by Don Winslow
“It’s going to be Howard.”
“Is that the word?”
“That’s the word.” And you know it’s the word, Tom. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.
“I hope there are no hard feelings,” Blair says.
“Of course not,” Keller says. “So what do you want to do? Have a fistfight in the hallway? I accuse you of taking my sandwich from the office fridge . . .”
“You might have some things going on,” Blair says, “I just don’t want to have anything to do with.”
“What have you told Howard?”
“Nothing.”
“What are you going to tell him?” Keller asks.
It’s what the cartels do with their people who’ve been busted, Keller thinks. They tell them it’s all right to give up information, just tell us what you’re going to say so that we can make adjustments.
“That you’re looking at Lerner?” Blair says.
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“I guess I’m asking permission,” Blair says.
“You want my permission to fuck me?” Keller asks. “Okay, but just put the tip in. Give Howard a heads-up that he might want to look out for his buddies, but you don’t know details. Can you live with that?”
“Can you live with that?”
“I’ll have to, won’t I?” Keller stands up and Blair takes the signal that the meeting is over. “Thank you for all your great work and support, Tom. I truly appreciate it.”
“I’m sorry, Art.”
“Don’t be.”
That’s why they build life rafts, Keller thinks. Only the captain is expected to go down with the ship.
Keller gets Hidalgo in.
“Blair is going to the dark side,” Keller says. “He’s going to tip Howard to Agitator.”
“That’s it, then.”
Keller shakes his head. “We’ll use it to our advantage. If Howard wants to stick his head in a noose, we’ll let him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s see who he tells,” Keller says. “If this gets to Lerner, it will tell us a lot about how wide this thing is. We inject the dye, see where it goes through the bloodstream.”
“If Howard leaks this, it’s obstruction of justice.”
“Vacuum up all the Agitator intel,” Keller says. “Clean it off computers, take the physical files. I want them out of the building.”
“Speaking of obstruction.”
“If you’re not up for this—”
“I’m up for it.”
“From now on we run Agitator off premises,” Keller says. “Who do we have in Intelligence that’s still loyal?”
Hidalgo runs out some names. “McEneaney, Rolofson, Olson, Woodley, Flores, Salerno . . .”
“Have them create a ton of meaningless intel as chaff,” Keller says, “and route that through Blair. Anything of any importance bypasses him and goes directly to you and from you to me. Will they do that?”
“Those guys would walk through hell for you,” Hidalgo says. “There are a lot of people who would—”
“We don’t need a lot of people,” Keller says, “just the brave, the few, the career suicidal. They need to understand I can’t offer any protection as of January 17.”
“A lot of people are already packing,” Hidalgo says.
“Develop some false information,” Keller says, “and feed it to Blair.”
An echo test.
It doesn’t take long.
Howard is in Keller’s office that afternoon.
“Measuring for curtains?” Keller asks.
“Are you keeping an investigation from me?” Howard asks.
Blair made his deal.
“I don’t trust you,” Keller says. “You use intelligence you receive to undermine me.”
“You have created private fiefdoms inside this organization,” Howard says, “in direct violation of our policies of transparency, in order to advance a personal, politically motivated agenda that is in conflict with our mandated purpose.”
“Who wrote that for you?”
“Creating a false-flag operation inside the agency might even be a crime,” Howard says.
“You’re the lawyer.”
“You don’t know what you’re messing with.”
“Anytime you want to tell me, Denton,” Keller says. “I’ll be happy to take your sworn affidavit.”
“For this witch hunt?”
“We keep talking around this,” Keller says. “You want to be specific about what you’re concerned about here? Put a name to it?”
Howard doesn’t answer.
“Is that a no?” Keller asks. “Then what do we have to talk about?”
“I want those files.”
“And I want a pony.”
“If I detect,” Howard says, “any effort on your part to sanitize or remove files before your departure, my hand to God, I’ll see you criminally charged.”
“Get out,” Keller says. “Before I get myself criminally charged with assault.”
“True to form,” Howard says. “What is it they call you? ‘Killer Keller’?”
“You might want to remember that,” Keller says.
They meet by the Washington Monument.
Inconspicuous among the tourists.
