David Lindsey - The Rules of Silence

“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 had a team sweep a house Luquin owned in Rio de Janeiro. They found, among other things, a telephone number that rang in a house in the Polanco district in Mexico City. When I had another team go to the house in Polanco, they found it empty. Hastily empty. The man who had been leasing the place for the past two months was named Adnan Abdul-Haq. More phone numbers. One of these numbers rang at a house in Beirut, a house that belongs to Hezbollah.

“Further checking revealed that Luquin had been in Beirut twice in the past six months. Also, remember the accounts through which Cavatino was going to scatter your ten million?”

“One was in Beirut.”

Burden nodded. “Yeah, it's a popular money-laundering destination. But in this case none of the money went there. Not initially, though eventually that's where it all ended up.”

“Jesus. So what was going on?”

Burden stared at Titus and then sat back. “We may never know.”

“If you could've questioned- ”Titus stopped. That was Burden's point, wasn't it?

Burden smiled a little and shrugged.

“And Abdul-Haq? ”he said. “We don't have a clue who that guy is. His name hasn't turned up in any intelligence database that we have access to. The man will most likely remain a mystery to us. At what cost? We may never know that, either. Or we may find out the hard way: too late.”

Burden finished the wine in his glass and looked around. His eyes seemed to flicker at something of interest over Titus's shoulder, and then it was gone. The man didn't allow himself much room to live life as it came to him. He was always watchful of his own behavior, afraid, it seemed, of an involuntary betrayal of something within him.

“I can understand the… necessity for the list, ”Titus said, lowering his voice, leaning in toward Burden, “but I don't understand why, with so much to learn from Luquin, he wouldn't be more valuable to you alive than dead. Or any of the names on the list, for that matter.”

“Intelligence is… unstable, ”Burden said. “It has a halflife that's measured in instants. It has value only if the subject of the intelligence doesn't know we have it. The moment he knows, or his connections know, that you have it, its value dissipates like smoke. It becomes worthless.”

“Because everything changes, ”Titus said.

“That's right. If we picked up Luquin, everyone who ever had anything to do with him would burn their bridges. Anything that used to be connected to him-contacts, procedures, routes, systems, processes, safe houses… everything-would be compromised and immediately changed. Everyone would start conducting their business differently, and we'd have to start from scratch trying to find out who, when, where, how, why.

“But if he dies, ”Burden went on, “odds are that the information we have is still good. His death doesn't taint the security of their connections, everyone keeps using the same methods and procedures, though maybe with a little extra care, since they can't be sure who it was who got to him.”

“But removing him causes a void, ”Titus went on, beginning to see the logic, filling in the information to his own question. “It breaks up whatever operations he was driving, maybe kills them for good, and takes a major player out of the mix.”

Burden nodded. “It's one way of doing things. Right now, for us, it works. We're still playing catch-up as we revamp our intelligence programs. We need some breathing room. Checking names off that list buys us time.”

The waiter came and asked if they wanted another bottle of wine. Titus looked at Burden, who shook his head. The waiter retreated.

“How are you doing with it, then? ”Burden asked after a few moments of silence. “In terms of the sum of your life.”

Titus found it a curious question and was surprised that Burden would even want to know.

“To tell you the truth, ”he said, “there's no getting over it. No getting away from it, either.”

Burden nodded as if he knew what Titus was talking about, but he said nothing.

“It's having to keep quiet about it, ”Titus added, “pretending it never happened. Somehow that makes it harder to live with. Almost unbearable sometimes.”

“Keeping silent and pretending it never happened are two different things, ”Burden said. “You can't pretend it didn't happen. That'll drive you crazy. This thing is part of who you are now, and there's nothing you can do about it.