Silent Night (Sam Archer 4) (5 page)

All those factors had put him in the diner this morning and set in course what would take place in the city later that day. His bruised knuckles tightening around the mug, he drank from his coffee, thinking of all those years when he’d been treated like shit and how he’d had to put up with it.

After this morning, that would never happen again.

The diner was reasonably busy, people drifting in and out, the bell above the door frequently dinging and a blast of cold air accompanying each entrance and exit. Christmas music from the sound system filled the air, mingling with the murmurs of low conversation and the noise from the kitchen around the back. A tired-looking middle-aged waitress wandered over to their table, giving them a perfunctory smile, a pot of coffee in her hand.

‘Refill?’

Bleeker nodded, pushing his cup towards her. The woman filled it, then looked at the other two men. Neither responded and she moved away.

‘You think he got cold feet?’ asked the man sitting beside Bleeker, looking at the empty space in the four-man booth. He was the youngest of the group, just turned twenty years old with a slight frame and a weak face. His eyes were darting nervously around the room, his leg jiggling under the table.

The man across the table shook his head.

‘You know Ray. He isn’t a pussy.’

‘So where the hell is he?’

‘Forget him,’ Bleeker said. ‘Whether he ran or not, we’ve got a job to do. You need to focus. We do this and we do it right.’

Silence followed. Bleeker drank some of his fresh coffee, then looked at his watch.

‘Time check.’

The other two looked at their watches.

‘10:25.’

‘Check.’

‘Check.’

Bleeker took a deep breath. ‘So let’s do this thing. Donnie, pay the tab.’

Bleeker and the other man slid out from the booth. The kid called Donnie pulled a twenty from his wallet and trapped it under a glass, then moved out and joined the others. Together, the three men walked to the door of the diner.

Each of them carrying a white plastic bag containing a rectangular shoebox.

‘Don’t let Jorgensen get to you,’ Josh said, turning the steering wheel. ‘He’s an asshole.’

He and Archer were in one of the Bureau’s blacked-out Ford Explorers. They were just moving onto the
Queensborough
Bridge
which led across the East River and into the east side of
Manhattan
. It was a sunny morning, but it was still damn chilly. They had the heating going in the car, but it was taking a while to warm up.

‘Believe or not, he’s actually good police,’ Josh continued. ‘He’s just deficient in his personality.’

Archer shrugged. ‘One less Christmas card I have to write this year.’ Reaching forward, he cranked the heating up a notch.

‘So Katic left this morning?’ Josh asked.

‘Yeah. She’s gone.’

‘You say goodbye?’

Archer nodded. ‘I was over there when you rang.’

Josh glanced at him. ‘How’d it go?’

‘It was fine.’

‘That’s it? It was fine?’

Archer shrugged again. ‘She and I met on one of the most dangerous nights of our lives. Then I left. Once I came back and with all that adrenaline gone, we both realised we'd moved on.’

‘She’s a Fed, right?’

‘Yeah. She’s taking up an Agent-in-Charge position at their field office in
Chicago
. Her family are there too. Her kid's starting school there in the New Year.’

Josh nodded, sensing Archer didn't want to talk any more about it and a silence fell in the car.

Archer looked out of the window and watched the thick pillars of the Bridge pass by, the icy-cold
East River
running fast below. Moving to
New York
from the
UK
wasn’t a decision he’d taken lightly. He’d been more than happy in his prestigious position on the First Team of the ARU. They were one of the leading counter-terrorist task forces in
London
after all, and he’d worked alongside some of the best men and women out there. His great friend Chalky. Porter, Fox and Deakins, top guys who were more family than work colleagues. Nikki, a tech analyst who was both a close friend and an old flame. And Cobb, the best boss a man could ask for.

But a big factor in coming here had been FBI Supervisory Special Agent Mina Katic. Ever since they’d met last summer she'd been constantly in his thoughts. He'd arrived in
New York
seven months ago and initially everything seemed to be fine, but then Archer had realised it just wasn’t working. Something was missing. Aside from just feeling 'off', they both worked insanely unpredictable hours. They’d been separated by an ocean before, but now they were in the same city they still barely saw each other. Like embers on a dying fire, their romance had slowly dimmed and faded.

Soon enough, the spark was gone.

Her job offer in
Chicago
had been a blessing in disguise. He’d sensed for a while she’d had enough of New York and wanted to move back to where she’d grown up with her daughter, Jess, who would be starting high school in the next couple of years. When she'd first mentioned that she was thinking of leaving, Archer hadn’t felt any desire to ask her to stay.

That was when he knew it was over.

The period leading up to her departure, much like their goodbye this morning, had been very civil with no acrimony or hostility. Neither felt any anger towards the other. But for whatever reason, be it personal or professional, what they had obviously wasn’t destined to be a long-term thing. It almost seemed to Archer that a man in this career had to pick between his work and his personal life. You couldn’t have both. But then he glanced at Josh and realised that wasn’t true. You couldn’t find a happier married man or a more doting father. Josh was getting it right. Archer wanted to find out what his secret was.

