Chapter 2 #3
“Someone to keep the operation secure.” Finch's eyes narrowed.
“Sergeant Hale isn't here to spy on your team, Pembroke.
He's here because if anything happens to this hut or the people in it, we lose months of work and potentially thousands of lives.
The codebreakers are the brains. He's here to make sure nothing interrupts that work. Try to see it as a resource.”
I looked at the sergeant then, properly looked.
The scar across his knuckles, faded but visible.
The way his hands hung loose at his sides with the particular readiness of someone accustomed to violence.
His expression revealed nothing. Just watchfulness, that same careful assessment I'd felt across the room.
“Fine,” I heard myself say. “If those are my orders.”
“They are.” Finch nodded once. “Given your hours, you'll likely see more of Sergeant Hale than anyone else on your team. He'll escort you back to your billet at the end of late shifts. Try not to make his job more difficult than it needs to be.”
He swept out of the office, leaving me alone with the soldier.
The silence stretched, uncomfortable and charged. I could feel him looking at me, and I didn't know what to do with my hands, my face, any part of myself.
“I should get back to work,” I said finally.
“I'll be here.” His voice was rough, like gravel under boots. Northern accent, probably Lancashire or Yorkshire. Working-class, certainly. The kind of voice that didn't waste syllables.
I walked back to my desk with the awareness of him following, not close enough to crowd but close enough that I couldn't forget he was there.
Ruth raised an eyebrow as I sat down. Noor, across the room, mouthed something I couldn't read.
I ignored them both and pulled the Ardennes intercepts toward me, trying to focus on patterns instead of the prickling sensation of being watched.
He took up a position near the back of the hut, against the wall where he could see the entire room. And there he stayed, silent and still, for the rest of the afternoon.
I worked. Or tried to. The patterns that usually came so easily kept fragmenting under my attention, scattering every time I became aware of those blue-grey eyes somewhere behind me.
I made mistakes, had to re-do calculations, lost my place in the cipher tables twice.
By the time the light through the windows had faded to black and the night shift had begun filtering in, I was exhausted and frustrated and no closer to cracking the additional layers of the Ardennes traffic than I'd been hours ago.
“End of shift.”
I looked up. Sergeant Hale stood beside my desk, closer than he'd been all day. Up close, I could see the faint lines around his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the way he held himself like a man braced for impact.
“It's past eighteen hundred,” he said. “I'm to escort you back to your billet.”
“I should stay. The Ardennes intelligence—”
“Has been submitted. You said so yourself.” His tone left no room for argument. “You've been at this for twelve hours. Time to stop.”
I wanted to argue. The impulse rose up. But my body was betraying me, eyes burning, neck aching, thoughts starting to fragment at the edges.
I gathered my things. Coat, scarf, gloves, the Black Book secure in my pocket. When I stood, the room tilted slightly, and I had to grip the edge of my desk until it steadied.
“When did you last eat?”
The question caught me off guard. I looked at him, found his expression unchanged but something different in his eyes. Not concern, exactly. More like professional assessment.
“This morning,” I said. “I think.”
“You think.”
“I don't always notice. When I'm working.”
He studied me for a moment, then turned toward the door. “Canteen's still open. We'll stop on the way.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“Didn't ask if you were.”
I followed him out into the cold, too tired to argue, and the night air hit me like a wall.
The paths between buildings were barely visible, just the faint gleam of shaded lamps marking the way, and I was suddenly, viscerally grateful that I didn't have to navigate them alone.
Not that I'd ever admit it.
The canteen was nearly empty, a few stragglers nursing mugs and avoiding their billets. Sergeant Hale sat me at a corner table and returned minutes later with a plate of bread and cheese and a mug of something that might have been soup.
“Eat,” he said, sliding into the seat across from me.
I ate. Not because I was hungry, but because arguing required energy I didn't have. The bread was stale, the cheese flavourless, but my body responded to it anyway, some of the shakiness in my hands beginning to fade.
“You always work like that?” he asked eventually.
“Like what?”
“Like the world's ending and you're the only one who can stop it.”
The words stung more than they should have. “The world is ending. Or hadn't you noticed?”
“I've noticed.” His voice was flat. “I've been noticing for four years. Doesn't mean you have to kill yourself trying to fix it.”
“Someone has to try.”
“And it has to be you?”
I looked at him properly then. The weariness in his face, the shadows under his eyes that matched my own. The way he held himself, coiled tight, like he was expecting an attack that never came.
“What would you have me do?” I asked. “Go home? Sit in my mother's parlour and pretend none of this is happening? People are dying out there. Every day, every hour, people are dying because we're not fast enough, not clever enough—”
“You think I don't know that?”
The words cut me of. His eyes met mine, and I saw something there that made my breath catch. Something raw and barely contained.
“I've watched men die because I was too slow,” he said, quiet and brutal. “I've held them while they bled out and promised them things I couldn't deliver. So don't lecture me about what's at stake. I know exactly what's at stake.”
The silence stretched between us. I looked down at my plate, at the bread I'd barely touched, and felt something shift in my chest.
“I'm sorry,” I said finally. “That was presumptuous.”
He didn't respond for a long moment. Then: “Finish your food. It's getting cold.”
I finished. He watched. And when I'd eaten enough to satisfy whatever standard he'd set, he walked me back to my billet in silence, our boots crunching in the frozen snow.