The next day, they had to go to work.
They hashed it out in the morning, determining that it was unlikely that Pierre’s Secret Service guys knew where Flicka worked. They would have marched right into the Silver Horseshoe Casino to take her.
Dieter and Flicka had walked for almost a mile down the Strip to the Bellagio. Dieter had checked for surveillance at the half-mile mark and found none. Pierre’s guys couldn’t surveil their way out of a paper bag, so Dieter was confident that they had just gotten lucky and spotted Flicka in the crowd.
“But we could move to Reno,” he stated reasonably. “We would be safer if we changed towns.”
“We only have two more weeks, and then we can file,” she argued. “The residency period would start all over again in a new county. I don’t want to start over. I want to do this. I want to get it over with.”
Because Dieter was weak where she was concerned and because he wanted her to be legally free, he acquiesced, but staying made him nervous.
The time came to leave for work, just before noon.
Dieter left Flicka in their townhouse for the few minutes he would be gone and walked next door with Alina to hand her over to Tinashe and his illegal daycare operation.
“Hey, Raphael,” Tinashe said, for he was not one for nicknames. “How’re you doing?”
Dieter sat on the overstuffed couch, covered with a tomato, paisley print. “I need to tell you something.”
Tinashe turned from where he was searing some chicken breasts for the kids’ lunch. “Oh, yeah?”
“Those emergency numbers that I provided you, I need to know that you still have them.”
“Absolutely,” Tinashe said. “I have the paper copy in a binder, and I typed them into my phone just in case.”
Dieter handed him some paperwork. “If Gretchen and I don’t come home someday, this is my will. Call the number for Wulfram and Reagan von Hannover. Please keep Alina until they get here. I know he’ll arrive here within hours. The will specifies that Wulf and Rae are to be Alina’s legal guardians, not anyone else, and certainly not anyone else presenting herself to be Gretchen Mirabaud.”
Tinashe examined the documents. “You think something might happen to you and Gretchen?”
Dieter sighed. “We had a close call last night.”
Tinashe’s voice dropped. “You guys involved in something I should know about?”
“Gretchen has a homicidal, very wealthy ex-husband. Soon-to-be ex-husband. We’re working on that part. He tried to kidnap her last night.”
“But he wouldn’t show up here,” Tinashe said.
“I don’t think he knows where we live. We’ve been careful. He doesn’t know Alina exists, so she’s safe with you. But if we don’t come home, don’t waste time. Call Wulfram. He can protect her.” Even though Wulf might have a traitor in his security detail, surely Pierre wouldn’t care about Alina.
“Yeah, no problem, man.” Tinashe turned back to the stove to tend to the food. “You take care of yourself, though. That baby will do better with a father.”
Klosters
Flicka von Hannover
Klosters.
That one word told me so much
about Dieter’s childhood.
Flicka cowered on her side of the bed. “I’m sorry.”
Around them, the room was dark but for a wedge of light from the bathroom that illuminated the chest of drawers holding their few clothes.
Dieter was reaching his open hand across the sheets. “It’s all right. You know it’s all right. I’ve been saying you need counseling.”
“But yesterday, I was fine!” Flicka wanted to pound the bed in frustration. “How can I be fine one minute, and then break out in a cold sweat and shake like that? It doesn’t make sense!”
“It’s an emotional reaction. It doesn’t have to make sense. Come on, take my hand. You know how this goes.”
Flicka forced her hand to slither across the white bed sheet toward him. She finally managed to rest her fingers in his.
He asked, “Did I ever tell you about the time I rescued a dog that had fallen through the ice on a lake?”
“No,” she said, scrunching her head down on the pillow. “When was this?”
“I was fourteen.”
Fourteen?
Flicka almost didn’t breathe. “Yeah?”
“The dog had fallen through the ice on the lake near the ski chalet my family owns in Klosters.”
Klosters.
Flicka knew better than to repeat the name of the Swiss town, so she asked, “A dog?”
“Yes, it had broken through the thin ice and fallen in during a freak thaw in February. I was fourteen, and I had grown almost a foot in a year. Anyone else would have fallen through the ice, too, but I had grown so fast that I was a collection of dry sticks held together by rubber bands. I tied a rope around my foot just in case I broke through the ice. I laid flat to distribute my weight as widely as I could, and I shimmied over the thin ice to get the dog. I grabbed her collar and hauled her out. We named her Blondie because she was sort of yellow.”
“That’s lovely,” Flicka said. “Even then, you had a thing for blondes in trouble.”
He laughed. “She was a great dog.”
Klosters.
That one word, the name of the ski resort town Klosters, told Flicka more information about Dieter’s childhood than she had ever known about him.
Every year, the very upper-class Swiss boarding school where Flicka had grown up decamped to its second campus in Gstaad for winter sports. Gstaad was a very exclusive ski resort town. She often saw celebrities and millionaires in the chalets and on the slopes, if you could recognize them under the mufflers, ski goggles, and hats.
Even small ski chalets in Gstaad cost millions in any currency.
Klosters was far more exclusive than Gstaad.
