He could hear the expectant hush that fell over the room, the intake of breath and the scratch of pencil lead against paper. On his right, Reyes stared at him, his eyes boring into the side of his head like lasers burning his skin.
Reyes wanted him to deny it. “You need to do a Clinton,” he’d said. “You need to deny that anything meaningful took place. That it was just a slip of your attention. A meaningless indiscretion. Play it down. You can survive if you do.”
Ethan, I am so sorry.
“Special Agent Ethan Reichenbach and I were involved in a close, personal, intimate, and loving relationship. He was much, much more than a detail agent. He was my lover and my partner.” Jack cleared his throat and looked down at the podium. He had no notes, not for this. It was all coming from the space where his heart used to be.
Looking back up, he continued, “This was not something that I expected or anticipated would happen. Our relationship developed slowly and deliberately. But I want to make one thing perfectly clear.” His voice dropped to a growl. “Agent Reichenbach’s work was consistently above reproach. He drafted an impeccable security plan for the Ethiopia visit. It was his plan, in fact, that ensured that I survived the assault on the motorcade. An assault that…took Ethan from me.” Finally, his voice wavered, and Jack closed his eyes against the mass of lights and cameras and reporters. He inhaled, shaking, and the whir and click of cameras caught every single moment of his anguish.
He opened his eyes. “The blame for the attack in Ethiopia lies not with Agent Reichenbach, but with myself. I take full responsibility for the decision to travel, and for the quality of the intelligence that we were presented with. The buck stops on my desk.” Jack pressed his lips together. The cameras clicked again, flashes blaring. “I have had two great loves in my life. My wife, Captain Leslie Spiers, and my best friend and lover, Special Agent Ethan Reichenbach. Please understand that this is a period of deep mourning for me.” Swallowing, Jack folded his hands on the podium. “I’ll take questions now.”
The pressroom exploded. Reporters shot to their feet, arms waving in the air as they shouted over each other, each vying to be heard. Reyes tried to corral the crowd, bellowing for calm and for order.
Slowly, Jack closed his eyes as dread sank through him.
Ethan, I am so sorry.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later, Jack escaped the pressroom, leaving the shouting reporters behind, each scrabbling for another question. All around, Jack saw his aides and his advisors already scrolling through their phones and reading the breaking news headlines.
Some winced. Others cringed.
“That could have gone better,” Gottschalk said, falling into step next to Jack.
“I wasn’t going to lie. Ethan deserves better than that.”
Gottschalk’s silence loudly broadcast his disapproval. “I think Ethan would disagree,” Gottschalk finally said. “He’d want what is best for you.”
“What’s next?” Jack changed the topic and cleared his throat. He was done talking about this. He was just done.
“President Puchkov is scheduled to call in ten minutes to discuss joint military operations.”
“Russians and Americans working together.” Jack tried to smile, but it was grim. “I suppose I accomplished something in office.”
Gottschalk shot him a tight-lipped nod as Jack disappeared into the Oval Office.
He collapsed in his desk chair, throwing his head back. That had been awful. God-awful, worse than he’d even imagined. They’d questioned him about the details—when he said intimate, did he mean that they were involved sexually? And about whether he’d known that the Secret Service prohibited relationships with protectees. And why had he deceived the American public on his homosexuality? How long had he been gay? Was his marriage real, or was that just a cover?
“Ethan,” he whispered to the empty, silent office. “I miss you every single moment.”
On the corner of the desk, his secretary had dropped a folded piece of paper. Jack grabbed it. Inside, she had scrawled down Levi Daniels’s cell phone number.
Daniels still hadn’t shown up for his shifts. Jack had asked Inada what Inada was going to do about that. Inada had just swallowed and shrugged. What could anyone do that was right when an agent was shattered and grieving and lost?
Jack pulled out his phone and punched in the numbers. Daniels’s phone didn’t even ring, just rolled straight to voicemail. His voice, from happier days, boomed out of the phone’s speaker. “This is Levi Daniels, and I’m not available right now. Leave a message after the beep, and I’ll holler back at you as soon as I can. Kick it!”
