Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

In nice weather, such as this May afternoon, he sits at a table outside, sips his espresso, and watches the world go by on the boulevard in front. His three bodyguards stand at various places by the iron fence or the door to the café.

Keller watches this for three days.

After a long debate with Aguilar, it was decided that it was Keller who would make the first approach.

“You can’t,” Keller told the prosecutor. “If he turns you down, he blows our cover. Besides, you don’t have anything to offer him at this point. You can’t protect him in Mexico.”

Aguilar reluctantly agreed and Keller started his surveillance on Palacios, trying to find a time and place where he would be sufficiently alone. On this third afternoon, Keller walks in and takes a table next to Palacios. The bodyguards notice and watch, then apparently decide that he’s not a threat.

If Palacios is nervous about his situation, he doesn’t show it. His custom-made suit is pressed and clean, his black hair—with just flecks of silver at the temple—is carefully combed back. He looks cool, sophisticated, a man in charge of his world.

Keller sits and looks at him.

Palacios breaks first. “Do I know you?”

“You should, Chido.”

Palacios flinches slightly at the old aporto. “Why is that?”

“Because I can save your life,” Keller says. “May I join you?”

Palacios hesitates for a second, then nods. Keller gets up, the bodyguards start to close in, but Palacios waves them off.

“I’ll bet you thought you left ‘Chido’ behind in La Polvorilla,” Keller says when he sits down.

“I haven’t heard it in years,” Palacios says calmly. “Who are you?”

“I’m with DEA.”

Palacios shakes his head. “I know all the DEA guys.”

“Apparently not.”

“You said something about saving my life?” Palacios says. “I wasn’t aware it needed saving.”

“Seriously?” Keller asks. “You just buried three of your buddies. The Tapias want to kill you. If they don’t, Adán Barrera will. You have to know you’re on the endangered species list.”

“Your DEA colleagues would say that you’re talking out of your ass,” Palacios says.

I can’t lose him now, Keller thinks. I can’t make this cast and let him off the hook, because if I do he goes straight to Vera. So he says, “You were at a meeting last spring with Diego and Martín Tapia. During that meeting you agreed to provide protection to the Zetas and target La Familia instead. Also present at that meeting were Gerardo Vera, Roberto Bravo, and José Aristeo.”

Palacios reverts a little to his La Polvorilla days. “You’re full of shit.”

“I have you on tape, motherfucker.”

Palacios literally starts to sweat. Keller sees the beads of perspiration pop on his forehead, just below his carefully cut hair. He presses: “Think about it—you’ve got one foot on the Tapia dock and the other in the Barrera boat, and they’re drifting apart. You’re going to have to choose, and your guards can’t protect you in Puente Grande, which is where you’re going. The only question is, do they fuck you in the ass before they slit your throat?”

“I was at that meeting,” Palacios says, “to gather evidence against—”

“Save it,” Keller says. “You think Vera is going to protect you? I know you’re boys and all that from the old barrio, but if you think Vera’s going to put the life he has now on the line for old times’ sake, you don’t know your old friend.”

“Maybe he’s on that tape, too.”

“Maybe he is,” Keller says. “So that puts you in a little race with him, doesn’t it, because the first one of you to cut a deal gets a snitch visa to the States and the other gets ass-raped. Which do you want to be?”

Palacios glares at him.

Keller gets up. “I came to you first because you can trade up, for Vera. I’m going to go to him in exactly twenty-four hours, unless I hear from you first.”

He lays a slip of paper with a phone number on the table.

“Beautiful day for scoping the women, isn’t it?” Keller asks. “By the way, Ester Almanza sends her regards, you piece of shit.”

Keller holds his thumb and little finger to his face—Call me—smiles, and walks away.

–

There’s little to do now but wait.

And prepare for the worst-case scenario, that Palacios runs to Vera and they launch a counteroffensive that could take several forms, the most likely of which is a raid on SEIDO to acquire the incriminating tapes, Aguilar’s firing by pressure from Los Pinos, and even criminal charges against him.

