Page 81 of Enemy of My Enemy

Eventually, the tightness in his chest loosened, his throat opened again, and Jack was able to speak. “I want,” he began, clearing his throat when he croaked. “To show the world how much I love you. I don’t want to hide. I don’t want to let other people define this—defineus—anymore. I want everyone to see that I am proud to be with you. Proud of who I am. That I’m not ashamed. Not hiding.”

The hand stroking his thigh rose, sliding over his hip and up his ribs, until Ethan cupped his cheek and leaned in for a slow, tender kiss. Jack murmured into his lips, his eyes falling closed. Somewhere, deep in the center of his heart, a part of himself unfurled, and hanging within, Ethan’s smile, the sound of his laugh, and the color of his eyes lingered. The feel of his soul when they kissed oh-so-slowly.

Ethan broke away first, peppering Jack’s face with tiny kisses scattered over his cheeks, his nose, and one to the center of his forehead. “I’m with you all the way.”

* * *

Chapter 28

Paris

Adam moved slowlywith Sergeants Coleman and Wright, creeping down the creaking, rat-infested hallway of Noah William’s rundown flat in the 18tharrondissementof Paris. They had their handguns out, and so far they’d stayed out of sight of the others living in the squalid tenement building. Blaring French daytime television seeped into the hall alongside screams from children left alone and ignored.

Coleman froze outside one warped door, listening. He shook his head a moment later. Slowly, he moved into position and pushed it open, the barrel of his handgun going in first. The hinges squeaked, an earsplitting racket, and he froze.

Next to Adam, Wright froze as well, glancing up and down the tenement slum’s hall.

Nothing. Coleman led Wright inside, out of the dingy, desperate hallway that stank of hot urine and day-old feces. Newspapers cluttered the ground, sticking to their boots.

After Moscow, Reichenbach had sent the bulk of Adam’s men to Somalia to hunt Madigan down and Adam and a two-man insertion team to Europe, chasing the ghosts that had smuggled Madigan’s bombers into Russia.

They had tracked Noah Williams across half of Europe, from closed-circuit TV cameras, border crossings, and satellite imagery until they spotted him entering and exiting the same run-down flat in Paris for three days in a row.

They’d moved in immediately.

Inside Noah’s flat, a single bare bulb hung from the ceiling, droning, but barely lighting up the flat. A moldy mattress lay in the corner and a jacket bundled at the head doubled as a pillow. Next to the mattress, a rifle lay on the stained carpet, ready to be grabbed at a moment. One dingy window let in fractured light, and through the grime, the distantSacré Cœurcathedral rose on its hill.

Wright and Coleman moved in silently, back to back, peering into the dark corners. “Clear,” Coleman called.

“Clear,” Wright answered, a moment after.

Adam followed, checking the hallway one last time before he slipped inside.

Lowering their weapons, they walked backward to the center of the tiny room, frowning. “What the fuck?” Coleman whispered.

Adam shook his head.

On the walls, maps of Russia had been tacked up haphazardly with colored pins pushed into cities and towns scattered across the country. Surveillance pictures of President Puchkov and of his cabinet covered the map’s edges. There was a young Russian man, blond-haired and blue-eyed, at the president’s side. These were pictures taken without their knowledge, and from too close a range.

Routes were highlighted over the map, lines of red and black crossing borders into Eastern Europe, and south through Georgia, Armenia, and Turkey.

A third map of the Arabian Gulf hung as well, with pictures of three speedboats. More pictures of a Russian destroyer, sitting dockside at an unknown port, and a tanker, listing slightly, with a beach in the background.

There were maps of the Arctic and pictures of oil derricks in the heavy ice.

Covering another wall, newspaper cutouts of President Spiers and Ethan Reichenbach. Photos of the two clipped from magazines and printed off the Internet.

The whole tableau seemed crazy, like a collection had turned into an obsession that didn’t know when to quit.

“Get pictures of this shit.” Adam jerked his chin to Coleman, and his sergeant pulled out his phone and snapped pictures of the walls and Noah’s mad display. “What the hell are we looking at? Ratlines across Europe? Smuggling routes into Russia?”

A board creaked in a far corner, shrouded in darkness.

Wright whirled, his weapon raised.

A silver barrel rose in the darkness, a handgun rising. Fingers squeezed the trigger, the aim dead on Coleman’s back.

“Guys!” Wright shouted. “Look out!”