Page 31 of In Shining Armor

The Pitfall of Perfect Logic

It had made perfect sense at the time.

Dieter Schwarz was one of the very few commandos in the Swiss Army, a member of a special services unit called the Army Reconnaissance Detachment Ten in English. ARD-10 is the equivalent of the Navy SEALs or the British SAS, a military unit that uses special weapons and tactics and is less restrained by ethics or conventional warfare, except for the mandate to maintain Switzerland’s absolute neutrality in all global conflicts. Considering that their primary mission was to rescue kidnapped Swiss citizens around the world, a better analogy might be the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team.

Wulfram and Dieter had met in the Swiss Army because, like many of the four thousand or so regulars who had made the Swiss military their career, Dieter rotated between training the annual batch of cannon fodder,er,conscripts, and his own career. Wulfram Hannover had been in Dieter’s weapons class his first year and already highly skilled with a rifle.

When Wulf had stayed in the military for an extra year past his obligation, Dieter recruited him as a sniper for ARD-10.

Thus, Dieter Schwarz was highly trained with many weapons, frighteningly skilled at hand-to-hand combat, and could plan a military maneuver with the best tacticians in the world.

After Dieter and Wulf mustered out of the Swiss Army the same year, Wulf hired Dieter to head his security team, of course. Wulf would have been mad to pass up such a highly trained commando to head his security team, a force he knew would only grow over the years.

It made sense that, when Wulf moved to the UK for graduate school at the London School of Economics, Dieter went with him, and the two bachelors lived in Wulf’s apartment at Kensington Palace to oversee Wulf’s personal protection. Because the royal palace had security measures already in place, Dieter began coursework toward degrees in political science, wartime tactics, and business management while he was there. Wulfram always encouraged his people to better themselves and move on, even back then, when Wulfram was twenty-two and Dieter, twenty-three years old.

When Wulf’s younger sister Flicka graduated from Le Rosey, it was obvious that she should come live with them at Kensington Palace and continue her music education at the Royal College of Music, which was literally around the corner from Kensington Palace.

Wulfram graduated with his doctorate in economics and secured a professorship at the University of Chicago, and it was logical that he must go. Chicago produced most of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Wulf was on track to become a Nobel laureate early in his career.

However, Flicka was a sophomore at the Royal College at the time, doing stellar work on her piano, and Dieter had been accepted to the M.B.A. program at the London Business School.

Thus, it made perfect sense that Wulfram’s Head of Security would continue to provide personal protection for Wulfram’s sister while she finished college, and so did he.

Dieter was practically an uncle to Flicka.

When Wulfram left for Chicago that final time that summer, amid the hearty handshakes and bluster about seeing each other soon, neither he nor Dieter noticed the spark of mischief in Flicka’s emerald green eyes.