Characterized by Disraeli as, “A city of palaces built by gentlemen for gentlemen,” Valletta, Malta, is perhaps more aptly described as a fortress built with style. In 1530, Charles V of Spain granted the long-drifting Knights of Saint John sovereign rule over the island, the annual fee being one Maltese falcon. Knowing a bargain when they saw one, the order of knights, who had a strong proclivity for mingling war with religion, rebranded themselves as the Knights of Malta. To make the place their own, the Knights set about fortifying the main harbor of Valletta. They built sentry stations and watchtowers, all looming high over the city’s elegant cathedrals. With their defenses in order, the Knights set a more leisurely pace to fashion the first planned city of Europe. They stayed for two hundred and sixty-eight years.
In the intervening centuries, the city has endured battles great and small. Valletta was where Suleiman the Magnificent was proved to be something less, his forty thousand troops sent packing by an entrenched force one quarter of its size. Even at the height of World War Two, enduring an enthusiastic bombing campaign by Axis air forces, Valletta remained largely intact thanks to the Knights’ robust design standards, not to mention brigades of sharp-eyed Allied antiaircraft gunners. By any measure, Valletta is a city built from the ground up with a defensive mind-set.
And defense was exactly what Slaton needed.
By cab he reached Senglea shortly after midnight, one of three harbor districts on the east side of the capital. In a country barely larger than Martha’s Vineyard there were few places to hide, so he’d opted for the densest population center, even if it was a predictable move. The neighborhood was an eclectic mix, a place where expatriate accountants lunched with tenth-generation cobblers, and sailmakers shared jugs of red wine with computer hackers. Yet there was no denying Senglea’s underlying soul—the massive Valletta shipyard was pervasive, infused into every brick, gutter, and shingle.
The temperature dropped markedly as morning took hold, and Slaton wished he’d stolen a jacket as well. His pants were bloodstained in spite of his efforts at a washbasin in the bus station restroom. His thigh throbbed in pain, and his hands still showed marks from a gravel rooftop in Mdina. A deep bruise on his elbow was a reminder of the Pole—the man he had killed in the stairwell. Slaton easily let that thought go. He hadn’t set out to kill anyone today. The other man had.
He selected a shabby boarding house near an empty dry-dock berth. The Inn, as proclaimed by a hand-drawn sign, was three stories of stone, mildew, and mortar that looked every bit as inspiring as its name. The night clerk was a man near sixty, and weathered was the word that came to Slaton’s mind—his channeled face and weary eyes spoke of a life less lived than endured. A lit cigarette was perched on a soda can, the ashes centered over the hole on top. The clerk barely registered Slaton’s approach.
“Do you have any rooms?” Slaton asked in English.
The man picked up his cigarette, the ashes missing the can completely and scattering over a scarred wooden counter. Once it was hanging from his slack lower lip, he said, “I have lots of rooms. Do you have any money?”
Slaton wondered if he looked that bad. He pulled out his wallet. “Two nights,” he said, knowing he would stay only one.
“Sixty euros … in advance.” As Slaton handled his wallet, the night clerk noticed the abrasion on his hands. “Been in a tussle, have you?” he asked, his tobacco-stained breath carrying across the counter.
“Accident at work. I’m a stonemason—I fell off a ladder. It was my hands or my face.”
The man curled fingers under his chin to think about it, a knurled thumb and forefinger that reminded Slaton of the branches of an old tree. He nodded as though it made perfect sense.
Slaton slid three twenties across the counter, and a key came in return, the old-school type with metal teeth and an engraved number 6.
Registration complete.
“Are you expecting company?” the desk man asked.
“Yes,” Slaton lied. “If a dark-haired woman comes looking for Max, please send her to my room.”
The Maltese nodded to say he would.
Slaton turned to go, but then he paused. He stepped back to the front desk and put his palm down on the moldering wood. When he pulled it away an additional twenty-euro bill appeared. “And if a man should come looking for me … or her … call my room and let the phone ring only twice.”
The man eyed him, and then the cash. “I don’t want trouble.”
“That’s my point.”
The twenty disappeared under the proprietor’s hand.
Another precaution was in place.
* * *
Slaton found room 6 on the second floor at the end of the corridor. The hallway by the door was nearly dark, the three-light fixture at that end of the hall having failed completely. He walked back to the staircase where a twin fixture was working perfectly, and in less than a minute he had switched out two of the three small bulbs. The hallway in front of room 6 was again bright. He did not reinsert the two dead bulbs into the staircase fixture. Instead, he studied the runner on the floor, a worn stretch of carpet ornamented with flowering vines and songbirds, all long ago trampled into submission. He raised the end of the runner nearest his door and placed the bulbs underneath, one at the end, the other a few feet farther on. When the carpet fell back in place the tiny rises were virtually indistinguishable.
Inside the room Slaton found what he expected, maybe a little more. The bed had been made and the floor seemed clean, although it was hard to say given the feeble light—every room at The Inn seemed a few bulbs short. There were dings and scrapes on the wall, but no damage that breached through to the next room. He rapped his knuckles on random sections and was rewarded with something old and solid, not the wood-framed drywall you got in newer buildings that was easily penetrated by small-caliber arms. The floor was old hardwood, worn and stained, and might have been recently swept. There was even a tiny bar of soap and a half-used bottle of shampoo in the bathroom.
Slaton swept the place for electronic devices, less because he expected to find anything than as an exercise to establish the right mind-set. Finding the phone unplugged, he reconnected the cable in case the night clerk had to make good on their arrangement. He checked the peephole at the door and saw an empty hallway, and through the room’s lone window, partly covered by plastic drapes that hung like lead, he saw the gray-brick siding of the adjacent building.
Slaton laid on the bed and closed his eyes, hoping for sleep. What came instead was the question he’d been evading for hours. Who would want me dead?
Regrettably, it was a long list. Family members of those he’d dispatched. Their tribal brethren. Even entire countries. Slaton had served for years as a kidon, a Mossad assassin, doing Israel’s dirtiest work. A thing like that followed a man, no matter how well he concealed himself. The accomplishments of his career, if they could be called that, were branded for eternity in minds and souls across the world. Including his own.
Yes, he decided, that had to be it. His past was responsible for what had happened tonight in Mdina. But what part?
One detail narrowed the field considerably. The man he’d dispatched in the stairwell, he was quite sure, was former GROM—Polish Special Forces. Yet the others were different. He knew because the Pole had used heavily accented English on their tactical frequency—likely the attackers’ only common tongue. Everything about the group screamed high-end mercenary. Which led to more troubling questions.
Who had hired them? What did it relate to?
Finally, the most vexing question of all. Given such a team—experienced and heavily armed, with a well-designed plan, and facing an unarmed and surprised target—how on earth was he still alive?