Page 24 of Don't Look Back

Andre

I hope you have arrived safely. I look forward to meeting you tomorrow evening at the gallery reception.

She was eager to attend the private reception at an art gallery her father had frequented—she’d found credit card statements with the name and had called and learned her father was a favored patron and consultant. The gallery manager was devastated to learn of his passing and invited her to this reception, which was one of the reasons she’d been so eager to catch a flight sooner rather than later.

If she’d caught her Tuesday flight, she’d be plenty fresh for the reception, but with all the delays, she only had twenty-one hours to get acclimated.

She replied to Andre in the affirmative, then tucked away her phone. She didn’t want to miss her first sight of Valletta because she was texting.

The old walls that surrounded the city were stunning to her historian heart. Her PhD might be in art history, but it was still history, and every work of art told a story about the time it was created in addition to the time period it invoked.

Michelangelo’s David was as much about a biblical figure from an ancient text as it was about the Renaissance period in which it had been sculpted.

The walled city was lit with modern lights, but that didn’t take away from the historic nature of the structures. These walls had been erected in response to surviving the Great Siege. They didn’t exist during the siege, but they told a story of survival and a community that came together after living through the impossible and building a fortress to prevent the next siege from being successful.

They were fortress walls made by master builders and artists. And four hundred and fifty-plus years later, they were both a military statement and a thing of utter beauty. Add that to the rest of the architecture, all made from the same limestone, and Valletta was breathtaking.

The taxi wound through the streets that edged the city—never venturing into the upper section that crisscrossed the old town—and a few times, she wondered if the driver was lost as they went down narrow alleyways that couldn’t possibly be roads.

But they were roads, and all at once, the taxi stopped in front of a corner building with the hotel name at the top.

She tipped the driver in cash and entered the hotel. It was well after ten p.m., and the lobby was quiet. She was starving, but would have to make do with the snacks in her bag this late. At least the hotel had a small bar. She bought a beer to enjoy in her room.

Then she took the tiny lift to her top-floor room with a view of the harbor. Her heart squeezed as she took in the lights and sharp stone walls of the fort and city across the water. The main window faced the harbor, and two smaller windows faced restaurants, roads, and the wharf that edged the walled city.

She sat in a chair and sipped her beer, looking across the water at Fort St. Angelo glowing in the night lights. She was really here. Doing this.

Her phone vibrated. She glanced at the screen to see the incoming text message.

Unknown Sender

You shouldn’t have come.

Kira began her first full day in Malta with breakfast in the hotel, followed by a stroll along the wharf toward the Siege Bell War Memorial. The day promised to be scorching hot, and she was glad for her airy sundress, broad-brimmed sun hat, and sturdy sunglasses.

She hadn’t slept well between the disturbing text message and disgruntled body clock that was unhappy with the six-hour time difference. Ten a.m. here was four a.m. in Virginia.

She would probably have to take a nap before heading to the reception tonight.

She made her way to Fort St. Elmo and paid the entry fee to tour the fort and museum. She leisurely explored the exhibits, trying to be mindful of anyone following or paying her undue interest.

As she promised Freya, she wouldnotbe caught off guard.

The museum was separated into time periods in different areas of the fort. She spent a fair amount of time in the World War II exhibit, even though it was likely that art stolen by Nazis had arrived in Malta much later, as Malta had been a Crown Colony from 1813-1964.

During the war, in spite of massive bombardment by the Axis powers, the Crown Colony of Malta—with the aid of Allied convoys—survived its second brutal siege, this one beginning 375 years after the Great Siege that established the small island country as a force to be respected in the Mediterranean.

After finishing at the fort and museum, she went to the movie theater next door to watchThe Malta Experience, a forty-five-minute film that presented the seven-thousand-year history of Malta followed by a tour of La Sacra Infermeria—the Holy Infirmary of the Knights of St. John—a hospital established in 1574.

She sat in the dark, air-conditioned theater with her translation headphones set to English. Only a dozen or so other tourists shared a theater that seated more than a hundred. As she watched, she began to doze. The dark, cool room and exhaustion defeating even the excited history lover in her.

Her eyes drifted closed, but she forced them open when the narrator described Neolithic sites, including the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, a series of connected underground burial chambers that dated to about 3000 BCE—Before Common Era. She hoped to visit the site, but hadn’t been able to get tickets, as they sold out weeks—even months—in advance.

The film progressed, giving the early recorded history of the islands, but even her love of all things historic couldn’t compete with jetlag and the cool, dark room. She drifted off, lulled by the Maltese-accented English words describing the battle that had been waged in 1565 in the waters around the fort she’d just toured.

The sound of explosions became gunshots, and the voice in her headphones changed. An eerie, singsong male voice with an unidentified accent saying her name: “Kiiirrraaa. Kiiiiraaaaaa.”

She jolted awake. Yanking the headphones off, she jumped to her feet, then twisted and tried to scan the faces of the other tourists in the dark theater. The light from the screen revealed clusters of fellow tourists listening with their headphones. Only the two attendees seated behind her noticed her odd behavior.

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