Diplomacy

will be screaming for my attention. Until then, I’m all ears.” Jack chuckled. “Okay.”

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    “WHAT are you doing, Christensen?”
    Gallagher was clearly furious, but Jack couldn’t care less. They were on a short break from yet another meeting with the Belgian Prime Minister and Defense Secretary, trying to persuade them to see the joint American-British standpoint that NATO needed to send a large amount of peace keeping troops to help the war effort and that the Belgians were not helping at showing a united front.
    Jack was tired, still not fully recovered from the busted ribs and bruised jaw he had received in the kidnapping attempt, and he was fighting for something he didn’t believe in.
    “Do you think we should send hundreds of young men and women into battle for this?” Jack narrowed his eyes at his friend.
    “My point is, it doesn’t matter what we think, Jack. Our job is to stand by the choices our countries make and to support them.” Sean turned around, his hands raised in defeat. “Why am I explaining this to you?” He looked at the American and whispered, “This is treason, Jack! Those guys that manhandled you fucked with your head, didn’t they?” Jack sighed and took a sip of his cup of coffee. “This is the decision of a few ego-trippers, Gallagher, and you know it. It’s my President’s economic reasons and your Prime Minister’s brown-nosing.
    Christ, Gallagher, the guy is so far up my president’s ass that he has a say in what he has for breakfast.”
    Gallagher snorted and shook his head. “There are ways of doing this, Jack, and this is not the diplomatic way. They’ll have your head on a plate for this, and mine too, if I’m not careful.” The Belgian Prime Minister and his tubby Defense Minister returned to the table, and Jack and Sean sat down as well.
    Jack cleared his throat. “Sir, can we talk off the record for a moment?”
    Sean shot him a deadly glance.
    The PM nodded to the secretaries to leave the room, and Jack got up again. He walked over to the door to close it after them and then paced towards the window.
    “I realize my Secretary of State was instructed to threaten you with sanctions if you didn’t help us persuade the French and Germans to close the ranks. I was asked to tell you as well, that the American Military D i p l o m a c y | 171

    would stop using your Antwerp port and that there would be trade sanctions. As a last resort, I was to threaten the extrication of the NATO
    headquarters.”
    Jack looked at Sean who was sitting upright in his chair, staring at the tabletop.
    “I can tell you now that the threats are all bullshit.” He saw the two ministers look at him, then at Sean, then back at him.
    “If your people don’t support this, neither should you. You’re a small country, but an important one, because you don’t let the big guys stare you down. I’m not saying you can stop this war, or that you can actually accomplish something by not joining NATO’s peace keeping force, but I’m telling you to follow your heart, something I should have done a long time ago.”
    Jack nodded at the two stunned politicians and walked out.

    “YOU actually said that?” Lucas asked, his eyebrows climbing towards his hairline.
    “Yeah,” Jack answered shyly. “I was sick and tired of hiding, of lying to everyone.” He kissed Lucas tenderly. “I knew Maria would never grant me a divorce unless I was everything she didn’t want me to be.” Lucas looked him in the eye seriously. “Sean was right. What you did was treason, Jack!”
    “I know, but you know what? It felt damn good. It was like the world dropped off my shoulders. I walked out of that building, and there was oxygen in the air. I could breathe at last. The Prime Minister knew better than to blab about what I had said, so nobody outside that room ever knew. They figured I had suffered a nervous breakdown, and I went along with it. I even saw a shrink. Had her write me up as vulnerable and a bit of a loose cannon. They gave me six months of ‘vacation’.”
    “And Maria?”
    Lucas still had deep lines on his forehead and Jack let his fingers gently ghost over his lover’s furrowed brow as he brushed aside the loose curls.

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    “She understood that if I was willing to blow my career over this that I was serious. We had a really long talk. Both did some crying. Talked some more.”
    Lucas’s worried smile made him