Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel (7 page)

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.

He returned to find everyone in character—the lawyer was studying the purchase agreement language with a furrowed brow, and the two councilmen were in a hushed argument with the mayor.

“Well?” Tuncay asked. “Have you reached a decision?”

All went silent, and everyone looked at the mayor, who after a lengthy pause said, “Yes, let’s do it.”

Their guest smiled.

Papers were signed and the deposit banked, effecting the transfer of the airframe known as CB68H to a Seychelles-based concern that no one in the room, including Osman Tuncay, had ever heard of before—Perseus Air Cargo.

The ersatz Italian was at the airport thirty minutes later waiting for his flight to Brasília, a scheduled 1:20 departure. The storm had subsided, but others were on the horizon, hinting at certain delays. As he waited in the boarding area, Tuncay pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number that was not listed among his contacts.

“It is done,” he said.

“When will it be ready?” the Israeli asked.

“For our acceptance flight? Two days, perhaps three. I will talk to our lawyer in Brasília this afternoon. The more errors he makes in the paperwork, the more time we will have. The maintenance contractors should arrive today, and I will get their opinion when I return. After that I’ll have a better idea as to when we can fly.”

“These mechanics can be trusted?”

“They are very capable, and have charged us accordingly. As long as the money flows, the aircraft will fly—it is only a matter of when.”

“But are they discreet?”

“I hired Spanish speakers in a Portuguese-speaking country. No one will question what they’re doing.”

“Even … the day after?”

A pause before Tuncay understood. “
Especially
the day after. The mechanics work for a reputable aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul facility. For such companies, reputation is paramount. They will make every effort to distance themselves from what’s going to happen.”

“All right. I am trusting your judgment.”

“Where is my copilot?”

“Walid is on the way. Are you sure he’s the right man for the job? Does he not need special training for this aircraft?”

Tuncay said, “He needs a pilot certificate and a pulse,” and by the time he added, “just leave everything to me,” he was already dreaming of the sun-drenched Mallorcan sea.

EIGHT

Zan Ben-Meir.

The name came to Slaton as he crossed a narrow street with church bells ringing in the distance. Maddeningly, there was little else, but that was who he’d seen yesterday. He associated the name to Mossad’s training grounds, and perhaps the café and halls of the service’s headquarters building. But there it ended. While it was not a large intelligence organization, Mossad spanned thinly across the world, and so there were countless operatives Slaton had never met, let alone worked with. Zan Ben-Meir was in his mind as a name and a face, but nothing more. He pushed it away, and focused on his principal reason for coming to Valletta.

On first arriving in Malta, early last year, he had taken a succession of minor masonry jobs in the city with a specific purpose in mind. For Slaton it was an investment, the way other people might put money in a brokerage account. His first commission, a chimney in need of refacing, had proved unsuitable, as had the second, a terraced retaining wall near a gas station that had been marred by an auto accident.

The third job, however, had been ideal.

The wall, a standard two-meter affair no different from a thousand others in the city, bordered the playground of a private school. For two days Slaton had made repairs, refurbishing the edges and joints, and adding new mortar where necessary. He arrived each day at sunrise, stayed until dusk, and took special care that the school’s headmaster was happy with his work, going as far as to offer an unconditional guarantee of his work—in truth, less out of good business practice than to ensure that no other masons would be called upon if subsequent restoration became necessary. In the end, the two hundred euros he earned for his work was no more than an afterthought.

He approached the school now on a quiet midafternoon to find the recess yard mostly empty. There were puddles from recent rain, and a group of robust-looking children, raised on fish and goat cheese and the southern sirocco, sat circled under a tree with a teacher on the far side of the grounds. He rounded the outer perimeter on a little used sidewalk, and followed the wall to the end where it abutted an adjacent building. He paused long enough to isolate the correct section of wall, an acute alcove where the stone face was hidden from the street. Slaton scanned a half-dozen high windows on the far side of the street, and the only eyes he met were those of a listless cat on a ledge, presumably scanning the sidewalks below for mice it would never chase.

He quickly went to work, happy he’d had the forethought to conceal a short pry-bar behind the inset mounts of a rain gutter. It took twenty seconds to retrieve the bar, which was red with rust, and far less to remove the keystone. Slaton reached his hand into the fist-sized gap, curled his wrist, and found the small package. He pulled it clear and stuffed it under his shirt, the plastic covering he’d so meticulously wrapped still in place. He repositioned the stone and tapped it into place with the bar. There was a fleeting urge to seal things properly with mortar, which made him wonder—had his profession of the last year made such deep inroads? No, he decided, it was only the other profession clawing back into his life. If anyone saw a problem with the year-old repair, it might give reason to recall the light-haired stonemason who’d performed it.

Slaton dropped the bar in a shadowed corner and made his way back to the main street. There he turned left, and walked purposefully in the direction of the harbor.