The Information Officer by Mark Mills

his bare feet. Mitzi was waiting for him, naked under a cotton sheet. She had placed the mattress on the floor, presumably to avoid any undue noise. The curtains were open, the room awash with silver moonlight. They knew that silence was essential—they had even discussed it while swimming in the bay—but when Max joined her beneath the sheet, the first thing he did was say, “I’m afraid I’m not overburdened with experience.”
    Mitzi stroked his face. “There’s no rush. I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to sleep a wink tonight.”
    “I don’t think anyone saw me.”
    “Good.”
    “And I locked the door.”
    “Ssshhh,” she said, silencing him with a kiss.
    The Maltese liked to rise early, and to be safe he left her roomsoon after four o’clock. He should have felt exhausted, drained, but there was a spring in his step, even a slight swagger. After reaching the safety of his room, he flopped onto the bed and tried to sleep, but his thoughts kept returning to the mattress on the floor, to the welcoming warmth of her body, its taut and slender beauty, her gift to him.
    What had he done to deserve it? And how had he misread her so badly? The remote, imperious creature he had come to know was gone forever, laid to rest on that lumpy mattress. She had shown no signs of guilt at her betrayal of Lionel—far from it—just a hunger and urgency that had drawn the same from him. Apart from a few hushed words of encouragement, they had barely spoken, and the pauses between their lovemaking had been brief and breathless interludes. Even now he wanted more, and it was to prevent himself from doing something dangerously rash that he swung his legs off the bed and headed to the beach for a final swim.
    An hour later, his bag was strapped to the back of the motorcycle and he was gone, tearing along the old dirt road that wound through the hills toward Mdina, his eyes screwed up against the wind and the low glare of the rising sun. He was a mile or so shy of Fort Bingemma when it happened, the enemy fighter swooping silently down on him and laying a trail of death across his path.
    His first thought at the time had been of an avenging angel dispatched by Lionel to seek amends, and while this brush with his conscience hadn’t persuaded him to leave Mitzi well alone, eight months on he was still incapable of mounting his motorcycle without thinking that the avenging angel was watching and waiting.
    Standing there on the roof of Saint Joseph’s, the skies over the airfields speckled with enemy planes, he certainly had no intention of making for Valetta before the siren had sounded its steady note of “Raiders Passed.”
    He tried to use the time constructively, planning how to proceed, formulating excuses for his inquiries so that they wouldn’t arouse suspicion. But there was no ignoring the cruel coincidence of the thing, the eerie sense of predestination. All roads led to the Upstanding , the submarine driven by Lionel “Campers” Campion, lieutenant commander and cuckold.

    It had been some months since he had visited the submarine base on Manoel Island, and the change was evident the moment he crossed the short causeway on his motorcycle. This time, he wasn’t waved through by the guard detail. They stopped him and questioned him and almost turned him away. He recognized the look in their eyes, the hollow stare of men who have been on the receiving end for so long that they’re itching to strike back at anything, even their own kind.
    There were two of them, young and lean and mean-looking, members of the Special Service Detachment assigned to the defense of HMS Talbot , as the submarine base was also known. They softened to his cause when he asked them if they’d heard about the Macchi brought down by Vitorin Zammit after its strafing run at the base. They had, and they were eager for details from an eyewitness. Their sense of camaraderie restored, they allowed Max to proceed. They even helped him