The Spy by Marc Eden

he’d met a girl who attracted him this much. A Lieutenant , to boot. And to think...
    They would soon be alone together in France.
    In the annals of the British Empire, reported by Rudyard, the dawn comes up like thunder; but at Achnacarry Castle it wasn’t thunder that men had to deal with on a morning—but death. To Valerie Sinclair, death was something that happened to somebody else.
    This position was soon to change.
    By lunch of the second day, she had learned how to kill with the knife and how to use the rifle butt as a weapon. In the afternoon, the carotid, how to break the nose, how to snap the human neck—the most vulnerable part of the skull—and what nerves to crush...German, of course. By twilight, how to puncture his heart. By supper, how to rupture his spleen.
    It was dark, and exhaustion blazed in her brain.
    In the dining room, the men seemed to be enjoying the evening meal. Hamilton helped her to cut the meat, because of her hands. Valerie waited until Pierre finished, and when he left, she said: “I’m not at all sure I could bring myself to kill anyone, unless, of course, I had to.” She thought of the teachings of her father, and now she might be called upon to take a human life. In running from death, she had run towards it.
    It was as though Hamilton could see into the window of her mind. “The first real knowledge most men ever have is the knowledge that they are dying,” the Commander said, and he filled his plate. “Even so, for them as well as for us, death is an unfathomable darkness...” Valerie, who was sipping her milk, spilled it. “As I said before, when it comes to a German or yourself, there will be no time to think, or to be self-sacrificing. You will cause him to die by whatever method you are learning here. The German soldier is formidable and brave. To kill him”—and he speared the meat—“is merely a matter of what’s appropriate at the time.”
    Valerie stared across at him and suddenly didn’t wish to eat. The dining room wavered and withdrew, reverberating like the distant splat of bullets; like the overloud voices of a dream. Fatigue, with a mumbled excuse, pulled her from the table and hurried her to her room. There, safe from Hamilton’s scrutiny, she sat on the edge of her cot, shuddering with horror. Exhaustion seeped into the comers of her being, wretched nausea; and deep, explosive shocks.
    The Spy was still in Scotland.
    The hours passed, and she was aware of being cold. Dawn with grey face, with pocked Commando visage, leered at last above her bunk. She awoke, and tried to focus, then crossed her eyes, as though staring at some rapidly moving ghost. She staggered out of bed, feeling drained of all desire except to return to it.
    Breakfast and scalding coffee got her heart started. The Commander was not yet about, though Pierre was soon in attendance. Not a bad sort of chap, really. And he seemed genuinely interested in her. She acknowledged the Frenchman with as few words as possible. She was too tired to talk. Too tired, even, to chew.
    She poked wearily at her breakfast.
    All around her, beneath the cold lights of morning, the cacophony of men pressed inward upon her brain. The sounds of eating, cursing, and hard male laughter crashed against her ears, welling up like cigarette smoke, evocations of a terrible strength. Somehow, she knew, it couldn’t be any other way: they were here to cut throats. They were here to be hardened in the way that iron is hardened, to become lethal as steel. But Valerie wasn’t made of steel, she was made of woman. Like a car, being wrecked, she was running out of gas. Here because of Hamilton, that fact seemed to be lost on them. Commander Hamilton would help her. Hamilton would understand...
    Hamilton was coming through the door.
    â€œGood morning!” he said, rubbing his hands briskly together and commandeering the seat next to her. He poured