Herr Ringgenberg poured the champagne with ceremony and wished them a marvelous stay. When he loitered at the door, it was Danni who slipped a fifty-franc note into his palm and thanked him ever so graciously. The door closed. She turned and raised her glass. “Cheers, darling.”
“Cheers,” said Jonathan, lifting his glass in return. “But weren’t you putting it on kind of heavy?”
“You’ve got to have some fun with it,” said Danni, without any fun at all, her Israeli accent knocking the frivolous, diamond-loving Texas gal flat on her behind. She set down the glass without drinking. “Get changed. You’ll find a suit in the closet. White shirt and necktie, please. We’re rich and conservative. This is no place for flannel shirts and boots.”
Inside the closet Jonathan found three suits, one charcoal, one navy, one black. “I’ll look like an undertaker,” he said.
“Undertakers don’t wear Zegna.”
Jonathan didn’t know what or who Zegna was, but knew better than to ask. “What about you?”
Danni entered the bathroom, a garment bag slung over her tanned arm. “Wait and see.”
The door closed and Jonathan stood for too long gazing at the strip of light beneath it. He was thinking of another luxury hotel where he’d had no business being, another foreign city, and another woman. A longing stirred inside him. Something stronger than desire. He took a step toward the door, then stopped, unsettled by his actions. As instructed, Jonathan dressed in the navy suit, white shirt, and midnight blue tie. The clothing fit as if tailored, and when he looked in the mirror, he saw the doctor his father had always wanted. Or, as Frank Connor might have said if he were present, “the doctor he was going to become.”
The door to the bathroom opened. Classical music drifted into the room, strains of Beethoven’s “Emperor.” The scent of French perfume.
“Ready to go?”
Jonathan turned from the dressing table and something inside him locked up. His first thought was that the woman standing in the doorway couldn’t be Danni. Someone had exchanged the fit, handsome woman with whom he’d spent the last four days for a raven-haired knockout who’d just stepped off the runway in Paris. The woman staring at him wore a black sheath that left no room for imagination. Her curves were more prominent than he’d suspected. Thanks to her heels, she was taller, too. Her face was expertly made up, with lipstick to put fire engines to shame and eyeliner to make Cleopatra blush. She wore her hair up, the better to show off her diamond stud earrings. More ice for Baby.
“What is it?” asked Danni. “Is something wrong?”
Jonathan rummaged through his store of sarcastic comments for something to explain away his awestruck expression. He found only the truth. “You look… nice.”
Danni’s eyes grew liquid, and she rushed back into the bedroom. She returned a minute later, holding a black leatherette box. Jonathan stood from his chair as she removed a men’s wristwatch with a brown crocodile strap. “An IWC Portuguese Chronograph,” she said, turning over his wrist and buckling the timepiece. “White gold, because you’re not flashy.”
“Unlike you.”
Danni lowered her eyes, and Jonathan tried not to enjoy the touch of her fingers, the rapt attention she paid to her task, the nearness of her. When she’d finished, he pulled back his sleeve and whistled. “Not exactly a Casio G-Shock.”
“This is Switzerland,” said Danni. “Watches matter. Oh, and one last thing.”
“What’s that?”
Danni took his hand and slipped a wedding band on his finger. “Now it’s official,” she said.
Jonathan looked at his hand, remembering that once he’d worn a ring. He was a man who admired permanence. “Good evening, Mrs. Robertson,” he said.
Danni glanced up, and all levity had fled her gaze. “Good evening, Mr. Robertson. Ready to head out?”
Jonathan nodded, and they stood for much too long, looking at each other.
36
Firebase Persuader was located at the head of a narrow mountain valley in the northern Afghan province of Korengal, five kilometers as the crow flies from the Pakistani border. The firebase was home to fifteen United States Marines, the members of Special Operations Team Alpha, Third Battalion, First Marines. The firebase’s footprint ran twenty meters by thirty and was surrounded by a waist-high HESCO wall, the successor to sandbags, and a three-meter-tall fence topped with coils of razor wire.
For four months, Special Operations Team Alpha had combed the valleys that ran like a witch’s fingers through the mountains. They had set up ambushes and constructed hides and humped up and down more hills than Sisyphus. Their mission was simple: interdict the flow of weapons and materiel from the ungoverned tribal regions of neighboring Pakistan and stop the traffic of foreign fighters slipping across the border to join their Taliban brethren. There had been some successes and some defeats. They’d lost two of their own, but they’d killed a hundred times that number. It was a painful trade-off, but no one would argue it wasn’t fair. In the war, Special Operations Team Alpha was a single barb in the country’s defensive perimeter. But it was a sharp barb.
Captain Kyle Crockett heard the flutter of the helicopters before he could see them. It was dusk and a purple haze hung in the air, obscuring the view down the valley leading from the northern plain. In a war zone, helicopters always flew in pairs. If one was shot down, the other was there to ferry the survivors, if there were any, and to provide cover for their rescue. Grabbing his rifle and his ruck, he left the CP and crossed the muddy ground to his men. The team going out this evening numbered twelve in all. They were well trained, disciplined, and fit. Under fire they kept their cool, and when called upon, they could be as vicious as a pack of wolves.
The team was dressed in winter gray camouflage utilities with anoraks covering their Kevlar vests. Ten of the men carried the standard-issue M4 automatic rifle, a look-alike of its predecessor, the M16, along with ten clips of ammunition, a total of 270 bullets per man. Four had mounted M203 grenade launchers under the barrel of their weapons, and two had the more accurate M79 launcher. The eleventh man was a sniper, who carried an M40 rifle, essentially a souped-up Remington 700. The twelfth was the team gunner, who carried the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, a heavy machine gun capable of laying down 2,500 rounds of ammo a minute. Tonight’s fighting would be done with machine guns set to full auto.
The radio crackled and the helicopter told Crockett to clear the LZ. “Landing in two minutes.”
“Oscar Mike,” called Crockett to his men. On the move. “Two minutes to deploy.”
The Marines threw their rucksacks on their backs and headed down the hill to the LZ.
The Chinooks barreled through the valley and landed, one after the other. The crew chiefs jumped to the ground and waved the Marines aboard.
Crockett drew his men close for a final word.
“We can expect some fight from these guys,” he shouted, straining to be heard above the rotors. “Once we engage, you are to shoot to kill. These are enemy combatants. We don’t have any room for prisoners on the ride back. Are we good?”
“Hoo-yah,” shouted the Marines as one.
“All right then,” said Crockett. “Let’s go get us some.”
37
The lecture was titled “Advances in Aesthetic and Cosmetic Treatments: A Clinical Perspective,” and the speaker was to be one Dr. Michel Revy, diplomate of the Swiss Board of Plastic Surgery, FACS, member of the International Society of Cosmetic Plastic Surgery, and recipient of a half-dozen awards and fellowships that Jonathan had never heard of. The venue was not a university or a hospital but the second-floor private dining room of the Restaurant Chesery, at the southern tip of the village. A plaque by the door indicated its membership in the Chaine des Rotisseurs as well as a score of 18 of 20 as awarded by the Gault Millau. Jonathan needed only a single whiff of the richly scented air to tell him he was in culinary heaven.