The Information Officer. Mark Mills

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      ‘I was drunk last weekend.’

      ‘Oh, that’s why you slurred your words when you said, “Don’t stop.”’

      It had been their first kiss, and it had taken place under an orange tree in the garden of her aunt’s palace in Mdina.

      ‘Well, I hope you enjoyed it, because it was the last time.’

      As deputy editor of Il-Berqa, Lilian was entitled to her own office. It was a small box of a room, and it had somehow acquired a view of Grand Harbour since Max’s last visit. It took him a moment to realize why. He wandered to the window and peered down at what remained of the church. The dome and the roof had collapsed into the nave, the pillars and arches of which were still standing, as was the greater part of the apse. Despite the destruction, the altar had been cleared of rubble and a priest was dressing it for Mass.

      ‘Close,’ said Max.

      ‘No one was killed.’

      ‘That’s good to hear.’

      He turned back in time to see her unpin her hair and shake it out. It fell like silk around her shoulders.

      ‘Better?’ she asked.

      ‘You could shave it all off and you’d still be beautiful.’ She cocked her head at him, deciding whether to accept the compliment.

      ‘It’s true.’

      It was. She could get away with it, with her large almond eyes, the sharp, high-bridged nose and full lips. She was of mixed parentage—half Maltese, half British—although her temperament owed considerably more to her Mediterranean blood. He still smarted when he remembered some of the words she’d directed at him, but he’d also shared many a full and proper belly-laugh with her. He suspected that when it came to pure intellect there were few to match her on the island. He knew for a fact that he struggled to keep up.

      ‘We don’t have long,’ she said. ‘I have to be in Sliema at twelve o’clock and there are no buses.’

      ‘Sliema?’

      ‘To talk to Vitorin Zammit.’

      ‘You’re going to run the story?’ he said hopefully.

      ‘Felix isn’t sure.’

      Felix was the editor, a plump and ponderous little character who didn’t seem to do a whole lot about the place. It was common knowledge that Lilian effectively ran the show.

      ‘What the old man did is not legal,’ Lilian went on. ‘We don’t want half the island shooting at planes.’

      ‘I don’t know. The artillery could do with all the help it can get right now.’

      She smiled. ‘True. But they’ll shoot at everything, even our own planes.’

      ‘They’ll have to find one first.’

      ‘But there are more Spitfires coming.’

      ‘Where did you hear that?’

      ‘Is it true?’ she asked.

      ‘There are always more Spitfires coming. When was the last time there weren’t more Spitfires coming?’

      Her eyes narrowed, seeing through his evasiveness, but she let it go unchallenged. Max sat himself on the corner of her desk and lit a cigarette.

      ‘You have to run this story.’

      ‘I don’t know, Max.’

      ‘Let’s see the photos.’

      She pulled a folder from a pile of papers and spread a handful of black-and-white photos on the desk. They were almost identical. In a couple of them Vitorin Zammit was shaking the hand of the downed Italian pilot, whose parachute was piled up at his feet, and in all of them a rag-tag band of grinning Maltese stood stiffly behind.

      The young Italian was ridiculously handsome, and knew it; he had run his fingers through his thick hair to give his fringe some lift as Max was preparing to take the first shot. Old Zammit’s suit was powdered white with dust from their breakneck dash up into the hills. Wedged in between Max and Pemberton on the back of the motorcycle, he had complained all the way about his abduction, and had only ceased his moaning when they spotted the black smoke billowing from the wreck of the Macchi. It had piled into the base of a low escarpment just south of Ghargur, the pilot drifting to earth in a rock-strewn field nearby, where he had been promptly surrounded by a mob of blue-chinned and bare-footed labourers brandishing sickles and hoes. His relief at the arrival of two uniformed officers on a motorcycle was patent—although he must have known that the Maltese weren’t the lynching kind—and when it was finally conveyed to him through a series of gestures that the old man in the suit had shot him down, he put his pride in his pocket and laughed along heartily with everyone else.

      ‘This is the best one,’ said Lilian.

      She was right. Zammit’s hand was resting on the Italian’s shoulder—a protective, almost tender gesture—and the younger man’s expression was an endearing picture of amused resignation. It was exactly the sort of image the Maltese would respond to—quietly triumphal and tinged with humour.

      ‘Yes,’ Max concurred.

      He could see from Lilian’s face that she was still hesitating, and he knew why. She had crossed swords with the authorities enough times in the past to have developed a reputation as something of a trouble-maker. When the siege was in its infancy, she had fought for the rights of the islanders to dig their own shelters on public property, and she had unsuccessfully championed the cause of the Maltese internees—Italian sympathizers, or so it was claimed—who had been locked up like common criminals at the outbreak of hostilities and who had recently been shipped off to Uganda.

      Running a story which might promote illegal behaviour among the islanders could have consequences for her. She was thinking of her job.

      ‘What he did might have contravened regulations, but look at it—’ Max handed her the photo. ‘This is what we all need right now. A hero. An improbable hero.’

      ‘I know that. You know that.’

      ‘Then I’ll report it in the Weekly Bulletin, and you’ll have your excuse to run it. The worst I’ll get is a slapped wrist. Believe me, even the Lieutenant-Governor will see the logic of putting it out there at a time like this.’

      Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you doing this?’

      Mistrust, antagonism even, was part and parcel of their professional relationship, and they’d stopped pretending it wasn’t. The Information Office and the only Maltese-language newspaper on the island might make for natural bedfellows, but Lilian’s loyalties were to her own people, whose interests were not always best served by the British policy which Max was bound to promote. This made for an uneasy collaboration, a tentative trade of services. Lilian advised Max on how best to pitch the tone of his publications and broadcasts to appeal to a Maltese audience, and in return she received access to the kind of information she couldn’t hope to get from anyone else. And both remained sceptical about the motives of the other.

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