Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel (16 page)

A long silence ran and Slaton discreetly checked all around.

“Why do you do that?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Your eyes never stop moving. Here, on the street, in the cab earlier.”

He didn’t answer, suspecting too much truth would not be in his favor.

“The way you killed that man today—have there been others?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes sank to the table.

“Astrid, I intend to leave Zurich tonight. I will do so as quickly and quietly as possible. You can come with me if you like, but you must find a safe place.”

She searched his eyes, obviously uncertain.

“It’s completely up to you,” he added. Slaton looked pointedly at her left hand. There was no ring on the second finger. “Do you live alone?”

“Yes, but what—”

“Is there a place you can go for a few days, somewhere out of town?”

“I have a sister in Vienna.”

“No, no relatives.”

She seemed to descend again, fear taking reign.

“Astrid, I know this is difficult. But you
must
find a safe place. You won’t be able to convince the authorities to protect you—not the kind of protection you’ll need. A week, maybe two, and things will settle. Then go to the police and tell them everything.”

“Even about you? What you did to that man?”

“If that’s what you want.”

Astrid looked at him anxiously, nearing the place he wanted. She said, “The men who killed Walter—they have to be held accountable.”

“Agreed. The question is how. The police aren’t going to find them. On the other hand … I might be able to.”

“You?”

The old ways were beginning to flow.
Use the truth to your advantage
. “They took Walter’s computer. People do that because they want records. If I could see Walter’s files, study them, I might be able to determine what their motive is. And by extension, who they are.”

“And if you can? What then?”

“Then we decide what to do about it—together.”

He watched closely, and was thankful for what she didn’t say.
The records? The records are gone now.
He said, “Walter’s files are backed up, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“There is a chalet in Klosters. He spends weekends there working. He encrypts the files and transfers them between his office and a computer there.”

“Do you have a key to this chalet?”

She let loose a long sigh. “No. But I think I know where to get one.”

*   *   *

Ben-Meir made his second bad-news call in as many days. “The
kidon
killed Stanev.”

There was a pause, though only in part due to the distances involved. The faraway voice replied, “The computer?”

“We have it, as well as the codes.”

“And the rest?”

“The banker is dead,” said Ben-Meir, leaving the other unsaid.

“Well?” Irritation.

“We made plenty of noise. The
kidon
escaped.”

Relief seemed to flow through the phone. “Thank God you didn’t screw that up.”

Ben-Meir bristled, but could only say, “The problem arose when he returned to rescue the secretary.”

“What came of her?”

“I don’t know—she got away as well.”

“That could be a problem. I think you’ve forgotten how good he is.”

“I will prove you wrong very soon.”

“Let’s hope. Only be sure you wait the full twenty-four hours. Not a minute less.”

Ben-Meir opened his mouth to speak, but the line only clicked and went dead in his ear.

TWENTY-ONE

Tuncay was waiting when his copilot arrived at Santarém airport.

Walid Arslan looked weary as he stepped from the small Embraer jet onto the steaming tarmac. He was thirty-five years old, thin-boned, and had a long sallow face that reminded Tuncay of a dog in a kennel. The face was presently covered in a beard—not the long, righteous testimony of an engaged Muslim, but more a badge of indifference. A man who had abandoned, among other things, the standards of his profession.

“Welcome to Brazil,” Tuncay said.

Walid shook his hand—an embrace was not yet appropriate, as the two had only met twice before. Walid regarded the surrounding jungle. “So this is the Amazon,” he remarked.

“I am told there is much more, but if I never see it I will die a happy man. It rains every day, and when it is not raining one can swim through the air.”

Walid nodded.

“Come. I know you are tired after your flights, but we must get straight to work.”

Tuncay led through the tiny terminal, outside, and ten minutes later they arrived at the big jet. Walid’s first impression was predictable.

“It is very big.”

Tuncay knew the last time Walid had seen the bottom of an aircraft was several years earlier, and from the last perspective any pilot would ever wish—floating beneath a parachute while his Su-25 Frogfoot attack aircraft fell to the earth in a tumbling fireball.