Keller doesn’t discount another possibility—an outright assassination attempt on Aguilar.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aguilar says when Keller suggests it over a brandy in his study.

Lucinda had prepared her usual excellent dinner, a fiery shrimp dish over rice, and the children were their charming selves, conversing easily about their ballet and horseback lessons, and shyly about boys they had met at an interschool dance. Keller had forgotten how simply lovely family life could be.

Then Aguilar and Keller went into his study to discuss business, and now Keller sits there with the cell phone in his pocket, urging it to ring. He’d bought it only for Palacios’s call, and now it sits in his pocket like a time bomb you want to go off. Every second it doesn’t increases the possibility that Palacios has gone to Vera, or, maybe worse, to the Tapias. “It’s not ridiculous, Luis. In fact, I think you should consider moving your family out for a little while.”

“How would I explain that to them, Art?” Aguilar asks. “Without terrifying them?”

“A vacation,” Keller said. “We set you up in the States, DEA provides security.”

“I don’t think Gerardo would go so far as to hurt families.”

“But Barrera would,” Keller says, “and has.”

“They’d make a threat first, no? To intimidate me into cooperating?”

“Probably,” Keller admits. “But it doesn’t hurt to be safe. Look, wouldn’t the girls love a couple of weeks at some dude ranch in Arizona? They could ride—”

“Western saddles? And ruin their seats—”

“Luis,” Keller says. “Galvén, Aristeo, and Bravo were killed outside their homes. Do you want to expose your family to that possibility?”

“Of course not.”

“Well…”

“I’ll think about it.”

They go over other possibilities. If Aguilar’s boss, the attorney general, calls him in and either fires him, shuts down the investigation, or both, it means he’s in on it, in which case Keller gets out of the country as fast as possible with a copy of the tape.

The phone vibrates.

Aguilar watches as Keller digs it out of his pocket, listens for two seconds. “Parque México,” he says. “Foro Lindbergh. One hour.” He clicks off.

–

They meet under the pergola near the large columns in the Lindbergh Forum.

A smart choice, because it’s out of sight. But dangerous, because the trees behind the columns offer ample cover for gunmen, especially at night.

Keller knows that he might be walking into a trap. But then again, he’s pretty much in a trap already, so what’s the difference? Nevertheless, he keeps his hand on the pistol under his jacket.

Palacios stands at the end of the pergola.

He appears to be alone.

“I want out tonight,” he says.

“That’s not going to happen.” The moment Palacios crosses the border, he loses half his motivation to talk. Keller has seen it happen—the source sits on a chair in some office on the other side and spins useless bullshit stories until everyone gets tired of it and moves on. No, what they have to do is pick Palacios as clean as they can before they move him. Everything they get after that is gravy.

But they have to move fast.

“Here’s how it’s going to work,” Keller says. “You’re going to give us information. We check it out to see if you’re telling the truth. When we have enough to nail Vera, you get your ticket.”

Palacios stares at him. Then he says, “I want visas for myself, my wife, and my two adult children. And I get immunity, I get to keep my bank accounts.”

The prick doesn’t want to go into the program and become a greeter at a suburban Tucson Home Depot. He wants to come across and live the high life on the dirty millions he’s taken from the Sinaloa cartel.

“That’s up to your AG,” Keller says.

It’s a risk Keller has to take, and it might as well be sooner than later. Palacios might balk at the Mexican involvement, because he thinks he’s been dealing exclusively with DEA.

Palacios says, “We’re done here.”

“You walk away now,” Keller says, “you don’t get far. You get busted before you leave the park. You think your old buddies are going to wait around to see if you flip?”

Keller knows his business, knows that there’s a time to push and a time to pull, so now he softens his tone and says, “Look, you haven’t committed a crime in the States. Neither has Vera. So the Justice Department can only offer you sanctuary as a courtesy to the Mexican AG’s office. We do it through SEIDO, keep it under wraps.”

“Luis Aguilar?” Palacios asks. “That sanctimonious prick?”

“He’s your lifeline, Chido.”

Palacios laughs. “Where is he?”

“In a car on Calle Chiapas.”

“Let’s go.”

