beginning. They sat on the slab, surrounded by the smells of lumber and concrete and freshly moved earth.
Now it was Norlin who remained silent. Titus waited, his heart loping along as if it were trying to outrun what he was sure would be Norlin's grim appraisal of his dilemma.
Finally Norlin asked, “How difficult is it going to be to do what he wants, to move the money?”
“Depends on how much he asks for first. I've got, I don't know, a good chunk in markets I can dump immediately. I'll take a loss, but I can do it. Beyond that I'll have to sell pieces of the company. It's just going to look bizarre to… hell, to everybody. I've built CaiText on cautious, conservative business practices, for God's sake. I've got a reputation for that.
“Just six months ago, after years of planning, I let all the division heads buy into the company. That's worked great all these years with one other guy who's been with me from the beginning. But on top of that, six months ago, we borrowed heavily for our expansion program-a program all the division heads planned and proposed to me. Everyone's excited about it, and we think it's going to have a huge payoff.
“Now, can you imagine how this is going to look if I start shifting assets so I can start laying out millions of dollars on foreign investments? This isn't going to work.”
“But you don't have any specific instructions yet, ”Norlin said. “You don't know the immediate requirements.”
“No.”
Norlin wasn't saying much, and that was making Titus nervous, filling him with the worst kind of dread.
In the reflected glow of the city lights across the river, Titus could see enough of Norlin to remember him from four years ago. Of middle height, he had thinning hair, a face with no jawline. His shoulders were rounded, tending to a slight hunch.
Norlin shook his head. “I don't blame you for not going to the FBI. I wouldn't have, either. But that's not what they'd want me to say to you. The conventional wisdom is that the sooner they're involved, the better.”
Norlin sat with his arms locked straight, his hands palms down on the edge of the slab, looking at Titus.
“But this doesn't look too damned conventional to me, ”he said. “You know what the percentages are for catching kidnappers in the U.S.? Ninety-five percent. That's mostly because things like this don't usually happen here in the States. The people who get into it here are loners, emotional basket cases to start with. Crazies who think they're going to magically solve the sad problems of their empty lives by stealing another living human being.”
He paused.
“But if something like this, if this was what kidnapping was like in the States, that ninety-five percent would be shattered. Why? Because this is business, and these people aren't crazies. Not in the sense I'm talking about, anyway. That thing with the dogs, that was a promise, not a threat. You can expect these people to do exactly what they say they're going to do.”
“This is it, then? ”Titus was incredulous. “This is it? I just get ready to cough up sixty-four million?”
“No, I didn't say that.”
“Then what in the hell do I do?”
Norlin didn't say anything. He was thinking, and the fact that he wasn't just firing off action points, wasn't rolling out a game plan, wasn't giving Titus go-to names, scared the shit out of him. Norlin was Titus's cop show equivalent of his one phone call, and he wasn't coming through.
Titus wiped the sweat off the side of his face. This wasn't what he'd wanted. He'd wanted Norlin to be reassuring, to have answers. He felt his chest tightening; he felt time running out; he felt desperate.
“I'm no good to you, ”Norlin said.
Jesus.
“I'm not. Wherever this guy's coming from-Colombia, Mexico, Brazil-he's from another world. Believe me, these guys do not breathe the same air we do. Listen, last year in Colombia alone, nearly a billion dollars were paid out in kidnapping ransoms. Big business. And it just doesn't get any more serious than this.”
Norlin shook his head, thinking.
“What I'm seeing here, this is some kind of hybrid operation. I don't know. I've never heard of this kind of thing happening in the States. I've never heard of this much money being demanded. I've never heard of them wanting to keep the money transfer ‘legal.'”
His voice was flat. He wasn't getting excited about it, he was just laying out the facts.
“Killing friends, family, for negotiating leverage, that's routine in Latin America, India, Philippines, Russia, those places, yeah. But here in the States? Shit. I don't know what they're thinking. It's just way, way out of whack. It's hard to believe.”
Titus thought he heard a glimmer of hope.
“You think this could just be a huge poker hand, then? He's calling my bluff? If I cough up some money, he hits it lucky? If I don't, he'll just disappear? He took a shot at it, and it didn't really cost him anything to try.”
“No. ”Norlin was quick to come back. “That's not what I'm saying. You've got to believe this guy. ”He shook his head. “Everything's accelerated in the last two years. There's a harder edge to everything, terrorism, international crime. Law enforcement's pressing harder, intelligence community has gotten back into the trenches. Everything's more extreme. Looking down the road, we knew we were going to be seeing things we'd never dreamed of seeing before. This is the kind of thing we were afraid of. And the worst part of it is, we're just not geared up yet to deal with something so damned brutal.”
Chapter 8
Titus turned and sat on the slab again, a few feet away from Norlin. He felt a little light-headed, his thoughts alternating in velocity between a stunned, sluggish incredulity and the frenetic, revved-up hyperjitter of panic. He wanted to stand up again. He wanted to pace. He wanted to be able to think methodically. He wanted more air. He wanted to wake up.
“I'm going to give you some advice, ”Norlin said. “Your situation, there are going to be pressures put on you, deliberately, to make fast decisions. And you're going to have to do it. You won't have any choice. But it's going to be tough because sometimes-and it's just the odds, you can't fight it-sometimes you're going to make the wrong decisions. The consequences are going to be painful.”
“What's that mean, exactly? ”Titus wanted it spelled out, bad news in black and white.
“It means that after it's done, it's done. If you're going to second-guess yourself, you'll go crazy before this is over.”
“Odds are, people are going to die, you mean.”
“Think of it like this: This man is bringing you a sick situation. He created it. You didn't. He's going to force you to make choices where nobody wins. When that happens, remember who started it. You're just playing the hand that this guy's dealt you.”
Titus let this sober insight sink in. Norlin didn't rush him. Titus could smell the freshly cut brush around them, the stuff that had been carved out of the hillside for the construction site. He could smell the earth, an odor, a fragrance, really, that made him think of his dogs and of the weight of them as he'd put them into the hole he'd dug at the back of the orchard.
“Okay, ”Titus said, “I understand. ”And he did, but he didn't want to believe it. He wanted to believe that he could avoid the grim scenario that Norlin was predicting. He wanted to believe that in most cases that might be true, but he'd be able to avoid it. He'd figure out a way not to have to live through that kind of dark dilemma.
“I'm going to put you in touch with someone, ”Norlin said, standing. In the dim ambient light from the city in the distance, Titus watched him step off the concrete slab and go over to his car. He reached in and took out an oversize cell phone- encrypted, Titus assumed-and came back over to the slab.
“I've got to repeat this, ”Norlin said. “This is not the way the FBI would want it done. They'd say it was irresponsible. And normally I'd agree with them. But… ”He hesitated only slightly. “The truth is, if I were standing where you're standing right now, I'd want this guy to hear my story. And I'd want to know what he thinks about it. He may say, Go to the FBI. Then you should go, and you won't have to worry about whether you're doing the right thing or not. You can believe what he says.”
