“Tell me where she is.”
“You think you can make me with that popgun? Go ahead, try. Better still, don’t bother. There’s no point. I’ll never tell you, not you, not anyone.” He spread his arms wide. “Here before God I give you my word.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“You don’t know me,” said Freddie darkly. “It’ll be my little victory. Go on, do it. She’s dead anyway.”
Max lowered the gun sharply, aiming at Freddie’s leg, his finger tightening around the trigger.
A shot rang out around the church and Max was sent reeling, as if clubbed in the arm. He stumbled and fell, gripping his shoulder, feeling the blood, the shock giving way to a searing pain and the vague realization that he’d just been shot.
Elliott stepped into view from behind a pillar—his gun, his eyes, trained on Max.
“Is he alone?” Elliott asked.
Max was on the point of replying when Elliott turned to Freddie and demanded, “Is he alone?”
“I think so,” replied Freddie, slowly coming out of a crouch.
“You think so, or you know so?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
Freddie’s confusion was becoming more evident with each response.
Keeping his gun on Max, Elliott recovered the revolver from the ground before backing away.
“What are you doing here?” Freddie asked, bewildered.
“My job,” said Elliott. “Covering your back. I work for Tacitus too.”
Tacitus? The significance of the word was lost on Max, and for a moment the same seemed true for Freddie. But then he began to laugh.
“You think it’s funny? You see me laughing? I wouldn’t have to be here if you hadn’t screwed up.”
“Elliott?” said Max pathetically.
“Shut up.”
Elliott turned back to Freddie and nodded toward the main doors. “Get out of here.”
Freddie edged his way past Elliott. “What are you going to do with him?”
“Use your imagination.”
“Goodbye, Max,” said Freddie.
The words sounded almost heartfelt.
Max stared at them both, incapable of speech.
Elliott advanced on him.
“Elliott …,” he pleaded.
“Lie down.”
Max kicked out with his feet, trying to keep him at bay.
It couldn’t end like this. It wasn’t possible.
His efforts to defend himself were rewarded with a crippling boot to the solar plexus. Gasping for breath, he looked up at Elliott, vaguely aware of Freddie—a dim shape in the smoke, watching from near the entrance.
“I’m sorry,” said Elliott, dropping to one knee and placing the muzzle of his revolver against Max’s temple. “But as the old saying goes, ‘It is appointed unto man once to die.’”
The words chimed with some hazy memory. He knew that they had made him laugh at the time, but he couldn’t remember why. Something to do with snow and an old man …
He was still groping for the details when Elliott pulled the trigger.
LONDON
May 1951
“SHALL I POUR?” SAID ELLIOTT, REACHING FOR THE WINE bottle.
“Why not?”
Elliott filled their glasses before raising his own in a toast. He took a moment to settle on one he was happy with.
“To all those who didn’t make it.”
“All those who didn’t make it.”
They clinked glasses tentatively, as if the weight of their shared history might shatter the crystal.
“They told me you didn’t make it.”
“I know,” said Elliott. “Remind me—how did I die?”
“You went down in a plane off the French coast,” replied Max.
“I hope it was quick.”
“They said Freddie died in the same crash.”
“What else did they say?”
“Is he alive?”
The idea that Freddie might still be walking the planet somewhere tightened his stomach.
“Not unless he sprouted wings.” Elliott paused briefly, lowering his eyes. “I threw him out of a Lodestar over the Bay of Biscay.”
“You threw him out of a plane?”
“You make it sound easier than it was. He fought me like a tiger all the way.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s why I’m here. What do you want to know?”
“I thought you were a German agent.”
Elliott rolled his eyes. “Jeez, they really didn’t tell you anything, did they? I’m beginning to understand the frosty reception.”
It was true, they had told Max almost nothing. In their efforts to hush the whole thing up, they’d flown him off the island the moment he’d been fit to travel. There’d been a desk job waiting for him back in London at the Ministry of Information, but he’d recognized it for what it was: a bribe to keep him quiet and onside while seeing out the war with some modicum of respectability.
“But you shot me.”
“Only cos you were about to shoot him in the leg, and I couldn’t trust you not to hit an artery. I needed him alive.”
“What, so you could throw him out of a plane?”
Elliott shrugged. “I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
Elliott pulled a black hardback notebook from his jacket pocket and laid it on the table. It was old and scuffed.
“It’s all in there. Everything. Going back years. He started young. Freddie Lambert was the sickest sonofabitch I ever came across, and I’ve been around the block a few times since Malta. I haven’t lost a minute’s sleep over what I did. He went out that door screaming like a stuck pig, and that’s exactly what he deserved.”
“Judge, jury, and executioner?”
Elliott slid the notebook across the table toward Max. “Read it first. And when you’re done, burn it. You’ll want to.”
“Why did you want him alive?”
Elliott lit another cigarette before replying. “There’s only one thing more valuable than an agent, and that’s a double agent, assuming you can be sure of his duplicity.”
“You knew he’d killed three girls and you were still happy to work with him?”
“Not exactly dancing a jig, but nothing beats feeding the enemy what you want them to hear. Yes, I knew what he’d done. I also knew what he could do for us. My job demands a certain pragmatism. Not everyone has the stomach for it.”
According to Elliott, the British authorities on the island hadn’t been happy with the idea, and it had made for tension between him and Malta Command.
“You see, we knew the Germans had an agent on the island. We’d known for a while. We didn’t know who he was, but we knew exactly what he was up to, and why. I was all for finding him and using him. They were all for sitting tight.”
“Sitting tight?”
“Doing nothing. They had their reasons—good reasons.” He paused. “This isn’t public knowledge, and it won’t be for a while yet, so keep it to yourself. We’d cracked the German codes by then. Well, a bunch of your experts had. Hell of an achievement. Probably swung the war our way. It sure as hell made all the difference on Malta. We knew where and when they were running their convoys to Rommel. We knew when the Luftwaffe was leaving Sicily for the Russian front and when they were returning. Remember the Italian E-boat raid on Grand Harbour? We knew it was coming. We were ready for them. That’s why they didn’t stand a chance.”
Max remembered it clearly. It had been a rout, a predawn massacre.
“The only trouble with having the heads-up is you’ve got to be careful how you use the intelligence.”
“Because you’ll give the game away.”
“Exactly. That’s just what it is—a game. Defense Security didn’t want to risk moving on the Germans’ agent because they might have figured out we were deciphering their signals.”
“The lives of a few Maltese girls—who cares, right?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t a dirty game. No one enjoys doing the math on these things. And like I said, I didn’t agree with them.”