A very large man detached himself from a small group of people at the door and walked toward them. Stratton waved at the man.

“That is your main bodyguard, Richard Cartiere,” Stratton said as he turned off the ignition. “If anything happens, Rich will take care of you. He’s 290 pounds of former SAS trouble for anyone who might try to harm you.”

Zoe thought he looked like a moving mountain as he came around and opened her door.

“Good evening,” Zoe greeted the large man. He smiled and returned her greeting with a bow. She would learn that he was a man of action and not words.

She got out and followed Cartiere into the lobby. A doorman rushed to take custody of her new clothes.

Seth Ridgeway cursed under his breath as the taxi pulled to a halt in front of the Eden au Lac’s lobby. Of all the goddamned places he’d like to avoid, this would be the only decent hotel in Zurich with a reservation. Damn. He’d called hotel after hotel from the train station. “We’re sorry, Mein Herr,” they all told him, but the Christmas season is upon us. Parties, visiting, people coming from the country to shop and celebrate. I’m afraid we have no vacancies for several weeks. Perhaps…”

Seth had thanked each politely and hung up to call another number. Then he had tried visiting the hotels in person. With the same results. The Schweizerhof had been more helpful than most The clerk behind the desk called several of his counterparts at other hotels and finally found Ridgeway a room.

“It is at the Eden au Lac,” the clerk said proudly. “It is a fine hotel, but they are a bit farther away from our main shopping area. It is for this reason I was able to get you a room.”

Seth had tried to look enthusiastic for the clerk’s sake, tipped him generously, and walked back outside to his waiting taxi.

Putting off the inevitable trip to a hotel he didn’t want to stay at, Seth took his cabdriver to dinner. They left the meter running in the cab, and Seth paid for it all. The man was a Turkish immigrant who spoke little German and no English. His family was still back in Turkey and he sent them most of the money he made from driving the cab. He had a wife and seven children, the oldest a boy of twelve. He missed them all. Beyond that, the language barrier prevented anything approaching real conversation.

So they muddled through the meal using hand signs and facial expressions to communicate. They had toasted each other from the bottle of Chateau Latour Seth had ordered. Neither understood the toast of the other, but both felt honored. And they shared the universal language of strangers alone in a foreign country, separated from the ones they love.

But time finally ran out. Seth had to get to the hotel before the front desk gave his room to someone else.