Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel (21 page)

“Large veggie?” he asked.

“Yeah, thanks. I wasn’t in a mood to cook. What’s the damage?”

The kid told her, and as she reached into her pocket for a wadded twenty Christine noticed Stein near the curb. He was leaning on his cane near an old Honda that had a plastic D
OMINOS
sign strapped to the roof. He was watching intently. Feeling uncomfortable, Christine settled with the driver, who thanked her for a good tip before ambling away. When he passed Stein on the sidewalk the two exchanged an amiable nod.

The Israeli waited until the car was out of sight before moving with surprising quickness to the front steps. “What the hell was that?” he demanded.

“What do you mean?” she replied, trying to sound surprised. Stein had gone outside to get the lay of the local area, but not before giving strict instructions to allow no one in the house.

He brushed past her, and with a lukewarm pizza in her hand Christine closed the door against the chill wind.

“Did we not talk about this?” he said sternly. “You cannot allow
anyone
near.”

“It was a pizza delivery kid—I called in the order.”

“Did you know him?”

She set the pizza on the kitchen table. “Of course not. But—”

“But he had a shirt? A car with a sign? He was carrying a pizza box?”

She gave no reply.

“Listen,” Stein said, “I don’t
have
to be here! I’m doing this as a favor to Anton, and because I owe David my life. When you make mistakes like that, you put all of us at risk, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to get shot by somebody with an MP7 in a pizza container!”

Christine turned away and sighed deeply. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had to think like that.”

“I understand. But we need to be clear right now—if you want me to stay, you do things my way.”

She bit her lower lip. Did she want him to stay? Not really, not given what he represented. Then a distant voice interceded, David’s onetime reflection on his relationship with Mossad.
They didn’t need me often. But when they did, they needed me badly.
As much as she hated it, if Stein’s information
was
true she needed his help. Needed it badly. “All right,” she relented. “It won’t happen again.”

Seeming satisfied, Stein went to the pizza box and opened it. “Veggies? My life is on the line for peppers and onions?”

“I should have known better. Next time, the carnivore’s special.” She watched him drop a slice on a paper plate, and asked, “So did you learn anything out there?”

“Like you said, there’s only one road in. But at the cul-de-sac there’s a footpath through the woods that leads to a park.”

“I could have told you that.”

“You should have.”

Her face knitted into a frown.

“The path is in bad shape,” he said, “deep snow, and there’s a downed tree across the middle.”

“You went back into the trees?”

“Far enough. And there are a few things you should know. I disabled your garage door opener and did some rewiring. We’re not planning on driving anywhere, but if you want to raise the garage door you’ll need to do it manually. Do you know how to do that?”

Christine nodded. “And what does that do for us?”

He pulled her garage remote control from his pocket. “I can light up the backyard with one click. Good for taking a look at night, and a distraction to anyone we see nosing around. Oh, and I put your trash can in the garage.”

“Why? You expect someone to hide inside and wait for me to empty the diaper pail?”

He gave her a severe look. “Garbage outside attracts animals, and the last thing we need is a pack of raccoons nosing around in the middle of the night. The idea is to be proactive. By eliminating complications, we give ourselves every advantage.”

“Proactive. Does that mean you at least shoveled my sidewalk?”

“Not a chance. Snow is good—nobody can approach the house without leaving prints. I also found a small padlock in the garage and used it to secure your electrical box.”

“The lock on the workbench? That one’s no good. I’ve been meaning to throw it out because I lost the key.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll cut it off before I leave.”

He busied himself installing fresh batteries in her flashlights. They had scoured the house earlier and found six flashlights, but only two that actually worked. Stein wanted to get them all up to speed and put one at the entrance to each room. Since arriving yesterday he’d been in constant motion, studying and watching and preparing. There was a relentlessness about the man, perhaps tinged with a dash of paranoia. Traits she recognized only too well.

Davy squealed from his playpen. She lifted him out, put him in his high chair, and began spooning mashed peas. “What about the house across the street?” she asked. She had told him there was a new neighbor.

