Page 129 of The Words Beneath the Noise

Perfect conditions for surveillance.

I founda position near the main path with clear sightline to Hut X's entrance. Settled in to wait, rifle slung but accessible, sidearm loaded under my coat. Cold seeped through my boots, my coat, into my bones. Didn't matter. Discomfort was just information. I'd learned that lesson in foxholes across Europe, lying in mud and snow for hours waiting for a shot that might never come.

Tonight, the shot would come. I could feel it.

Twenty-three hundred came and went. Staff filtered out of Hut X in small groups, heading for billets or the canteen orwhatever small comforts they'd carved out of this war. Ruth emerged bundled against the cold, followed by Noor who was rubbing her eyes and looked half-dead from exhaustion. Neither saw me in the shadows. Good. Meant my concealment was working.

Then Peter.

Last to leave. Glancing around before exiting with body language that screamed guilty conscience. Nervous movements. Checking over his shoulder twice. Hands shoved deep in pockets like he was clutching something precious and dangerous.

I knew that look. Had seen it on men about to do something they couldn't take back.

Stayed back, followed at distance, using terrain and structures for concealment. He wasn't heading toward his billet. Wrong direction entirely. Moving instead toward the perimeter path, the back gate, the areas furthest from main security.

Every instinct I'd honed over three years of war was screaming.

He stopped twice, checking behind him. Worried about surveillance but not trained enough to spot a proper tail. Amateur. Desperate. Exactly the kind of person who made catastrophic mistakes while thinking he was being clever.

At the back gate, he paused. Pulled something from his pocket. Small object, hard to see in the darkness, but I caught the shape. Then he slipped through the gate, heading out into the fields beyond estate grounds.

This was it. Whatever he was doing, it was happening now.

I followed through the gate, keeping low, using the darkness and snow for cover. He was moving toward the treeline, maybe fifty yards from the fence. In his hand was definitely a lantern. Covered, not lit yet, but the profile was unmistakable.

Signal device. For guiding aircraft. For marking targets.

For killing everyone I cared about.

Peter reached the treeline, looked back toward the estate one final time. I could see his breath fogging in the cold air, could see the tremble in his hands as he started unwrapping the lantern.

Time to move.

I stepped out of concealment, rifle coming up smooth and automatic, sighted on his centre mass. “Rowe. Step away from the lantern.”

He spun. Face going white even in the darkness, eyes wide with the particular terror of a man caught in the act.

“Hale. Christ.” His voice cracked. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I said step away.”

“This isn't... I'm just...” He was scrambling for words, for excuses, for anything that might save him. “It's not what it looks like. I'm out here for personal reasons. Nothing to do with security or?—”

“Bullshit.” I kept my voice flat, cold. The voice I used when I needed men to understand that I was not negotiating. “Drop the lantern and put your hands up.”

“You don't understand.”

“I understand perfectly. You've been selling us out for months. Convoy routes. Patrol schedules. Everything that flows through Hut X.” I took a step closer, rifle steady. “And now you're out here about to light a beacon so the Luftwaffe knows exactly where to drop their bombs.”

Peter's face crumpled. Not denial anymore. Recognition. The look of a man watching his careful lies collapse around him.

“I need this,” he said, voice rising. “My sister needs this. The money they're paying, it's enough to get her into proper housing, away from the tube stations where the rockets hit. She's all I have left, Hale. Our parents are dead. Our house is rubble. She's seventeen years old and she sleeps underground because there's nowhere else safe.”

“So you decided to make everywhere unsafe for everyone else.”

“It's just information. Just schedules and movements.” He was pleading now, hands still clutching the lantern like it was salvation rather than damnation. “Nothing that actually matters. Nothing that hurts anyone.”

“Nothing that matters?” The words came out harder than I intended. “Twenty-three men dead on a convoy last week. That doesn't matter? The patrol schedules that let reconnaissance flights map this entire estate. That doesn't matter?” I gestured toward the buildings behind us with my rifle. “Art is in there. Ruth. Noor. Dozens of people who've done nothing but work themselves to exhaustion trying to end this war. And you've painted a target on every single one of them.”