Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel (15 page)

When Stein was done with his pants he sat back down on the examining table. “Give me five minutes, then I’ll leave if you want. This is not an official visit, Christine. I don’t work for Mossad—not anymore. As you can see, I have certain limitations. Anton sent me to see you.”

“Why?”

“There’s a problem.”

Christine laughed derisively. “A problem. Do you guys take a course in that? Understatement 101?”

Stein ignored it. “Christine, we think you may be in danger.”

“Danger? Why on earth would I be in danger?”

Stein took a moment to arrange his thoughts. “It goes back a long time. Many years ago David was involved in a Mossad mission targeting a particularly extreme offshoot of Hamas called al-Zahari. This organization knew no bounds. They undertook a terrible series of attacks directed at noncombatants—they intentionally went after women and children in the name of sensationalism. Mossad went all-out to identify who was responsible, and one al-Zahari cell came to light. Our government decided to hit back, and David was given the assignment. You know what his specialty was.”

Christine didn’t respond, but she knew all too well. David was an extraordinarily talented marksman.

“He killed four men that day,” Stein continued, “all in a matter of seconds.”

Christine folded her arms tightly across her chest. She’d always known there had been such missions, but David never spoke of them in detail—and she had never asked.

Stein continued, “The identity of Mossad operatives is kept strictly secret. Unfortunately, in this case we believe there was a breach. It’s been many years, but recently we think David’s name was tied to these deaths.”

Christine had heard enough. “What does it matter? They can’t take revenge against a dead man.”

“Actually … you have to think about it from their point of view. The concept of Arab justice is rarely understood by Western minds. These people demand an eye for an eye, a system of tribal retribution that’s been in place for a thousand generations. If they’ve discovered David was the shooter on that mission, and we believe that’s the case, they won’t miss a chance to send a message to Israel. Or more precisely, to the other
kidonim
. A message that says, ‘Strike us, and we will go after you
and
your families.’”

Christine sat slowly in the room’s only chair, a four-wheel roller that had never felt so unsteady. Room 3 was the practice’s pediatric corner, and the walls were decked in whale stickers and fabric balloons. She felt the fight going out of her, and stared at a zoo-themed mobile while Stein continued.

“Al-Zahari will seek retribution—they have one man who specializes in it. He’s very effective, and has more than once traveled abroad to kill.”

“An assassin?” she found herself saying.

“Yes.”

“And you’re here to warn me about this? To tell me a killer is coming to hunt me down?”

“Actually,” Stein said, “we think he may already be here. Last week we uncovered his false identity—unfortunately, the day after he arrived at Dulles.”

Christine suddenly felt cold. She stood and put a shoulder to the door. Would it never end? David had existed in a world previously unknown to her, a place where lies were a dialect and death an occupational hazard. But now the tsunami of his past was rushing at her again. The difference this time—she would have to face it alone.

“You’re saying this man could be near.”

“Very possibly. And … it might not be limited to you.”

Every muscle in her body tensed.

“You have a son now,” he said. “David’s son.”

Christine’s head began to swim. She tried to think of an argument, a way to tell this stranger who seemed so maddeningly familiar that it couldn’t be true. It was hopeless, and she knew why. A mother’s protective instinct.

She looked at him and whispered contemptuously, “You’re bastards—all of you!”

Stein looked at her impassively, not arguing otherwise. Just as David would have done.

She sucked in a long, ragged breath. “What do I do about it?”

“Anton wants me to stay with you, give you protection.”

She glanced at his now-covered leg.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m capable enough. This is a defensive op, and when you play defense, knowledge and preparation are what’s important. There are a lot of people looking for this guy, both your government and mine.”

“My government? As in the FBI?”

Stein nodded.

“If they’re involved, shouldn’t they be the ones protecting me?”

“That’s a bit delicate. Israel has shared this man’s identity with U.S. authorities, told them how dangerous he is. But we can’t mention David, or by extension you and your son. Not without raising uncomfortable questions for everyone.”

“Will they find him?”

