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 around 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 ragtag 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 had been 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’d spotted the black smoke billowing from the wreck of the Macchi. It had piled into the base of a low escarpment just south of Gharghur, the pilot drifting to earth in a rock-strewn field nearby, where he had been promptly surrounded by a mob of blue-chinned and barefooted laborers brandishing sickles and hoes. His relief at the arrival of two uniformed officers on a motorcycle had been patent—although he must have known that the Maltese weren’t the lynching kind—and when it had finally been conveyed to him through a series of gestures that the old man in the suit had shot him down, he’d 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 humor.
“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 British authorities enough times in the past to have developed a reputation as something of a troublemaker. 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’d also 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 that might promote illegal behavior 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