He knows it won't end until one or both of them is dead.

The beekeeper is not at dinner that night, he doesn't go to Compline afterward. When he doesn't show up at Vigils in the morning, Brother Gregory goes to his room to see if he's sick.

The room is empty.

The beekeeper is gone.

Metropolitan Correctional Center, San Diego 2004.

The thing you have to admire about the North Americans, Adn thinks, is their consistency.

They never learn.

Adn has been as good as his word.

After the funeral, he sat down with Gibson and gave him gold. He sat across the table from DEA, with federal, state, and local prosecutors, answered every question they asked, and some they didn't know to ask. The information he provided led to a score of huge drug seizures and high-level arrests in the United States and Mexico.

This scared the shit out of Tompkins.

"I know what I'm doing," Adn assured him.

He saves the best for last. "Do you want Hugo Garza?"

"We're on Viagra for Garza," Gibson answers.

"Can you give them Garza?" Tompkins asks, rattled. His client is offering to give up the head of the Gulf cartel, the most powerful drug organization in Mexico now that Adn's old Federacin has been taken apart.

This is why Tompkins doesn't like to let clients in on the haggling. It's like bringing your wife in with you to buy a car-sooner or later she's going to say something that costs you. Clients have a right to be present, but just because you can doesn't mean you should.

But what Adn says next-it goes way over the top.

"I want to be extradited," Adn says. "I'll plead guilty here, but I want to serve my sentence in Mexico."

Mexico and the United States have a reciprocal arrangement to allow prisoners to serve their time in their home countries for humanitarian purposes, to be near their families. But Tompkins is aghast and hauls his client out of the room. "You're a snitch, Adn. You won't last five minutes in a Mexican prison. They'll be lining up to kill you."

"They'll be lining up in American prisons, too," Adn observes. The prisons on this side of the border are filled with Mexican narcos and cholo gangbangers who would jump at the opportunity to move up in the hierarchy by killing the world's biggest informer.

Security arrangements for Adn have played a major role in the plea agreement that Tompkins has been negotiating, but Adn has already balked at going onto the "protected prisoner" units with child molesters and other informers.

"Adn," Tompkins pleads, "as your lawyer-as your friend-I'm asking you not to do this. I'm making progress. With judicial notice of your cooperation, I can possibly get your sentence down to fifteen years, then the witness protection program. Time served, you're out in twelve. You can still have a life."

"You are my lawyer," Adn says, "and as your client, I'm instructing you to make this deal-Garza for extradition. If you won't, I'll fire you and get someone who will."

Because this deal has to be made, and Adn can't tell Tompkins why. Can't tell him that delicate negotiations have been going on in Mexico for months, and that yes, it's a risk, but it's a risk he has to take.

If they kill him, they kill him, but he's not going to spend his life in a prison cell.

So he waits while Tompkins goes back in. Adn knows it won't be simple-Gibson will have to go to his bosses, who will go to theirs. Then the Justice Department will talk to the State Department, who will talk to the CIA, who will talk to the White House, and then the deal will get done.

Because a former occupant of that same White House authorized the arrangement back in the '80s by which To trafficked cocaine and gave money to the anticommunist Contras, and no one wants Adn Barrera pulling that skeleton from the closet to the witness stand.

There will be no trial.

They'll take the Garza bait instead.

Because the North Americans never learn.

- Three weeks later, the Mexican federales, acting on information provided by the DEA, capture Hugo Garza, the boss of the Gulf cartel, at a remote ranch in Tamaulipas.

Two days later, U.S. marshals take Adn out of San Diego in the middle of the night and put him on a plane to Guadalajara, where federales in black uniforms and hoods whisk him off the plane and drive him to serve his sentence at the Puente Grande Correctional Facility-"the Big Bridge"-outside the city that his uncle had once ruled like a duchy.

A convoy of two armored cars and a personnel carrier rumble up the Zapotlanejo Freeway toward the guard towers of the prison, its searchlights glowing silver in an otherwise silk black night.

The lead armored car stops under one of the towers by a large sign that reads CEFERESO II. Coils of razor wire top the high fences and concrete walls. Machine gunners in the towers train their sights on the convoy.

A steel door slides open and the convoy pulls inside a large supply bay. The door slides shut behind it. They say that once you cross the Big Bridge, you never cross back.

Adn Barrera is looking at twenty-two years here.

It's cold, and Adn huddles inside the blue down jacket they gave him as the guards take him by the elbows and help him out of the personnel carrier. His hands are cuffed in front of him, his ankles shackled.

He stands against a concrete wall as guards snap his picture, fingerprint, and "process" him. They take off his cuffs and shackles, then the jacket, and he shivers as he changes into the brown prison uniform with the number 817 stitched on the front and back.

The warden gives a speech. "Adn Barrera, you are now an inmate of CEFERESO II. Do not think that your former status gives you any standing here. You are just another criminal. Abide by the rules, and you will do fine. Disobey them, and you will suffer the consequences. I wish you a successful rehabilitation."