“Absolutely. Your intelligence services sometimes struggle abroad, but they’re very good at finding people on their own turf. In a week, maybe two, they’ll either have found him, or he’ll have aborted his mission and gone home.”

“So what … you want to follow me around, like a bodyguard or something?”

“Not follow—I can’t protect you if you’re moving. We go to your house. You, your son, and I. We stay there until this blows over.”

“
What?
For a week or two? I can’t do that, I’ve got a job. My colleagues here expect me to—”

“Get the flu,” he suggested, “have a breakdown if necessary. I’ll leave it up to you.” Stein stood, looking considerably more robust than the cane in his hand suggested. “We’ll pick up your son at your neighbor’s house as soon as we get back.”

Christine stiffened. By telling her that
he
knew where Davy was, he was telling her anybody could know. It re-stoked old anxieties, that precarious existence she’d known when David was in her life. Treat every stranger with suspicion, always know what’s behind your back. Could she indoctrinate her infant son to such a repulsive existence?

What choice do I have?

“Look,” he said, “you can say no. I’m here because I owe David. Mossad sent me behind enemy lines, and when things went bad they left me for dead. David pulled me out. Maybe you should ask yourself a question. What would
he
want you to do?”

It was a cruel hypothetical, but in the end effective. Christine relented and gave a nod.

“Grab your coat,” he said. “We’ll make a quick stop on the way to your house to pick up some food. In the meantime, I want you to start thinking about security. I need to know if you have an alarm, if there are any weapons in the house, which neighbors you can trust.”

Dazed, she opened the door and Stein followed her to her office. There she took her coat off the hook, said something to Lisa—See you tomorrow?—and headed to the elevator with Stein in trail. She found herself watching the world with a terrible old mistrust. She ignored a wave from the new dermatologist outside Suite 9, and gave a wide berth to a young man on crutches waiting for the elevator. Tom, the roving security guard in the parking garage, seemed more frail than she remembered. Her car was parked poorly in a dark and isolated corner.

Everything had changed in a moment, reverting to what it had been in the bleakest days of her life. With each step, the question she’d asked herself hammered again and again in her mind.

What choice do I have?

TWENTY

Thirty minutes after leaving Bahnhofstrasse, Slaton had Krueger’s able assistant sitting quietly in the corner booth of a pub on Theaterplatz in Baden. Astrid had wanted to go to her apartment, a perfectly natural reaction. Also perfectly predictable, which was why Slaton had steered her here.

It would be a delicate task to revive Astrid Lund to what she had been an hour earlier—or as close as she would ever be. In Slaton’s regrettably vast experience, people unaccustomed to violent death rarely faced it well on first exposure. To the positive, on the steps of Krueger’s office Astrid had been steel in the moment of truth, giving Slaton the vital seconds he’d needed to gain an advantage.

Her hands were wrapped around a cup of coffee she hadn’t touched, and only too late Slaton realized his beverage order had been characteristically insensitive—the very liquid she’d just used to scald a killer’s face.

“I was late for work today,” she said in a toneless voice. “I haven’t been late in fifteen years.”

Slaton said nothing. He wanted her to talk.

“Walter’s injuries were terrible,” she said, “but might he have survived?”

Slaton considered how to best phrase the answer, and perhaps taking the easy way out, he pointed to a wall-mounted television on the far side of the room. There was no sound, but the BREAKING NEWS caption might as well have been in flashing neon: PRIVATE BANKER DEAD IN BAHNHOFSTRASSE SHOOTING
.
POLICE SEARCH FOR SUSPECTS.

A reporter was interviewing an eyewitness, the lawyer from Suite 3, Herr Schimmler. He’d removed his shirttail from his zipper. Slaton considered asking for the volume to be raised, but the risk seemed to outweigh any benefit. The lawyer had likely bunkered up in his office during the attack, which meant he would never have seen the assailants. The only stranger Schimmler had encountered was Slaton, who was presently carrying a Glock 9mm that could easily prove to be the murder weapon, notwithstanding the fact that he’d discarded the awkward, custom-fit silencer in a back-alley Dumpster.

