Chapter 17.

AUSTIN.

Luquin paced slowly back and forth along the deck that was perched on the edge of the cliff, one hand in his pocket, smoking his cigarette, the smoke a blue breath drifting away from him into the darkness. Now and then he paused and looked out into the night.

There was nothing much to see in the direction he was looking. Far below the sapphire surface of the wide river twisted through the cobalt darkness, and on the other side the long slope of the rising land ascended to black hills with spa.r.s.ely scattered lights glinting through the dense woods. Occasionally a light would flicker and stretch out and die, the headlights of a car negotiating the narrow, unlighted lanes that rambled through the thickly wooded hills. The house that held his attention was straight in front of him, a mile and a half away as the crow flies.

"We'll hear from him tomorrow, "Luquin said. "How many bugs have they taken out?"

"Half a dozen, so far."

"I told you, "Luquin sneered, "he is going to be so predictable, arrogant b.a.s.t.a.r.d. So f.u.c.king confident. n.o.body's going to bug his place and get away with it. I wish I could have seen his face when he realized what he had done. "He shook his head in amus.e.m.e.nt. "I would have had to find another excuse to kill Thrush if Cain had left the d.a.m.n bugs in place." He snorted. "It's going to be a pleasure working this a.s.shole."

He smoked. "But I can't figure out why we haven't picked him up on any of the bugs that are still in there. We haven't even heard him coughing or p.i.s.sing or anything."

"We're picking up the technicians."

"I know that, Jorge. But we're not picking up Cain. What's he doing?"

"You've scared the s.h.i.t out of him, Tano, "Macias said. "He's probably not even breathing in there."

Jorge Macias was Luquin's Mexican chief of operations. In his mid-thirties, Macias was barrel-chested and handsome in the Latin lover sense of the term. He was self-a.s.sured and selfcentered and easy with violence.

When Luquin had business in Mexico or Texas, it was Macias who saw that it ran the way it was supposed to. His teams laid the groundwork. His teams ran the intelligence. His teams provided the brutality when brutality was required. (It was Macias's people who had smuggled Luquin across the border in the top of Benny Chalmers's truck.) And from years of experience, he had become deft at pa.s.sing down the bad news to the lower ranks. If they made blunders, he gave them one chance to rectify their mistakes. Another failure, and they disappeared. Others took their place with the full knowledge of what had happened to the men before them. Predecessors'mistakes were never repeated. There were no exceptions.

"What about the guys sweeping the house? "Luquin asked.

"Just technicians. Our guy on the ground hasn't picked up any guns. Cain has a very high quality security system at CaiText, and he probably knew these guys through those connections. He runs a very tight operation. It looks like routine sweeping, just what we antic.i.p.ated. Nothing more than that."

"And you think these are the guys he called from the pay phone."

"Probably. He couldn't stand it. Wanted to do something about it as fast as he could."

Luquin planted his feet firmly apart, drew slowly on his cigarette, and stared across the night river. A boat moved steadily over the water, going away from the city. Its lights reflected off the sapphire, and the sound of its engine grumbled off the sides of the cliffs.

"I'm trying to imagine, "he said, as much to himself as to Macias, "what he must be thinking. The man is careful. He doesn't make big mistakes. He weighs the pros and cons, follows the rules, and makes safe, reasonable decisions. He is predictable, as we have seen. Now, how does he react to the realization that he is responsible for his friend's death?

"He's going to go over and over in his head how this happened, "Luquin went on, answering his own question. "He's going to reconfirm in his mind that I didn't specifically say: Don't sweep the house. So then he's going to think, My G.o.d, I've got to try to feel my way through this. That son of a b.i.t.c.h Luquin is unpredictable. I've got to read his mind. How in the h.e.l.l am I going to do that!"

Luquin smoked, resting his elbows on the deck railing as he peered into the night, as if the tiny lights of the houses in the distance were a fortune-teller's cards and he could see there the answers to all of his concerns.

"And then, "Luquin said, "he is going to begin to get crazy. A careful man finds it very stressful to deal with unpredictability. He sees no f.u.c.king way to figure it out. And that begins to wear on him. It begins to eat at him. And that's good."

Jorge Macias listened to Luquin talk. The man had no equal at what he did, and working for him was always an education in perversity. Over the years, Luquin had evolved from being just another a.s.sa.s.sin in the drug wars, a culture that bred a.s.sa.s.sins like maggots and treated them with just about as much respect, to being a kind of philosopher of the business of death. The amount of time Luquin put into knowing the psychological biography of the person he focused his attention on was extraordinary in this business. That was why he was so greatly feared by those who knew enough to fear him. And that was why he was so effective.