Walid had told him the story on their first meeting. To say he’d been recruited into the Syrian military was less than accurate.
Supplied
was a better word, offered up by a well-to-do Druze family who’d fared undeniably well under the Assad regime. Walid had been granted an officer’s commission and aviation training, and after two years he earned his wings in the Syrian Air Force. Things had gone nicely for a time, as they generally did for well-connected sons, until the outbreak of the war. The hostilities were into their twentieth month when a Stinger missile shot down not only his jet, but life as Walid knew it.

He’d been able to eject from the aircraft, and only the grace of a divine wind had pushed him out to sea on that final day of his service, away from a group of agitated and nearly deaf rebels who after months of bombings would have reacted with predictable passion had one of their tormentors dropped from the sky as a gift from Allah. Instead, Walid had been plucked from the Mediterranean by an old man, a onetime fisherman whose nets had burned to ash on the docks, set off by someone’s mortar round, yet whose ancient trawler refused to sink. Ever a practical sort, the old man had gravitated to a new and surprisingly lucrative line of work—retrieving overboard sailors, drowning refugees, cowards in sinking dhows, and repatriating them to families who were happy to pay for his services. Walid settled with the old man using a wad of wet dollars from his pocket—there for just such a contingency—and walked up the dock into Tripoli, Lebanon.

It was here that Walid’s life took a turn. Stranded in Lebanon, and seeing little future in returning to his squadron, he spent the balance of the war cooking soup and bread in a kitchen, likely feeding the very soldiers who had shot him down. As the war began to ebb, he learned that his family had scattered, the wealth and ties from the old days long spent and gone. For a time he tried to find work as a commercial pilot. Unfortunately, to be a former bomb-dropper, unemployed because his aircraft had been shot down, followed by desertion, hardly made a competitive resume for an aspiring airline pilot.

Tuncay learned of Walid Arslan through a cousin, and sensed a perfect fit for his needs—a man who was both trained and desperate. When Ben-Meir tracked him down he was working in an epicurean hovel in Byblos, sweating and cursing and roasting kebabs over an open pit. On that day last August, Walid had been a widower, insolvent, and frustrated by his faint prospects. Ben-Meir countered with a dream—one last flight that, if successful, would forever repair two of Walid’s three shortcomings. A new wife, he was told, was strictly his affair. Walid had been an easy recruit. But then, there were millions of such men in the Middle East today—educated, military-trained, drifting aimlessly through economies racked by sectarian violence, corruption, and religious intolerance.

Tuncay had doubts about the peculiar cast assembled by Ben-Meir, but he had to admit they were so far proving effective. The very idea that this disparate group of exiles was working for an Israeli master was perhaps a reflection of the new Middle East. Then again, the number of zeros in the payday gave reflections of its own. As with mercenaries through the ages, men rarely quibbled over religion or politics when the money was right.

Tuncay saw his copilot studying the modification on the belly of the airplane. The Turk wiped a bead of sweat from his temple. If humidity kept an address, he thought, it had to be here.

“Will it fly?” Walid asked, his white shirt already seeming glued to his back.

“With a little luck, the mechanics say tomorrow she will be ready. I expect some systems will fail, but most are not critical. Redundancy is the hallmark of modern airliners. Anyway, there are other mechanics where we are going.”

“So you have no worries?” said the ever-cautious Druze.

“I always have worries. What kind of captain would I be otherwise? But once we get off the ground, I calculate we could lose an engine and still reach our destination.”

Walid looked at him solemnly. “You realize I haven’t flown in a very long time.”

“Can you raise a landing gear handle?”

The copilot grinned. “The big knob shaped like a wheel?”

“See? I knew I chose you for a reason.”

Walid nodded toward the belly. “Do you think the system is still operable?”

“How would I know? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Perhaps we should try to activate it once we get airborne.”

“I think it looks simple. What could go wrong?” Tuncay gave a half-smile of his own, having asked the classic question pilots prodded one another with. “Now go upstairs, get familiar with the instruments. I am going to work on our flight plan.”

