The Information Officer - Mark Mills

Pemberton explained (with a degree of candor he would soon learn to curb) that he was sick of being shunted from pillar to post under the protective tutelage of his uncle, a bigwig in the War Office.

“I should warn you, he won’t be best pleased.”

“Then you can tell him that Malta has already saved your life,” replied Max. “The seaplane you should have flown out on last night is missing.”

“Missing?”

“Brought down near Pantelleria, we think. They have the radio direction finding and a squadron of 109s stationed there. We won’t know for sure until we hear what Rome Radio has to say on the matter. They talk a lot of rubbish, of course, but we’ve grown pretty adept at panning for the small truths that matter to us.”

Pemberton stared forlornly at his cup of coffee before looking up. “I had lunch with the pilot yesterday. Douglas. I knew him from Alex. Douglas Pitt.”

Max had never heard of Pitt, but then the seaplane boys at Kalafrana Bay rarely mingled, not even with the other pilots. They were always on the go, running the two-thousand-mile gauntlet between Alexandria and Gibraltar at opposite ends of the Mediterranean, breaking the journey in Malta—the lone Allied outpost in a hostile Nazi-controlled sea.

“You’ll get used to it.”

Pemberton’s eyes locked on to Max, demanding an explanation.

“Look, I’d be lying if I said casualty rates weren’t running pretty high right now. People, they … well, they’re here one day, gone the next.”

When Pemberton spoke, there was a mild note of irritation in his tone. “That doesn’t mean you have to stop remembering them.”

Well, actually it does, thought Max. Because if you spent your time thinking about the ones who’d copped it, you wouldn’t be able to function. In his first year he had written four heartfelt letters to the families of the three men and one woman he had known well enough to care for. He hadn’t written any such letters in the past year.

“No, you’re right, of course,” he said.

Pemberton would find his own path through it, assuming he survived long enough to navigate one.

“So, tell me, what do you know about Malta?”

“I know about Faith, Hope, and Charity.”

Everyone knew about Faith, Hope, and Charity; the newspapers back home had made sure of that, enshrining the names of the three Gloster Gladiators in the popular imagination. The story had “courage in the face of adversity” written all over it, just what the home readership had required back in the summer of 1940. While Hitler had skipped across northern Europe as though it were his private playground, on a small island in the Mediterranean three obsolescent biplanes had been bravely pitting themselves against the full might of Italy’s Regia Aeronautica, wrenched around the heavens by pilots barely qualified to fly them.

And so the myth was born. With a little assistance.

“Actually, there were six of them.”

“Six?”

“Gloster Gladiators. And a bunch more held back for spares.”

Pemberton frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Three makes for a better story, and there were never more than three in the air at any one time, the others being unserviceable.”

The names had been coined and then quietly disseminated by Max’s predecessor, their biblical source designed to chime with the fervent Catholicism of the Maltese.

“It’s part of what we do at the Information Office.”

“You mean propaganda?”

“That’s not a word we like to use.”

“I was told you were independent.”

“We are. Ostensibly.”

Max detected a worrying flicker of youthful righteousness in the other man’s gaze. Six months back, he might have retreated and allowed Pemberton to figure it out for himself, but with Malta’s fortunes now hanging by a thread, there was no place for such luxuries. He needed Pemberton firmly in the saddle from day one.

“Look, none of us is in the business of dragging people’s spirits down. The Huns and Eye-ties have cornered that market.”

He manufactured a smile, which Pemberton politely mirrored.

“You’re evidently a bright young man, so I’m going to save you some time and tell you the way it is.”

He opened with a history lesson, partly because Pemberton’s file made mention of a respectable second-class degree in that subject from Worcester College, Oxford.

It was best, Max explained, to take the stuff in the newspapers back home about “loyal little Malta” with a pinch of circumspection. At the outbreak of hostilities with Italy in June 1940, when that sawdust Caesar Mussolini threw his hand in with Hitler, Malta was a far more divided island than the British press had ever acknowledged. The Maltese might have offered themselves up to the British Empire back in 1800, but almost a century and a half on, there were many who wanted out of the relationship, their hearts set on independence from the mother country. Seated across the table from these nationalists in the Council of Government were the constitutionalists, defenders of the colonial cross. Not only were they superior in number, but they had the backing of the Strickland family, who effectively controlled the Maltese press, putting out two dailies: the Times of Malta and its vernacular sister paper, Il-Berqa.

