Page 36 of The Words Beneath the Noise

Through the window, I could see snow falling thick and fast, accumulating on the ground in a way that meant walking anywhere was going to be treacherous. Real snow this time, not the half-hearted flurries we'd been getting. Winter settling in with serious intent.

Part of me loved snow. Loved the way it transformed familiar landscapes into something clean and strange, the geometric perfection of individual flakes, the muffled quiet that came with heavy snowfall. But the practical part, the part that had to exist in a physical body with physical limitations, dreaded it. Wet socks. Ice hidden under fresh powder. The way cold seeped through every layer until even my bones felt frozen.

And the inevitable expectation that I'd join in whatever winter activities people decided were fun. Skating. Snowball fights. Building snowmen. All activities that required coordination I didn't have and comfort with cold I'd never developed and social engagement that exhausted me more than four hours of cryptanalysis ever could.

“You should go outside while there's still light,” Noor said, appearing at my elbow with the kind of stealth that suggested she'd been watching me spiral. “Fresh air. Movement. All those things doctors recommend to prevent turning into a hunched library troll.”

“I like being a library troll.”

“I know you do, which is why I'm telling you to go outside.” She grinned, all mischief and warmth. “Come on. When's the last time you actually looked at something beautiful just for the sake of looking?”

Couldn't remember. Couldn't remember the last time I'd done anything just for the sake of it, without purpose or productivity attached. Everything was work or eating to fuel work or sleeping to recover from work. A loop that kept me functional but probably wasn't what most people would call living.

“I'll think about it,” I said, which we both knew meant no.

“You're terrible at self-care. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Daily. Sometimes hourly.”

“Good. Consistency is important.” She squeezed my arm and headed back to her station, leaving me standing in the middle of the hut feeling oddly untethered.

The decrypt was done. Filed. Out of my hands now, moving up through channels to people who'd decide what to do with the information. My part was finished, which meant I had no excuse to stay buried in work, no justification for avoiding the world outside this room.

So I gathered my things with movements that felt automatic, slipped the Black Book into my jacket pocket where it belonged, and headed for the door before my brain could manufacture a reason to stay.

The walkto the manor felt longer than usual. Snow crunched under my boots, each step bringing me closer to whatever waited in that small office. I knew what this was. Knew what my role would be. Had accepted it, or told myself I had, in the days since Finch had first laid out the operation.

But knowing and doing were different things entirely.

The corporal at Finch's door nodded me through without announcement. Inside, Finch stood behind his desk, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He did not invite me to sit.

“It came through this morning,” he said without preamble. “The intercept we've been waiting for.”

He held out the papers, and I took them.

The cipher was not Lorenz. That much was immediately clear. But neither was it the simple substitution work that sometimes came through from field units, the kind of thing a competent clerk could crack with a frequency table and an hour's patience.

This was something in between. A polyalphabetic cipher, by the look of it, with what appeared to be a running key derived from some external text. Wehrmacht signals protocol, but modified. Personalised, perhaps, by an operator who fancied himself clever.

“How long?” Finch asked.

I scanned the letter groups, my mind already turning over possibilities. The message was short, barely sixtycharacters, which would make frequency analysis unreliable. But the structure suggested German military format, and German military format meant predictable openings. Location indicators. Unit designations. The bones of a message that might help me find my way in.

“I need to work on it,” I said. “The encryption is layered.”

Finch's eyes narrowed. “Layered how?”

“Polyalphabetic substitution with a running key. The operator has used a book cipher or something similar as the key source, which means I need to identify the text before I can fully decrypt.” I turned the paper over, looking for any annotation that might help. “Do we know which unit transmitted this?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might. Different units have different habits. Some favour poetry, some favour regulations, some favour the Bible.” I looked up at him. “If I know the unit, I might be able to narrow down the key text.”

Finch consulted a separate file on his desk. “Signals intercept from a Wehrmacht Intelligence relay in northern France. Routed through their secondary network, which is why it took us this long to acquire.”

Northern France. Wehrmacht Intelligence. That suggested an educated operator, someone with pretensions to culture. Not regulations, then. Poetry or literature.

“I'll have it decoded as soon as possible,” I said.