Марк Миллс – The Information Officer (страница 7)

Pemberton acquitted himself admirably during the brief interrogation which ensued. He judged his audience well, painting an amusing and self-deprecating portrait of his time in Alexandria, his meagre contribution to the war effort to date.

It was then that the first arms started to be raised, fingers pointing towards the north, towards St Julian’s Bay, St George’s Bay and beyond.

An unnatural silence descended on the terrace, ears straining for the discordant drone of approaching aircraft.

‘You’re about to witness a very one-sided show,’ said Freddie. ‘Try not to let it get you down.’

He wasn’t joking. The Artillery had just been rationed to fifteen rounds per gun per day. A Bofor could fire off its quota in all of seven seconds.

The enemy seemed to know this. There was something uncharacteristically loose about the first wave of fighters staining the sky, a lack of the usual German rigour when it came to formation flying. Like a boxer in his prime swaggering towards the ring, the adversary was confident.

A couple of the big guns barked an early defiance, and a few desultory puff-balls of flak appeared around the Me 109s, which had already begun to break for their pre-ordained targets. They swooped in flocks, birds of ill-omen, the real danger following close behind them.

A great staircase of Junker 88 bombers came out of the north, fringed with a covering force of yet more fighters.

‘Christ,’ muttered Freddie.

‘Holy shit,’ said Elliott.

Poor sods, thought Max.

It was clear now that the airfields had been singled out for attention: Ta’ Qali, Luqa, Hal Far, maybe even the new strips at Safi and Qrendi. They all lay some way inland, beyond Valletta and the Three Cities, strung out in a broken line, their runways forming a twisted spine to the southern half of the island.

The 88s shaped up for their shallow bombing runs and a token splatter of shell bursts smudged the sky. Arcing lines of tracer fire from a few Bofors joined the fray. From this distance they appeared to be doing little more than tickling the underbellies of the bombers, but a shout suddenly went up.

‘Look, a flamer!’

Sure enough, an 88 was deviating from its course, streaming black smoke. It climbed uncertainly towards the north, heading for home. This would normally have been the cue for a Spitfire to pounce on the stricken aircraft and finish it off, but the handful of fighters they had seen clawing for height just minutes before had probably been vectored away from the island for their own safety. It was easy to see why. The carpet bombing was well under way now, great pillars of smoke and dust rising into the sky, reaching for the lowering sun.

They all stared in silent sympathy at the remote spectacle. Earlier in the year, Max had been caught in a raid at Ta’ Qali, one of the mid-afternoon specials the Germans liked to throw in from time to time. He had spent twenty minutes lying as flat to the ground as nature would allow him in a ditch bounding the airfield. There had been close calls in the past couple of years—he still bore the odd scar to prove it—but nothing that even approached the deranging terror of his time in that ditch. His greatest fear at the time, strangely, had been of choking to death on the cloud of sickly yellow-grey dust, talcum-powder fine, which had enveloped everything, blotting out the sun, turning day into night. The ground beneath him had bucked like a living thing, and all around him the air had rung to the tune of flying splinters, a lethal symphony of rock and metal overlaid by more obvious notes: the whistle and shriek of falling bombs, the thump and crump of explosions, the staccato bark of the Bofors firing back blind, and the screams of the diving Stukas.

His hearing had never fully recovered, and he suspected that something essential within him had been changed that day, almost as if he were a machine that had been re-wired. It still functioned, though not quite as it had before.

He felt a light touch on his arm. It was Freddie.

‘I need to talk to you,’ he said in a low, confidential voice. ‘Not here. Alone.’

‘Okay.’

‘How’s tomorrow morning?’

Max nodded.

‘Can you come to the Central Hospital?’

‘What time?’

‘Early. How does eight sound?’

‘Barely acceptable.’

‘Meet me at the mortuary.’

Max was obliged to curb his curiosity. Elliott had drifted towards the parapet for a better view of the raid, but he now turned to them and said, ‘Looks like old Zammit’s got himself a new gun.’

