Silent Night - By Tom Barber Page 0,6

for the foreseeable future. Once in New York, he’d intended to apply for the NYPD and if accepted, begin re-training and then work his way up through the ranks from the ground. He needed at least five years on the street before he could attempt his goal of qualifying for the Emergency Service Unit, the NYPD’s SWAT team, but it was something that he was fully prepared to do. His father had been an NYPD cop and he’d recently discovered an ambition to follow in his footsteps, to experience what it was like to police the capital city of the world, as his dad had called it.

But a few days after he’d arrived and was prepping his application, Archer had received a call from Director Tim Cobb, his boss at the ARU in London. When Archer had explained his reasoning for handing in his notice back in May, Cobb had promised to try and help speed up his process of induction. He’d worked quite extensively with members of the NYPD in the past and had the sort of professional connections that could help Archer out.

However, the proposition he’d made in that phone call was beyond anything the younger man could have imagined or hoped for.

In its new era of law enforcement, the NYPD now had detectives placed in major cities all over the world, in locations such as Lyon, Hamburg, Tel Aviv and Toronto. It wasn’t a secret to the police forces in those countries; the detectives weren’t on clandestine operations. They were there to work closely with the major intelligence departments in each city and act as tripwires, giving immediate heads-up warnings whenever they were alerted to something relevant to New York City’s safety and security. It was a crucial part of the new age of the NYPD.

If something was coming, they wanted to know about it as soon as possible.

Cobb told Archer that he’d contacted one of his colleagues in the Department concerning Archer’s situation. The guy had then passed Cobb on to Lieutenant General Jim Franklin, the man who ran the newly-formed Counter Terrorism Bureau. Although the two men had never had dealings in the past, they’d quickly realised that an agreement between them would benefit both parties considerably. Franklin already had two men in the UK working with New Scotland Yard, but given that the ARU was at the forefront of London’s fight against terrorism he’d realised that stationing a man at the Unit’s headquarters in North London could prove very beneficial.

A deal was proposed.

If Cobb took a man from the NYPD, then Franklin would be happy to take Archer.

When Cobb had rung that night, he told Archer about the planned exchange. He didn’t even need to ask if the younger man would say yes. The next day, the swap was given the green light. An NYPD detective was heading to the ARU in London and Archer was joining the Counter Terrorism Bureau in New York City. However, admission wasn’t guaranteed. He’d endured extensive background checks and been enrolled in a federal police programme down in Georgia. Given that he’d been a frontline cop in the UK for almost a decade, he’d cruised the training and enjoyed every minute, learning some new techniques and honing some old ones. Once he’d passed the course, the deal was done and at the end of July he’d been formally presented with his badge. It was a huge moment for him.

It meant 3 Grade Detective Sam Archer was now a member of the NYPD’s Counter Terrorism Bureau.

Moving further into the building, Archer turned right and headed into the workplace for the detective squads. This portion of the building was spread over two floors. The lower level was where the working areas were located. Upstairs there were a series of Briefing Rooms and Lieutenant General Franklin’s office, all of which lay behind a fenced railing that looked down into the detective pit.

That morning, the place was humming. The weekend shift was hard at work, scores of people at desks, phone conversations taking place and fingers tapping computer keyboards. With the New Year approaching in a couple of weeks, many of the detectives had been assigned security roles for the crowds that would gather in Times Square. Given that there was always an upcoming celebration, parade, sporting event or political visit in the city, there was no such thing as a quiet shift when you worked in this building. Amongst the organised melee, Archer saw that someone had made a half-hearted attempt