“What about the murderers of the 100th Bomb Group?” It was the voice of one of the Reuters correspondents, a young Englishman with a bloody bandage on his brow and disbelief in his eyes. “Hundreds of innocent Maltese civilians were murdered on Malta? Don’t they count because they’re not Americans?”
Walter Brenckmann froze.
The ink wasn’t dry on the ceasefire and already the fault lines in the patched up ‘special relationship’ were tearing apart at the seams. In the crush he was jostled. He flicked an irritated glance to his left at the middle aged, plump brunette in a creased twin set with a tired perm who was glaring at the English Premier. He thought he recognised the woman as one of the President’s secretaries. He couldn’t recollect her name; in fact he didn’t think he’d actually heard it.
The woman had jammed her handbag, an ugly scuffed blue leather thing, against his hip and was attempting to retrieve something from inside it.
Walter Brenckmann thought he saw metal glinting.
He thought nothing of it.
But then he thought again.
The glaring arcs illuminating the two leaders cast hard shadows and a backlight that reflected off every surface, dimly, He’d seen a reflection off a bright, shiny metallic edge where there ought to have been none.
He half-turned just as the barrel of the gun, a lumpy old-style Pattern 1911 Navy Colt was raised slowly, shakily.
The Navy man didn’t actually believe what he was seeing.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a blond Secret Service man begin to move. The eyes of his President and those of the British Premier widened. The gun levelled.
Everything happened at once with incredible speed.
And yet in that blink of an eye everything seemed to be moving in ultra slow motion.
The blond Secret Service man bowled over Jack Kennedy like he was a linebacker sacking quarterback.
For a split second Edward Heath looked into the eyes of his assassin as another Secret Service agent moved towards him, probably knowing it was a million years too late.
The first shot barked deafeningly and there was instant pandemonium.
Bodies were diving for cover.
Everybody except Walter Brenckmann.
He wrestled with the woman with the gun, clawing for the Colt. There was a second shot as the Navy man and the woman fell hard on the ground. The third shot was so close to Walter Brenckmann’s head that the concussion of the discharge seemed to be inside his skull.
That was when his World went black.
Chapter 49
Lieutenant Jim Siddall took Marija’s arm and helped her out of the Land Rover. The big former Redcap looked less fierce, less hard-bitten in his crisp new uniform and strangely, more relaxed. He’d collected her from the Pembroke Barracks and at her request, taken her home so she could change into a fresh dress. He’d explained that the ‘C-in-C would welcome the opportunity to speak with the leader of the Women of Malta movement’, so she’d decided she’d look her best for the interview. A little over a week ago she’d have half-suspected such an invitation would result in her arrest but everything had changed in the last week.
“The Women of Malta is not a ‘movement’,” she scolded her driver as the Land Rover negotiated the narrow, twisting roads out of the town. “I’m not even sure if it has any reason to exist now that our men have been released from detention.”
This seemed to amuse the big man.
“What?” She demanded, smiling.
“You have no idea the way other people see you,” he retorted quietly.
It was one of those mild winter days on Malta when the rain occasionally fell heavily but not for long and in between the showers the sun was strong enough to raise the dust. The prickly pear bushes beside the road were almost but not quite out of season, in the middle distance the ancient fortress city of Mdina overlooked a faded patchwork landscape of dry stone walls and small fields, villages and lonely farmsteads that sprawled across the rugged landscape of the interior of the island. Beyond Hamrun there were signs to the RAF airfields of Luqa and Ta’Qali, as if the roaring of jet engines could hide the existence of the great concrete scars of their runways. Marija knew that from the ramparts of Mdina she’d be able to look down on Ta’Qali, and watch the big transports and fighters drifting down and taking off there and from more distant Luqa. She and Joe had often watched the comings and goings from the two fields and the other small strips for endless summer hours in those years after the war when the British presence had seemed so benign.
It was not a long drive.
Nowhere on Malta was a long drive from anywhere else. Marija had read somewhere that the whole Maltese Archipelago was smaller than the Isle of Wight. She had looked at maps, compared scales and discovered that although Malta was smaller than the faraway island in the English Channel, roughly three times as many people lived on the islands of the Archipelago. Contemplating these facts she’d concluded that the Isle of Wight must be a lonely and a very quiet place and she’d felt a little bit sorry for the people who lived there.
“I can’t do anything about how other people see me,” she complained. “That is their problem, not mine!”
Soon the Land Rover was climbing up the slope to the ramparts of Mdina, negotiating the last switchback and driving up to the old city gate. The guards waved them through into the citadel where the narrow cobbled roads wound between great canyons of limestone and granite buildings.
The large sign above the double doors said: C–IN-C MALTA. Next to it a smaller board said: ALL VISITORS REPORT TO THE DUTY DESK.
“My office is three doors down the road,” Jim Siddall explained, pointing.
Marija looked up at the spires and domes of the Cathedral on her right. St Catherine’s Hospital for Women, where Margo Seiffert had trained her and dozens of other local women to be auxiliary nurses and midwives was just the other side of the Cathedral. Hardly anywhere inside the citadel was more than five minutes from anywhere. Mdina was like Malta itself in microcosm.
The big man escorted his charge inside.
“Miss Calleja has an appointment with the C-in-C,” he explained to the Royal Navy sub-lieutenant behind the desk inside the double doors. The other man made a call.
Alan Hannay trotted down the stairs half-a-minute later.
“Thanks, Jim,” he nodded affably to Marija’s guardian angel. “I’ll take it from here.”
The big ex-Redcap hesitated.
“Never fear, I’ll make sure Miss Calleja gets home safely,” the Commander-in-Chief’s flag lieutenant promised.
Marija climbed stairs with a patient, unhurried gait, almost but not quite one step at a time. If Alan Hannay was impatient with her slow pace he was far too well brought up to show it.
“I hear you almost had a nasty fall the other day?” The boy inquired, belatedly wondering if his attempt at polite conversation was possibly a mistake.
“I fainted,” Marija explained, feeling foolish. “One of the American fliers, Captain Zabriski, caught me.” She shrugged. “He kept apologising for ‘manhandling me’ afterwards as if it was his fault I’d fainted. You know that most of those boys at Fort Pembroke feel sick about what they did, don’t you?”
“Yes. I imagine I’d feel the same if I was them.”
Vice-Admiral Sir Julian Christopher’s flag lieutenant swiftly absented himself as soon as he’d delivered Marija to the great man’s room. His guest looked to the Commander-in-Chief and then around the mostly bare limestone walls; the room was more of a cell than an office with a single three feet square window with a view down towards Ta’Qali. Other than two hard-backed chairs the only furniture was a big, rather gnarled desk, and a single three drawer gun metal filing cabinet.