by Barber, Tom
Archer finished and took a moment’s breath, checking the corridor around him for any activity as he had been the entire phone call. He was standing at the end, by the stairwell, but no one else was around. He’d been speaking quietly, so there was no risk of anyone in rooms nearby catching what he was saying.
‘I didn’t know who else to call, sir,’ he added, aware that he had interrupted his sleep. ‘We didn’t know who to contact higher up. We have no idea who is involved. And right now, I’m a damn fugitive anyway.’
‘OK. Stay calm,’ Cobb said, thinking coolly and logically, not questioning a single word of what Archer just told him. ‘I have a friend in the FBI. He’s a solid guy. I worked with him on a joint operation a while ago when I was still at MI5. He’s high up now, an Assistant Director. His name’s Sanderson. I’ll call him, and tell him everything you just told me. You said you stored the money in the trunk of the car?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. If anyone finds it and reports it, it will pass through the NYPD and they’ll return it straight away.’
He paused.
‘Jesus Christ Archer, you’re supposed to be on holiday.’
‘I know, sir. I’m sorry. Someone involved in this killed my father. I had to try to find out who it was.’
There was a pause.
‘I understand,’ Cobb said. ‘But this Siletti guy could be a problem. He sounds like a smart man. If his story checks out and he’s covered any traces of his involvement, you could be in some deep shit. You beat him up. The FBI won’t like that, not on their turf. If he has half a brain, he’ll have killed Parker, Lock and Gerrard with a stolen weapon so any ballistics fingerprinting will draw a blank. You need solid proof against this guy. He’ll have made a mistake somewhere. You just need to find out where.’
The line went quiet as he thought for a moment.
‘Could you get a signed testimony from Farrell?’ Cobb asked.
‘He’s planning to leave the city forever tomorrow. If we could get something, we’d need to bring him in in the next twenty four hours or he’s gone, forever. And he isn’t the type to go down quietly. He told me he’s never going back to jail. He’d most likely get shot and killed if he got cornered.’
There was a pause. Archer checked up and down the corridor, the phone in his left hand, the Sig still in his right in the pocket of the coat.
‘OK. Stay near the phone,’ Cobb said. ‘I’ll get in touch with Sanderson and call you back. Where are you?’
‘Marriott. Times Square. Same joint you put me up in, sir.’
‘Did you switch rooms?’
‘Yes, sir. False name, claiming wit sec. No one knows we’re here.’
‘Good. Lay low, son. Don’t move. Stay where you are. I’ll call you back soon.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’
And the call ended.
Archer pushed the phone back into his pocket, then walked down the corridor towards their room. He checked either side, then pulled the key-card from his pocket and eased it into the slot, letting himself back into the room.
At the moment Cobb ended the call, two men in suits were on their way up in one of the elevators in the hotel. They’d left their shotguns in the back of the car they’d arrived in, but both had pistols in shoulder holsters hidden under their jackets. The weapons were stolen HK USP 9mm’s, tape over the trigger and grip, and each had a black suppressor screwed onto the barrel to lower the sound and report of the weapons firing.
They arrived on one of the floors. The doors slid open and they walked out. One of the men had a makeshift splint and gauze holding a broken nose in place, and as they moved down the corridor, he winced from the pain it was causing him. They saw the hotel room door ahead, and the two men slowed, moving forward quietly and slowly.
Fifteen yards.
Ten yards.
Five.
They arrived outside the door.
They checked either side, making sure no one was around, then both pulled out their pistols, pulling the top-slides back halfway to make sure a round was in the chamber of each weapon.
One of them, a man with red hair, had a key-card in his right hand.
He eased it into the slot and the door clicked, a light on the panel flicking green. In the next moment, he pushed down the handle and the two of them burst into the room, pistols up and ready to fire.
But no one was inside.
It was empty.
The man with the splint ran forward and checked the balcony whilst the man with red hair looked in the bathroom.
‘Shit,’ he said, as the man with the broken nose re-entered the room from the sliding doors. ‘They aren’t here.’
‘I can see that, dumbass,’ the other man said. He looked around and saw that there was an overnight bag here, a solitary black suit hanging on a hanger in the closet. One man had been staying here, travelling light. ‘Shit. Gerrard told me this was his room.’
‘Maybe they’re somewhere else in the hotel,’ the other man suggested.
‘Nah, they won’t have come back here. Katic has probably found somewhere for them to stay, with a friend or something.’
He swore.
‘We need to find them. They start talking to people in D.C , we’re screwed.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ O’Hara said.
Siletti pulled a phone from his pocket and pushed Redial, lifting it to his ear. The call connected.
‘Did you find them?’ a voice said.
‘No. They weren’t here.’
Pause.
‘This isn’t good. If you two go down, that might implicate me. That would make me very unhappy.’
‘I understand.’
‘You’d better pray you find them before the cops do.’
‘Understood.’
The call ended. Siletti looked over at his partner.
‘He’s pissed.’
‘No wonder.’
‘He said if we don’t find them, he’s going to come for us.’
