The Rules of Silence Read online

  “He just happens to be close by, ”Norlin explained. “He's in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. His name's García Burden.”

  Titus took the heavy phone and put it to his ear in time to hear one ring and then:

  “Titus Cain?”

  “Yes, that's right.”

  “García Burden. Gil's told me the basic story. If this is what it seems to be, it's extraordinary.”

  His voice was soft, a surprise, though Titus hadn't had any preconceptions. He had a bit of an accent, but Titus had no idea what it was. García. No, it wasn't Hispanic, the accent, not like Alvaro's, anyway. It was something altogether different.

  “‘If'? ”Titus asked. “Why wouldn't it be?”

  “Who knows? ”Burden said cryptically. “But your visitor's not who he says he is. His scheme is complex and would require a lot of experience in this sort of thing. So I'm fairly sure he's using a bogus name, which means he's on all the international border watch lists. He must've entered the States illegally. That's significant and supports the ransom story.”

  “How does it do that?”

  “He's too cautious to have come in under a fake passport. Too much risk with the new technology now. This kind of man wouldn't enter the States under the sorts of conditions illegal entry would require for anything routine. This has probably been in the works for a long time. He's come in for the kill … so to speak.”

  Burden seemed to be all over this.

  “How long before he gets back to you?”

  “He didn't say.”

  “It'll be very soon. But he gave you no instructions?”

  “No.”

  “So there are no ‘rules’for you to offend yet.”

  “I'm not supposed to contact any law enforcement agency.”

  “Well, he would consider me in that category, so if he knew about this, you would've already offended him. This conversation would justify the first hit.”

  The word hit struck Titus like a board to the side of the head. Jesus. It was stunning to hear that word in the context of reality, of his reality. But then, did he really believe Alvaro was going to start killing people if Titus didn't—what—follow instructions?

  Burden responded to Titus's shocked silence.

  “No, don't make that mistake, Mr. Cain, ”he said. “This man doesn't threaten. He probably even told you that himself. He's eagerly awaiting his first opportunity to show you how quickly he'll react to your failure to follow instructions.”

  “Then you do know him.”

  “I don't know. But I do know the kind of man he is. In that sense, yes, I know him. ”Burden abruptly shifted gears. “I want to work with you on this, Mr. Cain. Are you interested?”

  Titus glanced at Norlin, but he couldn't see anything beyond a dark figure.

  “Of course I'm interested, but I've got to think this over. I'm not going to decide to do this right now.”

  “I'm only asking if you're interested in talking.”

  “Yeah, of course I am.”

  “There's not a lot of time. You should come tomorrow.”

  “Down there? San Miguel?”

  “Yes. We need to be here when we talk. I have things to show you, to explain. My archives are here. They're not portable.”

  “But what if he tries to get in touch with me while I'm gone?”

  “I'll explain how to handle that.”

  “I don't know if I can make it tomorrow. My security system's been wrecked, and I've got to get someone to start debugging this place.”

  “Did he tell you not to call in security people?”

  “No. ”Titus cringed. Was that another offense? Was he expected to live with Alvaro listening to every word spoken in his own home? He couldn't do it. He wouldn't do it. “He didn't say specifically not to do it.”

  “Then you've got a choice to make. Get used to it, or be ready to live with the consequences, if there are any.”

  “I can't live like that.”

  “Fine. Do you know people who can do that for you?”

  “I own a software company. We work with electronic security constantly.”

  “You're going to need some highly specialized people, Mr. Cain. You've got a very specific kind of problem there. It's not the same. Surely you can see that.”

  Shit. Titus felt stupidly naive. He was going to have to start thinking differently.

  “Mr. Cain, this is my profession. This is what I do. Let me send someone to you. They know about the latest technology. They know this game. Okay?”

  “Yeah, ”Titus said. “Okay.”

  “They'll be there tomorrow, ”Burden said. “Now, you're coming down here tomorrow so we can talk?”

