The provisions of the Treachery Act were nothing if not specific in proscribing the disposal of those found guilty under its aegis. Dan French perfectly understood the powers and duties invested in his person by the current State of Emergency on the Maltese Archipelago, the fact of Martial Law, and the responsibilities incumbent upon him.
“Does he deny his involvement in materially assisting an enemy in a time of war?” He asked.
“No.” Rachel hesitated. “What will you do with him?”
The VIPs had come out from England to bring back heroes and nobody had done more to earn their triumph back home more than Peter Christopher and his brave band of brothers; nor Joseph Calleja. The truth about Samuel Calleja’s treachery would emerge soon enough…
“The business over Samuel Calleja will wait for another day,” he said, and that was an end to it. “Nobody in this building needs to know about it for now.”
Rachel blinked in the gloom.
She had been afraid the man would ask her to quietly make the problem go away and she had not known how she would react. Friday’s bloodletting had changed who she was in ways she was still discovering; she had hurt enough people.
“Thank you for bringing this to me,” the man went on, filling the vacuum of words. “It must be hard for you to trust people at the moment.”
Rachel almost jumped with alarm.
How could he have seen through her so easily?
“A little,” she admitted.
“No harm is to befall Mr Calleja,” Dan French stated, just so there could be no later misunderstanding. “I’d be obliged if you would re-emphasise that to Major Williams on your return to Rinella please.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you. After you have spoken to Major Williams I think it would be best if you returned to Marsa Creek. Ideally I would prefer Samuel Calleja’s wife to be removed from the, er, ‘firing line’ at this time but every place on an aircraft returning to England has been allocated several times over already. Would you be prepared to take the young lady under your wing until things blow over?”
Rachel was somewhat taken aback by how far ahead the man was thinking and planning. She had presented him with an intractable problem, he had decided what he was going to do about it and was requesting her assistance in managing one relatively small element of the fallout.
“Yes. Somebody ought to look after Rosa,” she concurred.
They turned and began to move towards the main building. It would be a little while before Nicolae Ceaușescu and his companion and nurse, Eleni could be transported across the island so there was no hurry. “As I said, it is the damnedest thing,” Dan French remarked again.
“The last few days have been very strange,” Rachel echoed. Since Friday she had allowed her voice and its tone to abandon the English drawl she had so carefully constructed throughout her adult life. Even to her own ear she now sounded Polish, bereft of her English vowels albeit unable to rid herself of her habitual very English syntax. It was as if she was becoming a different person, another woman.
“Yes, indeed. When things have settled down a bit,” the man flashed a smile in the dark, “might we dine together one evening do you think, Miss Piotrowska?”
Chapter 70
Seamus McCormick had no idea if the two Redcaps who had disturbed him fifteen minutes ago had raised the alarm before he emptied the magazine of his Browning forty-five into their faces and chests. In the ear-splitting silence after the hammer clicked down on an empty chamber the village around the green where he had parked up the Bedford lorry yesterday evening had remained dark, and nothing had moved. Very, very distantly a dog had barked. It had been surreal, otherwise nothing had happened.
Absolutely nothing!
But the two dead military policemen would be missed sooner or later and he did not have time to find out if they had friends in the vicinity. One of the Redcaps had fallen half-under the truck; the big lorry lurched forward over his body as he drove off.
Despite the cool of the night McCormick was sweating heavily and his mind was racing at a thousand miles an hour. One second he had been fitfully dozing in the cab; the next the gun had been bucking and kicking in his hand. He had been aware of the spent cartridges clattering off the dashboard and the windscreen, yet not recollected hearing the sound of the rounds actually firing.
What the fuck am I doing?
The question shrieked in his head.
Where am I going?
He did not know the answer to either question.
Nor did he know why he had shot the two Redcaps. For all he knew they might just have wanted a chat, a friendly chinwag to help pass the boredom of their night shift. Neither of them had pointed a gun at him…
They had looked shocked when he started shooting.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” He screamed, breaking the Bedford to a squealing halt.
He had panicked.
He had had no quarrel with a couple of squaddies with MP armbands; they were men like him, victims who had had no part in his wife, Siobhan’s murder, or in defending the guilty. His only fight was with the bastards who had sent him and thousands of men like him to make war on people who by rights ought to be his blood brothers.
He hammered the wheel in blind impotence.
He had never fired a gun in anger until tonight.
He had never killed a man until tonight.
And still there was no hue and cry. There were no flashing lights on the roads around the village. The houses by the road were dark, only the asthmatic rumbling of the Bedford’s ancient, sorely tried engine broke the quietness of the night.
What was the plan?
To get the Bedford out of sight, hidden in the trees. To find a place with a line of sight to the flight path into RAF Cheltenham. That had been the plan.
Perhaps, that was still the plan?
Seamus McCormick took a succession of long, decreasingly ragged deep breaths and waited for his heartbeat to slow down.
Hide the Bedford.
Unload the two Redeyes.
Find a launch site.
If he was discovered again then he would worry about it at the time.
He had run out of options and whatever happened he was not going to outlive this day. In that thought if in no other, there was a measure of cold comfort which might, if he was lucky, sustain him long enough to wreak his vengeance on his rulers.
Chapter 71
MOST URGENT MOST SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL STOP CAPTURED INFORMANT REPORTS ATTACK ON MALTA A STRATEGIC DIVERSION STOP MAIN SOVIET REPEAT MAIN SOVIET GROUND OFFENSIVE IMMINENT OR ALREADY UNDER WAY IN NORTHERN IRAN STOP OBJECTIVE OF MAJOR SOVIET GROUND AND AIR OFFENSIVE IS TO INVADE NORTHERN IRAN AND TO PASS INTO NORTHERN IRAQ SEIZING KIRKUK OILFIELDS STOP THEREAFTER TO DRIVE SOUTH TO BAGDHAD AND THEREAFTER DOWN THE FLOOD PLAINS OF THE TIGRIS AND THE EUPHRATES RIVERS TO SEIZE BASRA AND ABADAN ISLAND AND TO EMPLACE STRONG ARMOURED BLOCKING FORCES ON THE NORTHERN SHORE OF THE PERSIAN GULF THREATENING KUWAIT AND THE ARABIAN PENSINSULAR STOP INTEND TO PERSONALLY INTERROGATE INFORMANT SHORTLY STOP FURTHER MESSAGE WILL FOLLOW AS INTELLIGENCE BECOMES KNOWN STOP SIGNED CODS MACLEOD NEAVE MESSAGE ENDS.