Walid’s apprehension was clearly not allayed, yet Tuncay suspected it had nothing to do with the airplane. Finally the younger man said, “Do you think this will work? All of it?”

Tuncay gave a thoughtful pause. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” He then added, “And neither would you.”

TWENTY-TWO

From Zurich they rode the A3 autobahn south and east, rounding the length of Walensee, the alpine lake that had inspired Liszt to compose his most subdued and lyrical piano piece. In the cast of a high moon, the Churfirsten mountains loomed ominously behind smooth waters, two-thousand-meter peaks lined like soldiers in neat parade formation.

Slaton fought a running battle with the car, a rattletrap Peugeot whose manual transmission, tiny engine, and bald tires were wholly unsuited to climbing mountains in winter. It was a small consolation that his left leg had duty on the stiff clutch pedal, as his right thigh was still sore. Astrid herself had never owned a car, but a longtime friend, Crystal, who lived in Lachen on the south shore of Lake Zurich, had a husband who moonlighted doing automotive repair work. The man unfailingly kept a project or two stashed in his side yard, and when Astrid had asked for a loaner for the weekend, Crystal happily provided a key. Slaton had kept out of sight during the visit so Astrid wouldn’t have to explain the presence of a strange younger man.

The Peugeot was shabby but serviceable, and in Slaton’s mind the ideal means of transportation—virtually impossible to trace to either him or Astrid. She’d been mostly quiet during the journey, and Slaton did nothing to intervene. He knew she’d need time to come to terms with what had happened to Walter Krueger. Slaton was equally sure that she was watching him, and he imagined her internal argument.
Have I done the right thing, running away with a man I barely know? One who hours ago killed another man in cold blood?

He was mildly surprised Astrid had not insisted on going to the police. He wouldn’t stop her if she tried. Perhaps it was this very message, presented through his calm demeanor, that caused her to stay. To some degree, Astrid trusted him. Trusted that he could protect her. And perhaps in some dark corner of her mind, hoping the killer she’d befriended might eventually impart justice for what had happened.

Reaching the village of Landquart, Slaton steered carefully from the motorway. Another hour on a snow-covered secondary road, spanning the Prättigau Valley, put them in Klosters. Astrid, increasingly steady, gave directions to a yellow-lit A-frame building surrounded by thick evergreen trees whose branches were bent low by snow.

She said, “This office manages all the chalets on the street. Walter picks up his key here. I’ve come with him a number of times, so they’ll know me.”

He cast a sideways look. “Well enough to give you a key?”

“I think so. Once before, I arrived early and Walter was detained. In the end he couldn’t come, and he arranged for me to pick up the key at the desk. At least two of the clerks would recognize me—I’m sure of it.”

Slaton pulled to a stop in front of a small lobby.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll stay here and keep the car running. If anything feels wrong come back right away. We can find another way to get into the chalet.”

Without comment she went inside. Astrid returned nine minutes later with a look on her face Slaton couldn’t quite place. “What happened?” he asked as she slid in beside him.

“There was a new man behind the desk. I didn’t recognize him.”

“So you didn’t get it?”

Astrid held up a keycard, and her deadpan expression went to a slight grin. “I told him I was Walter’s wife. I said I’d left Zurich in a furor, forgetting my identification, because I’d just found out he was cheating on me. I called him a bastard and said I planned to take him for every penny.”

“He gave you a key based on that?”

“I was very distressed. He looked up Walter’s file, of course, and asked a few questions that I answered easily. Their address in Zurich, her maiden name. I might also have mentioned to the man that he had unusually nice blue eyes.”

Slaton cocked his head, only then noticing that the top two buttons on Astrid’s blouse—prim and proper Astrid—were newly unhooked and showing a surprisingly deep display of cleavage. Not for the first time, he reminded himself that spies were not the only ones capable of subterfuge.

“Second street on the right,” she said.

Without comment, Slaton accelerated and made the turn.