But Dieter would be guarding Rae at the wedding.
That was how Flicka rationalized talking about Dieter even though she knew that she was lingering over the descriptions too much and speaking too rapturously about his heroics.
The psychologist in the room might notice.
Flicka said, “Dieter was the guy who sneaked into a terrorists’ compound, evacuated Swiss citizens who had been kidnapped, and then drove them away without a whisper or a shot fired, just a glare in the rearview mirror as the walled house went up in a fireball.”
“And when he was young?” Rae asked. “You talked about Wulf’s childhood.”
Flicka’s eyebrows pinched together, and she held her wineglass too tightly. “Dieter never talks about anything that happened to him before he joined the Swiss army when he was eighteen. I’m pretty sure he’s a natural-born Swiss citizen. I think he was raised in a city because he’s comfortable in an urban area. He knows Geneva well. But I know nothing else, and Wulf says he doesn’t, either. It’s like Dieter sprang whole from the Swiss Alps and landed in the Swiss army as an adult.”
“He’s never spoken about it,” Rae clarified.
Yeah, this was like therapy. Flicka tried not to snap at Rae. “He’s never said anything at all. Not even references to Christmas as a child or school. When an opportunity occurs to say something, he passes, and Wulfram and I fill in the conversation.”
“Wow. That’s weird.”
“And then, of course,” Flicka mused, staring at sunshine in her red wine and realizing that this was her third glass this afternoon as she tried, vainly, to get through the anxiety-provoking wedding details, “there were the women.”
“Women?” Rae asked.
“Wulf has lovely taste in women, present company, no exception. He likesnicewomen. When he brought home a date, I’d cuddle up with them, and they’d read me books. I’m still friends with many of them. Josephine Alexandrovna and I travel together and talk, often. All of his dates he picked out were sweet. Sweetness, kindness, and intelligence matter most to him, it seems.”
Rae asked, “And Dieter didn’t date nice women?”
Flicka snorted through her nose. “Dieter had abominable taste in women.”
Again, present company, not excepted.
Flicka studied her wine. “He prefers beautiful psychopaths and narcissists to anyone who could love him. When his relationships go south, and they always do, Wulf is there to pick up the pieces. It’s a good thing, too. They’re both a little too tightly wound. Without each other, one of them would snap, and it would get very ugly, very quickly.”
“You weren’t jealous of Dieter’s dates, were you?” Rae asked.
Flicka kept her eyes on her wine. If she had glanced at Rae, it would have been admitting that there had been something between her and Dieter, maybe even that she was still in love with him.
No, that shehad beenin love with him.
Because surely Flicka wasn’tstillin love with him. It had been two years. She had married Pierre.
Flicka swallowed to make sure her voice would be steady. “Do you know why they resigned from the army?”
“Wulf said that you convinced him that it wasn’t an appropriate career for him, and I agree with you. He wouldn’t have been happy unless he were the supreme commander of all the forces. The problem is that Dieter is exactly the same, so they might have ended up killing each other.”
“That’s not it. After Wulf had been in the Swiss army for two years and was ready to re-enlist, Dieter had a problem. His CO suggested that perhaps the Swiss military was not active enough for Dieter, as Switzerland’s neutrality prevented them from participating in most UN conflicts. Some members of the government questioned the need for their special forces unit ARD-10 at all.”
“Oh, no,” Rae said.
Good.Rae understood.
Flicka said. “No matter how Dieter protested that his heart was in the Swiss military, that he was the perfect ‘guardian of the mountains’ as Swiss people believe they are, and that his blood ran with alpine ice, there was no real choice when the government reduced the ARD-10 in force from two hundred to forty members, and two-thirds of those were support personnel like inventory control. All they had left were ten commandos and no missions. Their funding had been slashed. ARD-10 just wouldn’t have enough action for Dieter Schwarz anymore, and they all knew it.”
“That must have been rough,” Rae said.
“It was brutal. Wulf brought him home, both of them sick-drunk. Leaving the military had ripped Dieter up by the roots. He’d been stumbling and in shock when Wulf had found him.”
“So Wulf takes care of Dieter when he’s ripped up.”
“And Dieter takes care of Wulf, too.” Flicka looked at the ceiling, choosing between the myriad possibilities. “Wulf would probably have died from overwork with his financial instruments. He might have fallen too far down his own personal pit and not been able to climb out. Certainly, in the last decade or so, one of the jackals—” the code word that meant an assassin, working alone, for whatever crazed reasons were swirling in his head “—would have gotten him. Enough of them tried. Statistically, I’m surprised that at least one of them didn’t get through, except that Dieter anticipated, or blocked, or shot them all. I can’t count the number of times he saved Wulfie’s life.”