The horn of a passing car blared, bringing Archer back to the situation at hand. They’d just moved off the Bridge and were now in
Manhattan
. Josh drove down 59
th,
headed west, past 1
st
, 2
nd
and 3
rd
Avenues. Then Park, Madison and 5
th
.
Central Park
rolled into view on their right. Everywhere he looked there were red and gold Christmas decorations, shoppers wrapped up in thick coats, many of them laden with bags as they made their way to a coffee shop or back to their hotels. A group of carol singers had taken up a position on the sidewalk by the south-east entrance of
Central Park
and he caught a glimpse of an ice-skating rink through a gap in the trees as they drove down the street.
New York
did Christmas damn well. There were throngs of people everywhere, all enjoying a festive weekend. All of them blissfully unaware that a man had died a horrific toxic death across the Park last night.

‘You got plans Christmas Day?’ Josh asked.

‘Haven’t thought about it.’

‘What about your sister? She’s in DC, right?’

‘She’s having a hot one. Going off with the family to the
Caribbean
.’

‘Never understood that. It wouldn’t feel right having a barbeque on Christmas Day.’

‘Right now I wouldn’t mind.’

Josh grinned. ‘You should come over. We’d love to have you.’

‘I can’t do that. Christmas is family time.’

‘Yeah, but now I won’t be able to fully relax. When I’m sitting by a warm fire with a cold beer and a plate of food, I’ll think of you alone in your apartment looking pathetic, pulling the ring off a can of soup.’

‘OK, I’ll think about it.’

Josh shook his head. ‘It’s not your decision anymore. I’ll tell Michelle. The moment I do that, it’s a given. Otherwise she’ll head over to your place on Christmas morning and march you over to our house herself.’

Archer laughed. They stopped at a red light at
Columbus Circle
, then once it turned green drove around the monument and headed uptown on Broadway.

‘Where is this place?’ Josh asked. ‘66
th
, right?’

‘66
th
and
Amsterdam
.’

From
Columbus
to around West 86
th
, Broadway was positioned at a right-diagonal that eventually straightened out. Given its slant, the road met
9
th
Avenue
on
64
th
Street
. Josh held at a red light, then took a left across the intersection and headed down 65
th
. The
next Avenue
over was
Amsterdam
. When the light was green, Josh moved out and over to the left hand lane. He pulled up to the kerb just past 66
th
, applying the handbrake and killing the engine.

The two men stepped out of the car, Archer hunching into his coat and pulling his collar up against the blast of the cold wind. Being on the west side of
Manhattan
, they were close to the
Hudson River
and the wind had an extra bite to it. Slamming his door and jamming his hands into his pockets, he walked around the front of the car and joined Josh on the edge of the sidewalk. Several stores and a frozen yoghurt place were lined side by side up the block, but the building in front of them had to be the address they were after. Judging by the entrance, a number of different businesses and companies had office space here. A series of company names and logos on metal placards lined the walls either side of the entrance, all in different swirling calligraphy and fonts.

Archer looked up at the building as Josh walked forward to check out the plates.

About a third of the way down, in plain, printed, no-bullshit style was
Flood Microbiology
.

'Bull's-eye,’ Josh said.

Archer didn’t respond.

Josh looked over his shoulder. ‘Let’s head-’

He stopped mid-sentence.

Archer's head was tilted back and he was staring up at the building in front of them.

There was something wrong.

‘Arch?’

‘
Look
,’ he said.

Josh frowned and stepping back to join his partner, tilted his head to see what had caught Archer’s attention. The building was about twenty storeys high, but he immediately saw what Archer had spotted.

‘
What the hell?’
he said.

The two men backed up quickly, moving out onto the street beside the car to get a better look.

They could see a man standing on the edge of the roof.

Eleven blocks uptown, a man in his early thirties was just finishing cooking a late breakfast, some eggs and bacon sizzling in a pan. He lived alone in an apartment on the
Upper West Side
. He wasn’t a social guy and had never been particularly comfortable around women, so he much preferred his own company in his own private place to having people around. It had been a long week and he was looking forward to relaxing all day by himself, just the way he liked it.

But suddenly, the doorbell rang.

It made him jump. He wasn’t expecting a guest. Maybe it was a delivery, or someone from downstairs.

‘One second,’ he called, tipping the frying pan and sliding his breakfast onto a plate. Turning off the cooker and wiping his hands on a cloth, he walked over to the door and pulled it open.

There was a man and woman standing there.

The man had bleach-blond hair, with a sharp jagged scar across one eyebrow. In contrast to his hair, he had dark, emotionless eyes that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a shark.

The woman was dark-haired with a harsh face, her hard eyes emphasised by thick black eyeliner.

They stared at him, expressionless.

The man had a roll of duct tape in his hand.

And the woman was holding a silenced pistol.

The lift inside the building on 66
th
and
Amsterdam
dinged, opening on the 20
th
floor.

Before the doors had fully parted, Archer and Josh sprinted out. The door to the stairwell was straight ahead. Archer wrenched it open and the two men raced up the stairs that led to the roof, bursting through the last door and running out onto the rooftop.

Fifteen yards away, they saw up close what they’d caught a glimpse of from the street.

A man was standing on the edge of the rooftop.

Ten feet behind him was a young woman, her hands covering her mouth.