Assassin's Silence

by Ward Larsen

  He spent time in front of a mirror in the station restroom washing salt from his face and finger-combing his hair, and he dumped half a pound of sand from his shoes into a trash bin. Slaton took a crusty roll with butter and a steaming cup of coffee as he waited in the platform café, and before noon that day he was at the Cagliari Airport, queuing up to the Alitalia counter.

  He exchanged pleasantries with the ticket agent, a striking woman with black hair, olive skin, and inarguably Roman features.

  “Your destination, sir?” she asked in the English he’d initiated.

  Slaton took pause.

  It was the all-important question, and the one that, ever since landing in a heap at the foot of the bastions of Mdina, he had imagined others were asking.

  Where would he go?

  Did his pursuers know about the banker in Zurich? Did they know about his family? Part of him wanted to rush to Virginia and build a fortress around his wife and child. But might doing so place them in the line of fire? He made his decision.

  “Zurich, please.”

  “Business or coach?” queried the smiling woman.

  “Business,” Slaton said, thinking, More euros, fewer questions.

  He handed over the credit card and passport in the name of Eric Risler, thankful for his foresight in establishing the credit account. It was difficult to go anywhere these days without a valid credit card—one of the curses of an increasingly Web-constrained world.

  “You have spent time at our seaside?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  She held up his passport and Slaton saw it was damp along one edge. “Oh, yes. There’s probably some sand in it as well. The mark of a good holiday.” He smiled, and so did the agent. It was hardly a concern. In truth, the imperfection gave the document greater authenticity. When she handed it back, along with a boarding pass, Slaton knew the legend of Eric Risler had held up perfectly—as a fifty-thousand-euro forgery should.

  “Enjoy your flight, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  Within an hour Slaton’s circumstances had risen measurably. He was in a wide leather seat on the airplane and scanning his complimentary copy of La Repubblica, a second cup of coffee and cloth napkin on the tray in front of him. Nothing in the news drew his eye—always a relief, as the gray dealings of his life had more than once been reflected on the front page—and so Slaton folded the paper and pressed a switch, and the big seat contorted into a comfortable reclined position.

  He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but it was quite hopeless. He felt like a detective facing a baffling case, his few scraps of evidence misconnecting like stray shooting stars. The Pole he’d killed in the stairwell. Ben-Meir, a former Mossad operative. Who would assemble such a group? Men who administered money in Zurich? Others who administered death from Damascus or Gaza? Those in the latter factions certainly had motive, given Slaton’s long and lethal past, yet neither the tribes of Palestine nor the madmen of Tehran would dispatch hired guns to Malta. They would use their own killers. Nothing seemed to correlate, and it left Slaton facing the most bleak question a man can ask.

  Who would benefit from a world without me?

  The most honest answer that came to mind was a bitter and disturbing one, and a revelation that did nothing to resolve his dilemma. The clearest beneficiaries were two innocents who were, at that moment, situated tenuously across an ocean to the west.

  SIXTEEN

  Aircraft, like humans, deteriorate without exercise.

  The mechanics had spent the previous evening troubleshooting the fuel problem. Under a flood of bright work lights, they’d sourced the spill to a dodgy wing tank check valve. The valve was nearing the end of its nominal service life, a high-cycle item on a high-cycle airframe, and fourteen months in the Amazon’s baleful heat and humidity had only accelerated the inevitable. The only option was a replacement, and so the mechanics had given Umberto a purchase request for a new part, to be relayed by fax, before boxing up their tools and quitting for the night. While Umberto put the request through, the Guatemalans led the Peruvians, who smelled as though they’d bathed in jet fuel, to cousin Leonardo’s for an evening of fun and refreshment. Umberto had gone home.

  They were all back at dawn, the mechanics bleary-eyed yet determined, and a delivery truck arrived two hours later carrying an express shipment sent through a freight forwarding company in Belém. Umberto greeted the driver at the airfield access point and unlocked the gate. After the truck rumbled through, he secured the gate before inspecting the truck’s open cargo bed. It was laden from front to back with crated spares and expendables, the most recognizable items being a pair of fifty-inch, thirty-two-ply main landing gear tires.