  “Yeah—”

  “Do you speak Spanish?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn't matter.”

  “What do you want me to do, just fly down there?”

  “No. I'll get instructions to you. And Mr. Cain, you need to understand right now that nothing is ‘just’ anything anymore. From now on you are an extraordinary exception to the general rules of just about everything.”

  WEDNESDAY

  The Second Day

  Chapter 9

  Any significant sleep had been impossible during the night. Titus had lain in bed watching the black hills against the cobalt dark sky and was still watching as the sun rounded the curve of the earth, scattering the night before it.

  At nine-fifteen the next morning, a van and a pickup with no markings pulled into Titus's driveway. They stopped within a large enclosure of high hedges that screened the parking area from the city.

  Mark Herrin was a quiet young man with a ponytail and a gentle smile. He was a full head taller than Cline, his partner, who had a fraternity-neat haircut and a tendril of a black tattoo creeping out of the white collar of his shirt along his left jugular vein.

  They introduced themselves, and Herrin said, “García said to assume everything in the house is hot.”

  “I'm not positive about it, ”Titus said. “I do know the security system's been bypassed.”

  “We'll give it all a good cleaning, ”Herrin said with a kind of lazy indifference. “Actually debugging a place like this takes a lot of equipment. We're going to have to haul some things inside. Big stuff. ”He looked around at the hedge enclosure. “This is a big break, having this protection. I don't like working under the opposition's constant supervision, you know, ”he said, throwing a look across the valley toward the river.

  “Then you think the house is being watched? ”Titus asked.

  “If you're a target, you're a target, ”Herrin said simply. “If this guy's serious, there's no such thing as half-assed in this business.”

  They stood there between the driveway and the veranda while Herrin had Titus corroborate the information Burden had passed on to him, and then he asked him a lot of additional questions.

  “Okay, ”Herrin said after a while. “We need to go inside and look around. Now, when we start locating these bugs and jerking them out of there, they're going to know about it. So after we pop the first one, the cat's out of the bag. But there's no need to give them a heads-up, either. So when we get in there let's don't talk about what we're going to be doing, okay?”

  Titus led them inside and showed them through the house. Once they had a feel for the layout of the place, Titus left them alone to wander through the house and survey the size of their job.

  Remembering what Herrin had said about the house being watched, Titus walked down the allée to the site where the stone workers were facing the reservoir. They came in every morning just after sunrise to get an early start on the heat, using the code to the front gates on the property. Titus had been using these men for years to do work around the property, but now he wasn't comfortable with someone having access to that kind of freedom to the grounds.

  Standing in the shade of an oak, he talked with Benito, the foreman, and told him that he was going to have some other men on the property working on some elec
trical problems, and he didn't want that many crews and trucks there at the same time. He said he'd give Benito's crew two weeks’ paid vacation—beginning right now. When they came back, they could pick up where they'd left off.

  Benito was surprised, but two weeks’ paid vacation smoothed over a lot of puzzlement, and Titus shook his hand and headed back to the house. He could hear the crew loading their tools into the truck behind him.

  Titus returned to the kitchen and looked at his watch. He had about forty minutes before he had to leave. He picked up his cell phone and walked outside to call Carla Elster, his assistant at CaiText.

  “Carla, listen, I don't really have any must-do meetings during the next few days, do I?”

  “Nothing on your calendar but the weekly touch-base reviews with the department heads, ”Carla said. “But, uh, Matt Rohan did call late yesterday and wanted to see you for about half an hour when you had time today. He didn't say what about. As usual. And Donice McCafferty called for an appointment. I'm guessing she wants to ask if CaiText will sponsor their charity drive again this fall. And I was supposed to remind you that there's a retirement party on Friday for Alison Daly in accounting.”

  There was no wasted motion and no wasted moments in Carla's life. She was disciplined, focused, organized, and faithful to her routines. She had to be, because without it her life and Titus's life would fall apart. At least she was convinced they would.

