Maybe Barrera’s, though.

“Both,” Aguilar says.

On shouted orders, the honor guards snap their rifles to their shoulders. The sound is crisp and sharp.

“I guess we suspect each other, then,” Keller says.

Aguilar’s face goes red with anger. “Were you thinking that, when you were sitting at the table, with my family?”

Good, Keller thinks. It’s out there. “As a matter of fact, I was.”

The rifles crack.

Calderón makes a speech.

“Today I reiterate my promise not to retreat in the quest for a Mexico where order prevails,” he says. “We must say, all Mexican men and women together, that enough is enough. We have come together to confront this evil. We can’t accept this situation. Our fight is head-on. The capacities of the Mexican state are aligned to break the structures of each cartel. We are determined to recover the streets that should never have ceased being ours.”

Gerardo Vera stands up and says simply, “We will not be intimidated.”

“You’re corrupt,” Aguilar says to Keller as they walk away. “You’re a corrupt man and a corrupt cop, and I’m going to bring you down.”

Mutual, Keller thinks.

Christmas 2007

Sinaloa, Mexico

—

The Barreras come home for Christmas.

Adán has his new security system in place with the Gente Nueva, the government has come down hard on the Tapias, and while the war with them drags on, it’s more the Tapias on the run than him.

The killings of three top police officials have shocked the nation. The public relations campaign has worked—people from vastly different demographics agree that the Tapias should be hunted down like rabid dogs.

The Tapias did the government a huge favor, Adán thinks. It’s a game change—heretofore the public has been lukewarm on Calderón’s war on drugs, some even protesting in the streets against it. But the disgust at the murders has aroused a feeling of patriotism and support for the government not seen in a very long time.

The Tapias have handed Calderón a mandate.

And me as well, Adán thinks.

Eva is glad to be home.

She decorates the finca in La Tuna with traditional poinsettias—unaware that they symbolize new life for fallen warriors. Sinaloa has a heavy German influence, so she and Adán put up a gigantic Christmas tree outside for the village children to come see because Eva wants to start a new tradition.

So they sponsor a posada, a children’s parade from the village to the finca, where Eva has spent thousands on the tree with special carved wooden ornaments imported from Germany and a nativity scene with ceramic figures from Tlaquepaque.

The children, with two playing Mary and Joseph on a burro, march to the nativity scene, where Eva has hung up a gigantic star-shaped piñata from a ficus branch, filled with candy and toys.

After that, Adán and Eva host a feast for the village, with buñuelos, atole, tamales, and hot ponche spiced with cinnamon and vanilla.

Then they sing the villancicos, the Christmas carols.

Adán is a little surprised, but pleased, at how traditional Eva is. Christmas Eve, she insists that they go to the village church for the late-night Mass of the Rooster, and she delights in the fireworks set off after the service.

Then there’s a midnight dinner, this time the traditional bacalao, dried cod in tomato sauce with onions—which Adán can’t stand but tolerates because it reminds Eva of her childhood—and revoltijo de romerita, shrimp in pepito sauce, which he does like.

They spend Christmas Day itself quietly, sleeping late and getting up to eat leftovers.

Three days later comes Los Santos Innocentes to commemorate the boys that Herod slaughtered in his futile hunt for the baby Jesus. Tradition has it that anything borrowed on this day doesn’t have to be returned, and Nacho phones up asking to “borrow” the Laredo plaza. Adán declines and they chat for a few minutes about inconsequential things before hanging up with best wishes for the New Year.

Los Santos Innocentes is also Mexico’s “April Fool’s Day,” with the mandatory pranks, including phony newspaper stories, one of which announces that Adán Barrera, despite being rumored dead or employed as a sous-chef at Los Pinos, will nevertheless take over as host of Atínale al Precio—The Price Is Right. Eva hides the paper from him, but he laughs when he sees it and, to her delight, does a passable impression of Héctor Sandarti, replete with Guatemalan accent.

Adán doesn’t really want to go out for New Year’s Eve, but Eva very much does and he doesn’t want her to think that she married a grouchy old man, so they fly to Puerto Vallarta, where his men go into the club first, collect all cell phones, apologize, and tell the other celebrants that they’ll be locked in until El Patrón leaves, and then Adán and Eva come in and join the festivities. She looks more than wonderful in a short red dress and a silly New Year’s Eve tiara, and she even talked Adán into a tuxedo on the promise that she would talk him out of it later.

Eva dances her head off and Adán does his best to keep up, although he has to admit—albeit only to himself—that he’s quite ready for midnight to come when they do the traditional thing of feeding each other twelve grapes along with the strikes of midnight for good luck in the coming year.

They leave shortly afterward, and cell phones are restored to their owners, who have a new story to tell.

Epiphany—El Día de los Tres Reyes Magos, “Three Kings Day”—is the next festival in the liturgical calendar. That night, January 5, Eva, as she did when she was a girl, leaves a shoe outside the door where the Wise Men will enter to greet Jesus. That afternoon, the village children put messages inside helium balloons provided by Adán and Eva that explain why they have been good or bad that year and what they would like as a gift, and then loft them to the heavens with great hope.

And that night, five Nueva Gente armed with high-powered rifles and night scopes shoot to death five of Vicente Fuentes’s key people in Juárez.

—

Holidays are hard on the solitary man.

The single, the widowed, perhaps most especially the divorced, to whose loneliness is added the bitter spice of regret.

Marisol invited Keller up to Valverde for Christmas, but he declined. Although the threat against him has diminished—neither side is likely to kill a DEA agent and tip the scales—he prefers to be alone with his angst. Starting things with Marisol again won’t solve any of the underlying issues, and there’s no point in prolonging it for either of them.

It’s been a miserable six months.

Luis Aguilar has been waging his own bureaucratic war on Keller, doing everything he can to get him recalled to the United States.

“You been fucking around with the working agreement?” Taylor asked Keller on the phone a few weeks ago. “Going behind Aguilar’s back, developing your own sources? Is the past prologue here, Art? Tell me you don’t have some sort of relationship with the Tapias.”

“I’ve been a Boy Scout.”

“Aguilar says you’re taking money, Art,” Taylor said. “He says you’re in the Tapias’ pocket.”

“Jesus Christ, Tim.”

“Could you pass a polygraph?”

“Could he?”

“What, you have evidence?” Taylor asked.

“No.” Not yet. I don’t have it yet, Keller thought, but I know it’s coming. “You test me and I walk.”

“That’s not much of a threat at this point.”

“Go to the videotape,” Keller answered. He cited his record—Osiel Contreras sitting in a Houston supermax, Alberto Tapia on a slab, and the Sinaloa cartel split into pieces. “I shouldn’t have to plead for my life here. The fuck, Tim? You think I’m dirty?”