Assassin's Silence

by Ward Larsen

  The bus came to life in a rumble of diesel and hissing brakes. Slaton eased back in his seat. By his best estimate, he would arrive in Valletta shortly after midnight.

  SIX

  Characterized by Disraeli as, “A city of palaces built by gentlemen for gentlemen,” Valletta, Malta, is perhaps more aptly described as a fortress built with style. In 1530, Charles V of Spain granted the long-drifting Knights of Saint John sovereign rule over the island, the annual fee being one Maltese falcon. Knowing a bargain when they saw one, the order of knights, who had a strong proclivity for mingling war with religion, rebranded themselves as the Knights of Malta. To make the place their own, the Knights set about fortifying the main harbor of Valletta. They built sentry stations and watchtowers, all looming high over the city’s elegant cathedrals. With their defenses in order, the Knights set a more leisurely pace to fashion the first planned city of Europe. They stayed for two hundred and sixty-eight years.

  In the intervening centuries, the city has endured battles great and small. Valletta was where Suleiman the Magnificent was proved to be something less, his forty thousand troops sent packing by an entrenched force one quarter of its size. Even at the height of World War Two, enduring an enthusiastic bombing campaign by Axis air forces, Valletta remained largely intact thanks to the Knights’ robust design standards, not to mention brigades of sharp-eyed Allied antiaircraft gunners. By any measure, Valletta is a city built from the ground up with a defensive mind-set.

  And defense was exactly what Slaton needed.

  By cab he reached Senglea shortly after midnight, one of three harbor districts on the east side of the capital. In a country barely larger than Martha’s Vineyard there were few places to hide, so he’d opted for the densest population center, even if it was a predictable move. The neighborhood was an eclectic mix, a place where expatriate accountants lunched with tenth-generation cobblers, and sailmakers shared jugs of red wine with computer hackers. Yet there was no denying Senglea’s underlying soul—the massive Valletta shipyard was pervasive, infused into every brick, gutter, and shingle.

  The temperature dropped markedly as morning took hold, and Slaton wished he’d stolen a jacket as well. His pants were bloodstained in spite of his efforts at a washbasin in the bus station restroom. His thigh throbbed in pain, and his hands still showed marks from a gravel rooftop in Mdina. A deep bruise on his elbow was a reminder of the Pole—the man he had killed in the stairwell. Slaton easily let that thought go. He hadn’t set out to kill anyone today. The other man had.

  He selected a shabby boarding house near an empty dry-dock berth. The Inn, as proclaimed by a hand-drawn sign, was three stories of stone, mildew, and mortar that looked every bit as inspiring as its name. The night clerk was a man near sixty, and weathered was the word that came to Slaton’s mind—his channeled face and weary eyes spoke of a life less lived than endured. A lit cigarette was perched on a soda can, the ashes centered over the hole on top. The clerk barely registered Slaton’s approach.

  “Do you have any rooms?” Slaton asked in English.

  The man picked up his cigarette, the ashes missing the can completely and scattering over a scarred wooden counter. Once it was hanging from his slack lower lip, he said, “I have lots of rooms. Do you have any money?”

  Slaton wondered if he looked that bad. He pulled out his wallet. “Two nights,” he said, knowing he would stay only one.

  “Sixty euros … in advance.” As Slaton handled his wallet, the night clerk noticed the abrasion on his hands. “Been in a tussle, have you?” he asked, his tobacco-stained breath carrying across the counter.

  “Accident at work. I’m a stonemason—I fell off a ladder. It was my hands or my face.”

  The man curled fingers under his chin to think about it, a knurled thumb and forefinger that reminded Slaton of the branches of an old tree. He nodded as though it made perfect sense.

  Slaton slid three twenties across the counter, and a key came in return, the old-school type with metal teeth and an engraved number 6.

  Registration complete.

  “Are you expecting company?” the desk man asked.

  “Yes,” Slaton lied. “If a dark-haired woman comes looking for Max, please send her to my room.”

  The Maltese nodded to say he would.

