Barrera’s disappearance ran on CNN, Fox, all the networks. He became a social media darling, with thousands playing a game of “Where’s Waldo?” on the internet, breathlessly speculating on the great man’s whereabouts. (Keller’s absolute favorite story was that Barrera had turned down an offer from Dancing with the Stars, or alternatively, was hiding out as the star of an NBC sitcom.) The furor faded, of course, as all these things do, save for a few die-hard bloggers and the DEA and the Mexican SEIDO, for whom the issue of Barrera’s existence or lack thereof wasn’t a game but deadly serious business.
And now, Keller thinks, it will start again.
The coffin is filled.
Now it’s the throne that’s empty.
We’re in a double bind, Keller thinks. The Sinaloa cartel is the key driver behind the heroin traffic. If we help take the cartel down, we destroy the Pax Sinaloa. If we lay off the cartel, we accept the continuation of the heroin crisis here.
The Sinaloa cartel has its agenda and we have ours, and Barrera’s “death” could create an irreconcilable conflict between promoting stability in Mexico and stopping the heroin epidemic in the United States.
The first requires the preservation of the Sinaloa cartel, the second requires its destruction.
The State Department and CIA will at least passively collude in Mexico’s partnership with the cartel, while the Justice Department and DEA are determined to shut down the cartel’s heroin operations.
There are other factions. The AG wants drug policy reforms, and so does the White House drug czar, but while the attorney general is going to leave soon anyway, the White House is more cautious. The president has all the courage and freedom of a lame duck, but doesn’t want to hand the conservatives any ammunition to fire at his potential successor who has to run in 2016.
And one of those conservatives is your own deputy, Keller thinks, who would like to see you and the reforms swept out in ’16 and preferably before. The Republicans already have the House and Senate, if they win the White House the new occupant will put in a new AG who will take us back to the heights—or depths, if you will—of the war on drugs, and one of the first people he’ll fire is you.
So the clock is ticking.
It’s your job, Keller thinks, to stop the flow of heroin into this country. The Sinaloa cartel—Adán’s legacy, the edifice he constructed, that you helped him construct—is slaughtering thousands of people and it has to die.
Check that—it won’t just die.
You have to kill it.
When Blair leaves, Keller starts working the phones.
First he puts in a call to Orduña.
“They found the body,” Keller says, without introduction.
“Where?”
“Where do you think?” Keller says. “I’m about to call SEIDO but I wanted you to know first.”
Because Orduña is clean—absolutely squeaky clean, taking neither money nor shit from anyone. His marines—with Keller’s help and intelligence from the US—had devastated the Zetas, and now Orduña is ready to take down the rest, including Sinaloa.
A silence, then Orduña says, “So champagne is in order.”
Next, Keller phones SEIDO, the Mexican version of a combined FBI and DEA, and speaks to the attorney general. It’s a delicate call because the Mexican AG would be offended that the Guatemalans contacted DEA before they contacted him. The relationship has always been fragile, all the more so because of Howard’s incessant meddling, but mostly because SEIDO has been, at various times, in Sinaloa’s pocket.
“I wanted to give you a heads-up right away,” Keller says. “We’re going to put out a press release, but we can hold it until you put out yours.”
“I appreciate that.”
The next call Keller makes is to his own attorney general.
“We want to get a statement out,” the AG says.
“We do,” Keller says, “but let’s hold it until Mexico can get it out first.”
“Why is that?”
“To let them save face,” Keller says. “It looks bad for them if they got the news from us.”
“They did get the news from us.”
“We have to work with them,” Keller says. “And it’s always good to have a marker. Hell, it’s not like we captured the guy—he got killed by other narcos.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Sure looks like it.” He spends five more minutes persuading the AG to hold the announcement and then calls a contact at CNN. “You didn’t get this from me, but Mexico is about to announce that Adán Barrera’s body has been found in Guatemala.”
“Jesus, can we run with that?”
“That’s your call,” Keller says. “I’m just telling you what’s about to happen. It will confirm the story that Barrera was killed after a peace meeting with the Zetas.”
“Then who’s been running the cartel?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Come on, Art.”
“Do you want to get out ahead of Fox,” Keller asks, “or do you want to stay on the phone asking me questions I can’t answer?”
Turns out it’s the former.
Martin’s Tavern has been in business since they repealed Prohibition in 1933 and has been a haven for Democratic pols ever since. Keller steps inside next to the booth where legend says that John Kennedy proposed to Jackie.
Camelot, Keller thinks.
Another myth, but one that he had profoundly believed in as a kid. He believed in JFK and Bobby, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus and God. The first four having been assassinated, that leaves God, but not the one who’d inhabited Keller’s childhood in the place of his absent father, not the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent deity who ruled with stern but fair justice.
That God died in Mexico.
Like a lot of gods, Keller thinks as the stale warmth of the cozy tavern hits him. Mexico is a country where the temples of the new gods are built on the gravesites of the old.
He climbs the narrow wooden stairs to the upstairs room where Sam Rayburn used to hold court, and Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson twisted arms to get their bills passed.
O’Brien sits alone in a booth. His full face is ruddy, his thick hair snow white, as befits a man in his seventies. His thick hand is wrapped around a squat glass. Another glass sits on the table.
O’Brien is a Republican. He just likes Martin’s.
“I ordered for you,” he says as Keller sits down.
“Thanks,” Keller says. “It is Barrera’s body. They just confirmed it.”
“What did you tell the attorney general?” O’Brien asks.
“What we know,” Keller says. “That our intelligence about a battle between the Zetas and Sinaloa turned out to be accurate, and that Barrera was apparently killed in the gunfight.”
O’Brien says, “If Dos Erres becomes a real story, we can be connected to Tidewater.”
“We can,” Keller says. “But there’s nothing to connect Tidewater to the raid.”
The company had dissolved and then re-formed in Arizona under a different flag. Twenty people went on the Guatemala mission. One KIA. His body was extracted, the family informed that he