Standing alone in the room, Titus looked again at the picture. Burden's rather creative warning was vivid and had blindsided him with its almost cruel undertone. It was unnerving, as he imagined Burden had intended it to be.
He picked up one of the books lying on a library table and read the title: The History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age. He flipped through it and saw that the pages were heavily annotated in brown ink. He picked up another: Spanish Red: An Ethnogeographical Study of Cochineal and the Opuntia Cactus. Again heavily annotated. He bent down and looked at the book lying open, the fountain pen in its gutter: The Liar's Tale: A History of Falsehood. More marginalia in brown ink. The book next to this one had a dozen page markers sticking out of it: The Natural History of the Soul in Ancient Mexico.
Titus was surprised. He had expected to find books on intelligence systems, cryptography, international crime, terrorism, drug trade… kidnapping. None of that here. But clearly Burden had his resources. The room where the three women were working must have held a vast amount of information, and he remembered that in their telephone conversation Burden had mentioned his archives.
A shadow in the doorway caused him to look up. Lalia was standing there, smiling at him in her radiant colors. He followed her light, barefooted step around the balcony to the other side. She left him alone in a spacious bedroom where the linens smelled of lilac and the fireplace scents hinted vaguely of November fires.
While she waited outside the door on the loggia, he washed and splashed cool water on his face and combed his hair. He was tempted to call Rita-it was the dinner hour in Venice- but, again, he didn't have anything to tell her except that he was in trouble. That wouldn't do.
His neck ached, and he recognized the stiff beginnings of a tension headache. Tucking in his shirttail, he thought of the photograph of the Argentine widow and her monkey, and of how Burden had chosen to give it a position in his study that practically defined the place. Titus was sure that there was more to the picture than met the eye or that was hinted at in Burden's explication. And he was sure, too, that there was more to Garcia Burden than a lifetime of knowing him would ever allow anyone to understand.
He followed the colorful Lalia downstairs to a dining room, one entire wall of which was open to the courtyard. Sitting alone, he was served by two young Indian girls who urged him to go ahead and eat.
For a little while he enjoyed the food and beer. The echoing birdsong spilling out of the colonnades and dying into the undertones of the fountain were almost soporific, even comforting. Then, unexpectedly, this momentary peace caught in his throat like a sob, and he found himself on the verge of tears. Jesus, what was happening to him? He put down his beer and fought to control himself, baffled by the sudden burst of intense feelings. Embarrassed, he swallowed. And then swallowed again.
While he was struggling to calm himself, he saw Burden come in through the entrance corridor and enter the loggia across the courtyard. By the time he got to the dining room, Titus had reined in his wobbly emotions.
Burden sat down with him, and one of the girls brought him a plate of fruit and slices of various melons. He took one of the lime slices on the side of his plate and drizzled the juice over the melons. He ate a few bites, then picked up with their conversation as if he'd never left.
“I'll tell you an anecdote about Tano Luquin, ”Burden said quietly, chewing a bite of cantaloupe. “Just a few months before he left Colombia to avoid being caught up in Escobar's disintegration, I saw an interesting example of how he works. It was one of Escobar's contracts, Tano twice removed, of course. I was in Medellin on another matter, but I had seen enough of Tano's work by then to be able to distinguish it from all the others.
“Culturally, you know, Colombians have ardent family allegiances. They're loving and loyal to their children, aunts, and uncles, devoted to the idea of family. This is true across all levels of society. An admirable societal characteristic that any culture would be proud of. But Colombia is a culture of extremes, and this worthy quality has a perverse downside in Colombia's criminal world. When a criminal enterprise requires violence, everyone understands that to hurt a man's family is to hurt the man in the deepest way possible. So this is done with disgusting regularity and predictability.”
Burden ate some more melon, staring out to the courtyard in thought, leaning on his forearms. He went on.
“An enemy's wife is killed. His sisters, brothers, children, are ideal targets. Often there is horrible mutilation, and sometimes the man is forced to watch it all as it happens. That's always a favorite touch. It's a spiritually vicious thing, intended to destroy the man within the man, his heart of hearts. It's never enough just to kill his body. No, they want to lacerate his soul as well. And if they could figure out a way to punish him beyond death, they would send someone straight into hellfire to get the job done.
“It's fascinating to me, these Janus faces of familial devotion. One gives strength to the other, becomes, in a weird way, its raison d'etre. You just wonder why one never mitigates the other. Why do they never see the faces of their own wives or children or siblings in the faces of the people they mutilate? Why doesn't that arrest a brutish hand or…”
He shrugged and drank from his bottle of beer. “But then, that's really a human irony, isn't it. Maybe there's a peculiar Colombian twist in these instances, but they certainly aren't alone in their lack of a moral imagination. Tano isn't Colombian, but his tactics were learned there and are the same.”
One of the Indian girls floated in to check their bottles of beer to see if they wanted fresh ones. No sooner did she leave with the empty ones than the other girl arrived with the new ones, the bottles cold, a fresh lime slice sticking out of them. Burden went on.
“Well, it was in this environment that Tano Luquin came to maturity in the art of kidnapping, and then surpassed his training and became the maestro of his own kind of abduction.”
He squeezed the lime into his beer, almost reluctant to get to the anecdote about Luquin that he'd promised.
