as they would always be, with their wry humor, their rough savoir faire, and their burning faith. Max and his kind were simply passing through. Maybe their hosts deserved a little more credit, a little more respect.
He could see where he was going with this, and he knew the reason why. He had just been insulted, intimidated, threatened with court-martial, even blackmailed. More than anything, it was the blackmail that angered him. Exploiting his friendship with Lilian to keep him in line was about as low as it got. So much for the happy family.
Feeling his hackles rising again, he lit another cigarette and did something he hadn’t done in a long while when caught in a quandary: he asked himself what his father’s advice would be to him.
The sun was at its zenith, and the heat rising in waves from the zinc roof was almost unbearable, but a small chill ran the length of Max’s spine when the answer came to him.
The town of Mtarfa lay scattered along the ridge just north of Mdina, its skyline dominated by the austere military architecture of the 90th General Hospital. The sprawling complex of wards and accommodation blocks had consumed the army barracks nearby to offer more than a thousand beds to the sick and wounded.
An attractive Maltese VAD eventually tracked Freddie down to the burns ward. Infection was a problem, apparently, and she asked Max to wait outside. He was quite happy to oblige. The few glimpses he got through the swing-doors as nurses came and went were enough of a trial. Some of the patients were so swaddled in bandages that they looked like Egyptian mummies laid out in state. Others were having their fresh burns scrubbed and sprayed, their eyes irrigated, or old dressings changed. There seemed to be so much activity, all of it centered on flesh that was either red raw or black and encrusted. The sweet smell of ether carried through the doors, along with a low murmur of morphine-dulled pain.
When Freddie finally appeared, they made for the long terrace at the back of the building. It had a grandstand view of the hills to the north and would normally have been thronging with invalids of all varieties making the most of the low, late sunshine, but people had grown more wary since the targeted raid on the 39th General Hospital at Saint Andrew’s.
It was the first chance Max and Freddie had had to talk openly about the meeting that morning, and Freddie didn’t hang about.
“I should just have gone to them again. I shouldn’t have involved you.”
“They’re not going to do anything, Freddie. They’re going to bury it.”
“I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“It’s what they do.”
“And you’re happy with that?”
Freddie drew hard on his cigarette and exhaled. “No, Max,” he said with a slight stiffening of tone, “I’m not happy with it. But what do you want me to say? I followed my conscience. I came to you first. It didn’t work out.” After a brief pause, he added, “Someone messed up, and I know it wasn’t me.”
Fair point. There was no getting away from it.
“It was Iris,” admitted Max.
“Iris?”
“It couldn’t have been anyone else. I didn’t tell anyone else.”
“Forgive me,” said Freddie, “I’m tired, not thinking straight, but what on God’s earth possessed you to tell Iris, of all people!”
Max did his best to explain his thinking at the time, the logic of his argument failing miserably to translate itself into words.
“Okay,” he conceded, “I was naïve.”
“It’s not the first word that springs to mind. The most ambitious girl in Christendom? You’d have done better to take out a page in the Times.”
“Maybe we should have.”
It sounded glib, but it was a serious statement, intended to test Freddie’s mettle.
“Listen, Max, this is way beyond us now. It’s a dirty business. This whole damn thing is a dirty business. You know what I was doing in there when you showed up? There’s a man, I couldn’t tell you how old exactly because his face is gone. I know he’s German, though, and that he bailed out of a burning 88. He should have stayed in that plane, gone down with it. He has no lips, no eyelids, no eyes, and his nose is all but gone. I’m hoping for his sake that a bug gets him. This is what we do to one another. After God knows how many millennia of human evolution, this is how we choose to treat one another still.”