Chapter 3
THREE
BLACK TEA & BLACKOUT
TOM
Voices layered over voices, laughter cutting through the clatter of cutlery on enamel, chairs scraping against floorboards that had been worn smooth by a thousand boots.
Steam billowed from the tea urns at the far end, fogging the blacked-out windows until the room felt sealed off from the rest of the world.
Bodies packed the long tables, uniforms mixing with civilian clothes, WAAFs with their hair pinned regulation-neat beside men in shirtsleeves who'd apparently forgotten it was December.
I catalogued it automatically. Three exits: main door, kitchen service entrance, emergency door near the wireless.
Four windows, all covered. Largest concentration of people near the tea station, creating a bottleneck that would slow evacuation in an emergency.
Structural weaknesses in the roof beams where water damage had warped the wood.
Old habits. The kind that kept you alive when everything else was trying to kill you.
I grabbed a tray and moved through the queue, accepting whatever the server ladled onto my plate without comment.
Grey meat that might have been beef. Potatoes boiled to mush.
Cabbage that smelled like something had died in it.
A thick slice of bread, a scraping of margarine, and tea the colour of Thames mud.
Better than what we'd eaten in the field. Better than nothing.
I found a seat at the end of a table, back to the wall, sightlines to both the main door and the service entrance. The noise pressed against me, but I'd learned to let it wash over without penetrating. Just sound. Just people. Nothing that could hurt me here.
That's when I spotted Pembroke.
He was at the far end of the room, wedged into the corner where the last table met the wall.
Hunched over a notebook, one hand moving in quick, precise strokes while the other cradled a mug he wasn't drinking from.
He'd built himself a fortress out of empty space, papers spread around him like a barricade, and even from this distance I could see the tension in his shoulders.
I knew that posture. The way you made yourself small when the world got too loud. The way you carved out territory and defended it with silence because that was all you had.
I turned my attention back to my food and ate methodically, not tasting anything, keeping one eye on the room. The noise ebbed and flowed around me, conversations bleeding into each other, and I let my mind drift into that detached state where I could observe without engaging.
Across from me, a young man in civilian clothes was holding court, voice carrying further than it needed to. Peter, the cipher clerk I'd seen around Hut X. Always moving, always talking, the kind of nervous energy that set my teeth on edge.
“...and my sister writes that half the street's gone now,” he was saying, gesturing with his fork. “Just rubble and rats. But the pub's still standing, so everyone's moved the sing-alongs there. Can you imagine? Bombs falling and they're all bellowing 'Roll Out the Barrel' like it's a celebration.”
Laughter from the people around him. Someone muttered about Londoners being mad.
Rowe grinned and pulled a cigarette from his pocket. Good tobacco, white paper, not the rubbish they issued. “Anyone want a smoke? Got these from a mate in town. Proper ones.”
Hands reached out. Rowe distributed them with the air of a man bestowing favours, and I watched, saying nothing, filing the observation away.
Black market cigarettes weren't unusual.
Everyone knew the underground economy existed, and most people looked the other way as long as it didn't interfere with operations.
But good cigarettes cost money. More money than a cipher clerk's wages should allow.
“You're the new security bloke, yeah?” Rowe's attention had shifted to me, eyes bright with curiosity. “The sniper?”
Every head at the table turned. I kept my expression flat. “Security detail. Not much call for sniping here.”
“Still.” He took a drag, exhaled slowly. “Must be strange. Going from the action to this. All these boffins and their puzzles.”
“It's a posting.”
“My cousin was in the infantry. Normandy.” He leaned forward, that hungry gleam in his eyes that I'd learned to recognise. The fascination people had with violence they'd never experienced. “Said it was absolute hell over there. Bodies everywhere, couldn't tell friend from enemy half the time.”
“Your cousin talk a lot about what he saw?”
Something flickered across Rowe's face. “Well, no. Not much. You know how it is.”
“I know exactly how it is.” I held his gaze until he looked away. “Which is why I don't talk about it either.”
The table went quiet. Rowe stubbed out his cigarette with more force than necessary and muttered something about needing to get back to work. The others drifted away in ones and twos, and I went back to my food, feeling the weight of their curiosity like eyes on the back of my neck.
I was scraping the last of the cabbage off my plate when the argument started.