The war had played into the hands of the Strickland loyalists. The first Italian bombs to rain down onto the island severely dented the affinity felt by many of the Maltese for their nearest neighbors, a short hop to the north across the blue waters of the Mediterranean. But neither were the Maltese fools—far from it. They could spot a lie at a hundred paces, and many were wary of the Strickland rags, which they knew to be slanted toward the British establishment.

Hence the Information Office, whose Daily Situation Report and Weekly Bulletin offered up for public consumption a cocktail of cold, factual, and apparently unbiased news. In essence, the Daily Situation Report was a scorecard. How many of their bombs had found their marks? And how many planes had both they and we lost in the course of that day’s raids? There were gray areas, of course, not least of all the often-conflicting claims made by the RAF and the artillery. In the wild confusion of a heavy raid on Grand Harbour, who could say with absolute certainty that a diving Stuka had been brought down by ack-ack fire and not the Hurricane on its tail?

Mediating such disputes had ruined many a pleasant evening for Max, all thanks to the late situation report—an update to the five o’clock report—which he was expected to put out at ten forty-five P.M. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d been summoned to the phone in the middle of an enjoyable dinner party to listen to the tedious bleatings of HQ Royal Artillery and RAF Intelligence, each so eager to stake their claim to another precious scalp.

Max thought it best to hold this information back from Pemberton. He certainly didn’t explain that the main reason he’d lobbied the lieutenant governor’s office for an assistant to take over the editorship of the Daily Situation Report was so that his own evenings might remain uncluttered by such irritations.

Instead, he played up his own onerous workload, spelling out in some detail the other activities of the Information Office: the monitoring of enemy radio stations in the Mediterranean; the translation of BBC broadcasts and speeches by the governor into Maltese; and the production of light entertainments, which, along with the relentless stream of news items, were put out over the island’s Rediffusion system.

“Gilding the pill,” said Pemberton distractedly, when Max was finished.

“Nicely put.”

“But not propaganda.”

“Perish the thought.”

“Well, not ostensibly.”

“Never ostensibly. Before the week’s out, I’ll be up in front of the finance committee fighting to justify the additional expense to the department of one Edward Pemberton.”

No lie there. Max would have to make his case, then the Maltese representatives would haul him over the coals, and then they would agree to his demands. In its own small way, this predictable little theater, played out with tedious regularity, laid bare one of the grander themes of colonial administration: allow them a voice, then tell them what to say.

“I think I get the picture.”

“Excellent. Now, where are you staying?”

“The Osbourne.”

“We’ll have to find you more permanent digs. There’s a drinks party later. It would pay for you to show your face. We might be able to rustle up something for you.”

“Sounds good.”

“If you don’t mind riding pillion, I can pick you up around five.”

“You have a motorcycle?”

“Technically, it’s three motorcycles, held together with wire and willpower.”

Pemberton flashed his film-star smile.

Yes, thought Max, Rosamund will be most pleased with her unexpected guest.

She was.

Her hand even went to her hair when she greeted them at the door, something it had never done for Max.

The house sat near the top of Prince of Wales Road in Sliema, just shy of the police station. It was typical of many Maltese homes in that the unassuming façade gave no indication of the treasures that lay behind it. The wooden entrance door was flanked by two windows, with three more windows on the upper floor united by a stone balcony overhanging the street. Perfectly symmetrical, the front of the house was unadorned except for a brass nameplate set in the white stucco—Villa Marija—and a small glazed terra-cotta roundel above the entrance, which showed a disconsolate-looking Virgin clutching her child.

Rosamund was wearing an oyster-gray satin evening gown, and once her hand had tugged self-consciously at her auburn locks, Max made the introductions. Rosamund offered a slender hand, drawing Pemberton inside as they shook, which permitted her to fire an approving look over his shoulder at Max as she did so.

The entrance hall was cool and cavernous, impeccably decked out with antique furniture. A Persian rug sprawled at their feet, and a handful of colorful impressionistic paintings hung from the walls. Pemberton looked mildly stunned.

“Tell me, Edward, you aren’t by any chance related to Adrian Pemberton, are you?”

“If he lives in Chepstow Crescent, then he’s my cousin, I’m afraid.”

“Why should you be afraid?”

“You obviously haven’t heard.”

“No, but I can’t wait.”

She hooked her arm through his, steering him across the drawing room toward the large walled garden at the rear of the house.

