Page 3 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“You'll be assigned to Hut X,” he continued. “That's where our cryptanalysts work. Codebreakers. Civilians, mostly, though some wear uniforms. They're an odd lot.” He paused, and something flickered in his eyes. “Brilliant, some of them. But not soldiers. They don't understand discipline the way we do.”

“Understood, sir.”

“There's one in particular I want you to watch.” He opened another file, this one thinner. “Arthur Pembroke. Cambridge mathematician. He's been here since '41 and he's cracked more enemy signals than anyone else in his section. Possibly anyone else on the estate.”

I waited.

“He's also...” Finch paused, searching for words. “Difficult. Keeps irregular hours. Forgets to eat. Wanders off when he'sthinking about something. Gets so focused on his work that he's walked into walls, tripped over steps, nearly set himself on fire with a cigarette he forgot he was holding.” He closed the file. “He's valuable, Hale. Too valuable to lose because he wandered onto the lake at midnight and fell through the ice.”

“You want me to babysit him.”

The words came out flatter than I'd intended, and Finch's eyes narrowed.

“I want you to keep him alive. There's a difference.” He stood, and I followed suit. “Corporal Davies will show you to your quarters and give you the tour. You'll start patrols tomorrow. Report to me at 0700 for briefing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“One more thing.” His voice stopped me at the door. “Your sidearm. You'll keep it. This isn't a convalescent home, Sergeant. It's a military installation, and you're still a soldier. Act like one.”

I saluted. He returned it with mechanical precision. And I got out of that office before the walls could close in any tighter.

The quartersthey gave me were in a converted stable block at the edge of the manor grounds, a narrow room that might have been a tack room before the war. Whitewashed walls, bare floorboards, a single window that looked out onto a yard where staff hurried between buildings with their collars turned up against the cold.

The bed was an iron frame with a mattress that had seen better decades, springs groaning when I sat on the edge. Someone had left a thin blanket folded at the foot and a bar of carbolic soap on the washstand. There was a wardrobe missing one door, a chair with a wonky leg, and a small coal stove inthe corner that gave off just enough heat to take the edge off the chill.

Home sweet bloody home.

I unpacked what little I had. Spare uniform in the wardrobe. Shaving kit on the washstand. The letters from home, three of them tied with kitchen string, I tucked into the drawer of the small table by the bed. My father's note, the one that just saidKeep your head down, we're proud of you, stayed folded in my paybook where it had been since Tunisia.

My rifle was gone, of course. Left behind in France with the rest of my sniper kit. But I still had my sidearm, a Webley revolver that had been my father's before he'd given it to me the night I shipped out. I checked the cylinder, confirmed it was loaded, and set it on the table within reach.

Old habits.

Through the thin walls, I could hear someone moving in the next room. Footsteps, the scrape of a chair, the low murmur of a wireless turned down low. Signs of life. Signs that I wasn't entirely alone in this strange, quiet place that felt nothing like anywhere I'd been before.

I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, water stains mapping continents I'd never visit. The silence pressed in, too heavy, too still. No artillery. No distant screams. No rhythm of boots and kit and men moving through mud. Just the wind against the window and the creak of old timbers and the sound of my own breathing, too loud in the dark.

The shaking started in my hands and worked its way up my arms.

I pressed them flat against the mattress and counted. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. The doctors had taught me that, promised it would help, but all it did was remind me how far I'd fallen from the steady-handed marksman who'd once been able to hold a bead for hours without wavering.

I thought about Eddie. About Danny. About all the others whose faces I couldn't forget no matter how hard I tried. They crowded into the edges of my vision, not quite ghosts but close enough, and I wondered if they'd followed me here or if I'd carried them in my chest the whole time.

Don't think about it, I told myself.Don't bloody think about it.

But the mind doesn't take orders. Not when the dark closes in and there's nothing to do but remember.

I couldn't sleep.

After an hour of trying, I gave up and pulled on my coat, stepping out into the night. The cold was a relief, it was enough to cut through the fog in my head, and I walked without thinking, letting my feet carry me along paths I didn't know toward a destination I hadn't chosen.

The estate was different at night. Quieter. The blackout made navigation treacherous, only the faint glow of shaded lamps to mark the walkways, but I'd spent years moving through darker places than this. My eyes adjusted. My body remembered.

I found myself at the perimeter fence, following it along the treeline. Beyond the wire, fields stretched away into darkness, and further still, I could make out the faint smudge of the village we'd driven through. Church spire. Cluster of rooftops. The world going on as if there wasn't a war.

The snow had stopped falling, and the sky had cleared enough to show stars. I stood there looking at them, hands shoved in my pockets, breath steaming in the cold. Somewhere very far away, so faint it might have been imagination, I heardthe rumble of engines. Bombers, probably. Heading out or coming home.

My chest tightened. I made myself breathe through it.