  Like all Brazilians, Umberto was accustomed to a certain level of inefficiency, and so he was surprised by the speed at which these parts had arrived. Moving to the driver’s-side window, he addressed the young man behind the wheel, who he’d already learned was a shaggy mulatto from Barcarena. Umberto was happy to finally have someone with whom he could converse.

  “I will show you where to go,” he said.

  The young man looked across the ramp at an airplane that stood out like a skyscraper in a favela, but he said nothing as Umberto walked around and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “This shipment came quickly,” Umberto remarked.

  The kid shifted into first gear. “Some of the parts arrived by air last night. Others we’ve had since last week.”

  “Last week? But we only sold the aircraft two days ago.”

  “Don’t ask me. They load my truck, tell me to drive—I drive.”

  Umberto felt a worm of suspicion, sensing that the city fathers had been outsmarted. Signore Petrecca had clearly been planning this purchase for some time, which meant he would certainly have spent more to acquire his prize. “Do you know what is back there?” he asked, nodding to the cargo bed.

  The young man handed over a load manifest.

  Umberto looked it over. He was no mechanic, but having spent his entire life around aircraft, he saw many things that made sense: a twenty-two-cell nickel-cadmium battery, a start valve for a General Electric CF6-50 engine, an engine-driven hydraulic pump, and a VHF radio module. Yet other items seemed unusual. Forty cases of engine oil, two suitcases, one red and one yellow, and twenty passenger seat cushions—this for an aircraft configured with only four seats, all in the cockpit. Most curious of all: six twenty-gallon cans of Sherwin-Williams acrylic urethane topcoat, in lusterless Matterhorn White, and an airless electric paint sprayer.

  When the truck pulled up to the aircraft, the mechanics—there were three teams now, a second band of Guatemalans having appeared out of nowhere in the early morning hours—began unloading the truck. The driver, in typical Barcarenan fashion, settled back for a nap in the cab.

  Umberto chipped in enthusiastically.

  He hauled heavy boxes up the stairs and stacked them in the aircraft’s massive cargo bay. On his third trip up the stairs he was surprised by the roar of the aircraft’s auxiliary power unit spinning to life. This was another new development—it meant the jet could now source its own electrical power and conditioned air. The temperature inside the cargo bay dropped ten degrees—not cool, but a marked improvement over the unusually torrid morning outside.

  With the truck unloaded, the mechanics began buzzing around the aircraft.

  Umberto stood back and watched appreciatively. These men were making progress, and he supposed it was the way of a successful business. Perseus Air Cargo had signed a purchase agreement, and transferred more dollars to the Santarém city coffers than Umberto would see in his life. That being the case, they would not want their valuable asset rotting away on the banks of the Amazon. They would want it scything through blue sky and connecting to faraway airports. In short, they would want it making money.

  The mechanics worked feverishly, as if facing a deadline to make CB68H airworthy. Umberto was there when the cockpit came to life in a mosaic o
f light, the warning systems blurting aural alerts and spinning through test cycles. Later two men mounted ladders and began spraying paint on the fuselage, and here, for the first time, Umberto thought the work seemed shoddy. There was no attempt made to cover static ports or vents, and the mechanic/painters only addressed the top half of the fuselage, leaving an awkward transition amidships to the original gray belly. He asked about this, only to be met by a shrug of disinterest. “This is primer. Pretty color comes later.”

  And so it went, six mechanics performing all manner of repairs. Umberto watched in fascination, and if he was truthful, with a trace of remorse. Nearing lunchtime one of the Peruvians came near, and unable to hold back any longer Umberto buttonholed the man and asked, “When do you think she will fly?”

  The mechanic, a squat cinder-block type with deep furrows in his brow, scrunched his lips in a noncommittal way. “Sabado. Domingo. Sólo Dios puede decir.”

  This much Umberto understood. Saturday. Sunday. Only God can say.