Macias would become a wealthy man from this one job alone. But there was a price for it. When you worked with Luquin there was always a price. The man didn't feel he was getting his money's worth out of you if you didn't pay a price, and that usually meant some kind of suffering. Before this was over, Luquin was going to require him to do something that would be anguishing, either physically or emotionally, and that was why Macias had already sworn to himself that this would be the last time he would work with this madman.

Macias's cell phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket and turned away from the deck railing. With his head down, listening, he began walking idly around the lighted pool. Luquin turned and watched him. He liked telephone calls during an operation like this. It meant action. Things were happening near and far to his advantage. The wheels turned; the plan moved forward.

He flicked the b.u.t.t of his cigarette, and it made a high, expert arc and landed in the near edge of the pool, floating on the aqua light. He watched Macias, who was on the other side of the pool now, the half of his body facing Luquin shimmering with turquoise light reflected from the surface of the water. By the time he got around to Luquin again, he was ending his conversation. He snapped the phone closed and joined Luquin at the railing again.

"That was Mateos in Venice. His informant in Mrs. Cain's hotel just reported that she received a telephone call a couple of hours ago. Unfortunately that's all he knows. The informant wasn't in a position to monitor the call. "Macias looked at his watch. "That would have been about two-thirty in Venice. An unusual hour to receive a call."

Luquin dug another cigarette out of the pocket of his guayabera and lighted it. "So that means that Mrs. Thrush and Mrs. Cain will be on their way home sometime tomorrow morning. "Luquin smiled slowly, and then it grew into a soft, delighted laugh. "G.o.dd.a.m.n, I love this guy Cain. Doing that woman long-distance would have been so inconvenient."

Luquin turned again to the dark valley and to his own thoughts, bending slightly, his elbows resting on the railing. Macias stepped away and took out his cell again. He glanced upstairs, where his two men were at their posts watching the street at the front of the house. He glanced at the shadows next to the house, where he could barely make out the black-onblack image of Roque, Luquin's personal bodyguard, sitting spookily in the shadows. It was Roque who had climbed up into the top of the dark cattle truck with his boss. He was never far away, like a sick memory you couldn't get away from.

Macias looked back at Luquin. His back was palely lighted as he stared into the night. A puff of smoke from his cigarette left his head and wandered away in a long blue stream. It looked as though his hair were on fire.

The night flight from San Miguel seemed interminable. But while the King Air was eating up air miles over the Sierra Madre Oriental and the north Mexican desert, t.i.tus was busy arranging the flight back to Austin for Rita and Louise. He called an international charter service in Houston that had planes on the ground in Milan's Malpensa Airport. He and Rita had agreed that once she talked to Louise, it was highly unlikely there would be any more sleep for them, so he arranged for the charter service to pick them up at Marco Polo International outside Venice as soon as the service could get a crew together.

With that done, he called Lack Paley at his home in Austin. Paley was t.i.tus's chief legal counsel, and t.i.tus told him that he wanted him to initiate the process to do three things: 1. Get with Terry Odell, t.i.tus's stockbroker, and borrow $10 million against his personal investments portfolio and immediately invest the entire amount in a certain way in the ent.i.ties he would name. Use Marcello Cavatino Inversiones, S.A., in Buenos Aires to facilitate the transactions. These transactions had to be completed by three o'clock the next day.2. Get with Lee Silber and borrow $21 million, using interest in CaiText as the collateral.3. Prepare doc.u.ments to sell off even more of CaiText in the way t.i.tus would describe.

Then he outlined the timetable.

After Paley got over the shock of his instructions, they spent the next forty minutes working out the general idea of how all this would work. t.i.tus told him to keep the plans strictly guarded, though he didn't explain why.

After landing in Austin, t.i.tus took a shuttle to the airport Hilton. Burden was a.s.suming that Luquin would have t.i.tus's home surveilled, as he had done during his other operations in Rio de Janeiro, and he didn't want Luquin to know that t.i.tus had left his house. Cline would pick him up in the morning, and t.i.tus would go home the same way he'd left, in the hidden compartment in the bed of Cline's pickup.

t.i.tus flipped on the television the moment he walked into the hotel room. The flight home had been filled with obsessive preoccupations as he had replayed again and again the what ifs, the shouldn't haves, the whys. Then he'd reviewed his conversations with Burden and tried to put into perspective what he had agreed that Burden should do. He could only hope that in the morning the things he had agreed to wouldn't look dramatically darker.

