Chapter 3 #2
“Still inside, I think. You know how he gets when he's working. Probably didn't even hear the whistle.”
Christ.
I left the others to continue toward the assembly point and pushed back into the hut, moving by touch and memory through the narrow corridor.
The darkness inside was even more complete than outside, the blacked-out windows sealing out any ambient light, and I had to feel my way along the walls until I reached the main workroom.
“Pembroke?”
No response.
I clicked on my torch, shielding it with my hand so only a sliver of light escaped, and swept the beam across the room. Desks, typewriters, filing cabinets, all the detritus of code-breaking work. And there, at the back, a figure still hunched over a desk, pencil moving across paper.
He hadn't noticed. The whistle, the evacuation, the total darkness. He'd been so deep in whatever he was working on that the entire world had ceased to exist.
I crossed the room in four strides and put my hand on his shoulder. “Pembroke.”
He startled violently, pencil skittering across the desk, and for a moment his eyes were wild, unfocused, like a man waking from a dream he couldn't escape.
“What—”
“Blackout drill. Everyone's evacuated. You need to move, now.”
“I was just—the intercepts—I almost had the—”
“Now.” I grabbed his coat from the back of his chair and shoved it at him. “You can crack the code of the century tomorrow. Tonight, you're getting out of this building before Finch has both our heads.”
He stared at me for a moment, still half-lost in whatever mental space he'd been occupying, and then something clicked. He pulled on the coat with fumbling hands, grabbed his scarf and the notebook that was never far from his reach, and followed me toward the door.
Outside, the darkness pressed close. I killed the torch once we were clear of the building; using light during a blackout drill defeated the purpose, and I didn't need Finch adding that to my list of failures.
“Stay close,” I said. “The path's iced over. I'll guide you.”
“I can—”
“I know you can. But you won't. Not tonight.” I took his elbow, the same grip I'd used on wounded men in the field, firm enough to steer but not tight enough to hurt. “We move together or not at all.”
He went rigid under my hand. I could feel the resistance in him, the instinct to pull away, to prove he didn't need help. But the cold was brutal and the ground was treacherous and somewhere in that brilliant, stubborn mind, practicality won out over pride.
He let me guide him.
We moved through the darkness in silence, my free hand outstretched to feel for obstacles, my feet testing each step before committing weight. The snow had crusted over with ice, crunching under our boots, and the only other sound was our breathing, harsh and white in the frozen air.
Halfway to the assembly point, a shout cut through the night. Then another. Sounds of a scuffle somewhere to our left, near the perimeter fence.
I stopped. Pembroke stopped with me, tension radiating through the arm I was holding.
“Stay here,” I said.
“What—”
“Don't move.”
I was already running, boots finding purchase on the ice through instinct and luck, hand going to the Webley at my hip.
The sounds led me to a section of fence where the woods pressed close, and I could make out shapes in the darkness now, two figures struggling, one trying to get over the wire while the other hauled him back.
“Hold!” I barked, and both figures froze.
My torch came on, blinding in the blackness, and I saw a young private I didn't recognise grappling with a civilian in a wool coat. The civilian had a satchel clutched to his chest, and his face, when the light hit it, was white with terror.
“What's going on here?”
The private straightened, still gripping the civilian's arm. “Caught him trying to go over the fence, Sarge. Said he was just going to the village, but why would anyone do that during a blackout drill?”
The civilian was babbling now, something about needing cigarettes, about not realising there was a drill, about how he'd just be a minute. His eyes kept darting to the satchel like it contained something precious. Or something damning.
“Name,” I said.
“W-Williams. Gerald Williams. I work in the signals office, I just—”
“Open the bag.”
“I really don't think that's necessary, I just—”
“Open it or I do.”
His hands shook as he fumbled with the clasp. Inside, visible in the torchlight: papers. Typed sheets with rows of numbers and letters that meant nothing to me but would mean everything to the wrong people.
“Private, you'll escort Mr. Williams to Captain Finch's office and wait there until I arrive. Don't let him out of your sight. Don't let him speak to anyone. And don't let go of that bag.”
“Yes, Sarge.”
I watched them go, the private half-dragging Williams through the snow, and felt the cold settle into my bones. A leak. Someone trying to smuggle information off the estate in the middle of a blackout drill, when attention was elsewhere and darkness provided cover.