–

At first they meet in cars, in parks at night, but then Aguilar invents a new segundera for Palacios, actually an undercover SEIDO agent named Gabriela—drop-dead gorgeous, a guapa with long legs and a longer résumé—law degree, a master’s in sociology, and a ruthless ambition. Aguilar provides Palacios with photos to show off to his buddies (“Look what I’m tapping”) and arranges for them to be seen together at bars around AFI headquarters. He provides her with an apartment and makes sure she’s seen leaving in the morning for her job at a local bank, and seen returning in the evening.

In the afternoons they meet with Palacios.

He plays games of his own, what Keller would call hide-the-ball, giving them a little information to shield more damaging information, having to be pressed, cross-examined, coddled, cajoled, threatened. He lets intelligence out like a fisherman lets out line to a fish, and they do the same with him, reminding him not too gently that he’s the one who’s hooked.

“You know we’ll run you through a polygraph,” Aguilar says.

“Yeah, I’ve taken them,” Palacios says with a smirk. “Best test money can buy.”

“This one will be legitimate,” Aguilar says. “And if you lie about anything, our deal is null and void. Let’s go over it again, Barrera’s escape from prison.”

“Who was in charge of prisons?” Palacios asks.

“Quit playing games.”

“Galvén,” Palacios says. “Nacho Esparza delivered $500,000 to Galvén and we cut it up.”

“Did Vera get a share?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m asking the questions.”

“It’s a stupid question.”

Aguilar sighs. “Humor me.”

“Vera got the biggest share, as usual,” Palacios answers. “Me, my motto is ‘Eat like a horse, not like a pig.’ That’s not Gerardo’s motto.”

He’s cute, Keller thinks. He knows the apartment is miked, and that he’s playing to a crowd that will eventually include the Mexican AG and a host of yanquis in DEA and Justice.

When they get through the failed raids on Barrera after his escape, Palacios actually laughs. They have to go over it a dozen times before they get what they think is the whole truth, but then Palacios laughs and says, “Are you fucking kidding me? We had him.”

“When? Where?”

“Nayarit,” Palacios says. “When he got out by helicopter. He and Nacho paid us four million for the next leg of his flight.”

“Did Vera—”

“Get his share? Of course.”

You almost had Barrera in Apatzingán, Palacios tells them. But we got him out that night and put in the lookalike. After that, Barrera moved back to Sinaloa.

“Where?” Keller asks.

“My deal is on Vera,” Palacios says, “not Barrera.”

Anyway, he doesn’t know, he claims. El Patrón moves from finca to finca in the mountains of Sinaloa and Durango. The police protect him, the locals protect him; he has his own private army now—Gente Nueva.

“Are they doing the fighting in Juárez?” Aguilar asks.

“You already know that.”

The meetings go on. Sometimes Palacios meets Gabriela at her apartment, other times he treats her to a suite at a five-star hotel—the Habita, the St. Regis, Las Alcobas, the Four Seasons—but never the Marriott. They take a suite so Gabriela can wait in the sitting room, out of earshot, and leave just before or after Palacios.

“Try to look well-fucked,” he says to her one day at the Habita. “I have a reputation to maintain.”

Gabriela is too disciplined to respond.

At every session, Palacios plays peekaboo, but Aguilar and Keller doggedly work him, like a boxer walks his opponent into a corner. Keller was not a bad amateur middleweight in his youth. He was patient then and he’s patient now, letting Palacios dance and shuffle, but always cutting off the ring and forcing him against the ropes where the truth gets told.

Palacios tells them how it worked.

A group of beat cops led by Gerardo Vera formed a drug, extortion, kidnapping, and car theft ring in Iztapalapa that they parlayed into a small empire, dealing dope internally for Nacho Esparza and the Tapias.

They had a monopoly in the eastern part of Mexico City that they enforced through threats, selective arrests, and—if that didn’t work—assaults, kidnappings, and murders.

The Izta cartel.

