Page 125 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“The leak Finch has been hunting. The one he thinks is you.” She pushed the papers toward me. “I think I've found who it really is.”

“Ruth, I'm suspended. If Finch finds out you're bringing me classified materials?—”

“Then we'd better make sure it's worth the risk.” Her voice was firm. “You're the best pattern analyst we have. Better than me, better than anyone else in that hut. If there's something in these intercepts that proves your innocence, you're the one most likely to find it.”

She spread the papers across my desk. Intercepts, freshly decoded, the ink still slightly smudged from hasty transcription. I recognised her handwriting in the margins, the annotations she always made when something struck her as significant.

“These came through two hours ago,” she said. “Luftwaffe reconnaissance unit, same one that's been active over southern England for the past month. But look at this.”

I scanned the text, letting my brain do what it did best. Pattern recognition. Connection. The thing that had made me valuable before Finch decided I was a suspect.

There, buried in the middle of what looked like atmospheric readings, was a phrase that didn't belong.

Quelle bestätigt. Rabennest aktiv. Source confirmed. Raven's nest active.

“Rabennest,” I said slowly. “That's a codename. German operators use bird references for ground assets sometimes. Informants. People on the inside.”

“That's what I thought. So I pulled everything from the past week that mentioned any variant of it.” Ruth spread more papers across my desk. “Look at the pattern, Art. Look at when these messages appear.”

I looked. Read through intercept after intercept, my brain sorting and cataloguing and making connections.

Rabennest had been mentioned six times in the past ten days. Each mention coincided with a specific piece of intelligence that the Germans shouldn't have had. The convoy that was hit. Patrol schedules that were anticipated. Timing of operations that went wrong.

The same operations Finch blamed me for compromising.

“Someone's feeding them information,” I said. “But it's not random. There's a rhythm to it.”

“Tuesdays and Fridays,” Ruth said. “That's when the messages appear. Like clockwork.”

I thought about my own schedule. The irregular hours Finch had interrogated me about. The sign-out logs that showed me leaving at different times, working late, coming in early.

None of it matched Tuesdays and Fridays. None of it aligned with when the leaks occurred.

“This proves I'm not the source,” I said slowly, the realisation dawning. “My schedule doesn't match. Whoever Rabennest is, they're operating on a completely different pattern.”

“Exactly.” Ruth pulled out one more page. “But there's more. The source identifier in these messages. I've seen it before.”

“Where?”

“The personnel logs. The filing codes.” She hesitated. “Art, I think it's Peter.”

Peter. The cipher clerk who sat three desks away. Who complained about cold fingers and offered everyone cigarettes. Who asked too many questions about operational outcomes.

“No,” I said, but even as I spoke, pieces were clicking into place. The paperwork errors I'd corrected. The timing discrepancies in his logs. The new boots he couldn't afford. “Peter's just... he's careless. Sloppy. That's not the same as?—”

“Look at the identifier.” Ruth pointed to a sequence of letters and numbers in the intercept. “Now look at this.”

She showed me one of Peter's filing logs. The same sequence. The same pattern. His own administrative quirk, appearing in German intelligence traffic.

“He's been using his own system to signal them,” I said, nausea rising in my throat. “The log errors weren't mistakes. They were messages.”

“That's what I think too.” Ruth's voice was barely audible. “He's been here two years. Access to everything. Every intercept, every schedule, every piece of intelligence that flows through Hut X.”

I thought about the convoy. Twenty-three dead. The weight I'd been carrying, the guilt Finch had laid at my feet. All of it because Peter had passed information while I was busy blaming myself.

“The convoy,” I said. “It wasn't my translation. It wasn't my notebook. It was Peter.”

“Yes.”