The Information Officer - Mark Mills

He hobbled his way to the low run of stone huts on the grounds near the east wing of the building. A slumbering doctor, not happy at being woken, directed him to Freddie’s digs two huts down.

Freddie wasn’t there, but his roommate was.

“You just missed him. He’s headed for the docks.”

“The docks?”

“To help with the wounded from the Welshman. She hit a couple of mines on her way in.”

Nearing the hospital, Max had passed a small fleet of ambulances racing down the hill in the opposite direction. This put him no more than fifteen minutes behind, if he stepped on it.

“I’d keep well clear of the docks, if I were you. They’re sure to have a pop at her come sunup.”

As Max hurried back through the grounds to his motorcycle, the first sliver of the new sun appeared out of the eastern sea, illuminating his path.

At first, he thought the Welshman’s precious cargo must be alight. A dense gray-green cloud was rising over the dockyards, spreading like some malevolent fog. He slowed the motorcycle, listening for the accompanying crackle of exploding ammunition, but heard nothing. A smoke screen, he realized, put up to throw off the aim of the enemy bombers. Moments later, he was swallowed up by it.

Chaos ruled along French Creek, much of it caused by the swirling smoke belching from the generators. With visibility reduced to a matter of yards, Max abandoned the motorcycle and set off on foot, searching for the ambulances. The unloading was already under way, and the quayside was a logjam of trucks waiting to bear off the cargo. Men moved through the miasma, appearing and fading like ghosts to a chorus of muffled shouts and orders. These increased in volume as the Welshman loomed into view, long and trim and battle-worn, with streaks of rust staining her flaking paint. She had her own cranes for loading, which was fortunate. Those on the quayside stood broken and twisted like crippled giants.

Max barged a path up the gangway onto the ship. He collared a crewman and asked for the sick bay. A peculiar stillness descended on him as he made his way belowdecks. He felt utterly divorced from the frenetic activity unfolding around him, focused on the imminent confrontation.

Freddie wasn’t in the sick bay, but a man on a bunk with a big bandage on his head mumbled some directions to the forward dressing station where the wounded were being tended to.

A couple of them hadn’t made it. They lay covered in blankets in a corner of the room. The others were on stretchers, patched up and ready to be moved. Freddie was in the thick of things, administering an injection of morphia to a howling sailor whose thigh was swaddled in blood-soaked rags.

Was that how he did it? Was that how he subdued the girls, with pharmaceuticals?

Freddie seemed to sense Max’s thoughts, turning as he got to his feet.

“My God, Max, what are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Hardly the time or the place.”

Freddie gestured the waiting orderlies forward. “Okay, let’s get them out of here.”

Max could only look on as Freddie marshaled his men, leading the party of stretcher-bearers through the belly of the ship. Max brought up the rear, doing his best to keep Freddie in his sights.

The air-raid siren heralded their appearance on the upper deck. This gave them seven minutes at most before the bombs would begin to fall. Somewhere up ahead, lost in the blanket of smoke, Max heard Freddie call, “Clear the gangway! Make way for the wounded!”

Max imagined Freddie slipping away in the man-made fog, but he was waiting at the bottom of the gangway, seeing the party safely off the ship, pointing a path through the torrent of men and clattering carts loaded with crates.

“Where is she, Freddie?”

“What happened? You look terrible.”

“I know it’s you.”

“And you’re not making a whole lot of sense.”

Freddie turned to follow the train of stretcher-bearers across the quayside. Max held him back by the arm. Freddie shook himself free, angry now.

“I don’t know what’s got into you, but there are men there who need attention. So—if you don’t mind—I’ve got a job to do.”

Max hadn’t spotted the ambulances on the quayside because they were parked in the streets of Senglea, just back from the docks. Senglea was a ghost town, long since evacuated by order of the governor. If anything, the smoke sat thicker there than on the quayside, undisturbed by the urgent passage of men.

There were four ambulances in all, but only three were required for the wounded men. Freddie sent them on their way before turning his attention back to Max. They were alone now, and Freddie was still angry.

“Okay, what the bloody hell’s going on?”

Don’t be fooled by the indignation, Max told himself. You’re dealing with a practiced liar, a dangerous man.

“Where’s Lilian?”

“Lilian?”

