minutes. The guy didn’t reappear. Archer hung on for a few more minutes, just to make sure he’d ditched the tail, then left the restaurant, crossing the street and walking south. He could see the ugly shape of Madison Square Garden starting to appear up ahead on the corner of 33 Street. One of the most famous arenas in the world, possibly the most famous, yet it was decidedly unattractive from the outside, looking like a big, muddy, brown doughnut. If it wasn’t for its illustrious history, the place surely would have been demolished and rebuilt a long time ago considering the way it looked from the outside. Crossing the streets, he moved past people gathering on the corner of 35 and turned to his left, headed back towards 7.
The walk took him about two minutes and he occasionally checked over his shoulder to assure that he hadn’t been picked up again. As he approached 7, he began to pass a Starbucks coffee shop immediately to his left. After he arrived on the corner of 35 and 7, he took the cap off his head and looked around. He saw a young black kid walking past, his fingers tapping on some buttons as he played some kind of video game.
‘Hey, kid.’
The boy stopped and looked at him.
‘Want a free hat?’ he asked, offering it to him.
The kid looked at him, unsure, then took the cap. He looked at it, checking it out, turning it side-to-side. It was a dark-blue peaked baseball cap, the Yankees team logo on the front, a silver N and Y on top of each other. He nodded approvingly, then looked up at Archer.
‘You for real?’
Archer nodded. The kid pulled it over his head.
‘Thanks man,’ he said.
‘No problem.’
And with that, the kid walked off, returning his attention to the video game in his hands, the cap on his head. Archer watched him go, then turned and pulled open the door to the Starbucks, ducking inside.
The coffee shop was moderately full, light jazz music flowing from the speakers, the ambience relaxed and quiet. The early morning mayhem of customers grabbing a drink before work had lessened slightly, and although there was a medium-length queue for the counter, the place was pretty chilled compared to the streets outside. People were sitting around the coffee shop, some tapping into netbooks and laptops or reading newspapers, others chatting with friends and enjoying their drinks.
Archer looked across the room and saw a middle-aged man in a smart suit sitting alone near the window. He had sunglasses over his eyes, but he was looking straight at him. He had two large drinks in front of him on the table, and he picked up the one on the right, taking a sip. Archer saw this and ignoring the queue for the counter, moved straight towards the guy. He took a seat across from him, pulling off his sunglasses.
Removing his own sunglasses, Supervisory Special Agent Todd Gerrard of the FBI pushed a cup of tea across the table towards him.
‘Good news,’ Archer said, checking back over his shoulder.
‘What?’ Gerrard asked.
‘I think I’m in.’
FOUR
It had all started four days ago.
Back across the Atlantic in London, Friday morning had begun like any other typical Friday morning for Archer. He’d woken up at 6 am, headed out the door for a 45 minute gym session, returned, showered, then took the Underground to his police station in North London, the Armed Response Unit, for 8:30 am sharp. He’d signed in at the front desk, then headed straight upstairs to their team briefing room to report in with the rest of the team and grab a cup of tea. He saved time every morning by not having to worry about breakfast. He didn’t have any semblance of an appetite in the morning, and the tea was just about all his stomach could cope with until lunch.
The Armed Response Unit operated in two halves. The first half was an analyst team, who gathered intelligence and information from inside these headquarters, and the second was an armed ten-man task force, who used that information out in the field when they were called upon in a crisis. The two teams worked in synergy with each other, and during the last eighteen months, despite being a relatively new squad, the ARU had become the premier response and counter-terrorist team in the city. Archer was the youngest man on the task force, just turned twenty seven, but the events of the past eight months meant