  Slaton turned to go, but then he paused. He stepped back to the front desk and put his palm down on the moldering wood. When he pulled it away an additional twenty-euro bill appeared. “And if a man should come looking for me … or her … call my room and let the phone ring only twice.”

  The man eyed him, and then the cash. “I don’t want trouble.”

  “That’s my point.”

  The twenty disappeared under the proprietor’s hand.

  Another precaution was in place.

  * * *

  Slaton found room 6 on the second floor at the end of the corridor. The hallway by the door was nearly dark, the three-light fixture at that end of the hall having failed completely. He walked back to the staircase where a twin fixture was working perfectly, and in less than a minute he had switched out two of the three small bulbs. The hallway in front of room 6 was again bright. He did not reinsert the two dead bulbs into the staircase fixture. Instead, he studied the runner on the floor, a worn stretch of carpet ornamented with flowering vines and songbirds, all long ago trampled into submission. He raised the end of the runner nearest his door and placed the bulbs underneath, one at the end, the other a few feet farther on. When the carpet fell back in place the tiny rises were virtually indistinguishable.

  Inside the room Slaton found what he expected, maybe a little more. The bed had been made and the floor seemed clean, although it was hard to say given the feeble light—every room at The Inn seemed a few bulbs short. There were dings and scrapes on the wall, but no damage that breached through to the next room. He rapped his knuckles on random sections and was rewarded with something old and solid, not the wood-framed drywall you got in newer buildings that was easily penetrated by small-caliber arms. The floor was old hardwood, worn and stained, and might have been recently swept. There was even a tiny bar of soap and a half-used bottle of shampoo in the bathroom.

  Slaton swept the place for electronic devices, less because he expected to find anything than as an exercise to establish the right mind-set. Finding the phone unplugged, he reconnected the cable in case the night clerk had to make good on their arrangement. He checked the peephole at the door and saw an empty hallway, and through the room’s lone window, partly covered by plastic drapes that hung like lead, he saw the gray-brick siding of the adjacent building.

  Slaton laid on the bed and closed his eyes, hoping for sleep. What came instead was the question he’d been evading for hours. Who would want me dead?

  Regrettably, it was a long list. Family members of those he’d dispatched. Their tribal brethren. Even entire countries. Slaton had served for years as a kidon, a Mossad assassin, doing Israel’s dirtiest work. A thing like that followed a man, no matter how well he concealed himself. The accomplishments of his career, if they could be called that, were branded for eternity in minds and souls across the world. Including his own.

  Yes, he decided, that had to be it. His past was responsible for what had happened tonight in Mdina. But what part?

  One detail narrowed the field considerably. The man he’d dispatched in the stairwell, he was quite sure, was former GROM—Polish Special Forces. Yet the others were different. He knew because the Pole had used heavily accented English on their tactical frequency—likely the attackers’ only common tongue. Everything about the group screamed high-end mercenary. Which led to more troubling questions.

  Who had hired them? What did it relate to?

  Finally, the most vexing question of all. Given such a team—experienced and heavily armed, with a well-designed plan, and facing an unarmed and surprised target—how on earth was he still alive?

  SEVEN

  Slaton slept as well as a hunted man c
ould. Which was to say, not well at all.

  To walk through life with a target on one’s back instills a measurable degree of fear—indeed, a lack thereof would border on psychosis. It was something Slaton had long ago come to terms with. More intolerable was the unpredictability. During his years in the field with Mossad he had rarely lived by routine, habitually leaving open where he would eat, travel, and sleep the next day. One could set a general course, but in the end life became no more than a series of reactions. No flights scheduled in advance, no meetings on a calendar, no lunch dates with friends. Unpredictability was the key. It was what kept you alive.

