valley as they gathered under a huddle of live oaks on the hill across the stream from the house. After speaking, Titus sat down and didn't hear another word anyone said. At one point he was shaken out of his preoccupation by the scream of a red-tailed hawk circling high overhead.
Family and friends gathered at the house afterward, and Titus sat for a long time in the shade of the porch and visited with Louise. After a while, at the appropriate time-neither too early nor too late-he and Rita drove away.
Carla's funeral on the following Monday was wrenching. There was a huge crowd at the late afternoon service in the church where she was a longtime member, the sanctuary filled with CaiText employees. Again, Titus spoke, but he and Rita were sitting with the girls, and when he sat down there was notime for him to indulge in his own reveries while Carla's daughters needed his attention.
Titus and Rita opened their home for the reception after-ward. The last people didn't leave until dusk.
In the days that followed, Titus was immediately forced to deal with the total loss of his life savings. His attorneys and financial advisers were still trying to make sense of his Cavatino investments. There would be some sticky moments getting all that sorted out, but it wasn't an insurmountable problem.
But CaiText was still a strong company with bright prospects, so it wasn't like starting over from scratch. Still, it was a sobering loss, and he threw himself into CaiText's business in a way that he hadn't done in the last several years.
At home, he and Rita continued to talk endlessly about what had happened. It was strange and frustrating to have had this lifetransforming experience in absolute isolation from the rest of the world. It was disconcerting suddenly to have powerful secrets that they would never be able to share with anyone. For a long time it obsessed them both. They hardly thought or spoke about anything else when they were alone. The whole experience was schizophrenic.
Over time, however, they gradually worked the nightmare into the fabric of their lives. They had to, or those four days would have become the only thing that had meaning for them in life. It would have defined them. Luquin and Macias would have stolen more than friends and money from them.
But Titus was restless. One night he went through the complicated process of contacting Gil Norlin again. He told him he wanted to try to arrange a meeting with Garcia Burden. Why? Because he just wanted to talk to him. He wanted the guy to sit still for a few hours and talk to him. Norlin said he would see what he could do. But Titus never heard from either of them.
Epilogue
It was a cold, drizzly evening with a heavy mist fuzzing the city's lights when Titus got out of the taxi in front of Galileo. He paid the driver and went inside, where one of the booths along the wall was waiting for him as he had requested.
He was in D.C. for business and would be returning to Austin the next day. After a week in the capital with back-toback appointments, he had deliberately left the evening open. He just wanted a slow meal alone and time to read the newspaper.
He got a bottle of good wine and ordered dinner. When it came, he ate slowly and continued to noodle through the newspaper. He was three-quarters through the meal when he was aware of someone approaching his table. He looked up and was stunned to see Garcia Burden standing there.
“Titus, ”Burden said, smiling and holding out his hand, “do you mind if I join you for a few minutes?”
He was dressed handsomely, even elegantly, Titus thought, and seemed as comfortable in his expensive, double-breasted suit as he had been in his jeans and baggy linen shirt. He sat down, and the waiter brought another glass. They waited while he poured wine for Burden and took away Titus's plate.
“This is no accident, ”Titus said.
Burden smiled. “I'm here on business, too, but Gil Norlin called me when he learned we were in the city at the same time. So I tracked you down.”
Titus could only imagine. And how in the hell did it happen that Norlin knew that Titus was in Washington?
“I understand you'd wanted to talk to me, ”Burden said. “Sorry it couldn't happen sooner.”
Titus nodded, studying him. The clothes might have changed, but he had the same sorrowful cast of the eyes that Titus remembered and the same air about him that suggested he had seen or done things that separated him from most other men.
“I was feeling… pretty desperate back then, when I called Norlin, ”Titus said. “Time has helped that a little bit. Rita and I have worked through some things, come to terms with some things, since then.”
Burden nodded.
Titus sipped his wine. They stared at each other.
“One thing, though. The man who… at Luquin's that night. That was Artemio Ospina, wasn't it? The girl's father.”
Burden nodded again.
“Why'd you lie to me about him being dead? I don't see the point of it.”
“Didn't lie to you. I said the guy had destroyed himself. That's what was so awful about it. He would've been better off dead. He became a professional killer, but that was just a sideline. His real reason for living was to track down the five guys who showed up at his house that night. He hunted them down one by one over the years. Luquin was the fifth one. After that, Artemio just ended it.”
“He quit killing?”
Burden told him how Artemio had died.
“Jesus! ”Titus was astonished, surprised that he could still be surprised by anything connected with those astounding four days in July. He studied Burden. The high-strung intensity that had been so much a part of him during that short ordeal was tempered now to an interesting subtlety. He was thoughtful, relaxed. He was in no hurry to end the conversation.
Burden glanced around the room, a flick of his eyes, an involuntary reflex that signaled a change in the conversation. He leaned forward a little more, his forearms on the table, his long fingers touching the stem of his wineglass, moving it slightly toward the candle on the table. He tilted it, letting the light pass through the ruby liquid.
“That laptop Macias was so desperate to get? ”Burden said.
Titus nodded.
“It contained the entire operational details of their scheme against you. Names. Names. Names. It expanded our criminal intelligence database about Mexico and its relationship to international crime by thirty percent. That's massive. It was a gold mine for us.
“Gil told me later that he'd told you and Rita about Mourad Berkat. Well, Tano Luquin was a key figure behind the Berkat episode. He was the one who had the Hamas connection, oddly enough. He dropped off our radar screens after that. When you came down to San Miguel and identified his picture in my files, I couldn't believe it.
“Macias is a different story. He knew about Luquin's connections to radical factions in the Middle East, and he'd started building secret files on Luquin's contacts. A man like Macias is addicted to information. Collects it like a junk dealer collects junk. You never know when you might be able to make a buck off some bit of information. Macias knew that eventually information about Luquin's Middle Eastern contacts would be valuable. He also knew that Luquin's dealings with these people could eventually be Luquin's downfall. So Macias began hedging his bets big time, hoarding every grain of information he could dig out of the cracks about Luquin and the terrorists. That laptop was full of dots, and Macias was already well on his way to connecting them.”
He stopped and looked at Titus, slowly righting his glass so that the ruby smear on the tablecloth moved like a red ghost back into the glass.
“Tano Luquin was running a very dangerous game, Titus. After you left San Miguel, I followed a hunch and