“This man-his name was Artemio Ospina-who had to be punished had three children, ”he resumed, glancing after the girl who had left the room, “all under the age of twelve. The oldest was his only daughter, and Artemio adored her for tender reasons. ”He shook his head. “Anyway, Artemio was abducted off the street and taken to his home. There he and his daughter were placed side by side and forced to watch while his wife and the remaining children were… dismembered… their body parts were… intermixed, reassembled into savage and surreal re-creations like horrible Hans Bellmer dolls.”
He paused. “I was there afterward. I saw it”-he pointed two fingers at his eyes-“with my own eyes. Unbelievable.”
Another pause. “You never see it all. The human mind's capacity for bestiality is boundless. You never see it all. There's always something even more unimaginable, out there, waiting for you. Just waiting.
“That night Artemio was given his freedom, allowed to go on living, as best he could, with those insane images. But Tano wasn't through with him.”
They had finished eating and were sitting there, sipping their beers. Burden glanced toward the kitchen.
“Come on, ”he said, picking up his beer. Titus accompanied him up the stone stairs to the balcony and around to his study. They returned to the places where they had sat before, and Burden resumed his story.
“That same night, Artemio's daughter was taken away. But Tano made sure he continued to see her. Every few months after that, Artemio was hunted down wherever he was and forced to look at photographs of his little daughter in various acts of unspeakable humiliation. She was now working in the child sex trade.
“There were torments in these photographs too brutal to speak. The imagination recoils. Her soul rotted away in little pieces right before her father's eyes.
“This would have gone on forever, but after nearly a year the man destroyed himself. I don't know how he lasted that long.”
Titus sat in silence, appalled. He heard the canaries in the courtyard below, their tiny voices crisp and light on the air that floated up to them.
“What in God's name had he done? ”Titus asked. The punishment, as Burden called it, had to have been provoked by something terrible.
“He was one of my agents, ”Burden said. “A common man, an intelligence officer. An extraordinary man. And that's not a contradiction. Ordinary men are capable of unbelievable heroics. There's something transcendent about it.”
Burden stopped. He almost went on, and then he stopped himself again. Then he said:
“And Luquin never even knew for sure that Artemio worked for me. He only suspected it. Artemio never admitted it.”
“Not even to save his family?”
“To save his family? That was never a possibility. That's not the way Luquin works. To fall under his suspicion is to have been judged guilty. Artemio knew that. Confession. No confession. It made no difference. The truth was the only thing Artemio had that Luquin couldn't get, and even in the midst of the horror of his misery and grief, Artemio clung to that one scrap of dignity. Luquin would not have it.”
Titus was speechless. The enormity of Luquin's bestiality came more alive with every image provoked by Burden's story.
“The point of telling you this, ”Burden said, picking up one of the many women's portraits lying around, “is to help you understand what is happening to you.”
He looked a moment at the woman's picture and then put it down and leveled his eyes at Titus.
“Your ordeal has begun. This is no time to be indecisive. This is no time to deceive yourself into believing you can avoid what is about to happen to you by negotiating with this man.”
Titus's stomach tightened. It was the second time Burden had used the word ordeal.
“Look, ”Titus said, feeling his fear and his frustration commingling into a confusing impatience, “I don't want anyone to die, but… You say, don't make the mistake of thinking I can negotiate with this man. Okay, well, that doesn't leave me many other choices.”
Burden had been lounging in his armchair, but as Titus spoke he gradually straightened up and sat forward, and Titus saw something happen in his face, something subtle but unmistakable that expelled the equanimity that had seemed to define him.
“There's the question, ”Burden said, “of whether or not you should go to the FBI and risk the consequences of Luquin finding out that you'd done it. ”He paused. “I'm telling you, he will find out. It's impossible that he won't. You have to ask yourself: How many people am I willing to let him kill before I accept this?”
He looked at Titus with an expression drained of politesse. “You need to know, Titus-”
His use of Titus's first name had an effect on Titus that was sudden and totally surprising. It immediately brought them together in alliance, as if they were banded together by heart and blood and ideal.
“-one or two are already dead. I don't mean literally, but I mean that they're as good as dead. He'll have to do it, so that he'll know that you know. He understands that you won't be able to comprehend him in the correct way until you know the shock of that.”
“That's inconceivable, ”said Titus, who was also leaning forward on the sofa now. “That doesn't make any sense.”
Burden looked at him as if he were trying to see something in Titus that hadn't yet been made apparent to him. It was almost as if he were trying to determine whether Titus himself could be trusted.
“It would be a mistake, Titus, for you to believe that this is only about you and Luquin. Right now the lens is focused on you, but only because Luquin has focused on you. There's more to this picture than you can see from your vantage point. You are only one detail among many, but for now you've become a very important detail.”
Burden stopped and sat back in his armchair. But he didn't resume his formerly languid posture.
“In the next hour or two we'll have to decide many things, ”he said. “I believe you're a good and honest man, Titus. I believe you'll be honest with me.”
Burden waited, sobriety returning to his eyes, deepening the lines that gathered there.
“I should tell you, ”he said, “the end of the story of the little girl. ”He paused, his gaze distracted toward some invisible place across the room. “I finally tracked her down, a few years later. Her grave, that is. It was… only… three weeks old. Just three weeks. I had”-he turned his eyes on Titus again- “I had her exhumed. I wanted to see her… with my own eyes. I had to know… beyond any doubt, that her hell was over for her.”
He swallowed. He was still looking at Titus, but he wasn't seeing him. He swallowed again.
“But she had suffered so… and that changes a person physically. Still, I'm almost… certain… that it was her.”