The Tapias used their political influence to move Vera into the old, PRI-era federal police. He played it clean for years—the very model of the incorruptible cop. Eliot freaking Ness. He quietly brought his old boys up with him—they were the same choirboys—until they moved high enough up the ladder to really do the Sinaloa cartel some serious good.

When the new administration decided to reorganize the old, “corrupt” federal police, the Sinaloans hit the jackpot. Vera turned the organization inside out, firing anyone he couldn’t control and hiring people loyal to him. And he put into high positions men from his old Izta cartel.

It was goddamn genius, Keller has to admit. Vera used the polygraphs to get rid of the undesirables, and then whitewashed the others to get the results he wanted. You could lie, just don’t lie to Gerardo Vera. You could take money from narcos, just make sure they’re the right narcos. Vera turned the entire AFI into an efficient, incorruptible institution serving the interests of the Sinaloa cartel.

Breaking Adán Barrera out of prison.

Making sure that no raid ever captured him.

Taking down Barrera’s rival narcos like Osiel Contreras.

Going to war against the CDG cops in Nuevo Laredo.

Vera didn’t have to worry about being investigated from below—his own people—or from above, thanks to Yvette Tapia’s suitcase deliveries to the Amaros.

It was a beautiful system, smooth as a German railroad, even through the elections and the new administration, which only promoted Vera to an even higher position. It should have gone on forever.

The money flowed through the Tapias and was, as far as Palacios knew, made up of a collective fund from them, Esparza, and Barrera. It cost a flat mil to appoint a tame AFI boss to a region and another $50,000–$100,000 monthly salary to that guy, 20 percent of which he kicked up to the Izta cartel.

Five hundred thousand a month went to Vera, with step-down payments to the other high-ranking guys—Galvén, Aristeo, Bravo, and Palacios—depending on their rank.

“How much did you make?” Aguilar asks one afternoon at the Four Seasons, unable to keep the disgust from his voice.

“Two million a year,” Palacios answers casually.

Special favors—the escape from Puente Grande, the close call after Nayarit, the takedown of Contreras, the raids on the Tapias—required extra money, Palacios tells them.

In those special cases, Esparza usually handled the payments.

“Where did the money come from?” Keller asks.

“El Patrón, I guess,” Palacios says. “I didn’t ask.”

“How high does it go?” Aguilar asks.

Palacios shrugs. “All I know is Vera. What he does with the money afterward—above my pay grade.”

“Los Pinos?” Aguilar asks. “We know that money went to Benjamín Amaro.”

“Then you know more than I do,” Palacios snaps.

Aguilar asks, his voice tight, “The attorney general?”

“I don’t know.”

–

At the next meeting at the St. Regis, Aguilar says, “Tell us about the meeting with Martín Tapia.”

“Tell me when I go el norte.”

“When we say you do,” Keller says. But he understands Palacios’s anxiety. Every day it gets more dangerous for him, every day he’s at risk of getting gunned down by the Tapias, if not by Gerardo Vera. Keller doesn’t really care if Palacios gets killed—good riddance to bad garbage—but not until they’ve stripped him of everything he knows, and he testifies.

“I want Arizona,” Palacios says. “Not Texas. I like Scottsdale.”

“It could be Akron for all I know,” Keller says.

“And a car,” Palacios adds. “Land Rover or Range Rover.”

“The fuck you think this is?” Keller asks, “The Price Is Right?”

“Tell us about the Tapia meeting,” Aguilar repeats.

“Can we get some lunch sent up?” Palacios asks. “I haven’t eaten.”

Gabriela calls down for some sandwiches. Palacios, munching on a torta, says, “The fuck you want to know? We met—”

“Was Vera there?”

“You know he was.”

“Do you know he was?”

“He was sitting beside me.”

“And—”

“And Martín told us that they’d made peace with the CDG and the Zetas,” Palacios says, “and that we were to go after La Familia instead. The fuck did we care? A narco is a narco.”

“Vera said that certain people would need more money,” Aguilar says. “Which people?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“Ask Gerardo.”

–

At the next meeting, Aguilar opens with, “Tell me about the Tapia raids.”

“You tell me about the Tapia raids.”

“What do you mean?”