  Late-morning sun coursed through the dirty window of room 6—the tilt mechanism on the slatted blind was broken, stuck in the open position. He went to the window, and the blunt wall of the other building was still there, only with color now, a dreary oyster-gray that would have looked right at home on any battleship. The inside of the room appeared worse in the truth of day. Wallpaper peeled from every corner, and what had appeared to be crown molding at midnight was actually a band of mildew riding the ceiling’s perimeter. The design he’d seen on the rug at the foot of the bed was in fact a terrible stain, the source of which Slaton had no desire to speculate upon.

  He went straight to the bathroom and checked the mirror. A coarse man stared back, but a marked improvement over last night. The abrasions on his face had lessened, one scrape on his left cheek remaining. His thigh still hurt like hell, and Slaton stripped down and pulled the bandage back to inspect the wound. It appeared no worse, no obvious infection. After a lukewarm shower he tamed his hair with a quick finger-comb, then did his best with the antiseptic ointment and a fresh bandage. He dressed in the same dirty clothes he’d arrived in.

  He compared his circumstances to yesterday’s: a dreary studio outside Mdina, a half-full fridge, and a dresser drawer stocked with clean shirts and socks. He envisioned that room today being swarmed by detectives. There would be little to find. The furniture and books had come with the apartment. There would perhaps be a bit of DNA—these days one could only do so much—yet there would be no computer or smartphone, and correspondingly no Facebook or Twitter. Slaton had long existed to the inverse of those privacy-killers. His good jacket he would miss, so too the wedding band mortared behind a bathroom tile, likely never to be found. Not unless he returned, and he never would. Christine would understand, he told himself.

  Or would she?

  Slaton was contemplating this point, standing at the washbasin and scrubbing a stain from his shirt, a towel wrapped round his waist, when a distinct pop caused him to freeze. He shut off the tap and listened.

  A second pop.

  The muffled implosions of two broken vacuums—the lightbulbs under the rug outside his door. Gentle sounds that in the context of events arrived like cannon shots. With soft steps Slaton followed the wall to the door. He heard a hushed curse in Maltese, a female voice, and then the rush of a broom and the tinkle of broken glass. He took the towel from his waist and waved it twice across the viewing port. Nothing happened. He leaned in and ventured a look, and saw the best possible scenario—an irritated maid sweeping up glass shards.

  Slaton expelled a long breath. This was how makeshift precautions often ended—teasing false alarms. The warning system he’d set last night was disabled. It hardly mattered. The Inn had served its purpose. He took a moment to study the evacuation diagram below the viewing port—every hotel door in the world had something like it.

  Twenty minutes later Slaton stepped silently down the hall, past the busy housekeeper who was sheeting a bed in an adjacent room. He trotted down the stairs, took a turn before reaching the front desk, and pushed through an alley-side fire door into the bright midday sun.

  * * *

  The meeting was arranged for eleven that morning, and so shortly after ten, from his hotel near the airport, the man registered as Gianni Petrecca took a cab into the center of Santarém. With thirty minutes to kill—to be early would be a sign of enthusiasm—he veered to a roadside rodízio, and carried away a plate of rice and beans that was remarkably tasty. As a former airline pilot, he was something of a scholar of the world’s cuisine, although a series of nuisance stomach ailments had instilled a preference for the bland over the exotic.

  His true name—one he had not used in months—was Osman Tuncay. He had been born fifty-one years ago in the Turkish village of Sariyer, at the head of the Bosphorus Straits, a clear sign of providence for a child who would flow into the world and never return to his source. He kept a Turkish passport in his given name—perhaps in the Beirut flat?—along with a European-sourced JAA pilot certificate and medical document. He doubted he would ever use any of them again, as his years of lawful flying were clearly at a sunset. Tuncay had flown for Arabian Air for eighteen years, and two smaller airlines before that. His abrupt termination at Arabian had not been an issue of discipline, but rather the economics of revolution. The Arab Spring, notwithstanding all its hope and fervor, in the end had the far more material effect of putting millions of men and women out of work. The airline industry was more susceptible than most, and Tuncay had been notified of his dismissal by form letter, attached to which was a check for one month’s severance pay. The contents of his locker were summarily shipped to the flat in Beirut. Fees due upon delivery.

