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“Trust me,lyubov moya?” Sergey smiled. “I’ll figure this out for us. I promise.”
Again Sasha nodded, but this time his lips curled upward in a tiny grin.
Sergey fixed his tie, slid his suit jacket on, and grabbed his phone. He grinned at Sasha as he headed through his bedroom and out to the foyer of the Kremlin presidential apartment. “Congratulations on coming out. I’m very proud of you.” He watched Sasha flush, bite his lip, and squirm. He seemed to glow, though, just faintly. A tiny shred of happiness peeking through the panic. Sasha always needed affirmation, like an ocean wave crashing against the shore, endlessly hungry for something he’d never received. Hopefully these friends of his would help calm those waters in his soul. “And happy birthday.” He pressed his lips to the phone screen.
When he pulled back, Sasha was beaming, and he blew Sergey a kiss. “Ya lyublyu tebya,” he said softly, his deep voice rumbling over Sergey’s skin.
“I love you, too,” Sergey said. He grabbed his files and his tablet under one arm and headed for the door. “I’ll talk to you when you wake up. Sweet dreams, Sasha.”
* * *
5
Valletta
Malta
Jack was startingto get that glazed look in his eyes, that champagne shine. Ethan rubbed his shoe up the inside of Jack’s calf beneath the café table as he drank his cappuccino. Jack smiled, the sunlight glinting off his shades, and sipped his mimosa. Down the block, waves from Valletta’s harbor rocked against the ancient stone, and sailboats crisscrossed with the morning ferries. Seagulls swooped and cried out, playing in the waves and the perfect blue sky.
“Having fun?” Ethan hooked his ankle around Jack’s and dropped his free hand to Jack’s thigh.
“With you? Always.” Jack blew him a kiss. “After this—”
Ringing interrupted him, vibrations clattering as Jack’s cell phone skittered over the cloth-covered wicker. A long string of numbers crawled across the display, beginning with a 7.
“Russia?” Jack traded a long look with Ethan. “Wonder if it’s Sergey.”
“Answer it and find out.” Ethan squeezed his thigh, stroking Jack’s skin at the hemline of his shorts. “It’s been a while since we’ve talked to him.”
“He’s been busy with his domestic reforms,” Jack said, waiting as Ethan pushed his wireless earbud into his ear. They took their calls together, especially unknown ones. “Hello?”
“Mr. Spiers-Reichenbach, I’m glad this is still your number,” a woman’s warm voice said over the line, richly accented, hints of continental Europe and the Near East mixing together. “You’re a hard man to get hold of, but I hear you’re the one I need to reach.”
“Who is this?” Jack sat up quickly. Ethan’s gaze darted around the café, the block. Took in their surroundings, confirmed their egress plan, his instinct to build escape routes and contingencies everywhere he went with Jack.
“This is Dr. Penelope de Mendoza. We met in Prague three years ago, when you were president.”
Jack’s eyebrows rose as he stared at Ethan. Dr. Mendoza, the president of Borderless Doctors, the largest nongovernmental medical and humanitarian relief program in the world. Jealousy flared within Ethan for a moment. He’d watched, stationed just behind Jack’s shoulder, as she and Jack had spent hours locked in intimate conversation. He’d wanted to leap off Air Force One afterward, bury his shame at having, only days before, exposed how deeply he’d fallen for Jack.
They’d come a long way since then. He rested his hand on Jack’s thigh again, squeezing once. He sat back, relaxing.
“Dr. Mendoza, this is a surprise,” Jack said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“The word in international circles is that you’re the man to talk to when someone has a problem they need to quietly take care of. Or in this case, investigate.”
“I’m not sure who you’ve heard that from—”
“Please, we are both political professionals. We know how relationships work. I am gambling on our conversation in Prague to keep you on the phone now, in fact.”
Jack stayed quiet.
“I have a problem, Mr. Spiers-Reichenbach.”
“Please, call me Jack.”
“Jack. I—or, rather, my organization has run into a mystery here in Russia’s Sakha Republic. And no one seems to be interested.”
“What’s going on?”
