‘Sam was a Red Dawn — a Krasnaya Zarya — agent all along. He claims never to have actually been the man who pulled the trigger but he confessed to being implicated in several terrorist outrages and assassinations.’
‘But,’ Rosa had protested in a small, terrified voice, ‘Admiral Christopher said he had been killed by those people?’
Rachel had tried to take hold of the other woman’s hand; she had shaken off her attempt and turned her back.
‘He believed Sam was probably dead. He saw no point in heaping unnecessary pain on you, or on Sam’s family. He was trying to promote a sense of unity on Malta at the time. If the Calleja family had a bad apple in its midst, what family on Malta could claim it was loyal?’
‘What will happen to Sam?’
Iron doors clanged noisily shut behind the two women as they were escorted deep inside the prison.
“If you would wait here,” a Redcap grunted, gesturing at two chairs placed in the gloomy corridor.
Rosa settled anxiously beside Rachel Piotrowska, whom she now knew to be her guardian. The woman whom many of the surviving Soviet paratroopers now call the ‘black widow of Mdina’ had been appointed by the C-in-C Malta to ‘keep her safe’ until the ‘storm blew over’. Rosa’s preferences in this matter were, it seemed, incidental and of no importance.
‘Can I see him?’ Rosa had asked.
Now that they were here at the prison Rosa was having second thoughts. What could she possibly say to the man who had humiliated her, who had destroyed her? And what, if anything, could he possibly say to her?
“You don’t have to put yourself through this?” Rachel murmured, touching Rosa’s arm.
“Does Marija know?” She asked, sniffing back fresh tears.
“Not yet. There will be no public announcement for some days. Perhaps, not for several weeks. First Sea Lord Admiral Sir David Luce has undertaken to break the news to Peter and Marija after the sentence has been carried out.”
The women lapsed into silence for several minutes.
“This way!” They were summoned.
Chapter 82
Peter Christopher blinked awake. The last thing he remembered was the Secretary of State for Information talking animatedly to him. For a few moments he had no idea what had awakened him.
The bell sounded and Marija pressed his left hand, still — as before he fell asleep — clasped possessively on her lap.
“This is Squadron Leader Guy French again. I’m dreadfully sorry that we are going round and round like this. There has been some kind of ‘local difficulty’ at Brize Norton so we will be diverting to RAF Cheltenham.” The Comet 4’s pilot guffawed insouciantly. “There’s not quite such a long runway at Cheltenham so don’t worry if it seems as if we are breaking a little bit harder than normal when I put the old girl down on terra firma. Oh, yes, I almost forgot; if you care to look out of the windows Fighter Command has sent up a couple of little friends to escort us the rest of the way. It’s quite exciting really!”
Peter Christopher chuckled.
“What is so funny husband?” His wife demanded. Marija was looking very pale and biting her bottom lip.
The man suddenly felt guilty, ashamed of his thoughtlessness. His wife was afraid of flying and he had fallen asleep when he ought to have been comforting her. Gently freeing his left hand he leaned towards her and put his arm around her shoulders. Marija wasted no time moving as close as her seat would allow and doing her best to meld against him.
Her husband planted a kiss in her hair.
“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I must have been more tired than I thought.”
“It’s okay,” she murmured lowly, “I talked a lot with Iain, he is a very interesting man.”
Chapter 83
There were two civilian prison guards flanking the chair in which the handcuffed man sat. The prisoner looked ashen but seemed, oddly, pacific and unconcerned by his surroundings or the prospect of this final encounter. There was no table in the room but the Redcaps brought in and positioned the two chairs which had been in the corridor about five feet in front of the prisoner.
Rachel went into the room first, holding Rosa’s trembling hand.
Strangely, once she was in the room and had got used to the idea that the man handcuffed in the chair in the middle of the cell was in fact her missing, presumed dead husband; the younger woman found new strength. Detaching herself from her minder she stepped up behind one of the vacant chairs, and stared at her husband until he flicked an upward glance towards her.
“I don’t want to sit down,” Rosa said, breathlessly. “It was a mistake coming here.”
Samuel Calleja looked to her coldly, his lip curling in contempt.
“Aren’t you even going to ask me why, wife?”
Rachel winced, stung by the cruelty of this scene. Air-Vice Marshal French had said Rosa had the right to confront, or to at least see her husband before his execution but she had never thought this encounter was a good idea. Now her worst fears seemed to be justified.
“I am not your wife, Samuel Calleja!” Rosa blurted angrily. “You never treated me like your wife and I never felt like I was your wife. You expect me to ask you why? Why you will break your poor Papa’s heart? Why your Mama will cry forever for your cowardly traitorous soul? You understand nothing! You are nothing! Marija and Joe are the best of these islands; you are the worst! What else is there to know?”
Rachel had not imagined the demure young Maltese housewife capable of such viperously focused coldly delivered hyperbole. It was more than the angst of a woman scorned; it was as if Rosa was channelling the rage of the Maltese people.
The man opened his mouth to defend himself.
Rosa would not be interrupted.
“The people of Malta will spit on your name when you are dead!” This said — or rather, hurled in her husband’s face — Rosa turned away and folded her arms across her chest as if she was chilled, shivering to the marrow of her bones.
Samuel Calleja ignored his wife and threw a feeble scowl at Rachel.
If Rachel had had a knife she would have gutted him without a second thought.
A few moments later as she hugged and unavailingly attempted to comfort Rosa in the corridor outside she got a grip of her anger; if she had put an end to Samuel Calleja then and there it would have been an act of mercy. It was better by far for the traitor to spend a sleepless night waiting to be marched out at dawn into the inner courtyard of Paola Prison, there to be chained to a stake to await his turn to be shot by firing squad alongside the first tranche of Soviet butchers convicted of war crimes against Maltese civilians.
Dan French was not wasting time or energy agonising over signing the death warrants of Soviet officers and senior NCOs who had been in any way complicit in the killing of non-combatants; they were in command of and therefore considered responsible de facto, for the actions and the crimes of all the men directly under their flag. As swiftly as the initial interrogation reports emerged from the Joint Intelligence Centre at Fort Rinella, the C-in-C was condemning the guilty. Likely Maltese and other civilian collaborators, turncoats and fifth columnists other than Samuel Calleja, whose guilt was transparent, would be subject to a more considered, quasi-judicial process in which some of the normal legal checks and balances might at some stage be allowed to intrude. But for the men who had commanded the murderous invaders there would be no half measures.