“Oh Christ,” Freddie blurted into his gin.

“But it doesn’t stop me from being able to make a judgment on the situation.”

Max thought on it. “I don’t report them.”

“Why not?”

“Morale. A squadron’s like a family.”

“You’re ready to lie to your family?”

“No. Yes. I suppose. If the situation calls for it.”

“Go on,” said Elliott. “What else, aside from morale?”

“Well, the two individuals in question, of course. They’d be packed off home, and everyone would know why. It would leak out.”

“An unfortunate turn of phrase, under the circumstances.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Elliott!” exclaimed Freddie.

Elliott ignored him. “Interesting,” he said. “Three differing views. Freddie said he’d report them, you’re a no, and I’m for reporting them.”

“I thought you said three.”

“There’s a difference between me and Freddie. He’s a moralist. Me, I’m a pragmatist. I’d report them, but only cos if I didn’t and word got out that I hadn’t, then it’d be my head on the block.”

“So what does that make me?” asked Max.

“That makes you a sentimentalist,” was the American’s surefooted response.

“Oh, come on—”

“Relax. There are worse things to be than a sentimentalist.”

“Yeah,” said Freddie, “you should try being a moralist.”

It was good to hear Freddie crack a joke. He had seemed strangely withdrawn, somehow not himself. Max was in a position to judge. They had been firm friends, the best of friends, for almost two years now, and in that time he’d learned to read Freddie’s rare down moods: the faint clouding in the cobalt-blue eyes, the slight tightening of the impish grin. He still looked that way now, even after the laughter had died away and the conversation had turned to Ralph, the missing member of their gang.