Smiling, Jack waited through the beep. “Hi, Agent Daniels, this is Jack. Jack Spiers.” He sighed. “You know who I am,” he said ruefully. “Look, I heard you’re…taking some time off. Would you please meet me for lunch? I…want to chat with you. Nothing official, nothing heavy. I just…” Jack sighed. “Look, we’ve both lost our friends. We can drop all the bullshit around each other, right? We’re both hurting, and life sucks right now. Let’s let it suck together for an hour.”
He clicked off the call, dropped his cell onto the desk, and then buried his face in his hands.
Twenty minutes later, Jack lay with his head on his arms crossed on top of the desktop. The ticking of the clock on the shelves to his left mocked him, marking the march of time. Outside, autumn’s wind whished through the trees, rattling heavy branches and fluttering leaves of ochre and amber, wine and goldenrod. The roses had withered, shedding their blooms across the lawns, turning to mold and rot before the gardeners had a chance to sweep them away. In the distance, car horns honked and tires squealed, the ever-present hustle and life of the city.
Jack barely lifted his head as he pressed the quick dial button on his office phone for Gottschalk.
“Sir?” Gottschalk answered within the first ring.
“Puchkov didn’t call.”
Calls between world leaders weren’t simple affairs. They involved a team of schedulers, the security services of each country, and two secretaries to the world’s most powerful men. Puchkov didn’t just dial Jack’s direct line. His secretary would make the call, which was routed through a constantly recorded secured line, and then passed over to Jack’s secretary, who queued it up for him. If everything worked perfectly, the two leaders met on the line at the same time.
But no call ever failed.
Gottschalk’s heavy sigh echoed. “Probably because of the press conference.”
Bile rose in the back of Jack’s throat. “I’m calling him,” he grunted. He hung up on Gottschalk and sat back, dragging the phone across the desk until he was hovering over it. He punched the extension for his secretary and told her to get Puchkov on the line while he waited.
Long, long minutes passed. The clock ticked on.
“Ethan…” he whispered, “I was starting to think of ‘after the Oval Office.’ After all of this. What would we do? Where would we go? Would you stay in the Secret Service? Would I take a board position somewhere in DC? Or in Texas? Would you come with me to Texas, if I left?” He closed his eyes and rested the silent phone against his forehead. “I wanted to take you on a real trip. Not a presidential trip where you were out of your mind with work. But a real vacation. Paris, maybe. Or Rome.” He smiled. “Or maybe something more adventurous. You seem like the type. Australia? New Zealand? We could have fun there.”
The phone clicked in his ear. His secretary’s scratchy voice spoke. “President Puchkov in two minutes, Mr. President.”
He grunted, squeezing his eyes closed. What was happening to him? He was talking to ghosts? Speaking out loud to the memory of his dead lover? He hadn’t lost it this badly when Leslie had died. What was this? The start of his descent into madness? Was he finally losing it? Was losing the second love of his life the limit of mental stability?
Jack banged his forehead against the phone handset. “Ethan,” he breathed.
“Mr. President?” Puchkov’s rough accent grated in his ear. “I am not your dead boyfriend.”
Clearing his throat, Jack straightened in his chair. Embarrassment burned through him. “President Puchkov. I apologize. My mind was wandering.”
“I can imagine. I saw your press conference, President
Pidor
.”
Jack frowned. He didn’t know that Russian word.
“We were supposed to chat ten minutes ago, Mr. President. I’d like to discuss our deployment plans in the Middle East. Try to coordinate our forces—”
Puchkov interrupted Jack. In his mind, he saw Puchkov waving him off, arrogantly waving him to silence. “No, no, President
Pidor
. I think, instead, that Russia will do our own part in the Middle East. That is to say, we don’t need you. Russia will act, and Russia will act decisively and with strength. It’s what Russia is best at.” A pause. “We do not need a
pidor
president’s help. You will not be in office long, anyway. Your country is in shock today. How long until they vote you out, hmm?”
“Puchkov,” Jack growled. “Is this about—” His throat clenched. He couldn’t say it. “After everything we’ve accomplished together—”
“You are a sinking ship. The world needs more than another failed president. I thought you were stronger than this. Good-bye, President
Pidor
.”
Puchkov ended the call.
Jack huffed, staring at the phone. He dropped the headset into the cradle and pulled his laptop close. A quick Internet search for the unknown Russian word brought him to the definition.
