Chapter 35
After Burden left them in front of the guest house, Titus and Rita headed straight to their bedroom, where they dutifully had the conversation Burden had wanted, and then went on to Titus's study. For the next hour they sat at the long table under the sunny cupola, contacting Carla's friends and enlisting help in calling scattered relatives. Titus made sure the news of Carla's death was handled properly at CaiText and that Carla's responsibilities were temporarily covered.
But no matter how many phone calls Titus made, no matter how many shocked people he talked to or how many urgent items he found crowding in upon him demanding to be dealt with immediately, his mind was divided. He had been staring out the window, lost in thought, when he realized that Rita was finishing a conversation and hanging up the phone. She had been talking to Louise.
“How'd she sound? ”he asked.
“Okay. I think she's in that just-get-through-the-funeral mode. Nel and Derek are lifesavers. And a lot of friends from Fredericksburg are coming out.”
“She'll have a lot of support, ”Titus said. “She'll need it.”
“She wants you to speak at the service, ”Rita said.
“When?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“Jesus. What'd you tell her?”
“Of course you would.”
Before he had time to process how impossible that seemed to him, his encrypted phone rang.
“This is Garcia. Listen, Gil Norlin's bringing in the bodyguards-”
“Norlin? ”Titus was surprised, though as soon as he was he didn't know why he should've been.
“He pulled together the local chase car drivers I needed last night, Titus. I use him when I need him, just like everybody else.”
For some reason that last sentence stuck in Titus's mind like a neon sign.
The bodyguards were two men and a woman. They arrived in a Blazer following Gil Norlin's Volvo without any special effort to conceal the fact that they were coming in. Titus guessed they had talked that over with Burden.
First names only. Janet was tall and athletic, with makeup that looked as if it had been applied by numbers. She had an easygoing manner. At first the sound-suppressed MP5 (she told them what it was) slung across her shoulder looked incongruous, until you watched her move around with it. She wore it as comfortably as her pleated trousers.
Ryan was the shorter of the two men at six two, Titus guessed. Lifted weights. Military haircut. All-American. Looked exactly like what he was.
The tall one, Kal, was maybe six five. Not a small man, but not bulked up like Ryan. He seemed a little preoccupied, as if the team were his responsibility.
As soon as they finished introductions and a few words, Rita and Titus took them on a tour of the house. Decisions were immediately made to lock all but the most frequently used doors and to put breach limpets on all the doors and windows. It got very serious very quickly.
After the bodyguards had been briefed and took off in separate directions, Norlin paused in the kitchen with Titus and Rita.
“Do what they say, ”he said. “There's no hocus-pocus here. Just a lot of experience-based common sense.”
“These are your people? ”Titus asked.
“I've worked with them before, ”he said. He was standing with his fist on his hip, his jacket pushed back a little. Titus saw Rita glance at the gun at his waist.
“And you've worked with Garcia Burden before, too?” Rita asked. “Is that right?”
“Yeah. A few years back.”
She looked at him. “Why don't you just give me some idea of what this man's like?”
Norlin flicked an uneasy glance at Titus and then looked down, collecting his thoughts.
“That's kind of touchy, ”he said.
“What do you mean? ”she asked. Her voice had a barb to it, as if his reluctance were somehow unworthy.
“Well, you're working with him-”
“Look, ”she interrupted, and then she hesitated nervously-or was it angrily? “People are dying here, ”she said, “and any scruples you might feel of a professional nature just don't seem significant to me right now.”
Norlin was looking at her. He didn't seem particularly taken aback, nor was he intimidated, but Rita had definitely cut through a lot of crap that he was used to falling back on when he was put on the spot.
“Well, he's had a full life, ”Norlin said with intended irony. “What did you have in mind?”
“Just give me some sense of what he's like, ”she said. “Something that… orients him in my head, gives me some perspective. Look, we're working with this man because you recommended him. Now you think about it: We don't really know you, either. You think it's just… the way it ought to be that just because we're scared to death here, we should start trusting people who-let's face it-are leading pretty damn murky lives? I don't know what you do. Titus has told me how he first met you, but then… what's that? You seem to be who you say you are, but then, how the hell are we to know, really? We haven't seen any credentials. Right? No one that we know we can trust has called us and vouched for you, have they? You know, Mr. Norlin”-she put a little extra on the “Mr. Norlin”-“we don't just intuit your integrity, or your legitimacy, for that matter. The fact that we're even working with him, Burden, or you… or any of these other people”-she gestured broadly toward the bodyguards, toward Herrin in the guest house-“strikes me as… just… insane when I think about it.”
By the time she had stopped, her voice was quavering with a complex brew of emotions. But the torrent of words had had its effect on Norlin. He seemed to soften a little as he looked at her.
“You have a good point, Mrs. Cain, ”he said carefully. “But let me say, it's only insane if you think of it from the point of view of your life before Cayetano Luquin. After Luquin, insane takes on another meaning altogether. But, ”he added quickly, “you're right. You've been asked to take a lot on faith. Those of us in this line of work, we don't appreciate that enough.”
He gave some thought to what he was about to say.
He leaned against the kitchen counter and folded his arms across his chest. His old suit, already sagging at all of its stress points, bunched up across his shoulders as if it had done this a thousand times before and knew the routine.
“On a personal level, ”he said, looking at Rita, “and I've told Titus this, I trust this man implicitly. But the thing is, the thing that would be hard for you to sort of get a grip on, is that my trust lies within a context of extremes. The things I trust him to do, for instance, are things that would probably shock you.”
Another pause. “I could talk about him for days. Don't waste your time trying to figure him out. The only person I know who comes even close to having done that is the woman he lives with. Her name's Lucia. I don't know how many years he's been with her. She's a Roma, a Gypsy from Sicily. Photographer. ”He looked at Titus. “Took all-or most-of those pictures you saw in his place. She's as inexplicable as he is, and they're devoted to each other… way past anything I've ever seen between two people. But that's personal stuff, not exactly where we want to go.
“Look, ”he said, “I'll tell you what. I don't really know how to do this, so I'll just tell you a story. I could tell you scores of them, but I think this one will do for right now. I'll make it short, but I think it'll give you some idea what Garcia Burden's life is like.”
Chapter 36
“Several years ago, ”Norlin began, “an Algerian Islamic extremist, guy named Mourad Berkat, showed up in
