Diplomacy

yes, I’m worried about him. We’ve been spending a lot of time together and of course we’ve become friends…”
    “And then some, it seems. Lucas…” Sean sighed. How was he going to tell the young man Jack had all but confessed to this? Ah, to hell with it. “Jack told me.”
    Lucas slumped down on the chair, defeated.
    “He didn’t mention your name, Lucas. He was always discreet. He just told me he was thinking of leaving his wife for a man, and I think that man is you.”
    Lucas’s head was in his hands now. Sean wondered if he was crying, but as the young man looked up an entirely different emotion was visible on his face. This was determination and resolve, the go-getter attitude for which Lucas was hired in the first place had replaced the scared look.
    “So we just sit here and do nothing?”
    “Well…” Sean was thinking quickly. “I have a friend in the Brussels Police Force I could call.”
    “So do it!” Lucas ordered, and then he remembered who he was talking to. “Please. Sir.”
    Sean picked up the phone and dialed. Lucas heard him talk to the man on the other side of the line, explaining the situation. After a few nods and ‘I see’s’ he replaced the telephone.
    “Mark was carrying a GPS homing beacon. If he and Jack are still together, then they should have them within the hour.” JACK was startled out of a fitful sleep by a loud rumble in the next room. He was hurting from his bruises and from falling asleep on a hard D i p l o m a c y | 147

    concrete floor with Mark’s body resting against his. His bodyguard wasn’t moving and the fear that the young man had died crept up on him again.
    How could he have fallen asleep?
    A blinding light entered the otherwise pitch-dark room as a door gave way to the two men in combat gear who had broken its seal. Three more followed as Jack watched apprehensively. Either they were being rescued or they were going to be killed.
    Jack’s eyes were still adjusting to the light when a hooded man with an assault rifle crouched beside him and spoke in perfect English, but with a heavy French accent. “Mr. Ambassador? I am Sergeant Lefebvre, Belgian Military Police; we have come to rescue you. Are you hurt?” Jack shook his head. “Take care of Mark first. He was shot, I don’t know if he’s still…”
    “Do not worry, sir, we will take care of him.” A young man in a jacket with fluorescent stripes reassured Jack while he examined Mark.
    Jack was pulled from underneath Mark’s limp body and a sharp pain pierced his side, stealing his breath.

    LUCAS ran into the emergency room of the University Hospital and slapped his hand on the counter of the dispatch station. “Mr.
    Christensen” he barked. “I need to see Mr. Jack Christensen, U.S.
    Ambassador, he was brought in here a little while ago!” The white-dressed women sitting behind the counter gave him an annoyed look.
    “Mr. Carlton?”
    Lucas turned sharply and saw a man dressed in a dark suit, hands folded in front of him and a discreet earpiece in his ear.
    “Please follow me, sir.”
    Lucas was escorted through a maze of corridors and elevators to a locked door, which the security man opened with a key card. The large plaque on the door said ‘Intensieve Zorgen’. Lucas’s Dutch was good enough to understand that this meant ‘Intensive Care’, and it stopped him dead in his tracks. Jack was badly injured, otherwise he wouldn’t be in the ICU. He had probably been shot. The thought turned Lucas’s heart to ice.

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    “Mr. Carlton.” The man held the door for him and continued calmly but with a certain insistence. “Please don’t dawdle.” Lucas took a deep breath as he entered the ward. At least Jack was alive and they were going to let him see him. He was therefore rather disappointed when he was led into a small waiting room. “Could someone just tell me if he’s okay?” he asked the man who had led him there.
    “Someone will come to see you shortly, Mr. Carlton,” he was told dispassionately as the man left him alone.
    Lucas couldn’t sit down. He tried to look through the gaps in the shutters that covered the windows, but found himself staring at a wall on the opposite side of the corridor. Nurses and doctors walked in and out of a room at one end of that corridor; some of them carrying equipment.
    Lucas couldn’t read their faces and his fear grew with each passing second.
    What if Jack was dead? The hospital sometimes left