Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

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Текущая страница: 36 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

“One other thing,” Eddie said. “I want to see my family.”

“Which one?” Keller asked.

“Both of them. Asshole.”

It was complicated, bringing first one and then the other of Eddie’s family in to see him.

The Mexican narco-world was buzzing about the disappearance of Crazy Eddie Ruiz. Phone and Internet traffic exploded, and both the narcos and law enforcement were busy trying to chase it down.

Some said that he’d been killed in retaliation for kidnapping Martín Tapia’s wife; others said that was bullshit because he’d released her. Still others responded that he was killed exactly because he did release her, by his own people, because they were afraid that he was weak.

They all agreed on one thing—Eddie was spotted in Acapulco the day of his disappearance, on the boardwalk eating an ice-cream cone.

But they were all out looking for him, or his body. They might also be watching his families.

His second wife, an American citizen, had crossed the border and was said to be with family in the area, but then again, she was nine months’ pregnant and would have come into the States to have the baby anyway.

Keller made both contacts personally.

It was tricky.

Ex-wives—or in this case not exactly an ex-wife—are renowned snitches, but Eddie faithfully sent Teresa more than enough money to live well, and her parents were, until they got busted, involved in laundering his coke money, so Keller doubted that she’d be a problem.

Teresa was living in Atlanta, and when she came to the door and saw Keller she turned pale.

“Oh my God.”

“Your husband is all right, Mrs. Ruiz.”

She packed up the kids, nine and twelve years old, and they flew not to El Paso, where the airport might be under watch, but to Las Cruces, New Mexico, and drove down from there. Keller brought them to Eddie’s quarters on the fort and then left them to have some privacy, picking them back up and taking them back to Las Cruces in the morning.

It was more complicated with Priscilla.

Their daughter, Brittany, was two and Priscilla was expecting any day. Keller was loath to drive her to El Paso, where there were about as many halcones as there were in Juárez. Instead, they dressed Eddie up in an army uniform and drove him to Alamogordo, where Priscilla, Brittany, and Priscilla’s mother met them at a motel. Keller had their car followed from El Paso to make sure they didn’t have a tail.

He gave Eddie the afternoon with his second family and then drove him back to Bliss, where he was comfortably ensconced in a bachelor officer’s apartment on base, with a twenty-four/seven guard of U.S. marshals.

Eddie had other demands—he wanted an iPod, loaded with the Eagles, Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen, and some Carrie Underwood. He wanted more visits with his families. And he wanted to watch the Super Bowl on a flat-screen HDTV, preferably with some decent chili and some cold beer.

“Shiner Bock,” Eddie specified.

He watched the Packers beat the Steelers on a sixty-inch LED with two federal marshals, chili, and beer.

Keller turned down Eddie’s invitation to join them.

Now he spreads the Dos Erres photos out on the coffee table in front of the sofa. “Is that them? Forty and Ochoa?”

“Yup.”

Keller looks down at the photos that show two men standing outside the school in Dos Erres. Both are wearing black ball caps, but their faces are still visible. One is full-fleshed with a thick black mustache. The other is thin and hawklike. Handsome.

“You’re sure,” Keller says.

“They burned Chacho García to death in front of me,” Eddie says. “You think I’m going to forget those faces? I promised myself I’d kill both those motherfuckers.”

Well, we have that in common, Keller thinks.

He leaves Eddie at Fort Bliss and flies to Washington.

–

Keller slams his fist on the table. “We goddamn know where they are! We have positive IDs and we know exactly where they are!”

He points to the photos spread on the table.

The State Department rep from its Narcotics Affairs Section yells back, “And that’s exactly the problem! They’re in a foreign country!”

Keller had flown straight from El Paso to Washington to make his case for a strike on the Zeta camp at Dos Erres. It isn’t going well—the administration, drone-happy as it is in South Asia, won’t authorize a strike of any kind, manned or unmanned, in Guatemala.

“We already have marines there,” Keller argues, “on an antitrafficking mission.”

Operation Mantillo Hammer has placed three hundred U.S. Marines and FAST teams in Guatemala to combat drug trafficking.

“They are there in a strictly advisory capacity,” the NAS guy says, “with authority to only use their weapons in self-defense. We can’t just go cross international borders to sanction anyone we want.”