Adn nods, and then they take him from the processing area into the COC, the Observation and Classification Center, to be evaluated for a permanent housing assignment.

Puente Grande is Mexico's harshest and most secure prison, and CEFERESO II (Federal Social Rehabilitation Center) is its maximum-security block, reserved for the most dangerous criminals, kidnappers, narco kingpins, and convicts who killed in other prisons.

The COC is the worst section of CEFERESO II.

This is where the malditos-the damned-go. Usually their indoctrination consists of being beaten with hoses, shocked with electric wires, or drenched with water and left to shiver, naked, on the bare concrete floor. Perhaps even worse is the isolation-no books, no magazines, nothing to write on. If the physical torture doesn't destroy them, the mental torment usually takes their minds. By the time the evaluation is completed, they are usually, and accurately, classified as insane.

The guard opens the door of a cell, Adn steps in, and the door closes behind him.

The man sitting on the metal bench is huge-six foot eight, heavily muscled, with a full black beard. He looks at Adn, grins, and says, "I'm your welcoming committee."

Adn braces for what he knows is coming.

The man gets up and wraps him in a crushing bear hug. "It's good to see you, primo."

"You, too, cousin."

Diego Tapia and Adn grew up together in the Sinaloan mountains, among the poppy fields, before the American war on drugs-a saner, quieter time. Diego was a young foot soldier-a sicario-when Adn's uncle formed the original Federacin.

Adn's physical opposite, Diego Tapia is broad-shouldered, whereas Adn is slight and a little stooped, especially after a year in an American jail cell. Adn looks like what he is-a businessman-and Diego looks like what he is, a wild, bearded mountain man who wouldn't seem out of place in those old photos of Pancho Villa's riders. He might as well have bandoliers crossed over his chest.

"You didn't have to come personally," Adn says.

"I won't stay long," Diego answers. "Nacho sends his regards. He'd be here, but..."

"It's not worth the risk," Adn says. He understands, but it's a bit annoying, seeing as his becoming an informer vastly increased Ignacio "Nacho" Esparza's wealth and standing.

The intelligence Adn provided the DEA created fissures in the rock of the Mexican drug trade, cracks that Diego and Nacho have seeped into like water, filling every vacancy created by the arrest of a rival.

(North Americans never learn.) Now Diego and Nacho each have their own organizations. Collectively, as the so-called Sinaloa cartel, they control a huge portion of the trafficking business, shipping cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine through Jurez and the Gulf. They also managed Adn's business for him in his absence, trafficking his product, maintaining his connections with police and politicians, collecting his debts.

It was Nacho who negotiated Adn's return to Mexico from the Mexican side, delivering large payments and larger assurances. Once that was arranged, Diego saw to it that most of the prison staff was already on Adn's payroll by the time he arrived. The majority of them were eager for the money. For the reluctant, Diego simply came into the prison and showed them their home addresses and photos of their wives and children.

Three guards still refused to take the money. Diego congratulated them for their integrity. Each was found the next morning sitting primly at his post with his throat cut.

The rest accepted Adn's largesse. A cook was paid $300 American a month, a senior guard as much as a thousand, the warden $50,000 above and beyond his annual salary.

As for the men lining up to kill Adn, there were several of them, all beaten to death by other inmates wielding baseball bats. "Los Bateadores"-"the Batters"-Sinaloan employees of Diego, would be Adn's private security squad inside Puente Grande.

"How long do I have to be here?" Adn asks.

Diego answers, "In here we can guarantee your safety. Out there..."

He doesn't need to finish-Adn understands. Out there are people who still want him dead. Certain people will have to go, certain politicians have yet to be bought, caonazos-huge bribes-have to be paid.

Adn knows he'll be in Puente Grande for a while.

- Adn's new cell, on Block 2, Level 1-A, of CEFERESO II, is 635 square feet, has a king-sized bed behind a private partition, a full kitchen, a bar, a flat-screen LED television, a computer, a stereo system, a desk, a dining room table, chairs, floor lamps, and a walk-in closet.

A refrigerator is stocked with frozen steaks and fish, fresh produce, beer, vodka, cocaine, and marijuana. The alcohol and drugs are not for him but for guards, inmates, and guests.

Adn doesn't use drugs.

He saw his uncle become addicted to crack and watched the once powerful patrn-Miguel ngel Barrera, "M-1," the genius, the progenitor of the cartels, a great man-become an addled-minded, paranoid fool, a conspirator in his own destruction.

So a single glass of wine with dinner is Adn's only indulgence.

A closet holds a rack of Italian-made, custom-tailored suits and shirts. Adn wears a clean white shirt every day-the dirty ones go to the prison laundry and come back pressed and folded-because he knows that in his business, as in any business, appearances are important.