“All I know is that Gerardo wanted to meet,” Palacios says. “Out of the office. Fine, we go out for a walk. He’s shook, like I’ve never seen him. You know Gerardo—ice.”

“And?”

“He tells me we have to go after the Tapias,” Palacios says. “I about shit my pants. ‘The Tapias, are you fucking kidding me? You know how much food they’ve put on our tables?’ He says it comes from on high.”

“And you ask him how high,” Keller prompts.

“And he holds his hand way above his head,” Palacios says. “So I say, ‘Adán Barrera is not going to like this,’ and Gerardo just stares at me, and then I get it—it comes from Barrera. And I say, ‘I don’t care, I’m not doing it, it’s suicide, going after the Tapias,’ and he says, ‘That’s why we better not fuck it up.’ ”

“Did he tell you why Barrera wanted the Tapias taken down?”

Palacios launches into a song-and-dance about how Gerardo didn’t share it with him specifically, but it had something to do with Diego getting too much power, and Alberto being too flashy, and all of them being into this Santa Muerte shit, and Adán thought they were becoming a liability, a risk.

All of which is true, Keller thinks, but he can see that he’s lying, that Vera told him about Salvador Barrera’s double-murder beef, and that Palacios doesn’t want Aguilar to know that he knows about the Tapia-for-Sal deal.

It’s very dangerous knowledge, Keller agrees.

“But you did fuck it up,” he prompts.

Palacios holds his hands up. “Not me—Galvén got stupid and blew Alberto away, and we just couldn’t lay our hands on Diego.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” Aguilar asks. “Are you still on his payroll? You’re alive, after all.”

“Shit,” Palacios says. “You think the Tapias are going to take us back after we killed his little brother? You think we’re going to double-cross Barrera? We’re running for our lives here.”

“You’re having coffee at the same place every day,” Keller says.

“When I’m not sitting here blowing you,” Palacios says. “Do you think I’d be doing this if I’d made a separate peace with Diego? Jesus Christ, could that cunt remember the mustard for a change? How hard is that?”

–

The game goes on.

Aguilar wants names, numbers, he wants to see Palacios’s bank accounts, his cell phone records, his e-mails. All the while, Keller plays a game of his own. He makes himself go out to lunch with Gerardo Vera, go out for drinks, listen to the man’s problems.

A straight-up shooting war has broken out in Sinaloa and Durango between Barrera loyalists and the Tapias.

Eight killed in a gun battle on Tuesday.

Another four on Wednesday…

Two hundred and sixty killed by the end of June.

Then, just yesterday, seven AFI agents were killed storming a safe house in Culiacán filled with Diego’s shooters.

And then, this morning, a banner appeared hanging from a Culiacán bridge that read THIS IS FOR YOU, GOVERNOR VILLA, EITHER YOU MAKE AN ARRANGEMENT WITH US OR WE’LL MAKE AN ARRANGEMENT FOR YOU. THIS WHOLE GOVERNMENT WORKING FOR BARRERA AND ESPARZA IS GOING TO DIE.

And other banners start to appear all over town with the message LITTLE TOY SOLDIERS AND STRAW POLICEMEN, THIS TERRITORY BELONGS TO DIEGO TAPIA.

“We have to move,” Keller tells Aguilar after another dance session with Palacios. “This whole thing is going to blow up.”

“You’re friends with the Tapias,” Aguilar says drily. “Tell them to give us a little time.”

Then Palacios balks—digs his feet in and says that he won’t give any more information until he’s assured of asylum in the United States.

“You’ve been stringing me along for weeks,” he says. “Enough.”

And walks out of the room.

–

It feels strange, being back in the United States. After what, Keller thinks, three years?

Strange hearing the language, seeing the ugly green money.

Washington is hot and humid in June, and Keller is sweating before he can get into the cab to DEA. At least he managed to get a flight into National, so the cab trip isn’t too long compared with the odyssey down from Dulles.

The announcement by Tim Taylor’s receptionist that there’s an Art Keller here to see him is greeted with the enthusiasm normally reserved for a colonoscopy. Taylor sticks his head out the door, sees that it’s sadly true, and gestures for Keller to come into his office.