“Tell me where she is!”

“How the hell should I know?”

Reaching for his gun seemed the right thing to do. Taking his eyes off Freddie for a split second as he did so was definitely the wrong thing.

The fist caught him square in the mouth, snapping his head back. His knees buckled and the world seemed to recede around him. He was dimly aware of the air-raid siren and the taste of blood in his mouth and the sound of an engine starting. He forced himself back to consciousness in time to see the remaining ambulance disappear into the smoke.

He stumbled off in pursuit, pulling the revolver from its holster. That’s when the Grand Harbour barrage opened up. It hadn’t been heard in months, not on this scale, not since the March convoy. The restrictions on ammunition had clearly been lifted, and guns were letting off from every quarter. The shattering cacophony didn’t assault just the ears but all the senses. The street shivered before Max’s eyes; his legs felt leaden, numbed to the bone by the reverberations.

He didn’t hear the ambulance until it was almost on him, materializing in a moment, its blunt nose bearing down on him head-on.

He hurled himself to the left, landing hard in a pile of rubble. The ambulance veered to crush him, and it might have succeeded if a large chunk of stonework hadn’t deflected it from its course. The front wheel struck the block with a sickening crunch, and the vehicle reared up, flashing him its dark belly as it passed over him, teetering on two wheels.

Because of the smoke, he didn’t see it roll over, but he heard the sound, even above the thunder of the barrage and the scream of diving Stukas.

He groped for the revolver among the rubble, pushed himself to his feet, and set off after the ambulance.

The vehicle lay on its side, its engine still running. He didn’t bother to check the driver’s compartment because he saw Freddie staggering off through the smoke. Max wasn’t capable of breaking into a sprint, but he did his best under the circumstances and was closing in when Freddie cut right, up some steps.

They led to a church, or what was left of it. A large section of the front façade was gone, and the entrance doors hung drunkenly from their hinges. A small voice told Max to holster his weapon before entering the building. He ignored it.

Freddie had made no attempt to hide. The roof had collapsed into the nave, and he was scrabbling his way toward the back of the building over the twisted beams and broken tiles. Max fired a warning shot, the report echoing off the walls and stopping Freddie in his tracks. He stood upright, turning to face his pursuer.

Outside, the crumping barrage began to fade, the first phase of the raid over. Max picked his way through the rubble. Within the four walls of the church, the smoke seemed to hang in the air like incense at a Catholic Mass.

“Is she alive? Tell me she’s alive.”

“She’s alive.”

“Where is she?”

“In a basement.”

“Where?”

“Within a two-mile radius.”

They both knew what that meant. Grand Harbour’s toothy huddle of cities and towns was reputed to be the most built-over place in Europe.

“You’ll never find her, I can promise you that, not if you pull that trigger. She’ll die a slow death, a horrible death, the worst kind. Starvation and dehydration—is that what you want for her?”

“Why, Freddie?”

“Why?” He gave a short laugh. “My God, that’s a question and a half. How long have you got?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t expect you to.”

“We were friends.”

“You mean we aren’t anymore?”

He seemed almost to be enjoying himself, untroubled by the gun leveled at his chest.

“Tell me where she is.”

“You think you can make me with that popgun? Go ahead, try. Better still, don’t bother. There’s no point. I’ll never tell you, not you, not anyone.” He spread his arms wide. “Here before God I give you my word.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“You don’t know me,” said Freddie darkly. “It’ll be my little victory. Go on, do it. She’s dead anyway.”

Max lowered the gun sharply, aiming at Freddie’s leg, his finger tightening around the trigger.

A shot rang out around the church and Max was sent reeling, as if clubbed in the arm. He stumbled and fell, gripping his shoulder, feeling the blood, the shock giving way to a searing pain and the vague realization that he’d just been shot.

Elliott stepped into view from behind a pillar—his gun, his eyes, trained on Max.

“Is he alone?” Elliott asked.

Max was on the point of replying when Elliott turned to Freddie and demanded, “Is he alone?”

“I think so,” replied Freddie, slowly coming out of a crouch.

“You think so, or you know so?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

Freddie’s confusion was becoming more evident with each response.

Keeping his gun on Max, Elliott recovered the revolver from the ground before backing away.

