?”

Elliott looked affronted. “It doesn’t matter who he is. What do you want to know? He’s part of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes.”

“Behind the scenes?”

“You think war is all bombs and bullets, aircraft and subs?”

“Yes. I think if you can hurt your enemy more than he hurts you, then you win.”

Elliott weighed his words. “You’re right, of course. But you’re also wrong. An enemy can be persuaded to squander its assets. Take the Battle of Hastings. A lot of crap’s been written about the Battle of Hastings—believe me, I read most of it at West Point. You want to know the long and short of it? Harold holds the high ground; William has to attack uphill. William fakes a retreat. Harold forsakes the high ground. Harold loses. Yes, horses and men and spears and arrows helped determine the outcome, but that’s a battle Harold should have won. He gave up his advantage.”

“Thanks for the history lesson.”

“Simple deception—that’s why he lost it.”

Max stopped at the top of the staircase. “And is that what you do, Elliott?”

“I wouldn’t have the first clue about faking a retreat.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Put it this way: I don’t fly planes and I don’t fire guns.”

“Yet again, I’ve learned nothing new about you whatsoever.”

Descending the staircase in stony silence, they passed the gangling fellow, no longer with files under his arm, coming in the opposite direction. “Your shirt’s hanging out,” he said curtly to Max.

“No it isn’t,” Max fired back.

Elliott cast a puzzled glance behind him as they carried on down the stone steps. “What is that, code or something?”

Max let him stew in his ignorance.

“Jeez, there are some things about you Brits I’ll never understand.”

They emerged from the building into the dancing heat and the cyclopean glare of the sun. Elliott put on his sunglasses—he was very proud of his Polaroid sunglasses.

“Look, if you want to talk truth, come and see me tonight.”

“I can’t,” said Max. “I’m dining with Ralph at the mess in Mdina.”

“You call Maconochies stew and tack biscuits dining?”

“I’m hoping corned beef’s on the menu tonight.”

“How does grilled fish and a chilled bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet sound?”

“Chassagne-Montrachet?”

“You just have to know where to look.” Elliott grinned.

A shot of truth was an undeniable temptation. So was a glass or two of white burgundy.

“I can’t. I promised Ralph, and I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Maybe I’ll join you.”

“I’m sure you’d be welcome.”

“I’m detecting a lack of enthusiasm.”

“That’s because I’m sulking.”

Elliott smiled. “I’ll call you later, when you’re over it.”

“Yes, do that.”

Elliott made off across the courtyard before stopping and turning back.

“Don’t let them get you down,” he called. “Like my granddaddy used to say: ‘There’s more horses’ asses in the world than there is horses.’”

The very first thing Max did on returning to the Information Office was snatch up one of the phones on his desk. He twirled the handle and asked the operator to put him through to the 90th General Hospital at Mtarfa.

Freddie wasn’t back yet. The car had probably been held up by the raid developing over Ta’ Qali.

Max replaced the receiver and stared at the papers that Maria had laid out in prioritized piles for his perusal. There was no point in even trying to work his way through them. He was too distracted, his thoughts turning to the ordeal of the past hour, skipping among Iris’s betrayal, his roasting in the lieutenant governor’s office, and Elliott’s promise of some answers.

It was a while before he was able to bring any order to bear in his head. Something about the meeting had struck a false note at the time, and he now realized what it was. Assuming that they’d learned of Max’s interest in the deaths from Iris, then there was no way they could have known about the shoulder tab. But if that was the case, then what were the two mystery men doing at the meeting? They had the distinct whiff of military intelligence about them—hardly the types to get involved in such an affair, not unless they knew there was more at stake than just a couple of local girls dying in what might or might not be suspicious circumstances.

Colonel Gifford, on the other hand, had appeared genuinely shocked when presented with the shoulder tab. His face had betrayed all the signs of someone coming to terms with the dire ramifications of such a discovery.

So what was going on? Colonel Gifford was in the dark while the others knew more than they were letting on? And where did Elliott fit? In one or other of the camps, or somewhere in between?

The questions kept proliferating, and Max was beginning to wish he’d taken Elliott up on his offer of barbecued fish, burgundy, and a heart-to-heart, when the steady wail of the “Raiders Passed” siren sounded outside.

