Page 2 of The Words Beneath the Noise

The truck hit a rut, and I grabbed the side rail hard enough to hurt. Focused on that instead. Pain was simple. Pain made sense.

When I looked up again, we were passing through gates, tall iron things with guards and a checkpoint that looked serious enough to be protecting something that mattered. Beyond them, the estate opened up like something from before the war, a manor house all gables and chimneys, lawns white with snow, a pond half-frozen at the bottom of a gentle slope.

And everywhere, scattered across the grounds like an afterthought, long wooden huts. Dozens of them. Smoke rising from chimneys, figures moving between buildings, the distant clatter of what might have been typewriters.

Beautiful, I thought, and then I saw the barbed wire.

It ran along sections of the fence, discrete but unmistakable. The blackout curtains in every window. The guards moving in pairs, rifles slung but ready. This wasn't a country retreat. This was a prison dressed up in snow.

The truck stopped outside the manor, and I climbed out, boots sinking into fresh powder. A corporal materialised from somewhere, clipboard in hand, and led me up the steps without a word. The door was heavy oak, the hallway beyond it all dark wood and floor polish and portraits of people who'd been dead long enough that no one remembered their names.

I felt like mud tracked across a clean carpet. Like something that didn't belong.

The corporal knocked on a door markedSecurity Office. A voice from inside, clipped and precise: “Enter.”

Captain Harold Finch sat behind his desk like a man who'd forgotten how to relax. Ramrod straight, uniform immaculate, eyes the colour of a winter sky and just as cold. He looked me over as I stood at attention, and I had the uncomfortable sense of being catalogued, every flaw and weakness noted and filed away.

“Sergeant Hale.” Not a question.

“Sir.”

“Sit.”

The chair was hard. Probably deliberate.

Finch opened a file on his desk, my file, and I watched him read through it with the kind of attention that made my skin crawl. I knew what was in there. Enlistment records, training evaluations, deployment history. The commendations. The kill count. And at the end, the medical notes that had brought me here instead of back to the line where I belonged.

“Impressive record,” he said finally. “North Africa. Sicily. Normandy.” His eyes flicked up to meet mine. “You've killed quite a few enemy combatants, Sergeant.”

I said nothing. What was there to say?

“Forty-seven confirmed.” He turned a page. “Likely more unconfirmed. Officers, mostly. Machine gun crews. Other snipers.” He closed the file with a soft snap. “You're very good at what you do.”

“Was, sir.”

His eyebrow lifted slightly. “Was?”

“I've been reassigned. Sir.”

“Yes.” He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled. “You have. Do you know why?”

“Medical evaluation recommended non-combat duties.”

“That's what the paperwork says.” He studied me for a long moment, and I had the sense he was seeing more than I wanted him to. “What it doesn't say is that you froze for six seconds under fire two weeks ago. That you've been having difficulty sleeping. That you flinch at loud noises and can't always control the tremor in your hands.”

I kept my face blank. Didn't let him see how the words landed like blows.

“The medical officers think you need rest,” Finch continued. “Time away from the front. I think what you need is purpose. Something to do besides sit in a room and think about all the things you can't change.” He pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer. “This estate is engaged in work of national importance. Signals intelligence. That's all you need to know, and more than you should repeat. You've signed the Official Secrets Act?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you understand the consequences.”

I understood. Prison or worse. Not that it mattered. I wasn't the talking type.

Finch slid the paper across the desk. “Your duties: perimeter patrols, internal security, and escort duty for specific personnel. The blackout makes movement dangerous, and some of our people are too valuable to risk them breaking an ankle in the dark.”

I could read between the lines. The boffins couldn't be trusted to walk from one building to another without supervision.