“I took a good look, even got around the backside once. The blinds are all drawn, but I did see one light upstairs, the window facing the street. There was no mail in the box and the fireplace is cold. The tracks in the driveway suggest the car went out once, then came back, probably yesterday.”

“You checked the mailbox? Isn’t that illegal?”

Stein give her a curious look, and said, “I’ll keep an eye on the place, Christine, but I didn’t see anything worrisome.”

She sighed. Davy’s bib was covered in green, and she took the next spoonful not from the jar but from his chin. “Yaniv—”

He looked up from unscrewing the lens of a flashlight.

“If I seem doubtful or cynical, please don’t take it for a lack of appreciation.”

He smiled. “I know—it’s okay.” He watched Davy take the scrapings of the jar, and said, “You know, he really does look like—” The thought stopped there, and he shot her an awkward look before gathering an armload of flashlights and getting back to his mission.

Christine watched him go with an odd feeling. It wasn’t what Stein had left unsaid, but something else. And it wasn’t the first time she’d felt it.

*   *   *

One hour later, Slaton arrived at the shuttle parking lot dead on schedule.

Astrid was waiting, and he steered the little Peugeot through deep puddles to reach the loading curb. She spotted him right away.

“I’m glad to see you, it was getting cold out there,” she said, sliding into the tattered passenger seat.

“I try to be punctual.”

“I’ve been thinking about where we could go now.”

“And?”

“I have another friend who lives in Wangen, where I grew up. She said she would be happy to have us for a few days.”

“You’ve already talked to this friend?”

“Yes. I borrowed a phone and told her I was on holiday with my new fiancé.” Astrid supplemented this with a coy smile.

“You’re beginning to think like a spy. All right, Wangen is on the road back to Zurich, isn’t it?”

“Yes, on the south side of the lake. It should take roughly an hour. My friend said she was on her way home from work and would have dinner waiting when we arrived.”

“A home-cooked dinner,” Slaton said, putting the car into gear. “How could I possibly say no to that?”

THIRTY-ONE

“You’re not gonna believe this,” said Jack Kelly.

He said something else, but the words were drowned out. Sorensen pressed her phone against her ear, struggling to hear against a symphony of barking. “What?”

“Where are you?” Kelly asked.

“I’m at the Humane Society.”

“Friday nights you work out, and Saturdays with stray dogs? Boss, we need to talk.”

“No, we don’t. Since I started this Langley posting I’m not traveling much, and I thought I might rescue a mutt. It’s not easy for a woman to find a trustworthy companion these days.”

Getting no reply, Sorensen stepped out from the kennel and into an empty exercise courtyard. “What have you got, Jack?”

“Two more hits on the Group of Seven.”

“Wait, let me guess—an assassination in the Hague this time?”

“Even better. An airplane crash off the coast of Brazil.”

“Seriously?”

“It was an MD-10, a big airliner. It disappeared from radar over the Atlantic. The names of the crew haven’t been publicly released, but we have an agreement with Brazil to immediately share the crew and passenger manifests of any air crash—a fallout from 9–11. When we ran the names, both the pilot and copilot were matches from the list I showed you last night. Both men arrived in Brazil on papers from our Iranian forgery operation, that same bundle of seven.”

“Jesus,” Sorensen said. “How many passengers were on board?”

“That’s the good news—only one. This was a cargo jet that was on some kind of maintenance acceptance flight. The only other person on board was a Brazilian national, some local guy who worked at the airport. His name is definitely not on our list.”

“All right, but … are you sure about this?”

“I double-checked everything. Four of the seven people on that MISIRI list have died this week, all under suspicious circumstances.”

“Suspicious? People getting shot on the streets is one thing, but what’s suspicious about an airplane crash?”

“Well,” Kelly hedged, “nothing yet. But I definitely think we should look into it.”

As he waited for her to make the call, a chorus of baying erupted from the kennels. Sorensen frowned. “Okay, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Let’s try to find out what these pilots were doing down in Brazil.”

