Everyone knew about Faith, Hope, and Charity; the newspapers back home had made sure of that, enshrining the names of the three Gloster Gladiators in the popular imagination. The story had “courage in the face of adversity” written all over it, just what the home readership had required back in the summer of 1940. While Hitler had skipped across northern Europe as though it were his private playground, on a small island in the Mediterranean three obsolescent biplanes had been bravely pitting themselves against the full might of Italy’s Regia Aeronautica, wrenched around the heavens by pilots barely qualified to fly them.

And so the myth was born. With a little assistance.

“Actually, there were six of them.”

“Six?”

“Gloster Gladiators. And a bunch more held back for spares.”

Pemberton frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Three makes for a better story, and there were never more than three in the air at any one time, the others being unserviceable.”

The names had been coined and then quietly disseminated by Max’s predecessor, their biblical source designed to chime with the fervent Catholicism of the Maltese.

“It’s part of what we do at the Information Office.”

“You mean propaganda?”

“That’s not a word we like to use.”

“I was told you were independent.”

“We are. Ostensibly.”

Max detected a worrying flicker of youthful righteousness in the other man’s gaze. Six months back, he might have retreated and allowed Pemberton to figure it out for himself, but with Malta’s fortunes now hanging by a thread, there was no place for such luxuries. He needed Pemberton firmly in the saddle from day one.

“Look, none of us is in the business of dragging people’s spirits down. The Huns and Eye-ties have cornered that market.”

He manufactured a smile, which Pemberton politely mirrored.

“You’re evidently a bright young man, so I’m going to save you some time and tell you the way it is.”