The Swiss ski resort area of Klosters is near Davos, where the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting is held every year. The world’s most powerful people attend the Davos meeting, and then they go to Klosters for a ski vacation, afterward.
Gstaad was the ski destination for movie stars and the idle rich.
Klosters was the playground for modern-day emperors.
Dieter’s family owned a chalet there.
Dieter Schwarz had said so many times that he was just a Swiss soldier and mercenary that she had believed him.
But he’d always had an upper-crust accent to his Alemannic and French-accented Swiss German, though she could hear the army barracks in there, too.
He was a study in contradictions, but that one word, Klosters, spoke volumes.
Flicka resolved to listen more closely to every word Dieter said.
His fingers were wrapped around her hand, and somehow, his arm had wedged itself around her shoulders.
Her body molded against his under the blankets.
She’d been so distracted that she hadn’t noticed his incursions, and she wasn’t shaking.
Dieter kissed her forehead. “Sleep now.”
Not In A Princess’s Job Description
Flicka von Hannover
You want to know what real terror is?
Being alone with an angry toddler.
“No!” Flicka yelled at Dieter as he was walking toward the door of the townhouse. “Don’t do it. I’m serious. If you walk out that door—”
Dieter’s sheepish grin pissed her off all the more. Damn those dimples! He said, “I’m sorry, but Tinashe has the flu. We don’t want Alina to get it. Trust me on this one.”
“I do not know what the hell could be so important that you would leave me alone with a toddler. Babysitting is not in the princess job description.”
“Neither is bartending, but you seem to be doing an admirable job of that. I can’t believe they gave you a promotion after only two weeks.”
“Bartending is obviously a profession very near royalty. Handing out alcohol and listening to drunks are two of our major job skills.”
“
Babysitting is just like bartending. Pour a glass of wine and babble back whatever nonsense she says.”
Flicka crossed her arms tightly over her chest in absolute rage, and she snarled, “You might as well leave her with a slavering, rabid dog.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“This is parental neglect.”
“Let her eat some goldfish crackers and watch some cartoons.”
“Screen time is bad for little kids. Even I know that.”
“An episode or two on PBS will not destroy her chances of getting into an Ivy League university.”
“How awful of a parent are you that you’re suggesting I sit her in front of the television and turn her little brain to mush?”
He turned the doorknob. “It’s only for an hour or two.”
“Do you know all the terrible things that could happen to her in just an hour or two? Let me tell you all of them.”
“I obsessed about them when she was little. Now I reduce the odds and live my life. You’ll be fine.”
Flicka yanked the door out of his hand and grabbed the front of his shirt. Warm autumn air rolled through the open doorway behind him like an open oven. “You get right back in here.”
“I have to do this for Wulfram, and I don’t want the ISP address to be anywhere near here. I’ve got access to an anonymous WiFi, and I’ll use a series of VPNs to disguise where we are. Just in case it doesn’t work, I don’t want a bright arrow leading them back here.”
“They already know we’re in Las Vegas,” Flicka said. “They’ve tried to get us twice. Thus, there is absolutely no reason for you to leave me alone with your toddler.”
“You’ll be fine. It’s just for an hour or so.” Dieter glanced at the sun-drenched street outside and pried Flicka’s clenched fist off of his shirt. “The car is here. I’ll be back soon. Bye-bye, Alina!” he called over Flicka’s head.
Alina raised her chubby hand from where she was sitting on the floor and flapped her fingers before she went back to trying to force a square block into a round hole.
“Dieter Something Schwarz, you come back here!” Flicka screamed after him.
But that jackass was already sprinting for the car.
“I don’t even know your middle name! You have to come back here and tell me your middle name so I can yell at you properly!”
“Valerian,” he called from the curb and hopped in the car.
“What kind of a stupid name is Valerian!” she called after the car as it sped down the small street and turned the corner at the end of the row of townhouses. “And I thought it was Leo!”
But he was gone.
She turned back to the townhouse’s small living room.
Alina turned the small toy over, looking for a hole that the square block would fit. When she saw Flicka staring at her, the toddler screwed up her face and screamed her frustration, banging the heavy peg on her foot, which made her cry harder.
This afternoon was going to end with both of them in tears. Flicka just knew it.
The Mousetrap
Dieter Schwarz
To catch the conscience of a king.
Or a spy.
Dieter leaned forward, typing a text into his phone as the ride-share car turned the corner and rocked him sideways.
Surely Flicka and Alina would be all right. Babysitting wasn’t as bad as she was making it out to be. He parented Alina all the time. She was an easy toddler.
He’d been trying to leave the townhouse because Wulf, Theo, and Noah had made it clear they had a half-hour window to stage this odd Mousetrap play that they had cooked up.
The plan was to accuse one of the Welfenlegion of being a mole planted by Grimaldi and Monaco.
There was, of course, no mole. A mole was a spy who had always been an enemy and had sneaked into the organization.
There was, probably, a traitor who had been bribed well after he had been hired. If Flicka contacted Wulf for help, Pierre had said that he would order the traitor to kill Wulf and Rae, and thus their unborn child.
