The PRI candidate, Pea Nieto, is making the end of the drug war a platform of his campaign. The other front-runner, PRD's Lpez Obrador, would go even further, refuse the Merida funds, and boot the DEA and CIA out of Mexico altogether. It's the wild card in all of this. No wonder Adn is in a hurry to grab all he can before the July elections, and before Pea 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 ftbol, 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 Krpeliner 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 Srete 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 Adn 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.

Adn 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," Adn 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 Ral and Miguel ngel all the time, bringing presents that infants cannot possibly appreciate or understand. Their birthday is coming up soon and Adn 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, Adn 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 cliches 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," Adn says drily. "Have you made inroads?"

"Into the new people?" Nacho asks. "Some. I can't guarantee it will be enough."