  Carla had been his assistant since the day he'd signed the corporation documents to start CaiText. Until he'd met Rita, Carla had been the one person he'd depended on to give him a grounded second opinion and an honest, compass-correcting perspective on whatever was preoccupying him at the time. She was like a sister to him.

  “Okay, well, if you could just put all of that on hold for right now, I'd appreciate it.”

  “On hold? For how long?”

  “A few days, maybe. I'm going to be out of pocket a couple of days.”

  Pause. “Okay. ”Pause. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. ”He stopped. Jesus. He was tempted, enormously tempted, to say something to her, to relieve some of the pressure he felt, but he kept remembering Alvaro's words: I don't want anyone suspicious… . That's the important thing. I really can't emphasize that enough.

  “Titus, ”she said, “what's going on?”

  At forty-six, Carla was a single mother of twin daughters who were soon to enter their freshman year at Vanderbilt University. Her husband had left her six years earlier when the girls were in the sixth grade, and Carla had immediately galvanized her mind and turned her life into a regimen. She was determined to do it all without him, and she did. She'd be damned if she would let her life fall apart in his absence. A man who would leave his wife and young daughters to fend for themselves couldn't have been all that valuable in the first place, she decided. She wouldn't let him be.

  Titus had helped her throughout the whole ordeal. Whenever she needed to take off from work for the girls’school events, she never even had to ask. He boosted her salary to compensate for the loss of half her income, and he made sure the girls had summer jobs at CaiText so Carla didn't have to worry about them during the day.

  Her husband had maddeningly given her the house in West Lake Hills without a whimper. The fact that he didn't think it worth fighting for infuriated her. And he didn't even fuss that much about the level of alimony she had demanded. He was in such a hurry to set up housekeeping with his new girlfriend that he practically ran from everything they had built together over fourteen years of marriage.

  And then there was Darlene, his new woman. Darlene was half Carla's age. She was a blonde; Carla was a brunet. She was tall; Carla was not so tall. She was health-nut thin and tight; Carla was practical medium and not so tight. Darlene didn't work; Carla had worked for CaiText their entire marriage and was as loyal to Titus and the company he was building as if she owned half of it. The striking differences in the two women were an additional humiliation. Darlene was everything that Carla wasn't.

  But that had been six years ago. She had created a new life and a new self. She had made a stable home for her daughters while she had nurtured them through the storms and stresses of adolescence. They were good girls, and she was proud of them.

  Now, though, with the girls away from home for the first time at summer jobs in Denver that Titus had gotten for them, and soon to be off to their first year at the university, Carla found herself with a spare moment once in a while, for the first time in eighteen years. She was dating a man, Nathan Jordan, who was considerate and sensible and comfortable with the girls, who liked him very much. She was entering a new season in life, and it looked as if it were going to be a good one.

  “Everything okay with Rita? ”she asked.

  “Yeah, everything's fine. I talked with her last night.”

  Pause. He could feel her listening to his voice, reading between the lines of the way he sounded. She was all over this.

  “Come on Titus. What's going on?”

  “I'm under a little pressure here, ”he said. “It's nothing to do with Rita. It's … financial. And it's personal, company's not involved. But Rita doesn't know about it yet. It doesn't seem right to go into it with you before I've had a chance to tell her.”

  “Well … is it … disastrous? I mean, hell, Titus, give me something to put this in perspective.”

  “Several months back I made some … risky investments. I've just learned that they've gone bad. I've lost a hell of a lot of money. I'm working out how to deal with it. I can tell you more in a few days. But right now, Carla, you're the only person who knows about this. Understand?”

  “Yeah, Titus, I understand, ”she said, and he could hear the sympathy and the actual hurt in her voice. “Listen, I'm sorry to hear this. If I can do anything … I'll do anything I can.”

  “I've got to go, ”he said.