“Has he done something terribly wicked? I do hope he’s done something terribly wicked. It would bear out all my suspicions about him.”

Max dumped his scuffed leather shoulder bag onto the divan and followed them outside.

Rosamund had three rules when it came to her “little get-togethers.” The first was that she personally greeted everyone at the door. The second was that it was unforgivably rude to speculate about the source of the copious quantities of spirits on offer, when it was barely possible to locate a bottle of beer on the island. The third rule stated quite simply that there was to be no “talking shop” after the first hour, to which end she would ring a small handbell at the appointed time.

“All week I get nothing from Hugh but barrages and Bofors and Junker 88s. For a few small hours, I’d like to talk about something else, and I’m sure you all would too.”

Hugh was her husband, a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Artillery. A mathematician of some standing before the war, Hugh had worked out the intricate calculations behind the coordinated box barrage over Grand Harbour—an impressive feat, and one that had seen him elevated to the position of senior staff officer at RA HQ. Though he was in his early forties, he looked considerably older, which played to his private passion—the theater—making him eligible for a host of more senior roles, which he scooped up uncontested every time the Malta Amateur Dramatic Club put on one of their plays. He was always trying to get Max to audition for some token part to make up the numbers: butler, chauffeur, monosyllabic house guest.

While Rosamund abandoned her first rule in order to parade her new catch around the garden, Max made for the drinks table in the grateful shade beneath one of the orange trees. True to form, there was no one to pour the drinks. It wouldn’t be good for relations if the Maltese staff were to witness the excesses of their brothers in suffering. Max was concocting a whisky and soda when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“‘Ah, thou honeysuckle villain.’”

“Henry the Fourth,” Max responded, without turning.

“Not good enough, and you know it.”

Max swiveled to face Hugh, whose forehead, as ever, was beaded with perspiration. It was an old and slightly tedious game of theirs. Hugh liked to toss quotations at him, usually Shakespeare, but not always.

“King Henry the Fourth, Part II,” said Max.

“Damn.”

“Mistress Quickly to Falstaff. I studied it at school.”

“Double damn. That makes three in a row.”

“But only twenty-two out of thirty-eight.”

Hugh gave a little chortle. “Glad to see I’m not the only one keeping score.”

“Speaking of scores, congratulations on your century.”

“Yes, quite a month. One hundred and two, all told.”

“One hundred and one; 249 Squadron are claiming the Stuka over Ta’ Qali yesterday afternoon.”

“Bloody typical.”

“Let them have it. Their heads are down right now.”

“Not for much longer.”

Max hesitated. “So the rumors are true.”

“What’s that, old man?”

“They’re sending us another batch of Spitfires.”

“Couldn’t possibly say—it’s top secret.”

“Then I’ll just have to ask Rosamund.”

Hugh laughed. His wife had a reputation for being “genned up” on everything. No news, however trivial, slipped through Rosamund’s net. Given her connections across the services, it was quite possible that she knew near on as much as the governor himself. The fact that she had cultivated a close friendship with His Excellency—or “H.E.,” as she insisted on referring to him—no doubt boosted her store of knowledge.

“I’ll be right back,” said Hugh, grabbing a bottle. “Damsel in distress over by the bougainvillea. Trevor Kimberley’s better half. A bit on the short side, but easy on the eye. And thirsty.”

“We like them thirsty.”

“‘Thou honeyseed rogue.’”

“King Henry the Fourth, Part II.”

“Doesn’t count,” said Hugh, disappearing with the bottle.

Max turned back to the drinks table and topped off his glass. Hugh was right; April had been quite a month—the darkest yet. The artillery might have knocked down more than a hundred enemy aircraft, but that was largely due to the more frequent and promiscuous raids. The figures were in, and the Luftwaffe had flown a staggering ninety-six hundred sorties against the island in April, almost double the number for March, which itself had shattered all previous records. The lack of any meaningful competition from the boys in blue had also contributed to the artillery’s impressive bag. There weren’t many pilots who’d logged more than a few hours of operational flying time all month, thanks to the glaring lack of serviceable Spitfires and Hurricanes. Even when the airfields at Ta’ Qali, Luqa, and Hal Far pooled their resources, you were still looking at less than ten planes. The pilots were used to taking to the air with the odds mightily stacked against them—things had never been any different on Malta, and you rarely heard the pilots complain—but what could a handful of patched-up, battle-scarred crates really hope to achieve against a massed raid of Junker 88s with a covering fighter force of sixty?