Dom Mintoff did not begin to comprehend why the American, who spoke in a clear, confident drawl redolent with authority and certitude, had told him that. What point did he think he was making?
The Commander of the US Sixth Fleet swept aside all doubt the next moment.
‘A lot of people on Malta, maybe some of the people close to you, went bad yesterday, Mr Mintoff. The enemy knew where to find important people, civilians like your political opponents in the Nationalist Party, and senior off duty British personnel. My MPs — military policemen — and my Marines, and all the intelligence gathering facilities of my Fleet have been put at Air Vice-Marshal French’s disposal to hunt down those traitors.’
Dom Mintoff recoiled at the implied threat behind those words.
Dan French sipped his coffee, wrinkling his nose.
‘I apologise for the coffee, gentlemen. Mrs Bonnici is an absolute darling,’ he observed, ruefully. “Nobody has the heart to tell her that her coffee is poisonous.’ This said he fixed Dom Mintoff in an amiably intense gaze for some seconds. ‘We very nearly lost the war yesterday, Mr Mintoff. Not the war we thought we’d been fighting these last few months but an altogether more,’ he paused, pondered his words, ‘unforgiving one. We won’t make that mistake again. Martial law will be in force across the Maltese Archipelago until further notice. I would rather work with you and whoever emerges to lead the Nationalists in the spirit of men of good will with the best interests of the people of Malta at heart, but,’ his shoulders twitched apologetically, ‘the time for half measures is over, Mr Mintoff. Within the rule of law you are either with us or against us.’
It had been a curious interview and Mintoff had walked out of it honestly not knowing what to make of it. He felt like he had been read the riot act, except it was not that simple. For all his decency and English expressions of fair play he understood that Air Vice-Marshal French might at any time crack down hard. Behind the politely stated position, his preference for co-operation not coercion, he was the one holding a machine gun in his velvet-gloved hand.
So when the Leader of the Maltese Labour Party looked at the fitfully dozing young naval officer; who by his courageous deeds had yesterday proven to be every inch his dead father’s son Dom Mintoff could not help but wonder with whom the future lay.
While the war continued Malta would never be independent.
The islands of the archipelago would forever be weighed down by the dead hand of British — and now American — imperial might; and yet, to even contemplate fighting that colonial yoke was a counsel of despair.
Peter Christopher and his men had been prepared to die for the honour of their Queen and to save the lives of countless Maltese people. His people. Yesterday’s titanic battle would one day be a thing of legend. A legend attached to the powerful mythology of Malta’s very own little princess, Marija Calleja-Christopher. Assuming, that was, she too had survived. The possibilities were deeply worrying to a man to whom politics was life, and life was politics.
Fate had decreed that the hero of the Battle of Malta was the husband of the young woman who had come to encapsulate the soul of the archipelago; the woman who somehow represented the best that Malta and the Maltese could be. A month ago the wedding of the Fighting Admiral’s son and the Little Princess had captured the imagination of practically every man, woman and child on Malta; it was as if the Maltese had suddenly inherited a Royal Family, a family about whom everybody might gladly unite.
Dom Mintoff was nothing if not the shrewdest of political operators. He made mistakes, everybody made mistakes. But unlike his foes he always looked several steps ahead, like a driver focused not on the vehicle directly in front of him but the movements of the traffic in the far distance. Where one stood at present was incidental, the important thing was to understand where one wanted to go in the future. Politics was about ends and means; and understanding who was a serious player and who was not.
The young naval officer sleeping on that chair would awake a Knight of the Realm, inheriting the Fighting Admiral’s baronetcy. In the next few days the British would shower him with medals and accolades because that was what the British always did when they had suffered a crippling, humiliating defeat. It was a formula all British governments had slavishly followed since the Crimean War when an aristocratic imbecile had led the Light Brigade to immortal brave destruction down the wrong valley, to attack the wrong guns at the battle of Balaklava. And once they had proclaimed their new hero they would discover, to their ecstatic delight that their newly crowned Odysseus had already married his princess…
Dom Mintoff ought to have despised the young man sleeping in the chair in the derelict old seaplane hangar; despised him and his angelic wife but in a funny sort of way he was tempted to feel just a little bit sorry for them. Whatever life they had imagined they would live, all that was history. Sooner or later they would belong to their adoring public, and after that, they would live forever in the spotlight of their former glories.
He suspected it would be an intolerable burden for the man sleeping in the chair; were it not for his little Princess of Malta…
Chapter 32
Peter Christopher awakened with a start that was quickly calmed by the woman’s sympathetic smile. On his arrival at the old seaplane base abandoned and forgotten in the 1950s he had been mightily peeved to discover that the ‘C-in-C was in conference’, and that he would have to wait for his interview with his father’s successor. He had dropped off to sleep almost immediately he settled on the bench outside the old flight office of the disused hangar. Notwithstanding the quiet hubbub all around him as people came and went, falling into small huddles then breaking up, the jarring of chairs, tables and the background static and unnaturally metallic squawking of the hastily installed public address system, his exhaustion was such that he had slept, albeit fitfully until a gentle hand had rocked his shoulder.
He squinted at the woman who was holding out a mug of what smelled a little like hot chocolate towards him. He accepted the mug, nodding his thanks as he gathered his wits.
“You and I really must stop meeting this way, Miss Pullman,” he observed dryly.
The woman’s smile was sad.
The younger man recollected his first meeting with the attractive, charming blond in a harbour front taverna in Lisbon in what seemed like another lifetime. And later meeting her again in the inner courtyard of the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women in Mdina when he had discovered the woman, whom he had taken for a spy in Lisbon, was already on friendly terms with Marija.
“My name is not Pullman,” the woman stated mildly. “It is a long story. It will wait for another time. Hopefully, there will be another time.”
The man was noticing the dried blood in her hair from a stitched wound that still oozed, the puffy discolouration around her right eye and the blood and filth on her creased and torn pale blue nursing auxiliary’s smock. She saw his concern and sought to allay it.
“My scalp and my black eye apart the blood isn’t mine,” she explained.
Fully awakened now the man was struggling to work out which part of him hurt the most. His right leg was stiff and fire lanced up and down it from toe to knee, his rib cage felt as if somebody had been jumping up and down on it and every time he attempted to manuever a facial muscle another part of his face burned in protest. He was pleasantly surprised to discover his hot chocolate had been heavily laced with rum.