Peter Christopher looked from the airman to the American admiral.
He was his father’s son and he knew his duty; and because he was his father’s son he understood that nothing in his life would ever be so simple again. A few hours ago he had stood on the bridge of his ship and made a decision which, at the time, he had tacitly if not implicitly, expected would be the death of his ship and most, probably all, of his men. That decision had been straightforward, uncluttered with nuances, and utterly apolitical in every way.
Life or death; to live or to die.
He had done his duty; he had done the honourable thing.
His father had given him leave to save himself and his ship; knowing that he could no more run from a fight than renounce his recently made wedding vows to the woman he loved.
Cut your lines and go…
His father had actually meant ‘engage the enemy more closely’.
The Battle of Malta was over, now the battle to preserve the brittle Anglo-American alliance upon which the future of his country depended was about to begin.
Peter Christopher had not lost his ship and so many of his men just so that senior officers in the Mediterranean and far, far away might indulge in pointless recriminations and thus leave the door open to politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to manufacture an even more disastrous defeat to Allied arms.
He was his father’s son and now was the time to prove it.
He looked Dan French in the eye.
“What do you need me to do, sir?”
Chapter 33
The small convoy — two ambulances from Royal Naval Hospital Bighi escorted by a Land Rover carrying four Royal Marines equipped to fight and to win a small colonial war — crawled up the hill towards the Citadel as the clouds over the island parted, and suddenly, eye-wateringly bright sunshine bathed the hill top twin city of Rabat-Mdina.
Marija sat wedged between the Royal Navy Medical Orderly at the wheel of the first ambulance and Dr Michael Stephens. The drive from Kalkara to the centre of the island, a journey of some ten miles had taken over two hours and the sights she had seen in those two hours had very nearly broken her heart. So much that had been rebuilt since the Second World War had been destroyed and all along the road the dead were laid out in rows. There were bodies in strange grey and brown and green uniforms, stacks and piles of weapons outside the Citadel; nobody had bothered to spread blankets or sheets over these men and the flies were already swarming.
The convoy was waved through two roadblocks and across the bridge into the Citadel. Work parties of servicemen and civilians were still clearing rubble from the road inside the gate. The ambulance bumped and jolted over the debris. The ancient streets and alleyways of the Citadel of Mdina were narrow, difficult to negotiate at the best of times and with a horrible, sinking feeling Marija began to face up to what might await her at St Catherine’s Hospital for Women.
‘Mrs Christopher,’ Dr Michael Stephens had asked awkwardly, approaching her earlier that morning. ‘There’s been no direct contact with medical services in Rabat or Mdina, we think all the telephone lines are down and at present operational radio traffic has absolute priority over all other communications, including medical affairs. I have been asked to lead a party to the Citadel. It occurred to me that as you are much more familiar with the layout and know everybody who is anybody in that city, you might care to come along as my assistant?’
Marija was confident that her friend and mentor, Dr Margo Seiffert, the Medical Director of the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women and designated future Head of the Medical Directorate of the Maltese Defence Force, would already have started to organise things in her inimitably feisty no-nonsense way as soon as the shooting had stopped the previous afternoon. Knowing Margo, she would have probably got to work long before the shooting stopped. But knowing that was not the same thing as knowing that Margo and her friends and fellow nurses in the Citadel had come through their ordeal unharmed.
“We’re going to have to go forward on foot,” Michael Stephens declared. A building had partially collapsed into the street ahead and fallen masonry blocked any further progress. He jumped down from the cab of the ambulance.
Marija squirmed across the seats, hesitating in the door while she briefly contemplated how exactly she was going to persuade her stiff, sore and aching bones to carry her down to the road in such a way as to not leave her in an undignified and significantly more bruised heap on the ground.
“Please. Let me help you, Mrs Christopher.”
Michael Stephens had realised that the young Maltese woman was physically flagging and now felt horribly guilty asking her to accompany his mission to Mdina. But he had needed somebody who knew the Citadel and would be capable of facilitating whatever needed to be done when they arrived, so he had asked her to come with his ‘advanced guard’ — other parties would be sent from Bighi and elsewhere when resources permitted — knowing that it was not remotely likely she would refuse him. Given what Marija had been through as a child and throughout her adolescence he could only imagine how beaten and battered she must be feeling after more than twenty-four hours on her feet without sleep or any real respite, or any extended opportunity to rest her reconstructed lower body.
He extended his arms.
“I’ll catch you,” he promised with a broad smile that said, louder than any words that ‘there is no need to be brave all the time’.
Marija stopped worrying about getting down to the ground with dignity and pretty much fell into the man’s waiting arms. He caught her under her arms, clung to her like she was an antique, immensely fragile urn and refused to let go of her until she had steadied on her feet. When he finally let go she swayed precariously for a moment and he grabbed her left elbow.
“The cobbles of the Citadel have always been a little bit of a trial,” Marija confessed sheepishly. She ought to have got used to the men around her being overly protective; too easily convinced that she was some delicate flower when in her own mind she was anything but a delicate bloom. She had noticed how swiftly Peter flung his arms around her the instant he suspected she might lose her balance; one day she would have to talk to him about that but there was no hurry. Nothing was quite so sublimely perfect as being swept of her feet by her new husband…
No sooner had the doctor released her than he stuck out his right arm.
She took his hand, knowing that the way she felt — her lower back, pelvis and legs were hurting rather than aching — a single misstep would send her tumbling, most likely onto her face.
“Lead on!” The man invited, with forced cheerfulness.
The dead lay in long rows on the flagstones and cobbles of St Paul’s Square before the blast-scarred towering facade of the Cathedral at its eastern end. The bodies of the invaders were casually strewn in a ragged line, those of British soldiers and Maltese civilians were arranged in neat, orderly lanes. Marija began to count the corpses, stopped because there were so many. The stench of death was already heavy in the air, unnaturally contained within the high walls of the buildings all around. Most of the windows in the square had been blown in or smashed; bullet holes and sprays of shrapnel had defiled every frontage. Sawdust and dirt had been thrown haphazardly over the black, fly-blown puddles of congealing blood and viscera between which the members of the newly arrived medical party stepped.