Dressed head to toe in black, Cooke had removed the clerical collar that otherwise explained his clothing choice. Dempsey knew why. Constantly identifying as a priest prevented Cooke from also being himself: a tall, thin miner’s son from County Durham in Northern England. And a man who enjoyed a dirty joke, the sight of a beautiful girl and even the occasional foul-mouthed blasphemy.

Cooke did not get to be that guy around many people. Dempsey was one of the few exceptions.

The tea was still steaming as Cooke took one of the two seats that sat beside a tall metal table at the far right of the balcony.

‘Still warm enough for you?’ Dempsey asked. The same small smile had returned. He already knew how Cooke would respond.

‘It’s alright,’ Cooke replied, with the tone of someone who thought otherwise. ‘Not like I can send it back anyway, is it?’

Dempsey laughed to himself as he took the second seat. The table formed a buttress between the two chairs, with both facing outwards across the darkening sky.

Neither man spoke as they slowly drank their tea, enjoying the warmth of the drink as the cold began to bite. They were surrounded by the sounds of the streets far below – horns, shouts and sirens – and the whipping wind that crashed between the high-rises and skyscrapers.

It was comfortable. Two men who knew each other well, and who did not need to fill silence with meaningless chatter. For Dempsey, at least, it was the ideal version of a friendship, and only when he noticed Cooke drain his cup did he finally speak again.

‘Need a refill?’ he asked.

‘Could you be any more English?’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I’ve known you for two years and in that time I’ve been in your place, what? Ten times? And every one of those has been after someone died.’

‘That can’t be right,’ Dempsey replied, not even convincing himself. ‘And what does that have to do with me being English?’

‘I’m telling you it’s right. And what do you do whenever I first get here? You avoid the real subject and you talk about tea. Like I said, you couldn’t be more English if you tried.’

Dempsey had no argument. He knew that Cooke was right. But then, when was he not? It was the reason Dempsey turned to him in times like this. Not because of Cooke’s faith; Dempsey was far from convinced that the priest was a full-on believer. And Dempsey’s own Catholicism was as confused as it came.

No. It was Cooke’s mind that Dempsey needed. His sense of right and wrong. And his habit of telling the absolute, unvarnished truth.

Dempsey had met Cooke on his first day with the United Nations’ newly formed International Security Bureau, less than twenty-four hours after arriving in New York.

As an officer in the British Army and later as an agent of the UK’s Department of Domestic Security, Dempsey had seen the world. He had operated for months at a time in little-known locations in Asia, Africa, even South America. And yet somehow his experience of New York – the closest thing on Earth to a world capital city – totalled a single three-day holiday, too many years before.