The Information Officer - Mark Mills

Elliott gave a little shrug. “You wrote us out of your history of the last war, and you’ll do the same with this one. But the truth is, without us you’re screwed; with us, you stand a chance. A bold statement, I know.”

“And some might say an arrogant one.”

“Now, that’s one area where you beat us hands down. You’re the only people in the world who could turn Dunkirk into a victory—a mass retreat, for Christ’s sake!”

“I suppose.”

“What is it about you Brits and your constant refusal to know when you’re beaten? Don’t get me wrong, I admire you for it. I mean, last month, when the Penelope was in port for repairs, you remember?”

How could anyone forget? The Germans had hurled everything they’d had at the damaged cruiser. Day after day the Stukas had come to finish her off, reducing the dockside to a mesh of craters. The ship’s quarterdeck became known as the “rock garden,” and when she finally slipped away under darkness to Alexandria, there were more than two thousand wooden pegs in her, stopping up the shrapnel holes and earning her the nickname HMS Porcupine.

“I got caught down there one morning during a raid. It was bedlam, like nothing I’d ever seen, and right in the middle of it the ship’s company started singing. Singing, for Christ’s sake, to keep the spirits of the gunners up! I don’t get you guys, I really don’t.”

“So why did they pick you for the job?”

“I asked for the posting.”

“Regretting it yet?” Max inquired with a faint smile.

“Things are a bit hotter than I’d hoped, but hey, look around you….” He spread his hands. “Nine miles below hell, it ain’t.”

Elliott flipped the fish on the grille.

“Why Malta?” Max asked.

“Because we’re making history here.”

“Not that they don’t have enough of it already.”

“This will be right up there with the best of it. The war can turn on what happens here.”

“You’ve been speaking to Hugh.”

“Hugh’s a romantic, but he also happens to be right. Malta saved Europe once before, and it might just do it again. You won’t know this, but Mandalay fell to the Japs a couple of days back. Burma’s as good as gone, and they’re coming at India through Ceylon. If Egypt falls to Rommel, there’s nothing to stop the enemy linking up. They’ll cut the world in half and lay their hands on all that oil in the Middle East. If that happens, well, I know which horse my money’s on. Egypt has to hold out, and that’s where we fit in—this dot of an island in the middle of nowhere, so easy to ignore.”

“You call this being ignored? Every day for the past God-knows-how-many months they’ve dropped the same tonnage of bombs on us as they did on Coventry.”

“Field Marshal Kesselring’s no fool. Far from it,” conceded Elliott. “He knows the importance of Malta. But does he have Hitler’s ear? Because in the end, that’s what counts.”

“None of it’s going to matter when they invade.”

“They’re not going to invade.”

“I’m so glad you told me,” Max replied, with casual sarcasm.

“I mean it. The invasion’s off.”

“Off?”

“Put back. But that’s enough. Once the new Spitfires get here, it’s dead and done for. This was their one chance, and it looks like Hitler’s made the same mistake again. He should have invaded you guys two years ago. July 1940. That was his moment, and he missed it. This time, his big mistake was listening to Rommel. Rommel thinks he can get to Cairo, Malta or no Malta. But Rommel’s not an administrator; he’s a tactician—and a good one, if only because he’s unorthodox and therefore hard to read. Logistics like supply lines are beneath his dignity; it’s quartermaster stuff. He takes for granted he’ll get whatever he needs, and right now he is getting it. But if we gain air superiority over this island, then the Wellingtons and Blenheims will start flying again from Luqa, and he’ll know what it’s like to feel the pinch. Maybe he’ll take Tobruk—odds are he will, in my book—but Cairo’s a step too far.”

“Anything else I should know while you’re at it?”

Max intended the question as a joke.

“Depends if you can keep a secret or not,” replied Elliott, lighting a cigarette. “The governor’s about to be relieved.”

“Dobbie?”

“That’s impressive—the information officer knows the name of his commander in chief.”

Max was genuinely shocked. Dobbie was—well, he wasn’t just part of the furniture, he was Malta itself.

“Why?”

“He’s lost the confidence of his service chiefs, and they’ve started sneaking to teacher. Personally, I blame the command structure you’ve put in place. It’s a goddamn shambles. You’ve got a governor who’s answerable to the colonial secretary and to the War Office, and a general officer commanding who can’t coordinate the defense of the island because your naval and air force commanders report directly to their C-in-Cs in Cairo.”

