David Lindsey - The Rules of Silence

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.

Talking to him all the while, she ushered him through a short corridor into the diffused brightness of a colonnade that enclosed a garden courtyard. The quadrangle of arches drew his eyes upward, where the dappled light fell past the secondfloor colonnade through the canopies of trees.

Continuing her lilting but unintelligible monologue, the woman gestured politely for Titus to wait on a long wooden bench against the ocher walls of the deep ambulatory. And then she disappeared. Wooden birdcages with varicolored finches and canaries hung along the colonnades, and a fountain in the center of the courtyard added its splash to the highpitched chatter of the birds.

Just as Titus took a deep breath, he was startled by an outburst of shouting. A woman's voice shrilled from one of the doorways on the second floor, a staccato, singsong flood of an Asian language delivered in spirited anger.

Then silence.

Slowly the birds, stopped by the verbal eruption, resumed.

Before Titus could even begin to imagine what that might have been about, a voice above him said, “Welcome to my home, Mr. Cain.”

Titus recognized the voice and looked up to the left side of the courtyard balcony.

Garcia Burden was leaning his forearms on the stone balustrade, looking down at him. He was tallish and lean, and his dark hair hadn't seen a barber in a good while. His unbuttoned black shirt hung open, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. A gold medallion on a chain around his neck dangled over the balustrade.

“We're just about ready for you up here, ”Burden said. “There are stairs over there. ”He gestured toward a stone staircase. “Just come around the balcony, ”he said, swinging his arm past the open doorways.

Burden was buttoning the front of his shirt as Titus approached him, and as they shook hands Titus noted that they were very nearly the same height. But Burden's age was difficult to determine. He might've been near Titus's age as well, but the crow's-feet at the corners of his brown eyes were deeply cut and had the effect of seeming to distort his age. And there was something in the eyes themselves that made Titus take a second look, something that made him think they had seen more than their share of remarkable things, many of them unnerving.

“Based on what you and Gil have told me, ”Burden said, his soft voice even softer now that they were near, “I've got it narrowed to three men. I've got photographs.”

He turned and led Titus through the open doorway in front of which he'd been standing.

The house was old, with the three-foot-thick walls typical of colonial architecture. The room they entered was huge and probably had been several rooms at one time. Though they were only passing through, heading for another opened doorway on the other side, Titus quickly caught glimpses of antique desks and bookcases, a sitting area with sofa and armchairs, a round library table stacked with books, some still open, a fountain pen cradled in the gutter of one. The only light in the room came in through the deep casements of the doors and windows.

As they went out the other door and onto another balcony, Titus realized that the simple blue wall that faced the street concealed a sizable compound. Here they looked down on a second garden courtyard twice as large as the first one and surrounded by several two-story casitas also connected by two levels of colonnades. Towering flamboyan trees cast a lacy veil of shade over everything.

Titus followed Burden into the first casita and through a time warp into the twenty-first century: a long narrow room chilly with air-conditioning, numerous computers and servers, a movie screen, a huge television screen, and videophones. Three women moved about the room, working at various tasks, ignoring Burden's arrival.

“Let's show him what we have, ”he said to no one in particular, and one of the women nearby turned around and sat at the computer. Titus was surprised to see that she was a Mayan Indian, her flattened features distinctive and unmistakable.

While she typed, Titus glanced at the other two women: an attractive Asian woman who appeared to be in her late forties, her hair worn in a precisely cut bob, dressed in a very smart, straight black skirt and dove gray blouse; and a busty woman of middle height and middle age, plain with Scotch-Irish coloring, roan hair, and a sweet, blue-eyed smile.

Burden stood with his arms crossed, staring over at the TV screen. When the first photo flashed up, he looked at Titus. Titus shook his head. Second photo. Burden looked at Titus. Again Titus shook his head.

“Oh? ”Burden seemed both surprised and eager. “Really? Well then, here's your man.”

Third photo. It was Alvaro in a grainy photograph blown up from a small surveillance negative, crossing a street-Titus thought it looked like Buenos Aires, maybe-a newspaper tucked under his arm as he glanced back in the direction of the photographer, though not at him.

“Yeah, ”Titus said, “that's him.”

“Cayetano Luquin Becerra. Mexican, ”Burden said.

Titus was both relieved and anxious, the way a man might feel when his doctor tells him that they've finally identified the mysterious disease that's been crippling him. He didn't know if this was good or bad.

“Let me see your laptop, ”Burden said, and when Titus gave it to him, he handed it on to the Asian woman. “We're going to tune it up a little, ”he explained. “When she's through, all communication from this man to you will automatically be forwarded to us. It's perfectly safe. He won't know. And we'll build very thorough firewalls for you so our own communications will be secure as well.”

He looked at Titus and jerked his head at the huge photograph on the screen.

“Good news and bad news, ”he said. “Come on, we'll talk about it.”

As they walked into the study again, Titus expected Burden to turn on some lights, but instead he walked over to an area where there was a sofa and armchairs and gestured for Titus to take a seat anywhere. Both men sat down.

“No one-no one in my business-has set eyes on Tano Luquin in three and a half years, ”Burden said. “The guy who took that picture you just saw, he was the last man. He's dead now, the photographer. It's been more than fifteen years since Luquin was seen in the U.S. This is significant.”

“In what way?”

“Well, I'm not sure. Is he here purely because of the size of the ransom??Quien sabe? Could be. Maybe not.”

Titus was sitting on the sofa, facing the wall at one end of the room, the one opposite Burden's desk, which was behind him. As his eyes adjusted to the low light, he realized that a large portion of the wall was taken up with a black-and-white photograph about four feet high and easily twelve feet long, recessed in its own niche in a simple black frame and surrounded by bookcases. The image was of a reclining nude woman.

“Look, I don't feel like I've got a lot of time, ”Titus said, nervous at Burden's peaceful demeanor. “How do we get started here?”

“You'll get a complete dossier on Luquin, ”Burden said, “you'll know who you're dealing with. But, briefly, here are the high spots. Tano grew up in a well-to-do family in Mexico City, university education. He was never really interested in any legitimate business pursuits, and by the late seventies he was already gravitating to the drug trade. By the turn of the decade he was down in Colombia doing petty errands for people who were contracting their services to Pablo Escobar, who had already become a notorious legend. Tano had a feel for abduction, and was soon kidnapping for hire, again for people who were working for Escobar.