He had the throttle wide open when he saw it—a rogue line of bomb bursts coming at him out of the darkness to his left—and he realized almost instantly that he was done for. The geometry was against him, the leaping trail of destruction destined to converge with his own trajectory a short way down the road, any moment.
He braked hard, the back wheel sliding away from under him. He was aware of a strange feeling of weightlessness, of flying, before a blinding white light snuffed out his senses.
CARMELA CASSAR HAD SOBBED AND SQUIRMED AND struggled the moment the sedative had worn off. Lilian, on the other hand, just lay there on the table, inert, denying him any satisfaction. Or so she thought. She wasn’t to know that it didn’t matter to him either way. If anything, her self-possession was a welcome challenge. It gave him something to work with.
He rose from the chair and approached the table.
She was spread-eagled on her back, her wrists and ankles lashed to the four legs. The gag and the blindfold were the same ones he had used on Carmela.
She flinched when he placed his hand on her chest, assuming that he was feeling for her breast.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Not yet.”
He was feeling for her heart. Again, he was impressed. It wasn’t thumping away beneath her rib cage, betraying her apparent composure.
“I’m beginning to understand what Max sees in you.”
She didn’t like the mention of Max. The thought of him upset her. It showed in her face.
He smiled, sensing an opening. She might be able to close down her body, but she couldn’t shut off her ears.
“He has a certain quality about him, doesn’t he? Oh, I’m not talking about the good looks—those will fade with time. It’s something else, something more lasting. Men feel it too. He’s not a threat to men. Maybe that’s what it is. He doesn’t try to impose himself on people. He’s not looking to prove anything.”
He lit a cigarette. Rather than blowing out the match, he held it close to her thigh—absently, almost without thinking—the flame licking at the skin just below the hem of her black skirt. Her leg jerked, twisting away from the heat. He dropped the match onto the floor.
“You have great legs, you know? They’re not quite as long as Mitzi’s, but your breasts are larger. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m forgetting, you don’t know about Mitzi, do you? I can’t imagine Max has told you about her. Why would he?”
All the while, he was searching her body for signs.
“I’m not sure you would like her. She’s very different from you. Not unintelligent, but frivolous, unreliable. Flighty—that’s the word I’m looking for.”
Still no reaction.
“Why he needs her in his life as well as you, I don’t know.”
The sinews stood out in her slender arms as she clenched her fists.
“The truth is often unkind. But it is what it is, and we just have to put up with it. In the grand scheme of things, a man torn between two women is hardly news, especially if he’s sleeping with only one of them.” He paused to allow his words to sink in. “He was with her three nights ago. I saw him go in and I saw him come out, and at one o’clock in the morning I don’t think they were playing backgammon.”
Lilian was visibly upset now, doing her best to hide it.
“Maybe with time he would have told you about her. Between you and me, I think he would have. Sadly, we’ll never know.”
DAY NINE
THERE WAS NO SUDDEN AWAKENING. HE CAME BACK TO consciousness slowly, on a building wave of pain. It carried him inexorably toward the shore and dumped him in a heap onto the beach. Only it wasn’t a beach, because there was a wall and something lying on top of him, pressing down on his leg.
He remembered now: the stick of bombs converging on him, the motorcycle sliding away, then flying, weightless, airborne …
As his eyes adjusted to the pale wash of moonlight, he saw that he was lying at the bottom of a steep bank, jammed up against a stone wall, his left leg caught beneath the motorcycle. How long he’d been there, he didn’t know. There was a smell of gasoline, and the thought of the precious liquid leaking away stirred him into action.
Once he’d freed his leg, he was surprised to find he was able to stand. He checked himself over with his hands, his palms raw and throbbing. The bleeding seemed superficial—lots of grazes and some deeper cuts on his legs. There was also a large bump on the back of his head, congealed with blood. He couldn’t place too much weight on his left ankle. It didn’t feel broken, though, just badly sprained.
He was more worried about the motorcycle, but she also seemed to have survived. There was still air in both tires, and although the handlebars were slightly out of alignment, the steering felt fine. From the sound of it, there was also enough gas in the tank to see him to Valetta.
He made his way up the bank, trying to piece together what had happened. He had come off the road at a bend. He hadn’t seen it at the time, and it wasn’t the reason he’d hit the back brake so hard. He had braked because some survival instinct had told him it was better to be close to the ground when a bomb went off. He could make out the large crater the bomb had torn in the shoulder of the road. He’d been lucky. The bend had probably saved him, the steep bank shielding him from the blast as he’d left the road.
The airfield at Luqa was recovering from the onslaught. He could see a few fires still burning, and every so often a delayed-action bomb would go off.
He turned at the sound of an approaching vehicle, traveling fast. He guessed what it was before he saw it—an ambulance racing to the scene. They were about the only things left on the roads since gas rationing had been tightened, and he often joked with Freddie that he and his kind were a bloody menace to other drivers.
He was right. It was an ambulance going hell-for-leather. He was about to flag it down when something stayed his hand—something Elliott had said to him, something he hadn’t thought about since.
The question isn’t where he took Carmela Cassar, but how he took her there.
He tried to reject the idea taking shape in his head, but it refused to be budged. The thought ripped through his brain, touching and changing everything in its path. The world as he’d been looking at it blurred into nothingness, and when it fell back into focus, he was no longer on the outside looking in. He was right at the heart of it, able to see things from all angles with a crisp and terrifying clarity.
“Oh my God,” he said quietly.
He knew there were seventy-two steps because he’d counted them before. He counted them now, not for old times’ sake but because each one sent a sharp pain shooting up his left leg. Maybe the ankle was broken after all.
He knew there was a good chance Lionel would be there—his last night on the island—but Max didn’t care. He didn’t even pause on the landing before knocking.
Mitzi eventually answered the door looking like something out of Dickens, with a dressing gown tightly tied at her waist, and carrying a chamber candlestick.
He was leaning against the doorjamb for support.
Her face fell. “My God, Max, what happened to you?”
“Who did you tell about us?”
“He’s here,” she said tightly.
“Who did you tell about us?”
“Max …,” she pleaded.