“Hold my calls,” he says to the receptionist.

Keller sits down across from Taylor’s desk.

“So,” Taylor says, “how’s the hunt for Barrera going? Not so good, huh?”

Keller takes out his copy of the Tapia tape, sticks it into Taylor’s Dictaphone, and hits play. “One of the voices is Martín Tapia, the other is Gerardo Vera.”

Taylor turns white. “Bull fucking shit. Where did you get this?”

Keller doesn’t answer.

“Same old Keller,” Taylor says. “How the fuck do you know that’s Vera?”

“Voice recognition software.”

“Inadmissible.”

“And a witness.”

“Who?” Taylor asks. He is not a happy man. He’s a less happy man when Keller tells him that the witness is Palacios. “That’s the third-highest-ranking cop in Mexico.”

Keller tells him about the Izta Mafia, the killings of the three cops, and the highlights of Palacios’s potential testimony.

“And you have this all on tape,” Taylor says.

“Aguilar does.”

Taylor gets up and looks out the window. “I’m pulling the pin in eighteen months. Bought one of those mobile homes with everything but a Jacuzzi in it, the wife and I are going to cruise around the country. I don’t need this right now.”

“I’ll need a snitch visa for Palacios,” Keller says. “Papers, a whole new package.”

“No shit.”

“Maybe one for Aguilar, too, if this goes south.”

“Oh, it’s already gone south,” Taylor says. “Do you know how much intelligence, how much information we’ve shared with Vera?”

“I have an idea.”

“No, you fucking don’t,” Taylor says, “because we specifically told him to keep most of it from you. If what you’re saying is true, every op we have down there…and a bunch of them up here…have been compromised. We’ll have to pull agents in, undercovers…”

“If what I’m saying is true,” Keller answers, “and it is, the entire federal justice system of Mexico has been turned inside out.”

“Palacios could be making up a story to get his ticket punched,” Taylor says.

“He could be,” Keller agrees. “But then, why would he need a ticket? If all this is bullshit, his life is in no danger.”

Taylor thinks about this for a second, then goes off. “Your mission was very clear, very specific—assist in the pursuit of Adán Barrera. You were not authorized to launch an investigation of corruption within the federal police force of a foreign nation—”

“You don’t want to know?” Keller asks. “You wanted me to hold it back until Vera gives Barrera one of your UCs to torture?!”

“Of course not,” Taylor says. He sighs, tired. “Look, I’ll need to go upstairs with this. You’ll have to come in, do the dog-and-pony. Fuck. Fuck. I’d thought we’d finally…Okay, let me get on the horn with the director, make his week. You stay where I can reach you in a hurry. Anything else you want, or is ruining my life sufficient for today?”

“Reservations at a dude ranch in Arizona.”

Taylor stares at him.

“For Aguilar’s family,” Keller says.

“See Brittany outside.”

“Can you expense it through—”

“Yes. Get out.”

–

Bureaucratic battles are bloody.

All the more so because it’s usually other people’s blood being shed, so what the fuck.

This is what Keller’s thinking as he sits at a table with Taylor, the DEA director, and representatives from Justice, State, Immigration and Naturalization, and the White House. There’s probably a Company guy in the room as well, sitting in the corner.

The DEA director chairs the meeting. “If Agent Keller’s information is accurate, we have a crisis on our hands.”

“Agent Keller,” the Justice hack, a middle-aged lawyer named McDonough, weighs in, “has a dubious tape recording and an even more dubious witness. I, for one, would not jeopardize our relations with Mexico based on the tales of a dirty cop.”

Keller knows McDonough—a former prosecutor in New York’s Eastern District. He’s gained more weight—his face is even redder, his jowls fatter, he’s one jelly doughnut away from a triple bypass.

“Concur,” the State Department rep says. Susan Carling has curly red hair, skin the color of chalk, and a PhD from Yale.

“What is the provenance of this tape?” McDonough asks.

Keller says, “The tape was handed to me by a source inside the Tapia organization, and that’s as far as I’m prepared to go.”