Finch had been right to worry.
I made my way back to where I'd left Pembroke, half-expecting him to have wandered off despite my instructions. But he was there, exactly where I'd left him, arms wrapped around himself against the cold.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Later. We need to get to the assembly point.”
I took his elbow again, and we walked the rest of the way in silence.
My mind was churning through implications, suspects, security protocols that had clearly failed somewhere.
But I kept my grip steady and my pace even, and when we reached the assembly point where the others were gathered in shivering clusters, I let go of Pembroke's arm and went to give my report.
Headcount complete. One attempted breach, suspect in custody. Hut X personnel all accounted for.
Finch's face, when I told him about Williams, went the colour of old stone. He dismissed me with a curt nod and headed toward the manor at a pace that suggested Williams was about to have a very unpleasant evening.
I found Pembroke waiting near the edge of the crowd, separate from the others as always, his notebook clutched to his chest like a shield.
“Who was it?” he asked when I approached. “The person you caught?”
“Gerald Williams. Signals office.”
Pembroke's brow furrowed. “Williams. He's competent. Quiet. I wouldn't have thought...” He trailed off, something shifting behind his eyes. “But then, one rarely does think.”
“You knew him?”
“I know everyone. At least enough to recognise their patterns.” He looked at me, and in the dim light from the manor windows, his expression was impossible to read. “You caught him because you were paying attention. Because you thought something might happen and you were ready for it.”
“That's my job.”
“Yes. It is.” He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer. “I didn't thank you. For earlier. In the canteen.”
“You didn't want to be rescued.”
“No. But that doesn't mean I wasn't grateful.” He shifted his weight, uncomfortable with the admission. “Morrison has been looking for an excuse to put me in my place for months. You gave him a reason to back down without losing face. That was... strategic.”
I almost laughed. Of all the ways to describe stepping between two men before a fight broke out, strategic wasn't the one I'd have chosen.
“I'll walk you back to your billet,” I said. “It's been a long night.”
He didn't argue. We walked through the dispersing crowd, past the huts and the manor and the guards resuming their normal posts, and the silence between us felt different than it had before. Less wary. Less weighted with mutual suspicion.
At his door, he paused, key in hand.
“Sergeant Hale.”
“Yeah?”
“The work I do here. The codes I break.” He wasn't looking at me, his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. “People die because of it. Our people, their people. Every intercept I crack becomes an order that sends men to kill or be killed.”
I said nothing. Just waited.
“I used to think that made me a coward. Sitting here in the warm while others freeze in foxholes. Pushing paper while others push through mud and blood.” His voice was barely above a whisper now.
“But lately I've started to wonder if it just makes me a different kind of weapon. One that kills from a distance, like...”
He stopped. Looked at me properly for the first time since we'd left the assembly point.
“Like you,” he finished.
The words hit harder than they should have.
I'd thought the same thing, more times than I could count.
The distance between pulling a trigger and decoding a message that led to an airstrike.
The removal from consequence. The way you could pretend, if you tried hard enough, that your hands were clean.
“We're both killers,” I said. “Just with different weapons. The war doesn't care how the bodies pile up, only that they do.”
“That's a bleak way of looking at it.”
“It's an honest one.”
He studied me, and I felt the weight of that intelligence turned in my direction, analysing, cataloguing, trying to find the pattern beneath my surface.
“Goodnight, Sergeant,” he said finally.
“Goodnight, Pembroke.”
He went inside, and I stood there for a long moment, staring at his closed door.
Then I turned and walked back toward my own billet, and if my thoughts kept returning to grey-green eyes and the soft admission that we might be the same kind of monster, I didn't let myself dwell on it.
Tomorrow there would be interrogations. Security reviews. The fallout from Williams's attempted betrayal rippling through the estate like a stone dropped in still water.
But that was tomorrow.
Tonight, I cleaned my pistol by candlelight and tried not to think about the way Pembroke had looked at me when he'd called us both weapons. The recognition in his voice. The understanding.
Like seeing his own reflection in a mirror he hadn't known was there.
I finished with the Webley, checked the cylinder, set it within reach on the bedside table. The cold pressed against the walls of my billet, and somewhere outside, a guard's footsteps crunched past in the snow.
I lay down on the narrow bed and stared at the ceiling, and eventually, long after the sounds of the estate had faded to silence, I slept.