Diplomacy

session and then let the director take a walk around by himself to, as he put it, ‘soak up the atmosphere’.
    Lucas stayed to the side with Mark and picked up one of the internal phones.
    “Jack? Are you really busy right now? No? Good. Can you come over to the General Assembly? I have some people here who’d like to meet you. Five minutes sounds good. Okay.”
    As Lucas sat down next to Mark, the man raised an eyebrow.
    “Did I just hear you say Jack?” Mark asked with more amusement than inquiry in his voice. “Would that be Jack Christensen?”
    “Yes. You know he no longer works for the State Department, right?”
    “Are you saying he works here?” Mark asked, as he nodded towards the hall.
    Lucas smiled. “Yes, as a senior interpreter. He’ll be here in five minutes for the technical advice you wanted, and then I figure you might like to have the chance to chat with him as well.”
    “Well, he did save my life,” Mark stated blankly.
    “Strange,” Lucas commented. “I thought it was the other way around.”
    “So the two of you are still together?”
    Lucas was a little surprised at Mark’s forwardness. “You don’t waste any words, do you?”
    Mark shrugged. “In tense situations, it’s best to be direct. I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable.”
    “No, it didn’t. Not really. I just didn’t think we were that transparent.”

    188 | Z a h r a O w e n s

    Mark looked at him sideways. “In my line of work, you learn to absorb any kind of information you can lay your hands on and use it to your advantage.”
    Lucas didn’t quite know how to deal with that statement and realized he was speechless, which was highly unusual for him.
    Luckily, Jack walked in at that very moment, nodded at Lucas and then grabbed Mark’s hand to pull him into a bear hug.
    Lucas watched a broad smile spread across the security man’s face and caught himself noticing the handsome man behind the stern exterior.
    The fact that he and Jack obviously shared a great friendship made Lucas feel like an intruder. He knew there was no reason to be jealous, though and gave the men some space, walking towards the movie director, who was taking notes and no doubt already planning the upcoming shoot.

    “SO you’re doing security for movies now?” Jack asked.
    He and Mark agreed to meet that evening in a bar around the corner from the U.N. building. Lucas was invited, but Jack knew that he would want to be home for AnnElise and wasn’t surprised when his lover declined.
    “I got a medical discharge from the Secret Service so I had to do something,” Mark answered, taking another swig from his bottle of beer.
    “This isn’t too bad. A lot of it is consultancy work, you know, giving my opinion on who should be hired for what, securing movie sets and sometimes, like for this movie, I get asked to assess if the portrayal of Secret Service men is accurate.”
    “So who’s going to play you in this film?” Jack asked, slightly amused.
    “Sean Penn,” Mark answered flatly. “He’ll do okay. He’s a good actor.”
    Jack sniggered. “He doesn’t look much like you.”
    “Well, he doesn’t have to, because he’s not playing me, right?
    Besides, you know who’s going to play you?” Now it was Mark’s turn to be amused and Jack wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. He took a sip from his beer and shook his head.
    “Nicole Kidman.”

    D i p l o m a c y | 189

    Both men started laughing. It was absurd, of course, but it felt good to rekindle the friendship that had grown between them in the weeks Jack had spent at his bodyguard’s bedside after Mark’s near fatal injury and Jack’s career suicide.
    Jack had realized in those dire times that real friends were rare, as many of the people he had known during his diplomatic career turned their backs on him. So, afraid to fall into a black hole after being a workaholic for so long, he spent his afternoons supporting the man who had saved his life by taking the bullet that had his name on it.
    Mark had needed all the support he could get. The bullet had ripped through one of his lungs and nicked several large arteries in his chest. In fact, the doctors told him more than once that he shouldn’t have survived an injury like that, but he did anyway. Jack’s help in his recovery had been greatly appreciated, as both men knew that career-wise, they were facing an uncertain future.
    Now four years later, the friendship was easily picked up again.
    “I