The rotors blow Magda’s hair into a mess, and Adán puts his hand on her back and pushes her down a little as they step into the open door.

Diego climbs in behind them and gives a thumbs-up to the pilot.

The helicopter lifts off.

Adán looks down at Puente Grande.

It’s been five years of negotiations, diplomacy, payoffs, establishing relationships, waiting for the other bosses to accept his presence, for some of them to die, for others to be killed, for the North Americans to move on and become obsessed with another public enemy number one.

Five years of patience and persistence and now he’s free.

To resume his rightful place.

Erie, Pennsylvania

Outside a diner the next morning, going in for the breakfast special of two eggs, toast, and coffee, Keller sees it.

A headline behind the cracked glass of a newspaper box.

DRUG KINGPIN ESCAPES.

Almost dizzy, Keller puts two quarters in the slot, takes out the paper, and scans the story for the name.

It can’t be.

It can’t be.

The letters spring out at him like shards of metal from a tripwire, booby-trap grenade.

“Adán Barrera.”

Keller lays the paper on top of the box and reads the story. Barrera extradited to a Mexican prison…Puente Grande…a Christmas party…

He can’t believe it.

Then again, he can.

Of course he can.

It’s Barrera and it’s Mexico.

The irony, Keller thinks, is as perfect as it is painful.

I’m a prisoner in the world’s largest solitary confinement.

And Barrera is free.

Keller tosses the paper into a trash can. He walks the streets for hours, past piles of dirty snow, closed factories, shivering crack whores, the detritus of a Rust Belt town where the jobs have gone south.

At some point, late in the afternoon with the sky turning a harsh, threatening gray, Keller walks into the bus station to go where he knows he’s always been headed.

—

The Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters are in Pentagon City. Which, Keller supposes, makes perfect sense. If you’re going to fight a war on drugs, base yourself in the Pentagon.

He’s in a suit and tie now, his only one of either, closely shaved and his hair freshly cut. He sits in the lobby and waits until they finally let him up to the fifth floor to see Tim Taylor, who successfully masks his enthusiasm at seeing Art Keller.

“What do you want, Art?” Taylor asks.

“You know what I want.”

“Forget it,” Taylor says. “The last thing we need right now is some old vendetta of yours.”

“Nobody knows Barrera like I do,” Art answers. “His family, his connections, the way his mind works. And nobody is as motivated as I am.”

“Why, because he’s hunting you?” Taylor asks. “I thought you had a different life now.”

“That was before you guys let Barrera out.”

“Go back to your bees, Art,” Taylor says now.

“I’ll go down the road.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you let me walk out of here,” Keller answers, “I’ll go to Langley. I’ll bet they’d send me.”

The rivalry between DEA and CIA is bitter, the tension between the two agencies horrific, the trust virtually nonexistent. CIA had at least helped to cover up Hidalgo’s murder, and DEA had never forgotten or forgiven it.

“You and Barrera,” Taylor says, “you’re the same guy.”

“My point.”

Taylor stares at him for a long time and then says, “This is going to be complicated. Not everyone is going to welcome you back. But I’ll see what I can do. Leave me a number where you can be reached.”

Keller finds a decent hotel up in Bethesda by the Naval Hospital and waits. He knows what’s happening—Taylor has to meet with higher-ups at DEA, who then have to go to their bosses at Justice. Justice has to talk to the State Department, and then it would have to be coordinated with CIA. There will be quiet lunches on K Street and quieter drinks in Georgetown.

He knows what the arguments will be: Art Keller is a loose cannon, not a team player; Keller has his own agenda, he’s too personally involved; the Mexicans resent him; it’s too dangerous.

The last argument is the toughest.

With a $2 million reward on Keller’s head, sending him down to Mexico is dangerous, to say the least, and DEA can’t afford the media storm that would ensue if another agent were killed in Mexico. Still, no one can reasonably question Keller’s potential value in the hunt for Adán Barrera.

“Give him a desk at EPIC,” a White House official determines, referring to DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center. “He can advise the Mexicans from there.”

Taylor relays the offer to Keller.

“I’m pretty sure,” Keller says, “that Barrera isn’t in El Paso.”

“Asshole.”

Keller hangs up.

The White House official who was listening in explodes. “Since when does some agent tell us where he will or will not go?!”

“This is not ‘some agent,’ ” Taylor responds. “This is Art fucking Keller, the former ‘Border Lord.’ He knows where the bodies are buried, and not just in Mexico.”

“What about the danger?”

Taylor shrugs. “It is what it is. If Keller gets Barrera, great. If Barrera gets him first…It puts other things to bed, doesn’t it?”

Keller knows what happened in 1985. He was there. He busted the flights of cocaine, saw the training camps, knew that NSC and CIA had used the Mexican cartels to fund the Nicaraguan Contras, with full approval of the White House. He perjured himself in his testimony before Congress in exchange for a free hand to go after the Barreras, and he destroyed them and put Adán Barrera away.

And now Barrera’s out, and Keller is back.

If he gets killed in Mexico, he takes some secrets with him.

Mexico is a cemetery for secrets.

—

After more phone calls, more classified memos, more lunches, and more drinks, the powers-that-be finally decide that Keller can go to Mexico City with DEA credentials, not as a special agent, but as an intelligence officer. And with a simple mission statement—“assist and advise in the capture of Adán Barrera or, alternatively, the verification of his death.”

Keller accepts.

But they still have to sell it to the Mexicans, who are skeptical about Keller being sent to “assist and advise.” It touches off a bureaucratic pissing match between the Mexican attorney general’s office, the Ministry of Public Security, and an alphabet soup of other agencies, all variously cooperating and/or competing within overlapping jurisdictions.

On the one hand, they want his knowledge; on the other hand is the notorious, if understandable, Mexican sensitivity about the perception that they’re “little brown brothers” in the relationship, as well as aggrievement over the constant—and one-sided—American insinuations of corruption.

Taylor lectures Keller about it. “Perhaps you missed it when you were off playing Friar Tuck, but it’s a new day down there. The PRI is out and PAN is in. The federal law enforcement agencies have been reorganized and cleaned up, and the received wisdom—which you will receive, Art—is that Los Pinos is reborn with a bright shiny new soul.”

Yeah, Keller thinks. Back in the ’80s, the received wisdom was that there was no cocaine in Mexico, and he was ordered to keep his mouth shut about the all too tangible evidence to the contrary, the countless tons of blow the Colombians were moving through Barrera’s Federación into the United States. And Los Pinos—the Mexican White House—was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Federación. Now the official word is that the Mexican government is squeaky clean?

“So Barrera’s escape was a Houdini magic act,” Keller says. “No one in the government was bought off.”

“Maybe a prison guard or two.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’m not bullshitting you,” Taylor says. “You are not going to go down there and make onions. You assist and you advise, and otherwise you keep your mouth shut.”