He took himself up to the roof, where he smoked a cigarette and watched the dense pall of dust hanging over Ta’ Qali slowly disperse on the breeze.

Down below in the courtyard a fretful Father Bilocca was doing his best to marshal a bunch of boys into an ordered line, oblivious to the obscene gestures and the faces being pulled whenever his back was turned.

“Is everything okay, sir?”

Max hadn’t heard Pemberton join him.

“Fine. Just dandy. Smoke?”

Pemberton took a cigarette, and Max lit it for him.

“I hear Rosamund came up trumps.”

“She certainly did. I even have my own bathroom, not that there’s any water in the pipes.”

Rosamund had found him digs in Saint Julian’s, living with the Copnalls. Their eighteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was a pale and pretty creature prone to blushing who worked in the naval cipher department at Fort Saint Angelo. Max could picture her state of agitation at having Pemberton living under the same roof. The same thought must surely have occurred to Rosamund.

“How’s Elizabeth?”

“She’s a fine pianist.”

It all sounded very Jane Austen: the daughter tickling the ivories for the benefit of the handsome house guest. Rosamund was definitely up to something, but he couldn’t see it yet.

“I had a shot at that piece for the Weekly Bulletin.”

Max took the sheet of typed text. “That was quick.”

“It probably shows.”

He was clearly eager for Max to cast an eye over it there and then.

“The length looks good. I’ll let you know.”

For want of anything better to do, he started to read the moment Pemberton had disappeared back down the stairwell.

He read it twice, trying to find fault with it, something, anything. The tone was spot on, muscular and defiant yet not too triumphalist. He didn’t play to the heroism of the Manchester boys working the Bofors gun—that spoke for itself—rather, he presented the young gunners as workers at the coal face, grinding out a slow but inexorable victory. The mining metaphor was a small stroke of genius. It resonated with danger and hardship and collective enterprise, and it carried with it the shared experience of a people who daily descended into the earth. The theme also permitted him to round off the piece with a comic touch. There were no coal mines on Malta, a detail that seemed to have escaped the notice of the Italians, who in the early days of the conflict had proudly announced the destruction of a Maltese coal mine by the Regia Aeronautica—still the cause of much hilarity across the island.

Pemberton had done well, more than well; the article was pitch-perfect. So why, then, did it leave Max cold? A few hours before, it would have had him racing downstairs to congratulate the author.

Pemberton would get his pat on the back, and the piece would go out in the Weekly Bulletin, but Max would know it for what it was: another lie peddled to the masses. They weren’t one happy family pulling together in adversity. His experience at the Cassars’ house had made that starkly clear to him.

He remembered something that Charles Headley, his former boss and mentor, had said to him soon after his arrival at the Information Office.

“You know what the great thing about our line of work is, old man? I’ll tell you, it’s very simple. A lie can make its way halfway round the world before the truth has a chance to put its boots on.”

There was probably no less truth in those words now than there had been at the time, but for once Max found himself calling into question the words’ central assumption—that the power of a lie was something to be admired and cherished.

How much angrier would those grieving women at the Cassars’ have been with him had they known the truth about Carmela’s death? The answer, he suspected, was that they would have been less angry.

Thanks to Lilian, he knew the Maltese well enough by now to say that they would at least have respected him for his honesty. They were an ancient people, a wise people. They had seen civilizations come and go around their island home, and yet they were still there, as they would always be, with their wry humor, their rough savoir faire, and their burning faith. Max and his kind were simply passing through. Maybe their hosts deserved a little more credit, a little more respect.

He could see where he was going with this, and he knew the reason why. He had just been insulted, intimidated, threatened with court-martial, even blackmailed. More than anything, it was the blackmail that angered him. Exploiting his friendship with Lilian to keep him in line was about as low as it got. So much for the happy family.

Feeling his hackles rising again, he lit another cigarette and did something he hadn’t done in a long while when caught in a quandary: he asked himself what his father’s advice would be to him.

The sun was at its zenith, and the heat rising in waves from the zinc roof was almost unbearable, but a small chill ran the length of Max’s spine when the answer came to him.

The town of Mtarfa lay scattered along the ridge just north of Mdina, its skyline dominated by the austere military architecture of the 90th General Hospital. The sprawling complex of wards and accommodation blocks had consumed the army barracks nearby to offer more than a thousand beds to the sick and wounded.