You say “narco” anymore in D.C. outside the hallways of DEA, you get a yawn. You say “narcoterrorism,” you get a budget. A free hand and a blind eye. The Sinaloa cartel has been immaculate about not dealing with anything that looks like terrorists. If the Zetas are going to go into business with an AQ affiliate, they’ll bring the whole antiterrorist structure down on their heads.

So Keller knows that his call to Barcelona is a poison pill, a shot of mercury into the Zeta blood system. Memos flying around CIA will make their way to DEA, then there’ll be a coordinating committee.

And then there’ll be action.

In one month, the Zetas are going to deliver twenty kilos of cocaine and a smorgasbord of weapons to what they think is an Islamic terrorist cell. The shipment will be busted, the Zetas’ contacts in Europe rolled up like a cheap rug, and ’Ndrangheta will run away from the Zetas as fast as they can.

Barrera will get the European cocaine trade.

Sinaloa

May 2012

Adán lays flowers and a bottle of very good red wine on Magda’s grave. It’s sentimental, he knows, the same wine he gave her on their first “date” back in Puente Grande prison, a lifetime ago. He says a prayer for her soul, just in case there is a God and in case her soul needs prayer.

There have been two great loves in his life.

Magda.

His daughter, Gloria.

Also in the grave.

Adán gets up and brushes off his trousers. It’s time to put the past away, and with it the bitterness, and think only of the future. You have children now, two healthy sons, and you have to make a world for them.

He walks back to the car where Nacho waits.

“Don’t mention this to Eva,” Adán says as he gets in.

“Of all things,” Nacho says, “I understand mistresses.”

“I don’t have one now, if you’re wondering.”

“I wasn’t,” Nacho answers. “But it’s none of my business, as long as you treat my daughter well. And my grandsons.”

Nacho has become the doting grandfather. He comes to visit Raúl and Miguel Ángel all the time, bringing presents that infants cannot possibly appreciate or understand. Their birthday is coming up soon and Adán is dreading it, with Eva and her family planning a celebration that is almost royal in its scope and complexity.

And you’re going along with it, Adán thinks.

Admit it, you’re the doting father.

He didn’t think that having children at his age would really change his life—they were more for the sake of a business succession—but in his secret soul he has to admit that he loves those boys with a passion that he almost can’t believe.

All the clichés are true.

He lives for his children.

He would die for them.

Sometimes at night he sneaks out of bed, goes into the nursery, and watches them sleep. Part of this, he knows, is the anxiety of a parent who once lost a sick child. But most of it is pure pleasure, an actual physical joy of just looking at his children.

“The elections,” Nacho is saying. “PAN is going to lose.”

“The war on drugs is very unpopular,” Adán says drily. “Have you made inroads?”

“Into the new people?” Nacho asks. “Some. I can’t guarantee it will be enough.”

“It’s us or Ochoa,” Adán says. “The new government will choose us.”

“It’s us or Ochoa as long as there is an Ochoa,” Nacho says. “Once the Zetas are no longer a threat…the government might decide to go after us.”

“What are you saying?”

“That our best course of action might not be to destroy the Zetas but to damage them,” Nacho says. “Keep a remnant of them active as a counterweight to assure that we remain the lesser of evils.”

Adán looks out the window as the car slowly rolls through the cemetery. So many friends buried here. So many enemies, too. Some of them you put here.

“They killed Magda,” Adán says. “You can’t be seriously suggesting that we make peace with them.”

The Zetas are animals. Ochoa, Forty, and their minions are savage, sadistic murderers. Look what they did to the people on those buses, what they do to women and children. The extortion, the kidnapping, the firebombing of the casino…no wonder the country is turning against the narcos. The Zetas have made us into monsters, and they have to be destroyed.

“I’m not getting any younger,” Nacho is saying. “I would like to sit back and play with my grandchildren.”

“You want a rocking chair, too?”

“No, but maybe a fishing pole,” Nacho says. “We have billions. More money than our children’s children’s children could spend in a lifetime. I’m thinking of getting out, handing the business over to Junior. I don’t know, maybe taking the whole family out of the trade.”

“And how would that work?” Adán asks. “We make an announcement, have a party with toasts and gold watches, and the Ochoas of the world just let us live in peace?”

“No, I suppose not,” Nacho answers. “But if we made peace with them first, divide up the plazas—”

“We’re winning.”

“We’re not winning in Guatemala,” Nacho says, “and we’re running out of time. The new president will throw our friends out and the North Americans with them.”

Adán says, “We had good relations with the PRI once, we’ll have them again.”

“Different times, Adanito.”

The diminutive form of his name annoys Adán. Nacho is playing the foxy grandpa and Adán doesn’t like it. All the less because Nacho is right—those were different times. We ran our businesses, and if things got out of hand, we kept civilians out of it. Now the country is fed up with the violence associated with the drug trade. The chaos that—face it—you unloosed in Juárez alone has been catastrophic and you can’t reel it in anymore if you wanted to.

And the war with the Zetas—just yesterday sixteen of his men were found dumped along the highway outside Badiraguato with their heads cut off. We’re winning the war, but at a horrific cost.

And Nacho is right about Guatemala, too.

We are losing there, and if we lose Guatemala…

We can’t lose Guatemala.

The irony is bitter.

It all depends on Art Keller now.

—

“Let me ask you something,” Tim Taylor says. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

Keller looks across the desk at him in the meeting room in EPIC. “No, I don’t think I’m out of my fucking mind, Tim.”

“I ask,” Taylor says, “because I think you just requested that we allow a shipment of armaments to leave the United States en route to Spain.”

“Strictly speaking,” Keller answers, “I’m requesting that we allow a shipment of armaments to go to Mexico, then go to Spain—with a load of cocaine.”

“You never heard of Fast and Furious?” Taylor asks.

“I have.”

Everyone’s heard of DEA’s notorious “gun-walking” operation that went south, literally and figuratively. In an effort to trace arms sales, the agency allowed weapons to go into Mexico, and then lost track of them. The weapons were used by the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas in the commission of a number of killings, including the murder of Agent Jiménez. In fact, there’s been speculation that Jiménez and his partner were on that highway heading to collect a shipment of Fast and Furious weapons and bring them back.

“Because I can turn on the TV if you want,” Taylor says. “I think the congressional hearings are on C-Span.”

“That’s all right.”

Taylor says, “But you want to repeat the fiasco, only in Europe. So if you lose track of these weapons, we’ll have an international incident.”

“Rolando won’t be delivering the weapons to narcos,” Keller says. “He’ll be delivering them to our own agents.”

“Because you, on your own boot, set up a phony terrorist cell—”

“With the cooperation of Spanish intelligence—”

“—to entrap an American citizen—”

“Which is what a sting operation is,” Keller says. “What, Tim? You have ethical problems with setting up the Zetas? We’re just lucky we did set them up and they’re selling the weapons to us instead of some real AQ affiliate.”