“Tell that to bin Laden,” Keller says. “Oh, that’s right, you can’t—he’s dead.”

Like most other Americans, Keller had sat transfixed by the news of the bin Laden raid, and remembered 9/11, and quietly celebrated alone in his room with a single beer.

The president was one cool cat during all that, Keller remembered thinking. Cracking jokes at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner like Al Pacino at the baptism in The Godfather while he knew he was ordering hits.

“That was bin Laden,” the NAS rep says now.

“Ochoa is as bad.”

“Get a grip.”

“You think Ochoa isn’t a terrorist?” Keller asks. “Define terrorist for me. Is it someone who kills innocent civilians? Commits mass murder? Plants bombs? What criteria are we missing here?”

“He has committed none of those acts in the United States,” the rep answers.

“Ochoa sells millions of dollars’ worth of drugs in the United States,” Keller says. “He traffics human beings into the United States. He has caches of arms and cells of armed men in the United States. He ordered the killing of a United States federal agent. How is he not a terrorist threat to the United States?”

“The Zetas have not been officially designated a terrorist organization,” the rep says. “And even if they were, it’s more complicated than you think. Even with the jihadists, authorizing a strike requires convening a ‘kill panel’ to evaluate the necessity, the legal ramifications, the ethical justification…”

“Convene it,” Keller says. “I’ll testify.”

I’ll give you ethical justification.

The horrors go on and on.

Just last week, the Zetas tried to tap into a pipeline to steal Pemex oil and caused an explosion that killed thirty-six innocent people. If it had happened inside the United States it would be all over the news for days, with Congress screaming for action. Because it’s Mexico, it doesn’t matter.

“It’s a nonstarter,” the rep says.

“We have spent months,” Keller says, “and millions of dollars finding these people, and now that we have, we’re not going to do a goddamn thing about it?!”

Yes.

Ochoa has found himself a sanctuary where the U.S. won’t touch him.

Because he’s a Mexican narco, not an Islamic jihadist.

That’s when Keller gets the idea.

But he needs a break to implement it.

He gets it from a horse ranch in Oklahoma.

–

Forty’s little brother raises horses at a ranch outside of Ada.

Rolando Morales has been very successful, and recently rocked the quarterhorse world by buying a colt at auction for close to a million dollars. It strikes a few people as odd, because prior to buying the multimillion-dollar ranch, stables, and the thoroughbred horses to put in them, Rolando was a bricklayer. The FBI shows his highest annual income was $90,000.

There are whispers in the quarter-horse world about where Rolando’s money comes from, but to the FBI they’re more than whispers. They know it comes from big brother down in Nuevo Laredo—the ranch near Ada is a money laundry on hooves.

The technique is simple.

The Zetas send cash north to Rolando, who buys a horse for well over market value and then sells the horse back to the Zetas for true market value.

Money laundered.

And you still have your horse.

And participation in an expensive hobby, the sport of kings. It’s almost pathetic, Keller thinks, how badly the narcos want social status—polo, horse racing. What’s next, America’s Cup yachts?

The crowd here is different from the polo set in Mexico City. Here there are a lot of cowboy hats, and thousand-dollar custom boots, and denim, and turquoise jewelry. This is western American aristocracy, people with the money and leisure to play with expensive quarter horses.

The particular horse in question today is a colt named, with an almost unbelievable sense of impunity, Cartel One, and the race is the All American Futurity, the Kentucky Derby of quarter-horse racing.

Keller watches the jockey take him into the gate.

“You have money down?” Miller asks him. Miller is the FBI agent assigned to Operation Fury, the bureau’s surveillance of the Morales quarter-horse scam. Miller had contacted Keller because there was a red flag, an interdepartmental alert that anything to do with “Forty” Morales was to be forwarded to Art Keller.

“I’m not a gambler,” Keller says.

“Put a few bucks on Cartel One.”

“He’s an eight-to-one shot.”

“He’s a lock,” Miller says.

The horses come out of the gate. Cartel One starts slowly and gets trapped along the inside rail. But then a gap miraculously opens, the jockey works the colt to the outside, and Cartel One is third as they go into the home stretch. The two lead horses fade, and Cartel One comes in by a nose.

