Opening paragraphs.......

On a snow-swept January evening of 1991, Jonathan Pine, the English night manager of the Hotel Meister Palace in Zurich, forsook his office behind the reception desk and, in the grip of feelings he had not know before, took up his position in the lobby as a prelude to extending his hotel's welcome to a distinguished late arrival.  The Gulf war had just begun.  Throughout the day, news  of the Allied bombings, discreetly relayed by the staff, had caused consternation on the Zurich stock exchange.  Hotel bookings, which in any January were low, had sunk to crisis levels.  Once more in her long history Switzerland was under siege.

-John LeCarre, The Night Manager