Free Mission In Malta by Deborah Abela

doesn’t mean I want to see it up close.’
    â€˜Don’t worry about Max,’ Linden warned Alfonzo. ‘She really is excited about leeches; she’s just not good at showing it.’
    â€˜Oh, but you’ll see, Max. Once you’re hooked on leeches, they tend to suck you in.’
    Linden and Alfonzo laughed. Max stared at them and wondered what great spies, like Alex Crane, were doing right now.
    â€˜Get it?’ Alfonzo chuckled quietly. ‘Suck you in? It’s a little joke we in the leech world like to throw around every now and then.’
    Alfonzo sat down on a lounge opposite Max and Linden, looking very comfortable now that the subject had turned to leeches.
    â€˜In Australia there is a breed called Richardsonianus australis , which are the most medically useful in the world as they can suck blood for up to ten hours in one sitting. Others give up after twenty minutes.’
    â€˜I don’t mean to sound negative, but what’s the point of the slimy little bloodsuckers anyway?’ Max did nothing to remove the look of disgust from her face.
    â€˜I prefer not to use the word “bloodsuckers”,’ Alfonzo clarified. ‘There are so many other delightful aspects that make the leech trulymagnificent. They’re used in plastic surgery, and products are created from their saliva that are used in the prevention of heart disease. They also aid blood flow in microsurgery, which is used to reattach limbs.’
    â€˜Reattach limbs?’ Max felt her head spin and inflate above her body.
    â€˜After microsurgery to reattach body parts such as ears and fingers, the body needs time to create new veins. So in the meantime, they use leeches to draw out the blood that the veins aren’t capable of doing just yet. Isn’t that incredible?’
    â€˜Yeah, incredible.’ Max’s head started to throb and her skin turned clammy.
    â€˜Why do you sprinkle them with salt if you’re bitten by one?’ Linden took another swig of his drink.
    Alfonzo’s eyes lit up like a Christmas parade. ‘The salt causes them to vomit, which makes them open their mouths, hence, they let go,’ Alfonzo concluded as if he’d just discovered the meaning of life. Until he saw Max’s face. ‘But you can’t die from a leech bite. Even if you’re bitten by several leeches.’
    â€˜That’s amazing,’ Linden cried.
    â€˜That’s disgusting,’ Max reminded him. ‘So when they’re not sucking your blood they’revomiting all over you.’
    â€˜They have a fascinating history too. In ancient times, doctors believed draining a patient’s blood was good for all sorts of things from improving your memory to helping digestion.’
    â€˜If we talk about leeches any more, I know someone whose digestion is not going to improve,’ Max mumbled.
    â€˜In fact, a lot of the early blood-letters weren’t doctors at all but barbers. The red-and-white striped barbers’ poles let people know you could get a haircut and a good blood-letting as well.’
    Max felt her face heat up and her hands start to tingle. ‘Can we stop mentioning the word blood?’
    â€˜High-society women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would even put leeches behind their ears before a ball to give them rosy cheeks and shining eyes – and, so they thought, help them dance until dawn.’
    â€˜All that proves is that sometimes human beings have a habit of leaving their brains at home when they go out into society,’ Max muttered.
    â€˜How come they’re not that popular anymore?’ Linden asked.
    â€˜It’s called “modern medicine”.’ Max rolled her head away from the two leech fanatics.
    â€˜Actually, modern medicine is the reason they’re back,’ Alfonzo explained, as if it would make Max’s day. ‘What happened in the past was that the humble leech started to