For that charade, Noah would attack. Theo would be the wingman.
During the confrontation, Dieter would watch for the wrong reaction in the other guys.
He didn’t like it. He needed to be in the damn room with those guys to accurately evaluate their responses.
Besides, Dieter hadn’t noticed that his own damn wife, Gretchen, had been cheating on him and planning to run off with another guy while she stole millions from his business. Evidently, Dieter couldn’t see jack shit. He did not know why Theo and Wulf thought that he, of all people, could magically detect a traitor in their midst over a damn computer monitor.
And then there was the matter of motivation.
If Dieter did manage to smoke out the traitor, Flicka might be able to stay at Wulf’s house after her divorce was filed. Dieter would be able to return to Rogue Security and lead his quiet life with Alina and her babysitters.
He drew a deep breath while the driver sped the car down the freeway that led out of Las Vegas, toward red boulders and the golden desert under the wide, cloudless sky.
So, if this went right, he could essentially lose Flicka.
Now why would he want to do that?
But for her sake, he had to do his best. She would be safer with Wulfram and an intact Welfenlegion around her. Rogue Security could provide additional services, so he could probably see her.
But he wouldn’t be able to touch her.
And he wouldn’t be able to sleep next to her.
But she would be safer.
Well, she would have more security layers, but Pierre would know that she was in Wulfram’s house. He would have her exact location.
So, would that really be safer?
Besides, Flicka was enjoying her job as a bartender. Every time he looked over at her while she was working, she was grinning or talking to someone and gesturing with earnest enthusiasm at the liquor shelves behind her. She came home giddy with people-love.
The only time he’d seen Flicka that happy was when she’d pulled off a particularly good charity benefit.
Actually, she was even happier after one of those, but bartending was a close second. And she bartended every day. She could only stage a few enormous charity events per year.
He had to note, she had only been working at the Silver Horseshoe for a few weeks, and she was running the place. Plus, it was thriving. Even from his poker table, he could detect the increased energy among all the staff and the patrons, and the crowd had thickened in the bar and the gaming area.
Seeing her smile made him happy.
The car dropped Dieter off at a small building on the outskirts of town. He had rented a private office for the day that came with a desktop computer. His laptop rig with all its interesting software was in the custody of one of his Rogue Security guys, Magnus Jensen, who was currently logging in from all over the world with it. If Pierre’s Secret Service officers were tracking that laptop, Magnus was currently leading them a merry chase across Southeast Asia.
But it left Dieter without a computer.
He used the rented desktop, a slow and clunky contraption, and copied a long string of what appeared to be random letters and numbers from his phone’s screen into the browser’s address bar.
The computer screen flashed, and the computer downloaded a folder of all the programs he would need: a strong VPN program and Tor browsers. After those were installed, he dropped into the so-called dark web and found the hidden servers he wanted.
A text clicked into his phone, a string of numbers.
Dieter copied them into the pop-up box, and a list of menus opened on his computer.
Another window opened up on the screen. In it, a man wearing sunglasses and a dark hoodie grinned at Dieter.
Blaise Lyon had been a tame hacker for ARD-10 when Dieter had served in the Swiss elite commando unit, and he’d offered Blaise a job just as soon as he’d formed Rogue Security. While Blaise’s official title was Technical Suppor
t, he was one of the very best, and therefore one of the most dangerous, hackers in the world, able to rally a botnet army or write a brand-new, scary virus with very little preparation time. Dieter suspected Blaise dreamed in binary.
The hooded man on the screen said, “Welcome back.” A shrill, mechanical whine undercut Blaise’s voice when he spoke, a method to foil voice recognition software.
Dieter said, “Thank you. Good to see you.”
Blaise asked him, “How’s living with your ex?”
He was also an asshole with no boundaries who liked to hack people’s phones and listen to their conversations. “I’m going to start leaving my phone downstairs.”
“When you guys get nasty, I change the channel. I don’t want to watch that.”
Dieter hoped Blaise was telling the truth, and he probably was, considering the twitch between Blaise’s dark eyebrows and repulsed wrinkles around his nose and lips, micro-expressions of deep disgust.
Blaise was known to have delicate sensibilities. PDA and slimy food offended him. He insisted that he had seen too much of life to enjoy that.
“I’m still going to put it in a drawer.” Telling Blaise to stop listening was a waste of Dieter’s breath.
Theo Bonfils’ face popped up in another window. “We’re ready. Let’s go.”
Dieter settled into the chair, though he wasn’t sure what the Hell he was going to do in this little game of theirs.
The room swam into view on the monitor.
As before, the Welfenlegion, about fifty young, strong men, were sitting on mismatched chairs, though in a larger room this time. The fisheye lens on the webcam warped them.
Most of the guys were sitting in groups that Dieter expected. He knew the friend networks that had formed while he had been the chief of the Welfenlegion. He looked for anyone out of place, someone who had something to hide from his friends and thus was not sitting with them, but everyone had sorted themselves exactly like he would have expected.
In a Faraway Land Page 14