Read Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel for Free Online

steam-shrouded runway. And when people abandoned airliners on the fringes of his domain, Umberto’s job was to look after them—at least, as best he could given his laughable budget.
    Umberto Donato was Brazilian, mostly honest, and a man who held few grievances with life. The man walking beside him was none of those things.
    He had arrived this afternoon on the 1:15 flight from Brasília which, by an evident act of blessed providence, had been ten minutes early. In the air-conditioned passenger terminal the man had introduced himself as Gianni Petrecca, and produced an Italian passport to that effect. He spoke Portuguese with an accent Umberto supposed was Italian. His black hair and dark shadow of beard were decidedly Mediterranean. Gianni said he was from Naples, and that he was both a pilot and a broker of used aircraft, none of which the Brazilian had any reason to doubt. Indeed, after five minutes of conversation, Umberto was sure the man knew something about airplanes.
    “Is it always like this?” the Italian asked, wiping sweat from his forehead with a shirtsleeve.
    “Only in summer,” said a smiling Umberto, before adding, “but of course, here there is no other season.”
    With Umberto in the lead, the two men skirted a little-used taxiway on the airport’s east side and approached the aircraft in question. It was situated on the largest parking apron, a square pocket of asphalt the size of a soccer field that pushed insolently into the forest. The pad was surrounded on three sides by walls of vegetation, waxen green leaves the size of doormats and thick vines that seemed like arteries, binding everything into a single living organism.
    The airplane looked better than most of Santarém’s sky-tramps. It had all its engines, wheels, and entry doors, and the exterior access panels appeared to be in place, although a few hung open, waving limply in the moist air that was stirring on schedule. Two reflective panels in the cockpit windshield gave the impression that the jet was taking a nap behind blinders. All these details, however, were overshadowed by one overwhelming highlight—before them was the largest aircraft ever to land at Maestro Wilson Fonseca Airport by a factor of two.
    “Yes,” Gianni said, “it looks like the photograph in the listing. How long has it been on the market?”
    “Only two weeks,” said Umberto. “The airport has only recently taken legal possession.”
    “Nine hundred thousand U.S.—that is a lot to ask. I understand it will need a D-check soon. Heavy maintenance for such aircraft is very expensive. More than your asking price.”
    “But she is a low-cycle airframe,” Umberto countered, parroting what he’d been told to say by the city fathers, even if he wasn’t sure what it meant. “Another four to six years of use, depending on how hard she is flown.” She, Umberto thought. Yes, that’s very good .
    Gianni seemed unconvinced.
    “I am not authorized to discuss financial matters,” said Umberto, “yet there is always room for compromise.” He did, in fact, have some knowledge of the negotiations, which were being overseen by Santarém’s município, or community council. A broker from Brasília, well-versed in resale markets, had been consulted, and he explained that each month the jet didn’t sell lowered its value in the neighborhood of 3 percent.
    “What is the history of the craft?” the Italian asked.
    Umberto made a show of checking the paperwork he’d brought. It listed all the prior owners, the most recent being a Canadian leasing firm. They had bought the hull, in turn, from a highly specialized U.S. government contractor in California. Before that had been Air Ethiopia, who’d purchased it out of receivership after the collapse of Pan Am. “The original owner was Pan Am,” Umberto said, keeping with the most respectable maintenance outfit on the list, and glossing over the detail that Pan Am had acquired the jet in its takeover of National