  Chapter 10

  Herrin's assistant with the jugular tattoo drove out of Titus's place in his pickup, his windows rolled down in the late morning heat, obviously alone, as anyone could see. In a hidden compartment under the bed of the pickup, Titus lay in the dark, guessing the truck's route by following the right and left turns as they made their way down the winding roads to Westlake Drive and headed toward town.

  The ride downtown hardly registered on Titus. He carried no additional clothes, only his laptop, as Burden had instructed. He felt webby headed, his reflexes sluggish from the lack of sleep, his mind only slightly distracted by the rattling of equipment in the pickup's toolboxes and by the smell of plastics and electrical wiring.

  Cline let him out in the first level of the Four Seasons underground parking garage, and Titus took the elevator down to the second level, where he met two men waiting beside a rental car. No introductions.

  While one of the guys went over Titus with a debugging instrument, the other one opened his laptop and put it through a series of checks as well. Satisfied, they told him to lie down in the backseat of the car, and they drove out of the garage. A few minutes later they told him he could sit up, and he stared out the window into the bright summer light while they headed east out of downtown to Austin-Bergstrom International.

  They bypassed the main terminal entrance and circled around behind to the charter flight hangars. The car drove straight onto the tarmac to a waiting King Air 350, and in twelve minutes Titus was in the air.

  Alone in the cabin, he watched as the earth fell away outside the window, and when they began passing through the white, cumulous clouds, he reclined his seat as far as it would go. Still trying to understand how this could be happening to him, he fell asleep.

  Awakened by the quickly sinking Beechcraft, he sat up just as they were touching down. Zipping past the window was a narrow valley, the grass lush with the summer rains and scattered with up-reaching fingers of garambullo cactus and huisache trees with gracefully outspread canopies. As the pilot turned the aircraft and cut back on the engines, Titus saw a black Suburban waiting
at the edge of the isolated airstrip.

  The driver was a hefty Mexican behind sunglasses and a mustache, polite but taciturn, and soon they were sailing along the valley's dirt road. Beyond the nearer rolling hills, the Sierra de Morenos stretched out in the blue distance as far as Titus could see. Finally they reached a two-lane paved road and turned south.

  San Miguel de Allende was a small hillside town in central Mexico, a couple of hours north of Mexico City. Rich in colonial history, it was crowded with handsome churches and elegant homes clustered along narrow, and sometimes steep, cobblestone streets. It was famously beautiful and long had been a favorite retreat for wandering American writers and artists and eccentric expatriates with dubious pasts. For several decades now it had become a popular second-home destination for well-to-do Americans and a cosmopolitan international crowd.

  After rambling into the heart of town, past the Jardín, and then up into the higher neighborhoods, the driver eventually squeezed the Suburban into a cobbled lane of simple, sunwashed walls. He stopped the groaning vehicle on a steep incline and said something in Spanish, gesturing at a massive, dark wooden door set in a fading cornflower blue wall. A jacaranda, lavish with blossoms like broken pieces of the sky, sheltered the doorway. To one side, a brilliant bougainvillea splashed over the top of a rock wall as if the stones were holding back a sea of magenta.

  Titus got out with his laptop and waited for his driver to pull away up the hill before he crossed the lane. He stepped down from the steeply rising sidewalk to the level threshold of the cathedral-size door, banged the brass door knocker in the shape of a woman's hand, and waited as the sound echoed and died between the high walls of the lane.

  Very quickly a normal-size door inset into the larger one was opened by a grandmotherly Indian, who smiled at him with bright teeth generously framed in gold. Her abundant black-and-gray-striated hair was parted in the middle and worn in two braids that reached down past her thick waist.

  Greeting him in Spanish, she stepped back to invite him inside, a brown hand pressed gracefully to the front of her white blouse, which was embroidered with broad, alternating bands of russet and gold. Her skirt, a dazzling thing of cobalt and black stripes, stopped just an inch above her bare, stubby toes.