Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel (17 page)

Minutes later they reached the chalet, two stories of timber-framed gingerbread set amid a row of the same, the whole street outlined in the luminous spill of faux carriage lamps. A wilderness of style amid a forest of money. Smoke wafted from nearby chimneys, lazy strings of soot disappearing into a lusterless black sky, and the rooflines between them were caked in two feet of snow. At the height of the season, lights burned in windows and steam swirled from deck-mounted hot tubs. Hours ago the sidewalks would have been busy, skiers trudging awkwardly in heavy boots, skis and poles slung over their shoulders. Now, against the chilled evening air, après-ski activities prevailed in lodges and nightclubs.

Slaton pulled the car to a stop in front of a single-stall garage. “Can you open it?” he asked.

Astrid got out, walked cautiously over the icy pavement, and entered a combination into a security keypad. The door rose, and minutes later they were inside Krueger’s chalet.

TWENTY-THREE

Slaton stoked a fire to cut the chill, and then went about his usual safe house walk-through. He found two bedrooms, two baths, and a back door that led to a spruce balcony where a snow-encased hot tub commanded a stunning view of the mountain. While Astrid was in the bathroom, he discreetly checked the closet shelf, desk drawers, and nightstand—the three most likely places for a civilian to keep a weapon. Finding none, the Glock 9mm he’d acquired this morning was ever more a comfort in his waistband. He made one discovery of note—a rack of clothing on one side of the closet that he estimated to be very near Astrid’s fit and style. He’d already concluded that she was Krueger’s mistress, yet Slaton never passed judgment on the indiscretions of others—not given the body of sins he had accrued over the years.

“How long will we be here?” she asked on returning to the main room. Her voice was freshly unsettled, and he imagined her having taken a long hard look in the bathroom mirror.

“That depends on what we find.” He turned on the computer, it whirred to life, and he soon saw a security screen. “Do you have Walter’s password?” he asked.

A pause. “Yes. But let me do it.”

She typed quickly, with a secretary’s aptitude. Slaton registered her keystrokes with the corresponding talents of a spy: SEXYASTRID. Would he ever have guessed such a password from a staid banker and his well-organized assistant? Probably so, which was cold comment on his late financial manager’s cyber-security measures.

“These are the files you want,” she said, helping him navigate. He saw eleven, each electronic folder sided by a padlock symbol. “Seven of the trusts are strictly financial and comprise the bulk of your holdings—bonds, equities, cash, precious metals. The other four represent real estate and … well, what Walter referred to as ‘inventory.’”

“I imagine he was more specific.”

Astrid sighed. “The late Monsieur Grossman was a dealer of arms—guns, ammunition, explosives. Walter said there were warehouses, long owned through a series of shell companies. He did nothing to alter those arrangements. Apparently Grossman had no desire to answer to landlords regarding his inventory.”

“What about security?” Slaton asked.

“Grossman had made arrangements in each location—he paid handsomely for private guards who would not ask questions. Walter kept to these contracts as best he could, but I remember there were issues at one or two of the warehouses. It’s not the kind of thing he knew much about—after all, he was only a banker.”

It made sense to Slaton. He looked at the eleven files and saw ambiguous names, albeit with loose commonalities. TriStar Holdings. TriStar Trust Management. TS Management Group. He suspected there were other telltale associations. If publicly registered, even in different countries, any supercomputer could link these accounts without breaking a cyber-sweat. Again, security was lacking.

“These files are encrypted?” he asked.

“Yes, Walter managed things either from here or his office, never at home. There are codes to manage the encryption scheme between the two computers.”

“He kept them in his office safe in Zurich?”

“Yes.”

“We have to assume the men we encountered today have them. What about here at the chalet?”

This question was met with silence.

He spun the chair a half-turn and met her eyes. “Astrid, none of this is any good to Walter now—he’s gone. But if we can see these accounts it will help us understand what’s going on. Not to mention the fact that I
am
their rightful owner.”