“What are you doing here?” Freddie asked, bewildered.

“My job,” said Elliott. “Covering your back. I work for Tacitus too.”

Tacitus? The significance of the word was lost on Max, and for a moment the same seemed true for Freddie. But then he began to laugh.

“You think it’s funny? You see me laughing? I wouldn’t have to be here if you hadn’t screwed up.”

“Elliott?” said Max pathetically.

“Shut up.”

Elliott turned back to Freddie and nodded toward the main doors. “Get out of here.”

Freddie edged his way past Elliott. “What are you going to do with him?”

“Use your imagination.”

“Goodbye, Max,” said Freddie.

The words sounded almost heartfelt.

Max stared at them both, incapable of speech.

Elliott advanced on him.

“Elliott …,” he pleaded.

“Lie down.”

Max kicked out with his feet, trying to keep him at bay.

It couldn’t end like this. It wasn’t possible.

His efforts to defend himself were rewarded with a crippling boot to the solar plexus. Gasping for breath, he looked up at Elliott, vaguely aware of Freddie—a dim shape in the smoke, watching from near the entrance.

“I’m sorry,” said Elliott, dropping to one knee and placing the muzzle of his revolver against Max’s temple. “But as the old saying goes, ‘It is appointed unto man once to die.’”

The words chimed with some hazy memory. He knew that they had made him laugh at the time, but he couldn’t remember why. Something to do with snow and an old man …

He was still groping for the details when Elliott pulled the trigger.

LONDON

May 1951

“SHALL I POUR?” SAID ELLIOTT, REACHING FOR THE WINE bottle.

“Why not?”

Elliott filled their glasses before raising his own in a toast. He took a moment to settle on one he was happy with.

“To all those who didn’t make it.”

“All those who didn’t make it.”

They clinked glasses tentatively, as if the weight of their shared history might shatter the crystal.

“They told me you didn’t make it.”

“I know,” said Elliott. “Remind me—how did I die?”

“You went down in a plane off the French coast,” replied Max.

“I hope it was quick.”

“They said Freddie died in the same crash.”

“What else did they say?”

“Is he alive?”

The idea that Freddie might still be walking the planet somewhere tightened his stomach.

“Not unless he sprouted wings.” Elliott paused briefly, lowering his eyes. “I threw him out of a Lodestar over the Bay of Biscay.”

“You threw him out of a plane?”

“You make it sound easier than it was. He fought me like a tiger all the way.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s why I’m here. What do you want to know?”

“I thought you were a German agent.”

Elliott rolled his eyes. “Jeez, they really didn’t tell you anything, did they? I’m beginning to understand the frosty reception.”

It was true, they had told Max almost nothing. In their efforts to hush the whole thing up, they’d flown him off the island the moment he’d been fit to travel. There’d been a desk job waiting for him back in London at the Ministry of Information, but he’d recognized it for what it was: a bribe to keep him quiet and onside while seeing out the war with some modicum of respectability.

“But you shot me.”

“Only cos you were about to shoot him in the leg, and I couldn’t trust you not to hit an artery. I needed him alive.”

“What, so you could throw him out of a plane?”

Elliott shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

“Why?”

Elliott pulled a black hardback notebook from his jacket pocket and laid it on the table. It was old and scuffed.

“It’s all in there. Everything. Going back years. He started young. Freddie Lambert was the sickest sonofabitch I ever came across, and I’ve been around the block a few times since Malta. I haven’t lost a minute’s sleep over what I did. He went out that door screaming like a stuck pig, and that’s exactly what he deserved.”

“Judge, jury, and executioner?”

Elliott slid the notebook across the table toward Max. “Read it first. And when you’re done, burn it. You’ll want to.”

“Why did you want him alive?”

Elliott lit another cigarette before replying. “There’s only one thing more valuable than an agent, and that’s a double agent, assuming you can be sure of his duplicity.”

“You knew he’d killed three girls and you were still happy to work with him?”

“Not exactly dancing a jig, but nothing beats feeding the enemy what you want them to hear. Yes, I knew what he’d done. I also knew what he could do for us. My job demands a certain pragmatism. Not everyone has the stomach for it.”

According to Elliott, the British authorities on the island hadn’t been happy with the idea, and it had made for tension between him and Malta Command.