“That's incorrect.”
Pembroke's voice. Clipped, precise, carrying across the room despite its lack of volume.
I looked up.
He was standing now, notebook closed in one hand, facing a stocky man I recognised as one of the older cipher clerks.
Morrison, I thought. The one who'd spent three hours on intercepts that Pembroke had cracked in one.
The conversation around them had died, creating a pocket of silence that spread outward.
“I beg your pardon?” Morrison's face had gone red.
“The Hamburg raid you're describing. It wasn't the fifteenth of March. It was the sixteenth. And it wasn't seventy aircraft. It was eighty-three, with twelve losses.”
“I think I know what I'm talking about, Pembroke. I have a brother-in-law in Bomber Command.”
“Then his letters are inaccurate.” No malice in Pembroke's tone.
Just statement of fact, which somehow made it worse.
“The fifteenth was clear conditions, no operations scheduled.
The sixteenth was overcast, ideal for the pathfinder approach.
Eighty-three aircraft deployed. Twelve failed to return. It's documented.”
Morrison's hands clenched. “You're a fussy little bastard, aren't you? Always have to be right, always have to make everyone else look stupid.”
“I'm not trying to make anyone look anything. I'm correcting an error.”
“Nobody asked you to correct anything.”
“The error existed regardless of whether anyone asked.”
I could see the moment Morrison decided to escalate. The shift in his weight, the way his shoulders squared. Pembroke didn't see it. He was too focused on the argument, on being right, on the pure logic of his position without understanding the social dynamics swirling around him.
I stood up.
Morrison's hand was already reaching for Pembroke's collar when I stepped between them, not touching either man, just occupying the space in a way that made further movement impossible.
“Problem here?” My voice came out flat, the tone I'd used on raw recruits who needed reminding of the chain of command.
Morrison pulled up short, face purpling. “Mind your own business, Sergeant.”
“Mr. Pembroke is my business. Captain Finch's orders.”
The silence stretched. I didn't move, didn't blink, just stood there and let Morrison decide whether he wanted to make this into something official. Behind me, I could feel Pembroke's confusion, his uncertainty, the way he'd gone still and silent.
Morrison backed down. They always did, eventually, when they realised the other person wasn't going to flinch first.
“Fine,” he spat. “Keep your pet boffin on a shorter leash, then. Before someone teaches him some manners.”
He turned and stalked away, and the canteen slowly resumed its normal noise level, people looking away, pretending they hadn't been watching.
I turned to Pembroke.
He was staring at me with an expression I couldn't read. Surprise, maybe. Or anger. His hands were shaking slightly, though whether from fear or fury, I couldn't tell.
“I didn't need rescuing,” he said.
“You were about to get hit.”
“I can handle myself.”
“Against a man twice your weight who was two seconds from putting you on the floor?” I kept my voice low, private. “You're brilliant, Pembroke. Everyone says so. But brilliant doesn't stop a fist.”
His jaw tightened. For a moment I thought he might argue further, but instead he just gathered his notebook and papers with sharp, jerky movements.
“I have work to do,” he said, and walked out without looking back.
I watched him go, feeling the eyes of the room on me, and wondered if I'd just made everything worse.
The whistle came at twenty-two hundred sharp.
I was already positioned outside Hut X, torch in hand, when the lights died.
The darkness was total, absolute, the kind that swallowed depth and distance and left you navigating by memory and sound alone.
Across the estate, I could hear other whistles, other voices calling instructions, the controlled chaos of two hundred people trying to move through blackness without killing themselves.
The hut door opened, spilling a brief wedge of light before someone inside killed the lamps. Bodies emerged, bundled shapes moving too quickly for safety, breath steaming in the frigid air.
“Single file,” I called, voice carrying without shouting. “Follow the person in front of you. If you can't see them, stop and call out. Anyone who tries to run gets to explain to Finch why they're in the infirmary.”
They listened. Mostly. I counted them as they passed, checking names against the roster I'd memorised: Ruth Adler, moving with calm efficiency.
Noor Bennett, muttering something in Urdu that sounded like profanity.
A string of clerks and typists, some steady, some stumbling.
Peter, grinning even in the dark like this was some grand adventure.
No Pembroke.
I grabbed Rowe's arm as he passed. “Where's Pembroke?”