Then Art freakin' Keller walks through the door.

And makes Eddie an offer he can't refuse.

- Adn walks away from the television.

It's over.

At least as far as PAN is concerned.

Neither Pea Nieto nor Lpez Obrador is going to win. There will be the routine accusations of voter fraud, the usual protest marches, and then the electoral officials will do the intelligent thing and install Pea Nieto as the winner.

The election is not a disappointment, as he had expected that PAN would lose. Pea Nieto won't throw the North Americans out, but he will neutralize them. Which would have been a dream just a few months ago, but now is a problem in that they're allies in his war against the Zetas.

All the new government wants is peace, an end to the violence, Adn thinks. It will accept whatever arrangement we make in order to achieve peace and order. It will accept a Sinaloa-Zeta division of the plazas, it will accept a Sinaloa victory, it will accept a Zeta victory.

It only wants a pax narcotica.

Five months, Adn thinks.

We have five months until the new president takes office.

One hundred and fifty days to destroy Ochoa. Can it be done? Or is Nacho right, should we try to make peace?

It's a hard calculation. So tempting to push for victory. Even now the Zetas are in the process of losing their deal with 'Ndrangheta, in fact, losing all of Europe. The prince of darkness himself, Arturo Keller, personally saw to it, and the Zetas waltzed into his trap that will also set the North American antiterrorist apparatus against them.

Then again, a hundred things could go wrong.

Ochoa still has the upper hand in Guatemala.

He has thousands of fighters. He is without morals, restraint, or scruples-the truly ruthless man.

And that is the hell of all this, Adn thinks.

The unvarnished truth is that Mexico would be better off with you, rather than under the Zetas. You would run a business that didn't touch the ordinary person's ordinary life; Ochoa would preside over a reign of terror.

The current government understands this, the future one thinks like a goat bleating "just make it stop."

"Where are you going?" Eva asks him.

For some reason, she is glued to the elections, her attempt, Adn thinks, to display that she's a serious person with a real interest in current affairs. It's part of her new maturity campaign. Eva has adopted the "concerned young parent" role. Now she reads-articles about early education, organic nutrition and climate change, global warming and rising sea levels.

"What kind of a world," she has asked Adn several times, "will our children grow up in?"

The same world we did, Adn thinks, only hotter.

And with more beachfront property.

And yet it is time for a change.

For the country.

For yourself.

For your family.

Nacho is right-we have billions of dollars but live like refugees. We have to hide, look behind our backs, always have to wonder if this day is our last.

It's not the life you want for these boys in their cribs.

You could be El Patrn again, if you win. But you could also do what no patrn has ever done.

Walk away.

With a life and family intact.

No one has ever done that.

Every "drug lord" before you has ended up either dead or in prison.

You could reinvest your billions in legitimate concerns and your sons could grow up and live as titans of business.

You could live to see your grandchildren.

It could be done.

He goes upstairs to the nursery, where an abuela sits asleep in a chair beside the boys' cribs. Eva has decorated the nursery in soothing "womb tones" with letters from the alphabet painted on the walls and ceilings in the belief that it's never too early for them to start learning.

The boys have nannies, but Eva is what they now call a "helicopter parent," hovering over them constantly, supervising every detail of clothing, diet, and environment.

Ah well, he thinks, be patient. She tried for so long and so hard to have a baby, it's natural that's she's going to be overprotective for a while. She'll get over it and start a new phase. With any luck it will be "I'm sexy even though I'm a mother."

The abuela wakes with a start when Adn comes into the room and he shakes his head quickly to let her know that he doesn't mind her dozing. He looks down at the two babies, who are breathing softly and evenly, their foreheads dewy with a sheen of sweat.

They're beautiful.

He remembers Gloria when she was a baby. She was not beautiful, with her heavy misshapen head, except to him.

To him, she was lovely.

Adn looks down at his boys and then suddenly he doesn't see them but two other children and he gets hot and dizzy as he sees those two children on a bridge in Colombia, a boy and a girl, not babies but little, and he'd already had their mother killed and the little girl screamed Mi mam, mi mam and he gave the order and his man threw them over the side and he made himself watch as they plunged onto the rocks below and now he sees their faces in the faces of his sons and he recoils, staggers away from the crib, his children are dead children, all his children are dead.

He leans against the wall trying to catch his breath.

Then he forces himself to look into the crib again.

His boys are sleeping.

Adn kisses them on their cheeks and goes back downstairs and makes the call that will set up the peace meeting with Ochoa.

- The election is called by 8 p.m.

The following morning, the numbers are in: Pea Nieto receives 38.15 percent of the vote.

Lpez Obrador gets 31.64.

Vzquez Mota comes in with 25.40.

PAN is finished, Los Pinos will go back to the PRI, which also gets a heavy plurality in the Chamber of Deputies.

Victoria is bitterly disappointed.

"Did you call to gloat?" she asks Pablo.

"No," Pablo says, "just to firm up our plans."

"She should have won," Victoria says. "The country would be so much better off than with this...this..."

"I need your flight information."

"It's the media," Victoria says. "Media bias."

"You are the media."

"I mean the rest of the media."

"Of course."

"You, for instance," Victoria says. "And Ana. And El Nio Salvaje. How dare that...blogger...write a story the day before the election, accusing PAN of supporting the Sinaloa cartel?"

Perhaps because it's true, Pablo thinks. "I don't know, Victoria. Give me a clue-morning, afternoon, or evening?"

"Morning, afternoon, or evening what?"

"When you and Mateo are coming," Pablo says. "Is Ernesto coming with you?"

"I don't know, I don't know yet," Victoria says. "Pablo, I have stories to write, unfortunately. Stories on how this election will damage the economy. Now all we need is for the Democrats to get elected and we'll all be selling apples."

"Flight times?"

"I don't know." She sounds confused, impatient. "I'll have Emilia call you."

"Who's Emilia?"

"My new assistant."

"But you are coming," Pablo says.

"Yes."

"Tomorrow."

"Yes!"

"Okay, have Emilia call me."

"I will." She clicks off.

"Is Victoria beside herself with disappointment?" Ana asks, rolling her chair up to his. "I am sorry we won't have a woman president, only not that woman. Our answer to Maggie Thatcher."

"Ana?"

"Yes?"

"I don't care."

scar comes into the room. "Ana, write the story, straight news, facts and figures. Then get a jump on the inevitable fraud angles. Pablo-"

"Man-in-the-street."

"How did you know?"

"I just knew."

Pablo grabs his laptop, goes out into the parking lot, and gets into the fronterizo. He has no intention of going out and doing man-in-the-street interviews, because he already knows what man in which street is going to say.

And it doesn't matter.

He's leaving the paper, leaving journalism, leaving Mexico.

Leaving Jurez.

Pablo drives back to Ana's apartment and throws what little he has into a backpack.

- Manuel Godoy is a self-described geek.

A graduate student at Jurez Autonomous University, he's the best computer hacker in the city, maybe in all of Chihuahua.

Now he has a gun to his head.

Literally.

Three men picked him up as he left campus, shoved him into a car, hooded him, and drove him to this nondescript building. They sat him down in a chair in front of a computer, removed the hood, and stuck the pistol into the back of his head.

"You want to live?" the man they called "Forty" asked him.

"Yes."

"Good answer," Forty said. "You know Esta Vida?"