Hugh revered the Knights of Saint John and knew their story intimately. They were a relic from the crusading era, when the order had provided lodging and security to pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. When forced to repair to Rhodes, they effectively ruled that island for two centuries before being driven out by Suleiman. Malta became their next home—a grant from the Emperor Charles V—but it wasn’t long before Suleiman pursued them there and the stage was set for one of the bloodiest and most brutal sieges in history.
At one point, soon after Fort Saint Elmo had fallen to the Ottomans, the defenders began using the severed heads of their prisoners as cannonballs. This wasn’t because they lacked for ammunition. It was a ghoulish gesture of defiance by the knights, a response to the sight of their headless comrades from Fort Saint Elmo floating toward them across Grand Harbour, lashed to wooden crosses.
Against impossible odds, the besieged towns of Senglea and Birgu (now known as Vittoriosa) held out against the Ottoman Turks for a further two months. Continuously bombarded day and night from the heights around Grand Harbour, their defensive walls breached on numerous occasions, they stood firm under the resolute leadership of Jean de Valette, Grand Master of the order, a man more than willing to snatch up a pike and step into the fray like a common foot soldier.
Many thousands died on both sides in any number of gruesome ways before the Ottoman army finally withdrew from the island, taking to their galleys, their tails between their legs. It was a setback from which their territorial ambitions never fully recovered. Malta had stemmed the Turkish tide; Europe could rest easy once more.
“How bad do you think things will get if they invade?”
“Not as bad as last time,” quipped Hugh. “But you might actually have to get that service revolver out of its holster.”
“I’m a hopeless shot. Always was. The pheasants’ friend.”
“‘The pheasants’ friend’?”
“It’s what my stepmother used to call me.”
Hugh laughed. “Then I’ll make damn sure I’m standing behind you.”
Maybe it was the fatherly hand that settled onto his shoulder, but Max experienced a sudden impulse to unburden himself, to seek approval for the hazardous course he’d settled on in his head. Hugh liked to play the buffoon, but it was a colorful cloak. Beneath it lurked a serious and somewhat high-minded soul. Hugh would understand. He might even be willing to help.
“Hugh …”
“Yes?”
Max dropped his cigarette onto the sand and ground it out beneath his boot.
“I’d better run you home.”
THE MESSAGE WAS SHORT AND STRAIGHTFORWARD, THE means of delivering it considerably more complex.
To an uneducated eye, the apparatus in question might well have passed for a typewriter, but the keyboard belied the sophisticated mechanics buried away inside. First, the rotors had to be selected and inserted in the correct order, the alphabet ring set relative to them, and the plug board wired. These were easy enough tasks to perform. All you needed was the codebook listing the daily key settings. This being one of the naval machines with the extra rotors, it required a naval codebook, and the numbers were printed in red water-soluble ink.
It gave him pleasure to think that out there, somewhere, there were people listening, waiting attentively for his next transmission. For some of the eavesdroppers, the message would read as gobbledygook and forever remain that way. Field Marshal Kesselring, on the other hand, would have the correct text on his desk within the hour:Everything progressing according to plan. Virgil.
His German was up to the task of sending the message in the language of his paymasters—they’d asked him to do so for reasons of security—but the idea of bucking their instructions appealed to the contrary streak in him. Besides, the devilish piece of equipment in front of him was too good at its job. He could just as well have signed off using his own name; the Allied signals operators would have been none the wiser. The chances of them ever deciphering the text were so remote that they could be ignored.
As for the message, well, it didn’t tell the whole story. The submarines were such a feature of life on Malta that he hadn’t even considered the possibility of their withdrawal from the island. This unexpected turn of events had repercussions for his plans, but there seemed little point in worrying those up the line with the details. He would have to rise to the challenge, adapt his strategy to the new time constraints.
Last night, he had flirted with the idea that another girl might have to die, only to dismiss it as too much of a risk. Today, it seemed like a risk worth taking. If he had been burdened with a conscience, he might have tried to convince himself that it was a necessary move, that it served the plan, but he had long since given up lying to himself. He knew that he had probably done enough already. He had lit the touch paper and disappeared safely into the night. Common sense dictated that he lie low and allow the affair to play itself out.
But where was the fun in that? This is what Malta had taught him: that he enjoyed the killing.
It hadn’t always been that way. The first, the very first, before the war—Elsie, the theater usherette with the crooked front tooth—had brought him little pleasure that he could recall now. He hadn’t set out to take her life, but she had recognized him, and silencing her for good had been the only sensible option.
A very observant girl, that one. He had made three visits to the theater in the course of a year, and on all three occasions had carefully avoided showing any interest in her, let alone talking to her. And yet, on a moonless night in a dense patch of woodland she had recognized him. An observant girl. And a foolish one. If she’d kept her mouth shut, she’d still be alive, not moldering in a coffin beneath a cheap headstone bearing the hopeful epitaph Now Flying with the Angels.
He had left it a good long while before visiting her grave, curious to know how it would feel. Standing over her, he had experienced no emotions of any real note—no guilt, no self-loathing, no regrets—just a mild puzzlement when he recalled the last moments of her life. Unlike the ones who had gone before her (and survived to tell the tale), she had not fought him; she had almost given herself to him. Why had she been so biddable, so unresisting, so accepting of the inevitable?
“Not my face. Don’t hurt my face,” she had said.
The voice of experience? Was her father to blame? Or an uncle? Had she spent her childhood submitting to the unnatural advances of some man in her life? It seemed quite likely. The thought had occurred to him at the time, and he had struggled to enter her, although once inside, he had soon hardened. And when it was over, she had wiped herself with the hem of her skirt and calmly announced that she had seen him before. She was even able to list two of the three productions he’d attended at the theater. She was searching for the name of the third—“No, don’t tell me”—when he closed his hands around her throat.
She resisted then, but succumbed so quickly that he thought she might be faking. She wasn’t, so he got to his feet and brushed himself down. He left her handbag in the narrow lane that led to her parents’ house, at the spot where he’d snatched her into the trees, so that she wouldn’t lie there undiscovered for too long. It was a small gesture to her. She had asked him not to harm her face, and he wanted the world to know that he hadn’t, before she became so much carrion for the animals and insects. And maybe her father, or whoever he was, would see his own sin reflected back at him in her unblemished features.