She nodded and disappeared into the master bedroom. Slaton made no attempt to follow her. There was no safe or lockbox—he had already concluded that much—so the critical codes were likely tucked into a sock or written on the bottom of a tissue box. He turned back to the screen and rubbed a hand under his whisker-encrusted chin. It made a sound like sandpaper. He felt weariness seeping in, and tried mightily to keep his focus.

Astrid returned with a small notecard that had been creased by multiple folds. “Here,” she said.

Slaton took it and saw eleven alphanumeric character sets correlated to the file names. It could not have been more simple. He typed in the first, and as they waited for results, Astrid said, “Those men who came—do you think they were after your money? Or perhaps what’s in the warehouses?”

“A very good question,” he replied. “Possibly both. Let’s just hope they’ve been too busy running to take control of the accounts and lock us out.”

Fifteen seconds later the first financial file blossomed to the screen. “The funds in this one are still in place,” he said. “Nothing has moved.”

“Could it mean they don’t have the codes after all?”

“Possibly.” Slaton called up the remaining financial files, one by one, and each was the same. He was staring at the last one when a message in the corner of the screen caught his eye. ADMINISTRATIVE SETTINGS UPDATED. This was followed by a date and time. “Wait a minute—somebody altered the account settings three hours ago.”

“So they
do
have access.”

“Apparently.” He navigated to the administrative page, and the recent change was annotated on the bottom. The old trustee, a Bahamian law firm, was out, and the new guardian’s name was listed in red—a name that stood out like a bolt of lightning in the night sky.

“What the hell?” he murmured.

“David?” Astrid said, peering over his shoulder to read the screen. “Is that you? David Slaton?”

He saw no point in denying it. “They made me the new administrator of the account.”

“But
why
?” she said, her voice laced in consternation. “These men
killed
to gain access to the accounts. They were yours to begin with—all they’ve done is uncloud the ownership and put them directly in your name.”

Slaton was silent, contemplating a more basic question.
How do they even know my name?

He checked the other accounts and saw the same thing. In the last hours his name had been placed on each account. Stymied, he moved on to one of the arms warehouses, and was about to type in an encryption code when he paused. To the side of the files was a date and time—a record of when each had last been accessed. All the financial accounts had been opened today. Yet of the property holdings, only one of the four had been accessed. He elected to view the three that had not been touched, reasoning it was the best way to recognize what was different about the fourth.

Astrid pored over the screens with him. “Where are these warehouses?” she asked as he scrolled through pages of deadly inventory.

“Kinshasa, Cali, and Jakarta. According to the files all three remain intact.”

“Do you think that’s true?”

“No way to tell—not without physically going to each location and busting down the doors to see what’s inside. It’s possible they’ve been raided. Grossman had a low-tech, high-volume business model. Thousands of AK-47s, millions of rounds of ammunition, crate after crate of rocket-propelled grenades. There were a few more exotic items, things like plastic explosives and night optics. Altogether it’s enough to start a good-sized war. Enough to finish a small one.”

“If everything
is
still there—what will you do with it?”

He heaved a sigh. “I never gave it much thought—but I should have. The best thing would be to destroy it all, but that’s not as easy as it sounds. Arson is out of the question, too many explosives. Maybe scuttle everything in the deep end of the ocean.”

They both stared at the last remaining file.

“What about that one?” she asked.

“Let’s take a look.”

He opened the eleventh file and, if the information was correct, it could not have been more different. There were no weapons caches, indeed no inventory of any kind. Aside from the administrative page, the Beirut file consisted of no more than a lone street address that meant nothing to Slaton. Was it an abandoned cache? A warehouse Grossman had put in place but never stocked?

He let go a long breath and rubbed his hands over his face. He was bone-tired. “I can’t think straight. I have to get some sleep.”

“Yes, I’m exhausted as well.”

“Why don’t you take the main bedroom.”

“All right. And in the morning?”

“To begin, we check the accounts again.”

“You have access now. Why not take control and freeze these people out?”

