From Berlin, Rolando trains to the ancient Baltic port city of Rostock, where ’Ndrangheta has a strong presence. He goes to a yacht moored at the marina, stays for two hours, and then goes to his hotel on Kröpeliner Strasse. BND personnel track the yacht owners to a drug ring known for trafficking throughout the former East Germany.

Rolando backtracks by train to Hamburg. He connects with the local ’Ndrangheta and a Hamburg local and together they go down to the Reeperbahn, an upscale version of Nuevo Laredo’s Boy’s Town, only with more neon in lurid pinks, reds, greens, and purples. Rolando and his escorts walk past clubs with names like the Dollhouse, Safari, and the Beach Club and finally go into Club Relax, a brothel featuring women clad in masks and lingerie.

—

Rolando isn’t just a dye test, Keller thinks, when he comes back out a few hours later. He’s a germ, bacteria spreading through the corpus narcoticus. He infects everything he touches, and the infection spreads like a plague. Spider diagrams go up on police walls all over Europe, connecting Rolando’s connections to their connections and their connections. The brothel metaphor works—Rolando Morales is venereal. That’s part of Keller’s plan, and he’s pleased that it’s working, but it’s only part.

Rolando flies from Hamburg to Paris but doesn’t leave the airport, connecting instead with a local flight to Lyon, where the Sûreté pick up the surveillance. Everywhere he goes it’s the same drill—meeting with the organization, with dealers and financiers, and spreading the gospel of Heriberto Ochoa—the Zetas will win in Guatemala, they will win in Mexico, Barrera is finished once the elections happen, so hook your fate to the Zetas’ rising star. The meetings take place in parks, soccer stadiums, restaurants, strip clubs, and brothels.

Rolando picks up the checks.

He trains from Lyon to Montpellier, and from Montpellier across the Spanish border to Gerona and then to Barcelona.

It’s good that Rolando has gone to Spain, Keller thinks.

What cocaine doesn’t come into Europe through Gioia Tauro comes in through Spain, mostly through the small fishing towns on the Galician coast, but also increasingly through Madrid airport.

Spain is also an important market in itself, with the highest rate of cocaine use in Europe. Most of the coke comes directly from Colombia, the deal being that the Galician mob, Os Caneos, keeps half the shipment and sells it domestically in exchange for allowing the other half to flow through their territory into the rest of Europe.

Through his Spanish CNP liaison, Rafael Imaz, Keller learns that Rolando is going to host a party at Top Damas, the city’s most exclusive brothel.

“That’s a piece of luck,” Imaz tells Keller over the phone.

“You have contacts at the brothel?”

“We own it,” Imaz says.

It’s wired for video and sound, and Keller and Imaz get a good look at the guests as they roll up to the brothel. Imaz quickly identifies them as two Barcelona port officials.

Keller has to sit and listen to sounds that he’d rather not hear as Rolando and his guests partake of the specialties of the house, but when they finish, they settle into a back room for a relaxed business discussion.

MORALES: We bring it in shipping containers—small amounts at first—eight to ten kilos.

PORT OFFICIAL: How much for our consideration?

MORALES: Five thousand.

PORT OFFICIAL: Euros or dollars?

MORALES: Euros.

PORT OFFICIAL: Have you talked to Os Caneos?

MORALES: Why bring them into it? They’re a long way away.

PORT OFFICIAL (laughs): You don’t want to split the coke with them.

MORALES: Let’s just say we’re looking at other distributors.

SECOND PORT OFFICIAL: Have you cleared this with our Italian friends? I don’t want to get sideways with them.

MORALES: They don’t care what we do here.

Keller listens to the discussions go on until they finally arrive at a figure—8,000 euros per shipment of coke that passes through the port.

A CNP tail picks up Rolando as he walks out of the brothel, tracks him downtown into the El Raval district, and radios Keller and Imaz as the Zeta walks down a narrow, twisting street in this ancient part of the city.

Barcelona has the largest Islamic population in Spain, mostly Pakistanis, but also Moroccans and Tunisians. Keller knows that the U.S. consulate here has a secret antiterrorist section, concerned that Barcelona will become the next Hamburg, a European base for jihadists.

The bin Laden mission was less than a year ago, and everyone is waiting for the retaliatory strike.

“He’s in the Pakistani quarter,” Imaz says.

It’s working, Keller thinks. Please let him go where I hope he’s going, please let him walk into the trap. It’s been weeks in the making, weeks of private talks with Imaz, secret negotiations with CNI, exchanges of information and assets.

Now it will either work or not.

The tail follows Rolando to the tenement building, where he knocks on the door, waits a few seconds, and then is let in. CNI, the Central Nacional de Inteligencia, Spain’s CIA, has had the place under surveillance as a known location for the Tehrik-i-Taliban, a loose affiliate of Al Qaeda.

Keller sits and listens to the audio feed. So do the FBI guys, whose ears have really pricked up now. They know what this could mean—that they’re about to lose the Rolando Morales case and all their work—to other agencies, and they either give Keller dirty looks or avoid eye contact altogether as they all listen.

MORALES: What’s your name?

ALI: Call me Ali Mansur. It’s my jihad name.

MORALES: Okay. You speak good English.

ALI: I went to college in Ohio. Do you want to swap biographies or do business?

MORALES: You reached out to us.

ALI: You can sell us cocaine?

As much cocaine as they can buy, Rolando assures him. High quality, brought in through the port of Barcelona. Cash on the barrelhead.

That’s good, Keller thinks. That’s great. But he needs the other boot to drop. Come on, Ali, do it.

ALI: Can you get me guns?

Keller holds his breath. Then he hears—

MORALES: AR-15s, rocket launchers, grenades, you name it.

One of the FBI guys curses.

ALI: Where do you get them?

MORALES: What do you care?

ALI: I care that they’re good.

MORALES: They’re good.

Rolando is in the house for an hour. The tail gets photos of him when he comes out and hails a cab back to his hotel, the five-star Murmuri.

“You owe me,” Imaz tells Keller over a private line.

Keller hangs up and starts setting the hook. He gets on the horn to the station chief of the secret antiterrorist unit embedded in the Barcelona consulate.

“What do you know about a group called Tehrik-i-Taliban?” Keller asks.

“A lot.” CIA has had Tehrik-i-Taliban in Barcelona “up” for the past eighteen months. “Why? Is there a drug connection?”

“There might be.” Keller tells him about Rolando’s visit to the house in El Raval.

“These Zetas, what are they, some kind of cartel?”

“Jesus, where have you been?” Keller asks.

“Here.”

“Well, they’re about to be there,” Keller says.

“Great. Anything you can share with us, I’d appreciate.”

I’ve already shared with you what I want to share with you, Keller thinks—the lie that “Ali” is in good standing with TTP and not an agent provocateur, one of Imaz’s assets, buried deep inside the Spanish CNI.

You don’t need to know that, State doesn’t need to know that, CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security don’t need to know that. All any of you need to know is that the Zetas are willing to sell weapons to Islamic terrorists.