Page 19 of In Shining Armor

When Dieter Met Flicka

Dieter Schwarz

Men shouldn’t be attracted to children,

and I wasn’t attracted to Flicka when she was a little girl.

Not until she grew up.

The first time Dieter Schwarz met Flicka von Hannover, he and Wulfram Hannover had been hanging out in the Swiss Army barracks together for a few months.

On weekends and off-duty weeks, Wulfram went home.

Dieter never left the barracks overnight.

Wulf noticed and invited Dieter to his house for the weekend.

When they arrived at his huge house near the town of Rolle, laughing and carrying cases of beer, a hyper little ten-year-old dust mop flung itself at them, battering their legs and torsos and yipping with glee.

Dieter jumped back, grabbing the case of beer to his chest so he wouldn’t drop it and smash the fluffy thing. “What the hell is that?”

Wulf laughed, which made Dieter jump back even farther, and he swooped the whirling dervish up in his arms. “This is just my sister, Flicka.”

“You didn’t say you had a sister.”

“I invited you to my house,” Wulf said, his voice already deep at twenty years old. “My sister lives at my house, at least on weekends. During the week, she lives at Le Rosey School, just a few miles away. I pick her up for weekends.”

“Not often enough, Wulfie!” the child barked.

“But you invited me to your housewhen she’s here,”Dieter said. His back bumped the wall beside the front door.

“Yes, but surely Flicka can still come over. We don’t get sloppy drunk, usually. We’re not that bad an influence.”

“I’m just some guy.” Dieter’s voice dropped in anger. “You don’t know who the hell I am.”

“Sure I do,” Wulf said. “We’ve known each other for six months.”

“I could beanybody,”Dieter growled. “I could be a goddamn pedophile who wants to do terrible things to her. I could be a damned Russian trafficker who would take her in the middle of the night and sell her to some jackass who turns food into shitand little girls into corpses.”

Wulf set Flicka on her feet. “Go to the kitchen. Tell Frau Keller that I said you may have ice cream before supper.”

The child scampered off, her eerily green eyes wide on her small face.

Wulf had watched her go and turned to Dieter. “What is this about?”

“You can’t just bring strangers into your house and around a child, Wulfram! It’s unsafe. It’s not proper operational protocols. It’s just a damned bad idea!”

“You’re not a pedophile, Dieter.”

“You don’t know what’s going on in my head. You never know what’s going on in people’s heads until it’s way too damn late.”

“You have terrible taste in women, Dieter, but you like psychopaths, not children.”

Shudders ran through Dieter. “There’s no way you could know that.”

“It’s in your body language. It’s in who you look at and how you respond when they look at you. It’s in the fact that, when Flicka ran out here, you nearly crawled up the wall and clung to the chandelier rather than let her touch you. I would have other hypotheses as to why—”

“Don’t. They’re all wrong,” Dieter said.