  He was not a particularly religious man, and not an optimist by nature. All the same, as he regarded the buzzing machinery and flashing lights all around, Umberto thought they just might do it.

  SEVENTEEN

  After a fifty-minute layover in Rome, Slaton caught a midday connecting flight and arrived at Zurich International Airport at three that afternoon.

  He went straight to work, reasoning that there was enough left in the working day to make an approach, at least a cautious one, to his intended target. He hired a cab and settled in for a fifteen-minute ride to Bahnhofstrasse and downtown Zurich. He was struck by familiar sights as the cab climbed over the Limmat River and passed the Swiss National Museum, Gustav Gull’s strained impression of a Renaissance chateau, before rounding the contrasting Hauptbahnhof in all its mechanized efficiency, the largest rail station in Switzerland gearing up for the evening rush.

  Cold lay over the city like a stone, flurries spinning down to divide ancient basilicas from soulless monoliths of glass and steel. The cab veered onto Uraniastrasse, and the clock tower of St. Peters spired in the distance, a graceful contrast to the considerably less holy edifice of Credit Suisse. Nearing the offices of Krueger Asset Management, Bahnhofstrasse itself coursed before them, a once-busy thoroughfare given over to trams and a pedestrian boulevard.

  “Slow down, would you?” he asked the driver. “I haven’t been here in a long time and I should take a few pictures to show my wife.”

  With the meter running, the driver shrugged and slowed.

  Of all the earth’s addresses, this was one Slaton had always known he would visit again. It was also a place where he might be expected. The operation on Bahnhofstrasse had begun years ago, a brazen Mossad scheme in which a private banker, Walter Krueger, had been employed in the service of a brilliantly successful arms merchant named Benjamin Grossman. Krueger’s part was simple, indeed the same as that of any banker: alleviate the concerns of the rich by making them more so. When Grossman met an untimely end, however, stricken by a sudden illness, things had quickly gone afield. In a move that surprised everyone, the luckless arms dealer bequeathed his worldly possessions, all 1.3 billion of them, to his lone Mossad conduit—David Slaton.

  Herr Krueger, by Slaton’s instructions, had subsequently invested and—there was no more positive word—hidden the bulk of the estate. By Slaton’s most recent accounting, one year ago, there existed for his benefit, if not in his name, well-rounded accounts in seven different countries. There was also a minor constellation of warehouses across the world brimming with the stock of Grossman’s enterprise—bullets and guns and rocket-propelled grenades. These armaments Slaton had left in place, in part because he could think of no simple way to sell them, but more so because he knew there was no better end for such implements than to leave them rusting away in leak-prone buildings.

  He wondered now if he had made the right choices.

  The small church-like building came into view on a gray side street, a modest affair surrounded by larger and more stable structures that housed larger and more stable institutions—a cornice-ridden stone amid the financial quarry that was Zurich. The snow-dusted sidewalks were busy, London Fog overcoats swaying over four-hundred-dollar shoes, gloved hands fumbling with smartphones. Slaton watched a man in business attire walk into the building while a young woman in a ski parka came out turning her collar up against the brittle air. A handful of businesses besides Krueger’s leased space inside, and there was no way to tell which tenant was generating the traffic. Did Krueger Asset Management even remain as a going concern?

  Once Krueger had established Slaton’s dubious accounts, he could easily have managed them from home—and thereafter lived comfortably on the generous management fees. Yet he had expressed plans to keep the office, explaining that Switzerland’s banking regulators were forcing greater transparency, and that to keep up pretenses he thought it wise to retain a handful of other clients, men and women with more reputable portfolios. Might that have changed in the last year?

  Slaton turned his attention to the surrounding grounds, and beyond the building where his money resided he saw a modest open space, a park in another season whose green lawns had fallen to a lumpy carpet of white, and whose skeletal shrubs were tipped in new snow. He saw nothing out of place. No sturdy man eating gelato, no former Mossad operative sipping tea at a nearby café. Not that they would make it so easy.