“When you put it like that …”

“It is like that, and Dobbie’s taking the fall for it. I’d play the ‘poor health’ ticket if I were you, if only because there’s some truth in it. Oh, and better get drafting your piece. It’s going to happen soon, any day now.”

“In the middle of all this?”

“No point in hanging about once the decision’s been made. Thanks for everything, amigo, and adios.”

“Who’s replacing him?”

Elliott smiled. “You don’t expect me to hand you everything on a plate, do you?”

“No, although a piece of fish would be nice, before it’s cooked to buggery.”

They ate the fish with a simple salad of tomatoes so sweet that it suddenly made sense why they were classified as a fruit rather than a vegetable.

“I’ve been doing all the talking,” said Elliott. “Time for a bit of quid pro quo.”

“You really think I have anything up my sleeve to match what I’ve just heard?”

“I was talking about you. Tell me something about Max Chadwick that I don’t already know.”

“There’s a whole load of stuff you don’t know.”

“Don’t be so sure; I’ve read your file.”

“There’s a file on me?”

“You’re the information officer in a key theater of war. What do you think? I even know the name of your housemaster at Wellington.”

“Old Arsebreath?”

Elliott laughed. “That’s a level of detail it doesn’t go into.”

It came pretty close, though. Apparently Max had been described as “coming from a good family.”

“Well, that’s rubbish, for a start,” he protested. “My great-grandfather made a lot of money sending coal miners to their deaths. His son was a drunk, a bully, and a bigamist who never did an honest day’s work in his life.”

“A bigamist?”

“Well, maybe not technically, but he led a double life with another woman and other children.”

“And his son?”

“My father? He’s proof that the apple doesn’t always fall close to the tree.”

“Good on him,” said Elliott. “And that’s from a man who also had a bully for a father.”

Elliott already knew that Max’s mother had died when he was young. He didn’t know that she’d died in labor, giving birth to Max.

“There—something you didn’t know about me.”

“Doesn’t make the grade. I want something more personal.”

Max thought on it. Then he told Elliott about the letter his mother had written him.

It was a common enough practice, certainly for women like his mother, whose narrow hips weren’t best suited for bringing babies into the world. The doctor had warned her that it would be a difficult birth, that she might have to choose between herself and the child. She had chosen Max, and she had survived long enough to hold him in her arms before the loss of blood had killed her. Sometimes he saw himself spread-eagled on her chest, worn out from all the effort, as she slowly slipped away into oblivion. That’s how it had been, apparently; his father had told him so.

His father hadn’t told him about the letter she’d written to him, her unborn child—well, not until Max was sixteen. He’d found it long before then, though, hidden in his father’s desk, biding its time. The desk had always held a deep fascination for him, with its inlaid mother-of-pearl decoration and its drawers and pigeonholes stuffed with detritus from the world of adults. It was an irresistible Aladdin’s cave for a young boy, and whenever the coast was clear, he would go and poke around in it.

He found the letter tucked away with some other correspondence in a leather portfolio. It wasn’t sealed, and at first he was unsure what he was reading. Not long after, when he was packed off to boarding school near Oxford, he took the letter with him, a guard against loneliness. It had worked. The disembodied voice of his mother—recorded in her distinctive handwriting, with its looping p’s and g’s and y’s—had blunted his sense of isolation. She’d been with him, watching over him.

It was a long letter, and in it she spelled out the story of her life, everything from her childhood in the countryside near Versailles to the comical first encounter with his father in the lobby of the apartment building in Paris. She went to great pains to say that he (although she used the neutral “you” throughout) was the product of a fine and fulsome love affair, and she signed off with a line of French that made no sense to him whatsoever.

Had his French teacher been some creaky old chap in a tweed jacket, he probably wouldn’t have sought him out and asked for a translation. Mademoiselle Leckford, as Lucinda was known, had offered an altogether different prospect. She was young and pretty, and all the boys were a little in love with her. Max copied out the line on a piece of paper, which he presented to her after a class:Tu aurais été ma vie

She scrutinized it a moment before asking, “Where does it come from?” Seeing that the question unsettled him, she quickly added, “You don’t have to say.”

