Page 18 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“Because I didn't expect someone who kills people for a living to concern himself with moral complexity.”

The words hung between us, ugly and barbed. Hale's jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the stubble.

“You think I enjoy it?” His voice dropped, low and dangerous. “You think I wake up every morning grateful for another chance to put a bullet through someone's skull?”

“I think you're very good at it. And I think men who are good at violence rarely question whether they should be.”

“And men who are good at puzzles rarely see the blood on their hands.” He leaned forward, close enough that I could smell the beer on his breath, the wool of his uniform. “You want to know the difference between us, Pembroke? When I kill someone, I have to watch them fall. I have to see their face. You kill people from a distance, through numbers and patterns, and you never have to look at what you've done.”

“That's not fair.”

“War isn't fair. I thought a genius like you would have figured that out by now.”

We stared at each other across the scarred wood, the fire crackling somewhere behind me, the low murmur of other conversations fading into background noise. My heart was pounding, anger and something else I couldn't name churning in my stomach.

“Finch thinks I'm a security risk,” I heard myself say, the words spilling out before I could stop them. “Asked if my loyalties were divided. As if three years of successful decryptions meant nothing.”

I don't know why I told him. Maybe because fighting was exhausting and I needed to say it to someone, even someone who clearly despised everything I represented.

Hale's expression shifted, the anger giving way to something more guarded. “Finch said that to you?”

“This afternoon. Apparently my irregular shift patterns are cause for concern.” I laughed, hollow and bitter. “I work irregular hours because the Germans don't encrypt their messages on a schedule. But apparently that makes me suspicious.”

He was quiet for a long moment, turning his pint glass in his hands. His fingers were rough, calloused, the hands of someone who'd worked hard long before the war had given him a rifle.

“Finch is a bastard,” he said finally.

“So everyone keeps telling me. Doesn't make it easier to have him looking at me like I'm already guilty of something.”

“No. It wouldn't.” He took another drink, and when he spoke again, some of the hardness had left his voice. “Men like Finch see threats because that's all they know how to see. Doesn't mean the threats are real. Just means they're scared, and fear makes people stupid.”

“That's surprisingly philosophical for a man who just accused me of having blood on my hands.”

“You do have blood on your hands. So do I. So does everyone in this bloody war.” He set down his glass and met my eyes. “The difference is whether you let the guilt eat you alive or whether you keep doing the job anyway because someone has to.”

“And which are you? The eaten or the functioning?”

“Depends on the day.” Something flickered in his expression, there and gone. “Some nights I lie awake counting faces. Other nights I tell myself it matters, what we do. That the people we save outweigh the people we don't.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I have to. Otherwise what's the point?”

I looked at him properly then, this soldier who'd been assigned to guard me like I was something precious and fragile. In the firelight, the hard edges of his face had softened slightly, and I could see the exhaustion underneath, the same bone-deep tiredness I saw in my own mirror every morning.

We weren't so different, perhaps. Both of us killing from a distance, in our own ways. Both of us carrying the weight of decisions we hadn't asked to make.

“I'm sorry,” I said quietly. “What I said earlier. About violence and questioning. That was unfair.”

“It wasn't wrong, though.” He shrugged, a small movement that seemed to cost him something. “I don't question it enough. Easier not to.”

“And I question everything too much. Easier to drown in doubt than face what the answers might be.”

“Sounds like we're both a mess, then.”

“Seems that way.”

The silence that followed was different from before. Not comfortable, exactly, but not hostile either. Two men sitting with their failures in a pub that asked no questions, drinking bad beer and pretending the war wasn't waiting for them outside.