“You do not have the option, Agent Keller,” McDonough says, “of withholding the source of your information.”

“Fire me,” Keller says.

“Now, that’s an option,” McDonough says.

“Do you have a source inside the Tapia organization?” the DEA director asks Keller. “Because it doesn’t appear that you opened a file.”

“I don’t have a CI in the Tapia organization,” Keller answers. “Someone handed me the tape and—”

“Do you have a relationship with them?” McDonough asks. “Because if you haven’t opened a file, that’s completely inappropriate and opens you to suspicions of—”

Taylor says, “Can we talk about the real problem here, Ed? If a source came to you with information that the number three guy in the FBI was on the Gambino family payroll, you wouldn’t be sitting there picking him apart on procedural issues. I have people out there, who are now under horrendous risk.”

“Potentially,” McDonough says.

“Okay, you go to Tamaulipas under ‘potential’ risk, and tell me that you have time for this nitpicking shit,” Taylor says. “Keller is protecting his source. He’s an asshole, but that’s what he’s doing. Move on.”

The White House rep says, “The Mexican government is extremely sensitive to accusations of corruption, especially from us. If we push an agenda on this, it might sabotage years of diplomacy that are now finally having some positive effect. It could scuttle the very antitrafficking efforts that DEA has worked so hard to establish. Not to mention embarrassing us on the Hill.”

“I wouldn’t want anyone to be embarrassed,” Keller says.

“Be as ironic as you want,” the rep says, “but the Mérida Initiative wasn’t easy to push through Congress. It’s what you guys wanted, isn’t it??”

The Mérida Initiative is a three-year, $1.4 billion aid package, most of it to Mexico, to combat drug trafficking. Keller knows the details—thirteen Bell 412EP helicopters, eleven Black Hawks, four CN-235 transport planes, plus high-tech scanners, X-ray machines, and communications equipment. Not to mention training for police and Mexican military.

The same training, Keller thinks, we gave to the Zetas.

“Now you want us to do what?” the White House rep asks. “Go back to the Hill and tell them, ‘Whoops, forget it’? Turns out we were going to give a billion and a half dollars in sophisticated military equipment to a cabal of corrupt cops? That, in effect, we were going to hand over Black Hawk helicopters to the Sinaloa cartel? No, this is not going to happen.”

“We cannot disrupt the Mérida Initiative at this point,” Carling says. “It’s three days away from becoming law. The damage to our relationship with Mexico would be incalculable.”

“So the option is what?” the director asks. “Letting our allies continue to live in the belief that their top police officer is honest when we know in fact—”

“Not in fact,” McDonough says. “Allegedly.”

“—that he’s allegedly in the employ of the drug cartels?”

“If they don’t already know,” Keller says.

“We’re not asking for an international incident,” the director says, “just a ‘Q’ visa for Palacios.”

McDonough leans forward. “This is an internal Mexican issue. Justice will only authorize action if and when the Mexican attorney general contacts us with a request. As for Mr. Palacios, we can’t just accept his story at face value.”

“You have Vera on tape,” Keller says.

“There is no chain of custody on that tape,” McDonough says. “We don’t know its origin, it could have been doctored by the Tapia organization to sabotage its most effective adversary. They failed to take Vera out, so they’re trying to have us do it.”

“Palacios could have been planted on you,” Carling says to Keller, “for the exact purpose of scuttling the Mérida Initiative.”

“Which the cartels have to be extremely concerned about,” the White house rep says.

“Yeah, they’re quaking,” Taylor says.

The director turns to McDonough. “What do you need to bring Palacios over?”

“Have him wear a wire,” McDonough says. “Get me Vera on tape, incriminating himself on a record that we control, and then maybe we have something to talk about.”

“Can you get Palacios to wear a wire?” Taylor asks.

“I don’t know,” Keller says. “Vera is smart, he’s already freaked out…”

“We’re talking a one-time event here,” the director says, “not an ongoing operation.”

“Give it a shot,” McDonough says. “You get us a tape of Vera, we’ll get you the visa.”