Things might have been less dispiriting if a large flock of spanking new Spits hadn’t flown in just ten days before—forty-six in all, fresh from Greenock in Scotland by way of Gibraltar. The U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Wasp had seen them safe as far as the waters off Algiers, and the fly-off had gone without a hitch, all but two of the batch making it to Malta on the long-range fuel tanks. It had seemed too good to be true. And it was. Field Marshal Kesselring, sitting safely in Sicily, was no fool. He had obviously got wind of the reinforcement flight and had figured it best to wait for the aircraft to land before making his move. Within three days of their arrival almost half of the new Spitfires had been destroyed, and the rest had been put out of action by the Luftwaffe’s intensive carpet bombing of the airfields.

Kesselring had his man on the ropes and was going for the knockout. He knew it; they knew it. Because without fighter aircraft to challenge the Luftwaffe’s aerial dominance, there was little hope of any supply convoys getting through. And if that didn’t happen very soon, the guns would fall silent and the island would starve. Invasion, an imminent threat for months now, would inevitably follow.

Christ, it was unthinkable. So, best not to think about it, Max told himself, topping off his glass once more and turning to survey the garden.

He found himself face-to-face with Mitzi.

She had crept up on him unannounced and was regarding him with a curious and slightly concerned expression, her startling green eyes reaching for his, a stray ray of sunlight catching her blond hair. Not for the first time, he found himself silenced by her beauty.

“What were you thinking?” she asked.

“Nothing important.”

“Your shoulders were sagging. You looked … deflated.”

“Not anymore.”

“Flatterer.”

“It’s true.”

“If it’s true, then why didn’t you even look for me?”