But he told her anyway. It was good to have the excuse to tell someone about his mother and the letter she had written him, especially someone like Mademoiselle Leckford.

“It means …,” she said softly, peering down at him with a strange look in her eyes. “It means, ‘You would have been my life.’”

“Oh.”

She turned away, staring out the window. “Now run along, Chadwick.”

Only later did he learn that she had turned her back on him because she hadn’t wanted him to see the tears building in her eyes.

Of course, the pity felt by an adult for a ten-year-old boy could hardly be dignified with the name of friendship, but it had nonetheless been the start of something enduring and important for both of them.

“I still see her,” said Max, speaking of Lucinda. “And maybe I’m still a bit in love with her.”

“That’ll do me,” Elliott replied. “I like that. It’s a good story. Very revealing.”

“If you say so.”

“Oh, I do.”

Only when the plates were cleared away did they broach the subject they both knew they’d been avoiding, and it was Elliott who took the initiative.

“Recovered from the meeting yesterday?”

“Oh, that’s what it was. Seemed more like a court-martial to me.”

“From where I was sitting too.”

“Where exactly were you sitting?”

Elliott leaned back in his chair. “Put it this way: I can see both sides.”

“You think I can’t? You know what I did when Freddie first showed me the shoulder tab?”

“No, but I can guess. You thought about getting rid of it.”

Max was momentarily thrown by the response. “And what would you have done?”

“Same as you, probably—thought about it, changed my mind, snooped around a bit. The only difference is, I wouldn’t have got caught.”

“Well, bully for you.”

Elliott shrugged the comment aside. “I’m trained for that kind of thing. You’re an architect with a gift for writing the kind of upbeat bullshit that people want to hear at times like this.”

“If you’re trying to put me in my place, you’re doing a pretty good job—better than Colonel Gifford, even.”

“Gifford’s about as subtle as an anvil. I told him you couldn’t be strong-armed.”

“Well, he proved you wrong.”

“Did he? I doubt it. My guess is you’ve thought about nothing else since then … and what you’re going to do about it now.”

“What do you care?” said Max warily.

“You think I’m completely without principles?”

It was a typical play from Elliott, answering a question with a question. Nevertheless, Max reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Elliott took it from him, angling it at the light from the candles.

Max had scribbled three questions on it: Where does he find them? Where did he take Carmela Cassar? Why does he do it? He had put a line through the last of these.

“Interesting,” said Elliott. “But why cross out the last one?”

“Because it’s imponderable. Who knows why he does it? Some sick urge buried away deep inside him.”

“Him?” asked Elliott. “Why not them?”

The thought hadn’t occurred to Max. “I just assumed …”

“Well, don’t. Wethern’s Law of Suspended Judgment: assumption is the mother of all screwups.” Elliott pointed to the third item on Max’s list. “For all you know, this is the key to it all. Don’t dismiss it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Jeez, your ignorance is refreshing. I’m saying, what if he’s doing it for reasons other than self-gratification? What if he’s looking to destabilize the situation here? What if he’s working for the enemy and the whole thing is one big setup, all part of a plan to turn the Maltese against you, to break the special relationship?”

“Now you’re sounding like Ralph. He sees spies and fifth columnists everywhere.”

“Ralph is right to be on his guard. They are here. I can tell you that for nothing.”

It was a big statement, and one that raised more questions, but Max tried to remain focused on the issue.

“Freddie said there was evidence of sexual interference.”

“Ah …”

“So either this person—or persons—takes his job very seriously, or he’s getting some kind of pleasure from it.”

“Maybe both.”

“Now you’re reaching.”

“It’s possible, though.”

“Anything’s possible under what’s-his-name’s rule. It’s okay to make assumptions if they’re based on evidence.”

“What evidence? One trip to the sub base?” Elliott paused to allow his words to sink in. “I called Tommy Ravilious this afternoon. Don’t worry, I played my cards close. He still thinks the sun shines out of your skinny fundament.”

“Thank God for that. I can sleep easy tonight.”

“I don’t know,” said Elliott, glancing up at the cloudless sky. “That’s a ‘bomber’s moon.’ I wouldn’t bank on any of us sleeping easy tonight.” Looking back at Max, he asked, “So? Do the dates match with when the Upstanding was in port?”