It’s cold; Keller has his coat collar turned up and wishes he had worn a hat.
“I’ll get right to it,” O’Brien says. “Are you investigating Jason Lerner?”
“You’re flirting with obstruction of justice,” Keller says.
“Have you informed the attorney general of this investigation?” O’Brien asks.
He wants to know who knows what about Lerner, Keller thinks. How far a potential investigation has gone, to what level he has to go to cut it off. “Let me ask you, what do you know about Lerner? What prompts these questions? Has Denton Howard been to see you? Did he send you?”
“I’m not Howard’s errand boy.”
“Or did Lerner come himself?” Keller asks. “Or was it your president-elect?”
“If Howard came to me,” O’Brien says, “it was in my role on the Intelligence Committee and therefore perfectly legitimate.”
They stare at each other.
Then O’Brien says, “If you have an investigation going on Lerner or Terra, you need to drop it. Now.”
“I’m not confirming that I do or I don’t,” Keller says. “I’m going to do what I’d do on any investigation. I’ll pursue it wherever it takes me, and if that leads to a potential criminal charge, I’ll turn it over to the appropriate prosecutors. It’s not political.”
“Everything is political,” O’Brien says. “Especially these days.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ben.” At least I hope to God you don’t, Keller thinks. “You don’t know what you’re asking here.”
“I’m the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee,” O’Brien says. “If the head of DEA is investigating a potential connection between Terra and drug traffickers, I should know about it.”
“Apparently you already do.”
“I need details,” O’Brien says. “I need to know what you have.”
“Then subpoena me for a closed hearing and I’ll testify under oath,” Keller says. O’Brien doesn’t answer. He won’t bring me in on the record, Keller thinks, even if it’s sealed. Because there’ll be other senators in the room, some of them Democrats. “You don’t want to do that?”
“I thought we had a relationship.”
“I thought so, too.” But you’ve flipped. You brought me here to stop the heroin epidemic, and now you’ve sold yourself to the people who launder its money.
I don’t know you anymore, Ben.
“Leave office gracefully and live your life,” O’Brien says. “If it’s money, Art, we can arrange a soft place to land. There are think tanks, foundations, you could name your number.”
“I don’t have a number,” Keller says.
“Everyone has a
number.”
“What was yours?”
“Fuck you,” O’Brien says. “Fuck you and your sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, lapsed-Catholic bullshit.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“What, you’re a virgin now?” O’Brien asks. “When did your cherry grow back? You’ve played this game dirtier than about anyone I’ve ever known. You’ve made plenty of deals in your life, some of them with me. You know there are all kinds of coin.”
“Tax cuts? Immigration? The wall?”
“I don’t like this son of a bitch Dennison any more than you do,” O’Brien says. “But he’s not wrong about everything. And you don’t want these people as enemies.”
“I’ve had Adán Barrera, the Sinaloa cartel, and the Zetas as enemies,” Keller says. “You think I’m afraid of ‘these people’?”
“They will escort you out of your office, under guard, with a cardboard box in your hands.”
First the bribe and then the threat, Keller thinks.
I feel like I’m back in Mexico.
“You’re in no position to be lobbing shots from the moral high ground,” O’Brien says. “Your own feet are in a swamp.”
“What if I told you,” Keller says, “that there’s a real concern that drug cartels are purchasing influence at the highest levels of the United States government?”
“Are you telling me that?”
“Do I need to?” Keller asks. “Jesus Christ, Ben, you brought me here to win this war—”
O’Brien says, “Do you seriously believe anyone really wants to win this war? No one has an interest in winning this war; they have an interest in keeping it going. You can’t be that naive—tens of billions of dollars a year in law enforcement, equipment, prisons . . . it’s business. The war on drugs is big business. And that’s ‘purchasing influence at the highest levels of the United States government’ and always has been. And you think you’re going to stop that? Grow up. As your friend, I’m begging you, let this one go.”
“Or what?”
“They’ll destroy you.”
“You mean ‘we’ll.’”
“Okay,” O’Brien says, “we’ll destroy you.”
O’Brien starts to walk away, then turns around. “The good things in this world aren’t done by saints. They’re done by compromised people doing the best they can.”