She said, “I’ve worked for Walt … Herr Krueger, for nearly twenty years. He had his faults, but he was a decent man.”

“He was,” Slaton said, not knowing or caring if it was true.

She looked around the place as if registering her surroundings for the first time—a positive sign—and said, “We should go back. The police will want to talk to us. They’ll wonder where I am.”

He nodded, having expected the subject. The police represented order, and the Swiss, in all their militant neutrality, craved order. Astrid finally addressed her coffee, and when she took the first sip her face fell to a grimace.

“Acchh!” She reached across the table for the cream and sugar—the kind of thing that falls appreciably in one’s hierarchy of needs in times of high stress. Another sliver of normalcy returning.

“Why?”
she wondered aloud. “Why would three men come to Walter’s office and murder him?”

Something clicked deep in Slaton’s brain, like a mechanical unmeshing of gears. Unable to correlate the warning, he said, “I don’t know why. But I can tell you I’ve seen those men before.”

Astrid stared incredulously. Until now she had viewed Slaton as some blend of client, knight in shining armor, and grief counselor.

“You’ve seen them? Where?”

“They tried to kill me three days ago, in a place far from here. I think I might have led them to Zurich. Not intentionally, mind you—I don’t know how they followed me.”

Slaton could see her thoughts organizing, see her blue eyes sharpen.

“So … they came because they were looking for you?”

“Possibly.”

“I remember the last time you were here, Monsieur Mendelsohn. It was just over a year ago.” A pensive look, then, “Is that really your name? Mendelsohn?”

“Call me David.” Astrid did not look surprised, and it occurred to Slaton that he was probably not the first of Walter Krueger’s clients to use an alias. “I assume you are aware of the work he performed on my behalf?”

“In a general way.”

He waited.

“All right, yes. I know a good deal about Walter’s business dealings. There can be no other way when one works for a man for so many years. He was good to me, and in return I took my duty of discretion very seriously.”

“I’m sure you did. But you know my accounts are sizable, and that I gave Walter wide latitude in managing them.”

Astrid nodded. She was in her late fifties, he guessed, an attractive woman who was aging well, tall and slim, with shoulder-length blond hair fading to gray. Nothing had faded however in a pair of blue eyes as clear and vivid as any he’d ever seen.

“Do you think this is why these men came?” she asked. “A raid on your accounts?”

“I don’t know. All I can tell you is that they’re professionals.”

“What sort of professionals?”

“I think that’s obvious enough.”

Astrid seemed freshly unnerved, and Slaton sensed a mistake.

“We must call the police,” she said. “You could give them a description of those men, anonymously if necessary. They have to be held accountable.”

He paused, reckoning how best to steer the conversation to the course he wanted. He needed Astrid’s help—but the decision had to be hers. “That may not be so easy. They followed me across a continent. They killed Walter, raided his office, and two have escaped cleanly. This is no random burglary.”

“Are you suggesting we
shouldn’t
talk to the police?”

“I’m telling you that I’ve dealt with people like this before. There’s a chance they didn’t find what they were looking for, which means they could come after us. If so, the first place they’ll look is the local gendarmerie. If we go to the police now they’ll spend days asking us questions, but they won’t keep us safe. The assailants might even have contacts inside the police force.”

Her expression remained guarded, but he could see her considering it. After a long hesitation, she said, “I know what you are.”

“Is that in my favor?”

“Walter told me things about you. He said you were dangerous. He said you dealt in arms … and perhaps worse.”

“I’ve never dealt in arms.”

“You just killed a man.”

Slaton could think of no good response. “Years ago Walter had a client named Benjamin Grossman who
was
an arms merchant. Did you know him?”

“He came to the office a few times, yes. I know that he died two summers ago from a sudden illness, and that his estate was put in your care.”

“All true. I authorized Walter to continue managing everything, and I’ve had no contact with him since. I have no idea what’s become of Grossman’s legacy. There were no quarterly statements, no annual meetings. As to your suggestion—yes, I’ve done things I’m not proud of.”