There was a pause. The two men looked at the empty room for a moment longer, then Siletti cursed, blood staining the gauze in his nostrils, caking his moustache.
‘Screw this. Let’s get the hell out of here,’ he said.
The two men slotted their pistols back in their holsters and strode out of the hotel room.
Seventeen floors below the two men, Archer closed the door to 21 G quietly behind him and pulled the latch over. The door to the bathroom was open, the mirror steamed up, the bathtub empty, and he saw that Jessie was curled up in bed, fast asleep, exhausted but freshly bathed, the scary events of the evening temporarily forgotten. The shootout at the apartment had terrified her, but nothing that some velvet lies couldn’t fix. In the car on the way here, Katic had played down the attack, saying it was a training exercise from work, and although sceptical at first, the girl had believed it with the conviction that her mother was all-powerful, indestructible, the greatest person in the world.
Archer moved back into the room quietly, so as not to wake up Jessie, and stretched, taking off his coat and laying it over a chair. He pulled the pistol from the pocket and held it in his hand, cold, hard metallic reassurance. Everywhere he went tonight, the Sig was coming too. Jessie was asleep so he didn’t need to hide it. He saw that Katic was outside on the balcony, sat in one of the white chairs, facing Times Square. He moved out to join her.
She started as he opened the screen door and quickly reached for the pistol on her hip instinctively, but relaxed and smiled when she saw it was him. He stepped out, shutting the door quietly behind him.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey.’
‘Mind if I join you?’
She shook her head and he took a seat near her at the table.
There was a pause. Down below they could hear the constant hum and activity of Times Square. They were facing the east side, and if he sat up straight, Archer could see the tops of some of the billboards, illuminated in the night.
&
nbsp; ‘I spoke to my boss, back in the UK. He’s going to call me back.’
She nodded. ‘Good.’
Together, the two of them looked out over the city. The bright lights. The dark shapes of the buildings. The odd figure in windows far ahead, going about their business.
‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ Archer said.
‘Yeah. Me too.’
‘How did he die?’
‘Cancer.’
She paused.
‘He was only twenty six. We met the week after I left high school back in Chicago.’ Pause. ‘You’d have liked him. He was calm. Mature. Kind. Jessie was unexpected to say the least, but he never complained about it once. Never left my side. After she was born, when other guys his age were out partying, he stayed inside looking after her and me. She absolutely worshipped him.’
‘Is Katic his name?’
She shook her head.
‘Mine. We got married a couple years ago, but I couldn’t keep his name after he died. It was too hard. A constant reminder.’
‘Katic. Is that Croatian?’
She shook her head. ‘Serbian. Third generation. Family moved here after the war.’
Archer nodded and leaned back. Both of them looked out over the city in silence.
‘They’re out there right now, looking for us,’ Katic said. ‘The cops want you for the Garden heist. Farrell wants you because you abandoned him and his team and took their money. Siletti and O’Hara want us because we know about everything they’d done.’
She shook her head.
‘I thought there were rules, you know? Two separate sides. Cops and robbers. We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys. They do bad things, we chase them and try to stop them. But that’s not the case, is it?’
Archer shook his head.
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Suddenly it makes sense. Siletti and O’Hara were always reluctant. Complaining. Bitching about the pay. Siletti pissed about getting sent up here, O’Hara for not getting Gerrard’s role in the squad. I got so caught up in tailing Gerrard that I never stopped to look at those two. Now he, Parker and Lock are all dead.’
‘It’s not your fault. Don’t feel that way. You never could have known any of this was going to happen.’
Silence.
Katic shook her head, leaning back, looking up at the sky.
‘Parker had been Siletti’s partner for over a year. The kid never hurt a fly. Yet he shoots him in the back of the head. Executed. Like he committed war-crimes or something. The same probably happened to Lock and Gerrard. They interacted with these men. Spent time together. Ate food. Rode in the same cars. How the hell could they turn around and just murder them like that?’
Archer stayed silent as Katic sighed.
The noise of Times Square below filled the silence that followed
‘You’re a cop in the UK, right?’ she asked, turning to him.
‘That’s right.’
‘Have you ever been double-crossed?’
He nodded.
‘Once.’
She saw the look on his face and decided not to pursue it.
There was a pause.
‘It’s a horrible feeling,’ she said. ‘I still don’t get why they would do it. I can’t get my head around it.’
‘One reason. Money. I guess being in Bank Robbery, the two of them had been around a lot of cash. You said Siletti came from the Finance office too, back in D.C. Around all that money, every day, yet being unable to ever get your hands on any of it. Having to nod and smile as you get a monthly cheque that is a fraction of the amount of cash you deal with every day.’
Silence.
‘Your father talked about you, you know.’
Archer looked over at her.
‘When?’
‘We grabbed a coffee two weeks ago, three or four days before he died. He’d been tailing Parker, to make sure he was on our side, and had pulled his files from the database in D.C. Parker was a big high-school football player at a prep school upstate. Played quarterback. Your dad read it in the file and said he reminded him of you. Apparently you used to play soccer.’