He didn't want to think anymore. He took off his clothes and fell into bed, staring over his feet at CNN. He hoped to G.o.d it would keep him from thinking.

THURSDAY.

The Third Day

Chapter 18.

Herrin was waiting for him in the driveway behind the hedges when he swung his legs off the retractable hidden platform under the bed of the pickup. They walked toward the veranda, t.i.tus carrying his now modified laptop in its case. Herrin was drinking coffee from a chrome high-tech mug that looked like the thermal equivalent of a cryonic canister. They stopped and stood in the shade of the morning glories.

"I've talked with Garcia, "Herrin said, "and he's brought me up to speed."

t.i.tus nodded. Jesus.

"Can we talk in my office yet? "he asked, clearing his throat.

"Yeah, we can. As a matter of fact, I swept that first."

They walked through the courtyard past the fountain to a back door near the rock wall gate that led to the swimming pool. They went into a broad hallway, its atrium flooding the corridor with morning light, and turned into the first double doorway to the right.

t.i.tus's office was s.p.a.cious, and he walked across the room and put his laptop on his desk, a brandy-colored rolltop from an old bank in El Paso. He plugged in the laptop and turned it on. In the center of the room a long antique walnut table scattered with his latest projects, some brought from CaiText, some for his own private interests, was washed in diffused light from an octagonal cupola that hovered over the center of the room and burnished the two-hundred-year-old walnut. t.i.tus walked past it to the windows and looked out to the courtyard and to the orchard beyond. To his left he could see into the walled patios that surrounded the pool. He turned around.

"Okay, "he said. "Now you bring me up to speed."

"We're making good progress, "Herrin said. "This stuff's pretty slick. I like it. But it's a slow go. I'm keeping a floor plan of the house on the island in the kitchen. I'm marking the rooms that've been swept so you'll know where you can talk and where you can't. "He swigged from the chrome mug. "Garcia told me he wanted to leave a couple of places hot."

"Fine. Why?"

"Yeah. He said there might be some things we're going to want these guys to overhear, so we're going to overlook some bugs. We want it to look like we're good at this, but not quite good enough. They're expecting to lose most of them anyway. But the places we keep hot have got to be in rooms where it's logical that you'd think you're safe."

"You mean the bathroom. The bedroom."

"Yeah. In fact, I've already found the ones in your bedroom. They're more sophisticated than the others, much harder for us to find. They wanted these girls to stay put. So I left them in place. I suspected Garcia would want to leave some."

Through the windows at the end of the room, t.i.tus saw a scarlet tanager on the courtyard wall, an incredible brilliance for an instant, then it vanished.

"Okay, "t.i.tus said. "I understand that. Then go ahead and leave them."

"You'll have to be on your toes in there, "Herrin reminded him.

t.i.tus nodded. Yeah, there was going to be a lot of that.

Suddenly t.i.tus's encrypted cell phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and opened it.

"This is Garcia. You have a minute?"

"Go ahead."

"I've been up all night arranging a couple of mobile teams to work with us in Austin, "Burden said. "About three people in each team. One team's already there, one will be there in a couple of hours. Herrin's going to be coordinating some things with them, too, and he's going to need to set up some additional equipment. Is he going to have room in that guest house for several more monitors?"

"Yeah, there's plenty of room."

"Great. I'm about an hour out of Austin. We need to get together pretty soon and go over some things. Right now, though, I need you to get back to Luquin. Have you heard any more from him?"

"Nothing."

"Okay. Use the laptop and follow Luquin's communication instructions. All of this is about the money, so let's talk money with him. Here's how I think you should handle it."

Burden's instructions were precise, and he laid them out with a simple, straightforward explanation of his reasoning. t.i.tus was surprised at the boldness of what Burden wanted him to do, in light of what had happened with Charlie.

Though he was still in near shock at the fatal consequences of his own decisions made the day before, he knew that Burden's aggressive approach was necessary. He knew, too, that this couldn't be done without his own full commitment. This was no time to lose his nerve, though he had to admit that he had never before had so much riding on nerves that had been so badly frayed. But, by G.o.d, he wasn't about to fold now. For all that had been lost, there was so much more to save. Despite how grieved he was over Charlie's death, he knew in his gut that it was Luquin who had killed him. Deep down it made him furious that Luquin was trying to pin the responsibility for that great sadness on him.