Pidor
: derogative Russian slang for a homosexual: butt-fucker, cocksucker, shit-pusher, faggot, pederast.
Hot shame burned his blood. The world seemed to expand and then contract, focusing down on the words on the screen until there was nothing else. He heard nothing and everything, the sound of silence suddenly oppressive, suddenly screaming at him. His mind threw up every insult he’d ever heard, every curse and degradation thrown in homosexuals’ faces, now directed squarely at himself.
He closed his eyes. Clenched his hands into fists.
A moment later, Jack roared, hurling the phone from his desk. It shattered against the wall, the plastic cracking and splintering, and the cord tangling beneath a bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln.
Chapter Sixteen
Kurdish Military Base Destroyed; Locals Claim Jinn Responsible for Gruesome Deaths
In a scene straight out of a science fiction movie, locals crept up the hillside outside Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdistan provinces of Northern Iraq, and found a base utterly decimated. Blood was everywhere. On the walls, hanging from the ceiling. Soaking the desert sand. “It was the jinn,” a local said, refusing to go near the devastated base. “The demons came and ate the soldiers.”
* * * * *
Ethan leaned back against the wall in the darkened hallway, his breaths finally slowing. Across from him, Collard was hunched over, his hands on his knees, watching him with wary eyes.
“I’m okay,” Ethan grunted. “I’m okay.”
He wasn’t okay. He wasn’t remotely okay.
Rage had consumed him, burning away his conscious mind. He’d leapt, snarling, at the colonel, but Cooper shoved him off. Colonel Song wasn’t his target, though. He was just a messenger.
His target was Jeff Gottschalk. But Gottschalk was in Washington, DC, 6000 miles away, and right beside Jack.
He’d gone insane. He tore apart one of Faisal’s couches, ripping cushions in two before kicking out the back and then tearing the sides off the frame with his bare hands. He tore his stitches then. Doc had shouted about the blood spilling from his abdomen, and Collard had tackled him from behind. They wrestled on the ground like animals, Ethan snarling and grunting and bellowing with uncontrolled rage. Jack was in danger. He was right beside a traitor, a murderer, and there was nothing—nothing—Ethan could do. Not at that moment.
The impotence, the frustrated need to act, and the impossibility of saving his lover, destroyed him.
Collard finally put him in a sleeper hold, lying on his back with Ethan wrapped up in his arms and legs. His arm squeezed around Ethan’s neck as Cooper and his men shouted and tried to help. Collard’s voice, choking on furious tears, had finally cut through Ethan’s killing frenzy. “Jesus Christ, Ethan, don’t make me do this!”
He stopped fighting, relaxed in Collard’s grip. Collard let go, and Ethan rolled to his hands and knees, coughing up blood onto the marble floor. Doc shit a brick at that, but the blood was just from where he’d bit his lip. Cooper helped Collard up, glaring at Ethan.
Doc stitched his stomach back up, all while calling him an idiot and an asshole. Ethan sat on the ruined cushions of the couch, stuffing spilling out everywhere, while Doc kicked aside wooden debris from the frame and knelt in front of him.
He wasn’t gentle with his needle. Ethan didn’t care. He welcomed the pain.
Faisal and Colonel Song had ducked out when the worst of Ethan’s temper took over. They came back as Ethan was pulling his bloody shirt over his head. Fury licked at Ethan’s heart, and he asked for a moment before they continued.
Collard followed him down the hallway.
“Jesus Christ,” Collard breathed. “Fuck, Ethan.”
“He’s with
Jack
, Scott. He’s right next to him. Fuck, Jack could already be dead!”
“We don’t know what their final plan is. We don’t know what this package is, and we don’t know what the invite is. It’s got to be big, though. Black Fox doesn’t do small.”
Ethan’s teeth ground against one another. “Not helping,” he growled.
“We’ve got to listen to the rest of what the colonel has to say. Then we can figure out what to do.” Collard sighed, shaking his head. “Fuck…I put it all together while he was explaining everything. He knew about you two. And—” Collard straightened, his eyes bulging. “And he must have been the one to leak it to Director Stahl.”
“Director Stahl?” Stahl was their director at the Secret Service, in charge of the entire agency.
“Yeah. Daniels was called into his office just before the trip. The director was asking all about you and the president. Daniels thought he was sniffing after proof of you breaking the regs.”