Archer smiled, and nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’
She turned to him. ‘He had a lot of regrets, you know. I could see that in his body language when he spoke about you. I don’t know what happened between you, but his eyes lit up when he mentioned you that one time. Then his expression changed. He seemed sad. He tried to hide it, but I could see it.’
She paused.
‘I’m guessing he did something to screw up. Maybe a lot of things. I don’t know what he did, but I could tell that he regretted it and losing touch with you.’
Archer stayed silent, looking at her.
Suddenly, the cell phone rang in his pocket. Pulling his attention from Katic, he lifted it out of his pocket and pushed Answer.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me,’ Cobb said. ‘Good news.’
‘I spoke to Sanderson,’ Cobb said. ‘He’s on his way to you already from D.C. He’ll be there before morning.’
‘Great. How did he take the news?’
‘He was shocked, but he wasn’t surprised. Seems the FBI team in New York has been under review for quite some time. Their closure numbers are so bad, everyone in the entire organisation had noticed. Sanderson is an Assistant Director. All he needs to do is make one phone call and an entire division from D.C will be on their way up to help you all out. You can trust him, Arch. He’s an old friend.’
‘Great. Thank you, sir.’
‘How are you holding up?’
‘Yeah, I’m OK.’
‘The woman and the child?’
Archer looked at Katic. ‘They’re OK too.’
‘Just hang on till morning, son. Sanderson will take it from there. He believed everything I told him, everything that you told me. When he realised who your father was, that was enough to convince him. Seems he had a very good reputation over there.’
There was a pause.
‘I need to go. But call me if the shit hits the fan again. Do you have a gun?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Sleep with it in your hand. Clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The call ended. He turned to Katic, who was looking at him, her brown eyes hopeful.
‘We’re in business,’ he said. ‘A guy called Sanderson is on his way from the capital. He’s an Assistant Director. He wants to talk to me first hand, then it looks like he’s going to get us some back up.’
‘Great,’ she said. ‘That’s good news.’
There was a pause. Then she rose and stretched.
‘I’m spent. I’m going to hit the hay,’ she said.
Archer nodded. She walked past him, brushing his shoulder as she passed. He smelt her perfume.
He didn’t move as she continued on past him and re-entered the hotel room, sliding the door shut quietly behind her and leaving him out there alone.
Archer sat out on the balcony for another thirty minutes, thinking things through. Then he quietly entered the room. Katic and the girl were asleep in the bed. There was a couch straight ahead of him that looked inviting. He stacked up two cushions on the end closest to the window and sat on the middle.
Suddenly, he realised that he’d left his cell phone on. Siletti and O’Hara would be prowling the streets down below, but he knew the kind of equipment they would have access to back in their offices at Federal Plaza. He didn’t fancy getting triangulated by the cell phone’s signal. Back in London, he’d seen Nikki do the exact same thing, and she could find someone in less than a minute using the technology. He unclipped the back panel of the phone quietly so as not to wake Katic and the girl, then pulled out the battery. He thought for a moment, then rose and tiptoed across the room and did the same with Katic’s phone, laying it back gently on the table.
Satisfied, he returned to the couch and lay back, closing his eyes, the pistol in his hand with the safety on. He heard the deep
breathing of the mother and daughter from the bed. He glanced over and saw Katic fast asleep, her dark brown hair behind her head, her jaw-line and neck sleek and feminine.
He watched her for a few moments longer, then closed his own eyes.
And within a minute he was asleep.
EIGHTEEN
The next morning, Archer was the first to wake. He opened his eyes and found himself staring at the ceiling, his back flat on the couch, still in his t-shirt, jeans and shoes. In his right hand, the Sig was resting on the couch on its side, but it was aimed straight at the door.
He rose, stretching, and checked the bed. He saw Katic and Jessie still snuggled together, fast asleep amongst the folds of the clean white sheets. He smiled. He figured Katic was the type like himself who would be up at sunrise, getting in a run or a gym session before she started her day, but the events of last night had clearly knocked her body for six. He watched them both for a moment, then glanced at the clock on the bed-side table. The sunlight pouring in through the gap in the curtains already told him it was morning, another beautiful day in the city, and the red digits on the clock told him it was 9:29 am. He realised it was Sunday. He was supposed to be heading back to the UK today. His flight took off in eleven hours. But there was a hell of lot they’d have to face before he could even think about getting on that plane.
Yawning, he moved to the bathroom as quietly as he could and used the facilities, flushing the toilet and brushing his teeth with the complimentary white hotel brush and paste. He laid the pistol on the marble counter as he brushed and rinsed out his mouth. He examined his reflection in the mirror. He looked tired, but he’d seen himself look a lot worse. He smoothed down his hair, then remembered his phone and took the pieces out of his pocket, sliding the battery back into the slot on the back and reattaching the rear cover. He turned it on. After a few moments, a small phone came up in the left corner of the display. He had a voice message. Archer pushed the button and listened.