  For the next year he sent resumes across the world, a shotgun approach that was as sobering as it was hopeless. Watching his flight currency expire like sand from the top of an hourglass, his longtime hobby of carpentry rose to become his only source of income. Then, four months ago, just as he was debating whether to commit to a new set of hand tools, this new job had found him. There had been no job posting, only a quiet recommendation from the friend of a cousin in Haifa. The man who came to see him made an unthinkable offer, indeed a once-in-a-lifetime contract. For two months’ work, and a measurable amount of risk, the villa in Mallorca that Tuncay had always dreamed of could be his.

  He’d been doubtful at first, yet the six-figure advance, landing forcefully in his sinking bank account, had done the trick. Tuncay threw his allegiance behind an initiative that relied on seven men from across the hemisphere. They’d met as a group only once, gathering in a quiet villa on the Lebanese coast. Besides Tuncay, there was one scientist, a second pilot, and four others who were certainly soldiers. The scheme was audacious, yet with the right planning and backing he thought it might actually work. An Israeli named Ben-Meir, one of the soldiers, had governed that meeting, although Tuncay and the others had sensed a higher authority. An unseen underwriter of considerable means. A point further proven by what Tuncay today carried in his briefcase.

  At a quarter past eleven, under a torrential downpour, he arrived at Santarém’s municipal hall. The building was inundated, overwhelmed gutters feeding a temporary river that circled the foundation, and a crumbling roof that leaked like a colander. He was ushered to a small conference annex—as far as he could tell the only dry room in the place—where he shook hands with the mayor and two city councilmen. Rounding things out was the township’s lead—and Tuncay imagined only—staff attorney.

  The mayor opened things up. “We are happy you have come to do business in Santarém, sir.”

  Tuncay answered in his ambiguous Portuguese, “You have a lovely city. Unfortunately, I will not be able to stay long enough to enjoy her more subtle charms.” Without sitting down, which would imply patience, he set his briefcase on the conference table and unlatched it theatrically. “The corporation I represent has performed its due diligence with regard to the airframe. Our engineers have evaluated all maintenance records, and our legal department has determined that there should be no barriers with regard to an export license.”

  Tuncay pushed a purchase agreement toward the lawyer, underneath which was a Brazilian application for the title transfer of an aircraft, pending purchase, along with the associated security license. It all looked devastatingly authentic—a particular specialty, it seemed, of
the group he worked with. Were the lawyer to cross-check records in Brasília, he would find that a slightly altered application had indeed been filed, only the associated fee not paid, an oversight which anchored the process, for the foreseeable future, deep in the administrative eddies of the Ministry of Transportation.

  “This aircraft is near the end of its service life,” he continued, “and considerable maintenance will be required to restore the airworthiness certificate.”

  “Yes,” said the mayor, “we are aware of all that. But we also know the market prices of such aircraft.” He produced papers of his own and presented them to Tuncay. “This is a list of all transactions across the world involving MD-10s during the past two years. Sixteen sales have taken place, proving that significant demand remains among cargo operators.”

  Tuncay sighed. He was a pilot, not a negotiator—which was perhaps why he’d been given clear instructions. He pulled a certified check from his briefcase and slid it across the table, ending the brief volley of papers. “The amount, I suspect, is less than you would like, but it is the only offer I am authorized to make. If you have other buyers on the pitch you may wish to decline.” Tuncay said, “I will give you ten minutes to confer amongst yourselves, then I must get back to the airport. The last flight to Brasília today leaves in two hours.”

  Leaving the check on the table in front of four grim faces, Tuncay excused himself and left the room. At the entrance portico he smoked two cigarettes in twelve minutes, and marveled at a lashing rain that showed no hint of relenting. The streets became rivers, seeming to fuse a sodden city with its surrounding jungle. He had seen such storms before, in places like Africa and Indonesia, and he wondered if this one might affect his flight schedule. When his second cigarette was done, Tuncay twisted the toe of his shoe over the butt and kicked the remains into the gathering mote.