Now he goes about the business of putting back together the pieces that Keller shattered. In his absence, the Federacin has splintered into a few large groups and dozens of smaller ones.

The largest is the Jurez cartel, based in Ciudad Jurez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas. Vicente Fuentes seems to have won the battle for control there. Fine-he's a native Sinaloan, tight with Nacho Esparza, whom he allows to move his meth through the Jurez plaza.

The next in importance is the Gulf cartel-the Cartel del Golfo, the "CDG"-based in Matamoros, not far from the entry points in Laredo. Two men, Osiel Contreras and Salvador Herrera, reign there now that Hugo Garza is in jail. They're also cooperative, allowing Sinaloan product, via Diego's organization, to pass through their territory.

The third is the Tijuana cartel, which Adn and his brother Ral ran before, using it as a power base to take the entire Federacin. Their sister, Elena-the only surviving sibling-is trying to maintain control but losing her grip to a former associate, Teo Solorzano.

Then there's the Sinaloa cartel based in his own home state, the birthplace of the Mexican drug trade. It was from there that To built the Federacin, from there that he divided the country into plazas that he handed out like fiefdoms.

Now three organizations collectively comprise the Sinaloa cartel. Diego Tapia and his two brothers run one, trafficking cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. Nacho Esparza has another, and has become the "King of Meth."

The third is Adn's own, made of old Federacin loyalists and for which Diego and Nacho have been the dual placeholders, awaiting Adn's return. He in turn insists that he has no ambition to become the boss of the cartel, just the first among equals with his fellow Sinaloans.

Sinaloa is the heartland. It was the black loam of Sinaloa that grew the poppies and the marijuana that first gave birth to the trade, Sinaloa that provided the men who ran it.

But the problem with Sinaloa is not what it has, it's what it lacks.

A border.

The Sinaloan base is hundreds of miles from the border that separates-and joins-Mexico from the lucrative American market. While it's true that the countries share a two-thousand-mile land border, and that all of those miles can and have been used to smuggle drugs, it's also true that some of those miles are infinitely more valuable than others.

The vast majority of the border runs along isolated desert, but the truly valuable real estate are the "choke point" cities of Tijuana, Ciudad Jurez, Nuevo Laredo, and Matamoros. And the reason lies not in Mexico, but in the United States.

It has to do with highways.

Tijuana borders San Diego, where Interstate 5 is the major northsouth arterial that runs to Los Angeles. From Los Angeles, product can be stored and moved up the West Coast or anywhere in the United States.

Ciudad Jurez borders El Paso and Interstate 25, which connects to Interstate 40, the main eastwest arterial for the entire southern United States and therefore a river of cash for the Jurez cartel.

Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros are the twin jewels of the Gulf. Nuevo Laredo borders Laredo, Texas, but more importantly Interstate 35, the northsouth route that runs to Dallas. From Dallas, product can be shipped quickly to the entire American Midwest. Matamoros offers quick road access from Route 77 to Interstate 37, then on to Interstate 10 to Houston, New Orleans, and Florida. Matamoros is also on the coast, providing water access to the same U.S. port cities.

But the real action is in trucks.

You can haul product through the desert-by foot, horse, car, and pickup. You can go by water, dumping loads of marijuana and vacuum-sealed cocaine into the ocean for American partners to pick up and bring in.

Those are all worthwhile methods.

Trucking dwarfs them.

Since the 1994 NAFTA treaty between the United States and Mexico, tens of thousands of trucks cross the border from Tijuana, Jurez, and Nuevo Laredo every day. Most of them carry legitimate cargo. Many of them carry drugs.

It's the largest commercial border in the world, carrying almost $5 billion in trade a year.

Given the sheer volume of traffic, U.S. Customs can't come close to searching every truck. Even a serious effort to do so would cripple U.S.-Mexican trade. Not for nothing was NAFTA often referred to as the "North American Free Drug Trade Agreement."

Once the truck with drugs in it crosses that border, it's literally on the freeway.

"The Fives"-Interstates 5, 25, and 35-are the arterial veins of the Mexican drug trade.

When Adn ruled the trade, it didn't matter-he controlled the border crossings into El Paso, Laredo, and San Diego. But with him out of power, the Sinaloans have to pay a piso-a tax-to bring their product across.

Five points don't sound like a lot, but Adn has an accountant's perspective. You pay what you need to on a flat-fee basis-salaries and bribes, for instance, are just the cost of doing business. But percentages are to be avoided like debt-they suck the life out of a business.

And not only are the Sinaloans paying 5 percent of their own business-which amounts to millions of dollars-but they aren't collecting the 5 percent of other people's businesses, the piso that was theirs when he controlled all the plazas.

Now you're talking serious money.

Cocaine alone is a $30 billion market in the United States annually. Of the cocaine that goes into the United States, 70 percent of it goes through Jurez and the Gulf.

That's $21 billion.

The piso on that alone is a billion dollars.