Vitorin Zammit lived in the house directly across the street. Well into his sixties, he was a slight and vaguely comical character who had been a regular dinner guest at Villa Marija until the death of his wife the year before. He had amassed a small fortune exporting lace, a business which had allowed him to travel the world widely, and he spoke impeccable English in the way that only a foreigner can. His wife’s passing had hit him hard, and although she had been brought down by the same diabetes which had plagued her for years, he held the enemy unreservedly to blame. He now kept his own company, when he wasn’t caught up in the activities of the Sliema Home Guard Volunteers, through whose ranks he had risen rapidly to become something of a leading light.

He owned a pistol, and when a raid was in progress he was often to be found on his roof terrace taking potshots at the planes. Not only was this a futile gesture, it was in flagrant breach of the regulations. He should have known better, and he probably did, but no one begrudged him his bit of sport. If anyone took exception, Hugh invariably ensured that they came to see things differently.

Sometimes he wore his uniform, sometimes a suit. He never went into battle in his shirtsleeves. Today he was wearing a black suit and a Home Guard armband, and he prowled around his roof terrace like some dark ghost, eyes on the skies, apparently oblivious to the large crowd gathered on the neighbouring rooftop. Instead of his usual pistol, he carried a rifle in his hand.

‘Is that a Lee Enfield?’ said Freddie.

‘Might just as well be a goddamn broomstick for all the good it’s going to do him.’

The last of the bombers were making their runs now, dropping to four or five thousand feet before unloading over the airfields. Resistance was minimal, and they climbed safely away with a covey of fighters assigned to see them safely home. High above, all around, 109s blackened the sky like bees, keeping a wary guard. Their job done, the artillery all but spent, they would soon descend and begin picking over the carcass, making low-level attacks on targets of opportunity. If there was a time to be scared, now was it. Even a residential district like Sliema was fair game.

Knowing this, a few people started to drift below. Most stood their ground, though, eager to see how things would play out. Freddie made a drinks run downstairs. By the time he returned with their glasses the dockyards in Grand Harbour were under attack, the fighters rising into view behind Valletta like rocketing pheasants as they pulled up out of their dives. They couldn’t hope to inflict much real damage with their cannon and machine-gun fire, but they were making a point. He’d heard from Ralph that a 109 had even made a touch-and-go landing at Ta’ Qali the other day, rubbing their noses in it.

Today, pleasingly, this arrogance came at a price. A 109 banking over Fort St Elmo appeared to stagger, then its starboard wing dipped sharply and it spun away. There was no question of the pilot baling out at that height, and it hit the water, throwing up a white feather of spume near the harbour entrance.

‘Welcome to Malta, you sonofabitch,’ said Elliott darkly, as the cheers resounded around them.

Moments later, a couple of fighters swooped on Marsamxett Harbour from the direction of Floriana, flying tight down on the water, setting themselves for a strafing run at the submarine base on Manoel Island. There were no subs to be seen; they had recently taken to sitting out the daylight hours on the harbour bottom.

‘Macchis,’ said one of the young pilots.

He was right, they were Italian planes, blue Macchi 202s. If there was any doubt, the showman-like flourish with which they rolled away after releasing a couple of savage bursts of cannon fire settled the question of their nationality. The Italians were known, and mocked, for their aerobatic flair. Both aircraft made a second pass, their guns churning up the water in neat straight lines as they bore down on the base. They pulled away in a climbing turn to the left, making off to the north, skimming over the stepped rooftops of Sliema.

Their course brought them straight towards Villa Marija, the roar of their engines building quickly to a painful pitch, almost deafening, but not so loud that it drowned out the report of the first rifle shot. Or the second.

Max turned in time to see Vitorin Zammit fire off his third shot, in time to see a portion of the lead Macchi’s engine cowling fall away.

‘My God, I think he hit it,’ someone called.

He had not only hit it, he had done some damage. The Macchi’s engine coughed, clearing its throat, then coughed again, and again, misfiring badly now, a ribbon of black smoke snaking out behind it as it climbed towards St Julian’s.