Keller looks down into the paddock, where Rolando and his wife and friends are jumping up and down, yelling, screaming, and embracing. Quite a celebration for a race that was fixed, Keller thinks. Miller has established that tens of thousands were passed out to other jockeys and trainers.

The prize money for the All American Futurity is a flat million.

Not a bad day’s pay.

Still, chicken feed for the Zetas, who would have paid over a million to “win” the million. What they want is the bragging rights, the status. Rolando looks like his older brother, the same stocky build, the same curly black hair, even the thick mustache. Except he wears a white cowboy hat instead of a black ball cap.

“We thought we’d pick him up at the airport,” Miller says.

“You have enough to charge?”

“Money laundering, conspiracy to traffic narcotics, tax evasion,” Miller says. “Oh yeah.”

“Do me a favor?” Keller asks. “Hold off a little?”

“Can’t hold off for long,” Miller answers. “Rolando is planning a trip to Italy.”

“What?” Keller asks, feeling a jolt of excitement.

“He’s going to Europe,” Miller says. “Starting in Italy but going on some kind of Grand Tour, I guess—Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain. We’ve had a tap on his e-mail.”

“Family vacation?” Keller asks, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.

“Nope, just him.”

Yeah, just him. No married man takes a “vacation” to Europe without his wife. It just doesn’t happen. Rolando is going for work, and Keller hopes he knows what the work is.

He’s praying that Rolando is going to Italy as the Zetas’ ambassador to ’Ndrangheta.

The wealthiest criminal organization in the world.

’Ndrangheta is based in Calabria, in southern Italy at the toe of the boot, and it makes the older, more famous Sicilian Mafia look like a poor country cousin. Eighty percent of the cocaine that flows into Europe comes through ’Ndrangheta at its port of Gioia Tauro. The organization’s income from drug trafficking is estimated at $50 billion annually, a whopping 3.5 percent of Italy’s gross domestic product.

They’re untouchable.

The Gulf cartel used to have an exclusive relationship with ’Ndrangheta—now Barrera is competing with the Zetas for the European market. The apparent motive behind the sadistic murder of Magda Beltrán was that she had been making successful inroads with ’Ndrangheta.

Is Rolando Morales going on a diplomatic mission to secure an alliance with ’Ndrangheta for the Zetas? Keller wonders.

Wars are fought with money, and the European market would give either cartel an insurmountable financial advantage with which to buy weapons, equipment, protection, and, most of all, gunmen.

If the Zetas can become ’Ndrangheta’s suppliers, while at the same time cutting Barrera’s Guatemalan route, they’ll have the money and resources to beat him in Mexico.

So Rolando’s diplomatic mission—if that’s what it is—represents an enormous opportunity for the Zetas.

It’s an enormous opportunity for Keller, too.

“Let him go,” he says to Miller.

“Back to Oklahoma?”

“To Europe,” Keller says.

–

They pick him up in Milan’s San Siro stadium, where the red-and-black-clad AC Milan players are going up against the black-and-white-striped Juventus rivals.

Keller watches the video feed from a situation room at Quantico, supervised by the FBI, which is understandably reluctant to jeopardize an operation that has taken them years, cost them millions of dollars, and would result in convictions and headlines. DEA is equally reluctant to allow a Zeta ambassador freedom to leave the country and possibly escape arrest.

That’s just the domestic side.

Keller’s plan demands a complex multinational effort involving not only Italy’s Direzione Antidroga, but INTERPOL, as well as Switzerland’s Einsatzgruppe, Germany’s BND, the French Sûreté, Belgium’s Algemene Directie Bestuurlijke Politie, and Spain’s CNP—the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía.

The protocols are complicated, language barriers difficult, and negotiations intricate, requiring Keller to adopt a diplomatic persona that he hasn’t used for years. If it weren’t for the common umbrella of INTERPOL, the operation wouldn’t happen, but in the end everyone agrees to track Rolando’s movements and not make arrests, with each country free to do what it likes regarding its own territory after the operation is concluded.

The logistics are at least as complicated, with detachments of elite police swapping surveillance while keeping each other in touch, exchanging video, audio, and photos, keeping a loose net around Morales while not getting in close enough to spook him.

