Mark Mills - The Information Officer

“Traverse left … Down two … Lateral zero.”

Max was close enough to hear the bombardier’s shouts even above the scream of the diving Stuka.

“On!” yelled the layers almost simultaneously.

“Engage.”

“Fire!”

Pom-pom-pom-pom …

Pom-pom-pom-pom …

The stream of shells ascended toward the plane, bursting in its path, but not hitting it. A moment later, the pilot unloaded his twin bombs.

Max watched, mesmerized, as the two dark objects fell earthward, his brain processing their trajectory and struggling to make the calculation. Bang on target? Or a touch too short?

The gunners appeared oblivious to the menace, their minds on other matters. The Bofors’s barrel swung round to pick up the Stuka as it came out of its dive.

“Engage. …”

Max didn’t hear the command to fire. It was drowned out by a mighty explosion that shook the balcony beneath his feet and sent him reaching for the rail to steady himself.

The bombs had fallen short, slamming into the sheer bastion wall below the gun pit.

Pom-pom-pom-pom …

Pom-pom-pom-pom …

Max raised his eyes toward the Stuka, guided by the red phosphorescence of the tracers, and saw the tail section part company with the main body of the aircraft, cleaved clean away as if by a knife. He glimpsed the pilot and the rear gunner, strangely inert in the high Perspex hood, unconscious still because of the g-forces. The Stuka spiraled away over the rooftops. He hoped for their sakes that they wouldn’t regain consciousness before the end, but it was a good few seconds before a distant crump was heard—time enough for them to have come to and seen death rushing up at them.

The “Raiders Passed” siren sounded as Max was running a razor over his chin. He dressed quickly and headed downstairs, out into the unearthly silence that always followed a raid. The stench of cordite sat heavily in the chill morning air, and the flocks of pigeons were once more settling warily onto the rooftops, having spent the past half hour whirling around in agitated flight. A crowd of admirers was gathered around the Bofors gun pit. The Maltese boys had abandoned their nearby flag station and were reenacting the final moments of the doomed Stuka. The gunners were smoking and laughing and looking justifiably pleased with themselves. It had been a fine piece of shooting, each of them playing their part, a true team effort.

“Congratulations,” said Max.

“Thank you, sir,” replied the bombardier, the oldest of the bunch, a skinny fellow with jug ears and tombstone teeth.

“I saw it all from up there.” Max nodded toward his balcony.

“Wish I had too, sir,” said one of the layers, to a round of laughter.

“There’s only one thing troubling me.” Max threw in a brief pause for effect. “I was watching closely, and the way I saw it, you fired off four clips at four rounds apiece.”

One round more than their daily allowance of fifteen. They quickly figured Max was joking, and the bombardier spun round to the No. 4, the man who worked the pedal that fired the gun. “Oi, Bennett, you plonker. You hear that?” Bennett was the best footballer of the bunch, a sturdy little left-footer who could send an opponent the wrong way with the merest dip of a shoulder. “You’re in for it when the battery commander gets wind.”

“Go easy on him, sir.”

“Yeah. Bennett can’t count for nowt.”

“Don’t know the difference between fifteen and sixteen.”

“Just like his sister, sir. She told me she was sixteen.”

More laughter, and more cigarettes, and a promise from Max that they’d get a special mention in the Information Office’s Weekly Bulletin , something to show the folks back home.

He meant it. He was impressed, not only by the accuracy of their shooting, but by their sheer bloody doggedness. Even as the Stuka’s bombs had been dropping toward them, they had stayed focused on the task of bringing their gun to bear on the enemy. Max knew that he would have frozen; he knew that he would have suffered some quaint metaphysical moment, rooting him to the spot. And it took only one to freeze for the whole team to fall apart.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

This was the tired expression he toyed with as he headed for Paola, dodging the craters in the road. He wouldn’t use it, but he could take its essence, extrapolating the courage of a single gun crew to the bigger picture of the besieged garrison. Better still, he could give it to young Pemberton to play with. The fellow was itching to flex his literary muscles.

The Cassars lived in a long, squat farmhouse on the hillside above Paola, just off the Luqa road. It was an ugly building, notable only for the large beds of brightly colored flowers that hemmed it in on all sides.

Max heard the wailing before he reached the front door. It was loud enough to justify entering the house without knocking.

A dozen or so women were gathered in the drawing room, dressed entirely in black, some sporting faldettas , the ugly, yawning black headdresses favored by the more elderly. The door on the far side of the room was ajar, and through the crack he could just make out the bare feet, poking from beneath a white robe, of someone laid out on a table.

The urge to spin on his heel was sudden and overwhelming, but he had been spotted.

She caught up with him as he stepped outside into the sunlight.

“Excuse me …”

She was young, twenty or so, and she spoke English with barely any accent.

“May I help you?”

The syntax suggested that she worked in some kind of official capacity—a nurse or a teacher, maybe, or an employee at one of the regional Protection Offices. Her name was Nina and she was Carmela’s cousin.

Max had formulated a story that wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion, and she seemed to fall for it, suggesting that it was probably best right now if he spoke to Carmela’s father. News had just reached them that the coffin intended for Carmela had been destroyed by a wayward bomb while en route from Rabat, along with the cart, the horse, and the driver.

“Victor speaks English, but I am here if you need me.”

Victor Cassar was younger than Max had imagined, although his stooped shoulders suggested a man well into old age. He was at the back of the house, watering the flowers with his son, Joe. They moved mechanically, in silent tandem, Joe charging his father’s watering can with buckets of water hauled from below by hand.

It had been a miserable winter, one of the wettest in memory, but at least the wells were full.

Max introduced himself, explaining that he’d known Carmela from the Blue Parrot and had come to express his condolences at her death. Victor visibly perked up, touched by the gesture, which made Max feel worse for lying. He had no choice. The only other excuse for the visit he’d been able to think of—that it was part of a new policy of following up on civilian casualties—would have rung alarm bells with any Maltese worth their salt.

This story, though, was swallowed whole, even if it didn’t endear Max to Joe, who scrutinized him with a sullen scowl. When Joe was sent in search of refreshments, Victor explained that his son, like his wife, had never approved of Carmela’s line of work. He, on the other hand, knowing she was a good girl who would never have allowed herself to be drawn into bad ways, had sanctioned her decision.

Max offered up the words Victor was seeking.

“She was a great girl, fun and intelligent and very … proper.”

“Proper?”

He evidently didn’t know the word.