  He asked the driver to stop one block past the address, and there Slaton settled with the man and set out on the sidewalk at a measured pace. Near a trash can he picked up a small piece of cardboard from the ground. He tore it in half to make a triangle, folded it once, then twice, and shoved the wedge into his pocket. In the best Swiss tradition, he dropped the unused portion smartly back into the trash.

  Approaching the building Slaton spotted a security system that had not existed on his last visit, a pair of closed-circuit cameras installed gracelessly under the ornate roofline. He kept his face turned down, a simple but effective countermeasure, and never stopped moving. It was the surveillance you didn’t see that was dangerous. In the portico he was happy to find an unchanged letter-board directory, and in the last act of a six-hundred-mile day he approached the door with the familiar plaque: SUITE 4, KRUEGER ASSET MANAGEMENT.

  To one side of the door was a frosted glass panel, and he clearly saw light inside. He tested the handle and found it unlocked. Slaton pushed the door open, reaching into his pocket as he did so and dropping the wedge of cardboard on the carpeted floor. He saw an empty reception desk—the domain of the ever-efficient Astrid—but noted a sweater on her chair and a large overcoat on the rack behind it. Slaton held the door open 90 degrees, and with a toe nudged his makeshift doorstop in place. With a clear avenue of escape established, he took a cautious step inside.

  He listened keenly and sensed someone at the desk in the inner office—shuffling papers and the crinkle of leather under a heavy body. Krueger? He edged toward the door and was relieved to find the rotund banker alone, seated behind his desk.

  “Hello, Walter.”

  Krueger looked up and went ashen, his eyes twin orbs under his nearly bald crown. “Herr Mendelsohn! It’s been … it’s been a very long time.”

  Struggling for composure, the banker stood and snugged his tie to his neck, and the two shook hands across a monstrous mahogany desk.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Slaton said. “Astrid seems to have stepped out.”

  “Yes, she has gone for our afternoon coffee.” Krueger was exactly as Slaton remembered, steady and officious, a man who each morning had one egg and one cup of tea in the same chair, and who could be counted on to do so in the face of market gyrations, foreign upheaval, or for that matter, nuclear winter.

  A fast-recovering Krueger regarded the man he knew as Natan Mendelsohn, weighing him as he might a long-lost nephew. “How long has it been? Over a year, I think?”

  “Sixteen months, October.”

  “Ye
s, yes. Well, you look very fit and tan. You must be loitering in the south.”

  Slaton said nothing, and an awkward pause ensued. The matter of his residence, like so much else, had always been emphatically avoided. Theirs was a delicate relationship, although in a rare departure Slaton had made sure that the man who controlled his billion-plus dollars knew full well what he was—an assassin.

  Krueger shifted to the familiar. “I am happy to say that your accounts are performing well. The blind trusts have proved a particularly efficient strategy. I have to say, I’m surprised you haven’t contacted me sooner. Have you been busy with…” Krueger’s voice trailed off, until he finished with, “whatever you stay busy with.”

  “Busy enough,” Slaton replied. “I’ve begun an initiative that will require a modest amount of cash.”

  “Absolument,” replied his banker in earnest, finding the ground increasingly firm. Krueger took a seat behind his desk, which was just as Slaton remembered: a phone with multiple lines, a computer on the L-shaped extension, and dead center the customary blotter, leather-edged and empty, waiting for important work. The banker referenced his computer.

  “Please take a seat and I will call up your portfolio.” As he typed, Krueger said, “I manage everything in a most secure manner. All trading is performed from this office, and each account requires a unique access code that I keep here.” The Swiss turned in his chair and began spinning the tumbler on a heavy floor safe.

  “Yes, I’m sure it’s quite secure,” Slaton said distractedly. The outer door was still wedged open, and he thought it a detriment now, particularly with Astrid soon to return. “I’ll be back in a moment—I’m afraid I left your door open.” Slaton crossed through the outer room and walked past the reception desk. He was kicking out his cardboard wedge when a flash of motion caught his eye.