They’re going to use him as a dye test, let him run all the way through the bloodstream of the European drug-trafficking body.

The first place he goes is Milan, where Direzione Antidroga picks him up, and now their agents have him under surveillance, sending live video feed back to Quantico as Rolando talks into the ear of a translator who in turn talks to Ernesto Giorgi, the quintino, the underboss, of the ’Ndrangheta’s Milan ’ndrine—the equivalent of a Mexican plaza.

The noise in the stadium—the chanting, singing, banging of drums—is terrific. So there’s not a chance of grabbing audio in the noisy stadium—doubtless why Rolando and Giorgi chose to meet there. Keller can’t read lips, but the DEA techie at his side can—Giorgi had been friends with Osiel Contreras, and Rolando is explaining why the Zetas went against their old bosses, and why ’Ndrangheta should side with them.

Keller knows that Giorgi will forgive the treachery—business is business. What he won’t tolerate is losing, and the ’Ndrangheta mob boss would have been briefed on the recent Zeta defeats in Veracruz.

The crowd erupts in a cheer.

Giorgi jumps up and pumps his fist in the air as a Milan player runs around the stadium celebrating the goal he just scored. When Giorgi sits back down, he leans over to Rolando and says something.

Keller looks to the translator.

“ ‘We were thinking of doing business with the woman,’ ” the translator says. “ ‘Magda Beltrán.’ ”

Keller doesn’t need the translator to catch Rolando’s response in Spanish. The words are clear on his lips. “Está muerta.”

She’s dead.

–

Rolando and Giorgi dine in a private room at Cracco.

Two Michelin stars.

Rolando spent the afternoon in Milan shopping, and now he wears a gray Armani suit with brown Bruno Magli shoes, a red silk shirt, and no tie. Giorgi is more conservative in a brown Luciano Natazzi cashmere jacket.

A camera hidden in an overhead pin light provides an image, and this time, the audio is crystal clear as Rolando repeatedly asserts that the Zetas have control of the Petén and will dominate the cocaine trade. Giorgi isn’t convinced, and he brings up another issue.

GIORGI: Barrera has the government.

MORALES: That’s overstated.

GIORGI: He has the military and the federal police. Don’t blow smoke up my ass.

MORALES: But there’s an election coming up. PAN will lose. The winner is not going to prosecute the so-called war on drugs for the benefit of Adán Barrera. It will be up for bids.

GIORGI: You have the money?

MORALES: If we have your business, we’ll have the money.

Rolando is right, Keller thinks.

The PRI candidate, Peña Nieto, is making the end of the drug war a platform of his campaign. The other front-runner, PRD’s López Obrador, would go even further, refuse the Mérida funds, and boot the DEA and CIA out of Mexico altogether. It’s the wild card in all of this. No wonder Adán is in a hurry to grab all he can before the July elections, and before Peña Nieto would take office in December.

The irony is that we are, too.

We have to take the Zetas out before we get shut down.

“Who are they?” Keller asks as two men come in and sit down at the table.

No one in the room—not the FBI guys or the DEA people—knows. Keller gets on the phone to Alfredo Zumatto, his counterpart in DAD, who is also watching the video feed from Rome. He runs still frames through his database. Thirty minutes later an ID comes back—the two men are the vangelista and quintino—the second and third in command for Berlin.

“ ’Ndrangheta has 230 ’ndrines in Germany,” Zumatto says on the phone. “Your boy is making some impressive connections.”

He’s also trying to assure Giorgi that the Zetas won’t do business in Germany except through ’Ndrangheta, Keller thinks.

He watches as the men socialize. The rest of the talk is mostly about fútbol, horses, and women.

–

From Milan, Rolando takes the train to Zurich, meeting with bankers and potential dealers; from there he trains to Munich, meeting the local ’Ndrangheta members and some German nationals.

From Munich, Rolando goes to Berlin, where he hooks back up with the two men from the restaurant, who pick him up at his hotel near the Brandenburg Gate. The German counterpart in BND tails them to the Kreuzberg neighborhood, down the Oranienstrasse, where they go into a nightclub and meet three men that the BND guy identifies as Turkish immigrants.

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.

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.”