“Any idea how we do that?”

Sorensen was about to say no when she had an epiphany. “Actually, yeah. I think I know just the man for the job.”

*   *   *

Slaton kept a good pace in the Peugeot, and they arrived on the outskirts of Wangen at ten minutes before six.

“We are running late,” she said.

“Are we? I’m sure your friend will hold dinner.”

“The street is Dorfplatz. She said there would be a church on the corner.”

“You haven’t been to her house before?”

“No, she recently moved.” Astrid straightened in her seat. “There, it’s just ahead. After the turn stop at the fourth house on the right.”

Slaton saw the church, and the street labeled D
ORFPLATZ
. He drove straight past them.

“What are you doing? That was the turn.”

His eyes kept to the road. In silence another two streets passed before Slaton drew to a stop along the curb in front of a used car sales lot. He left the engine running and unlatched his seat belt. He pulled the Glock from his pocket and held it in his left hand.

Astrid stared at the gun. “You won’t need that when we arrive at—”

“I need it right now,” he interrupted.

Her face went to stone. “What do you mean?”

“I think you know.” He let this sink in for a moment. “How much, Astrid?”

“What?”

“How much did they pay you?”

She sat very still.

He said, “I followed you this morning, back in Klosters. You didn’t borrow a phone—you bought one.” Slaton reached into the inside pocket of her jacket and pulled out a cheap prepaid phone. “You sat on a bench and made a call. I know because I watched you from the post office across the street. I couldn’t hear what you were saying, but I didn’t need to. It’s easy to tell when someone is taking instructions because the flow of communications is very one-way, the receiver mostly nodding and saying ‘yes’ and ‘all right.’ That’s what you did.”

“But—”

He angled the barrel of the gun until it was pointed at her chest. “And there was something else. Just after Walter was killed, when we were talking at the pub in Baden—you asked why ‘three men’ would do that to Walter. Something about it bothered me at the time, but I couldn’t place it. I made the connection today—you were never in a position to see more than one of them, yet you knew there were three men. Then, when we discussed going to the police right away, you gave up far too easily. My mistake for not seeing it.”

She said nothing.

“There is no friend in Wangen, is there?”

Astrid deflated, her expression shot with guilt. One of her hands was near the door handle, but there was no tension in the musculature, no inching toward the cool silver handle.

“You made a bad choice, Astrid. I need to know—who are they?”

He sensed a hesitation, but not long enough for an amateur to fabricate a solid lie. “A man came to see me a few months ago. Walter was out for the day, so I was in the office alone. There were two other men with him, but they stayed in the hall and I never saw their faces. He said he represented Israel, and that they were the rightful owner of your accounts. He said you, Grossman, and Walter had stolen all of it. He said Israel preferred to settle things quietly, and gave two options. If I provided the encryption codes, he would pay me two hundred thousand U.S. dollars. Otherwise he would go to the police.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him I didn’t have the codes.”

“But you knew where they were.”

She nodded. “They knew I could get them. I was given time to think, and after two days I called a number I’d been given and agreed to their terms.”

“You and Walter were having an affair.”

She recoiled slightly, then nodded again.

For five minutes Astrid recounted the bitter details of a time-honed progression: late-night working sessions, a business trip to Paris followed by dinner to celebrate a profitable new account. From
cochon Basque
at Le Cinq, and a wine-soaked stroll along the Left Bank of the seventh arrondissement, there was but one possible destination.

“Our relationship had been going on for three years. Walter said he was going to leave his wife, but there was always an excuse, always another delay. I finally realized it was never going to happen. I confronted Walter. He blamed her, of course. He said she would ruin him if he ever left her. Our relationship became strained, and it was difficult for us to work together. I wanted to leave, but I needed the job.”

“So you saw this offer as a chance to get back at Walter.”

“Yes. But I swear by all that is holy, I never imagined what happened yesterday. I didn’t care if they ruined Walter financially—perhaps I even hoped it. But it never crossed my mind that he would be physically harmed.”