"Yeah, good. I'll do it, "he said when Burden finished.

"Okay. Then we're set. I'm going to call Herrin again and go through some things. I'll let you know when I get into town."

"One thing, "t.i.tus said. "In two hours Rita and Louise Thrush will be landing here in Austin. I want to get Rita out of here. I want her somewhere safe. Somewhere away from this business."

There was a silence at the other end.

"What's the matter? "he asked. "What's the problem?"

"I don't know if that's a good idea, "Burden said.

"Jesus, why wouldn't it be?"

"Keep reminding yourself: Luquin wants the money. The money. His methods are crude in some ways, but the bottom line is that he's trying to play you psychologically. He's hoping that the killings will gain your cooperation, that those deaths will guarantee you'll cough up the money. But he's smart enough to know that going after Rita could have just the opposite effect. It could send you over the edge. He's not going to risk that. She's safe. Just as safe as you are. He wants the money. This is about the money."

"You're telling me she's not at risk?"

"That's right. Right now I don't think she's at risk. What's more, if you do that, you could trigger another death. He doesn't want you thinking for yourself like that. He doesn't want you independent. He wants to dictate what you do and don't do. "Pause. "I think it would be a huge mistake, t.i.tus."

t.i.tus was livid. Was he supposed to believe that he couldn't even protect Rita? That he was supposed to just leave her sitting here, vulnerable, until Luquin decided he wanted to kill her? He held his tongue. He was boiling inside, but he held his tongue.

"We'll talk about it again later, "he said tersely. "I'm going to have to think about this."

Chapter 19.

Half an hour before t.i.tus sat down at his computer to contact Luquin for the first time, a King Air 350 similar to the one t.i.tus had flown in to San Miguel and back took off from the airstrip in the resort of Lago Vista on Lake Travis and headed for Austin, twenty-five air miles to the southeast.

Aboard the ten-pa.s.senger Beechcraft were six real estate developers who wanted a closer look at greater Austin. It was a common occurrence in a city that had attracted a lot of development in the past decade. And despite the fact that the economy had slowed all over the country, the roving eyes of developers were never still. Always hoping that the next upturn in the market was just around the corner, they were ever vigilant, thinking that if they timed it right, they could fall right into the money pot again with a well-placed housing development or a shopping mall or an office complex.

With the aircraft approaching Austin-Bergstrom International's tracking range, the pilot radioed the control tower, explained what his pa.s.sengers wanted to do, and requested permission to circle the city at a specific alt.i.tude of twenty-two thousand feet. After a few exchanges of information, the Beechcraft received its permission from the Austin-Bergstrom tower and fell into a series of patterned loops over the city, most of their turns concentrating on Austin's southwest quadrant, where much of the development had been in recent years. It covered both sides of Lake Austin from Emmet Shelton Bridge to the Austin Country Club, a swath of real estate that included some of the city's most desirable neighborhoods.

As the aircraft began its first series of turns, the pa.s.sengers swiveled their chairs to the cabin walls and opened concealed computer consoles that folded down out of the mainframe. Antennae telescoped out from the belly of the plane, and the technicians put on headphones and powered up their computers.

Each technician wore two earpieces so he could monitor two different radio-frequency transmissions simultaneously. Each was responsible for monitoring a selected range of frequencies in the cell phone bandwidth. Whenever they picked up an encrypted transmission, their computers immediately nailed the radio frequency and time, recorded the plane's position and the angle of reception of the signal. When the coordinates were locked in, they began recording the transmissions and then moved on to the next channel and continued scanning.

The object of this first collection flight was to scoop up as many encrypted transmissions as possible in their two hours aloft. The recordings were transmitted to the team that Burden had told t.i.tus was already in place, a large panel van carrying encryption crunchers who quickly went to work on the content coming down from the Beechcraft. The first order of business was to determine which transmissions were in Spanish. Once the Spanish transmissions were identified, they were sent to Herrin and Cline, who started mapping and a.n.a.lyzing the sources of the transmissions.

Mark Herrin sat at his computer in t.i.tus's guest house and watched the data scroll down the screen.

"Jesus. Good stuff! "he said into his headset mike. "What kind of technology do they have in that thing?"

"Expensive, "Burden said from some undisclosed location. When the scrolling slammed to a stop, Herrin saved the information to a new directory.

"Whoa! One hundred and twelve separate encrypted conversations in the southwest quadrant in two hours?!"

"Not a surprise, "Burden said. "Encryption's gotten to be something of a status symbol these days."