“No,” he said, “definitely not.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons. First, they probably think they have the only code set. If we interfere they’ll know we’re watching.”

“And second?”

“I don’t give a damn about the money.”

She gave him an odd look, as if he’d just told her the sun would rise in the west.

“The money in these accounts was never mine to begin with. It’s as dirty as money gets, bloody from warlords and drug smugglers and terrorists. It’s almost certainly the reason you and I are here hiding out in this chalet. I’ve killed two people this week, and took a new piece of shrapnel in my leg. Walter is dead, his wife a widow, and his kids have no father—all because of that money. So if it disappears today, I won’t miss a dime.”

“Yes, I see your point.”

“We’ll wait and watch. So far these people have done nothing but put the accounts in my name—for reasons I don’t understand. But I still think the money will move.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Slaton thought about it. “Then I’d
really
be worried. It would mean these people are ignoring nearly a billion dollars in liquid assets for something else. It would mean they’re after something even more valuable.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Anna Sorensen was changing into workout clothes, her sweatpants on her boyish hips but only a sports bra on top, when her office door burst open.

Jack Kelly, her assigned protégé, bustled in with a ream of paper in his hand. Quickly realizing his error, he turned away and said, “Sorry, boss.”

Sorensen slid a T-shirt over her head, and then on a whim slingshotted the 34C bra she’d just removed at Kelly. It ringed his neck and came to rest over one shoulder.

“You know,” he said, “in today’s CIA that could be construed as sexual harassment.”

“You’re damned right it is. It’s seven o’clock on a Friday night—shouldn’t you be at the Brew Pub with Ciarra by now?”

“What about you?” he countered. “This is your idea of a hot Friday night? Hooking up with a treadmill?”

When Jack turned around the ever-present smile was there on his face. He was a good sort, only two years out of Cornell, and still full of—whatever they filled kids up with there. He was tall and good-looking, and had a girlfriend who liked that he worked for the CIA, but not that his boss was blond, pretty, and single, notwithstanding the fact that Sorensen was ten years older.

“We’re having some luck with that NSA alert we were given last week,” said Kelly.

“What alert?”

“The Iranian forgery mill they hacked into—some guy selling passports out of a dentist’s office.”

“Oh, right,” she said, remembering. The NSA, in the course of its daily analysis of terabytes of data scooped out of Iran, had discovered a computer in a small dental office in Ahvaz that curiously kept on its hard drive a comprehensive sampling of passport images from countries around the world. Further inspection revealed that the office filled few cavities, and was quite possibly an arm of MISIRI, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

MISIRI, commonly pronounced “misery” in these halls, had in recent years succumbed to the fact that it suffered a crippling technological deficit in relation to its Western enemies. In light of this, the ministry had taken to divesting certain clandestine functions across the Islamic Republic. Limousines for the country’s elite were dispatched through a shadow taxi network in Tehran; signal intercepts from the southern border were logged and studied in an abandoned library in Isfahan; and the photographs that appeared in each day’s
Tehran Times
could be found, one day prior to publication, on the computer of an ersatz wedding photography business in Vanak, a concern registered in the name of an old man who walked with a cane, did not own a camera, and who by one reliable account was quite blind.

As cyber defenses went, it was a marginally effective countermeasure. A few undertakings were undoubtedly hidden, but those exposed were easily laid bare. In the case of the forger-dentist, the NSA was able to unearth and analyze a raft of counterfeit identity documents, and deemed them to be of unusually high quality. At that point things faltered. Given that Ahvaz was near the Al-Faw Peninsula—where Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait were divided by no more than ten miles—agency analysts laid even odds that they’d stumbled on nothing more than a criminal smuggling operation, and with bigger digital fish to fry, they had washed their hands of the matter by forwarding their findings to the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis, or OTA, eventually ending in Sorensen’s in-box.

She asked, “Is there any word whether this scheme is government run?”

“Still nothing on that, but we got one hit right away.” Kelly slid a printed message in front of her.