They walk off in opposite directions.
“He’s a smart man,” O’Brien says. “He’ll do the smart thing.”
“Can we take that risk?” Rollins asks. “Keller has been a loose cannon his entire career.”
O’Brien doesn’t like Rollins.
The man has been around the game for a long time; former special forces, former CIA, and now one of those intelligence veterans generally known as “operatives,” Rollins has worked for a host of consulting firms, renting himself out to foreign governments, corporations and political parties.
He’s a fixer.
Now he’s “fixing” for Berkeley.
“What are our options?” O’Brien asks.
“The man spent time tending bees at a monastery, for Chrissakes,” Lerner says. “He’s unstable. He has a prejudice against POTUS—his foreign wife is a well-known left-wing radical.”
“Art Keller is an American hero,” O’Brien says. “He has devoted his life to fighting for this country.”
“We don’t even know that Keller’s an American citizen,” Lerner says. “His mother was a Mexican national, wasn’t she?”
“That’s your response to this?” O’Brien asks. “A birther controversy? Look, you can discredit Keller all you want. But evidence speaks for itself independent of the source. Does he have evidence, Jason? Is that possible?”
“I don’t see how.”
“What I’m asking,” O’Brien says, “is whether there’s basis for a DEA investigation into your business dealings.”
“I put together a loan package from a Mexican bank,” Lerner says.
“With ties to drug traffickers?” O’Brien asks.
“I didn’t ask where their money came from.”
“Shut it down. Now.”
“The loan has already come through,” Lerner says. “It’s a done deal.”
“God damn it.”
“He has me talking to Mexican bankers,” Lerner says. “So what?”
“What conversations did you have with Claiborne?” Rollins asks.
“A lot of conversations.”
“We have to assume Claiborne was wired,” Rollins says. “Did you ever say anything about drug money?”
“Maybe.”
“That puts you in the crosshairs.”
“What does Keller have?” Lerner asks.
“That’s the problem,” Rollins says. “We don’t know. He hasn’t brought anything to the AG’s office.”
“Can’t we get to the AG,” Lerner asks, “have her instruct Keller to turn over his investigation data to her?”
O’Brien asks, “You think the current AG wants to do us any favors? It would have to wait until the inauguration, and then the new AG could make that demand.”
“Which Keller would have to obey.”
“Knowing him,” O’Brien says, “he’d probably tell the AG to go fuck himself.”
“Then we could fire him,” Lerner says.
“And what good would that do?” O’Brien asks. “He goes to the media.”
“Then we charge him with malfeasance.”
“So goddamn what?” O’Brien asks. “Keller’s in a cell next to you?”
“Take care of it,” Lerner says.
He walks out of the room.
The bribe, the threat.
In Mexico they phrased it plato o plomo.
The silver or the lead.
They come with more silver the same afternoon.
Howard calls to ask for a few minutes in his office.
“Art,” Howard starts. “You and I have had our differences, both personally and in terms of policy, but now I think we’re suffering under a mutual misunderstanding.”
“What have we misunderstood?”
“That I want your job,” Howard says.
“You don’t?”
Howard smiles a politician’s smile, as sincere and heartfelt as a twenty-dollar hooker, but without the warmth. “I’ve talked with the president-elect. He expressed a willingness for you to continue in office.”
“Is that right?”
“He knows your record,” Howard says. “He’s actually a fan. He thinks you’re the same kind of straight shooter from the hip that he is.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He thinks that with his ideas about border security and your passion to interdict drugs,” Howard says, “you could do great things together.”
“When did he have this epiphany?”
“President Dennison would be willing to give serious consideration to some of your policy ideas regarding marijuana legalization, sentencing reform and resources for treatment,” Howard says.
When the devil comes, Keller thinks, it’s with full hands. Offering you choice of a “greater good” so you can rationalize the bad. And I’ve made that deal, more than once. And it’s ingenious, it is tempting—think of all the good you could do if you just let the Lerner thing go.
“And I assume with this fresh attitude,” Keller says, “the right-wing attacks in the media would recede?”
“I think I’m safe in making that representation,” Howard says. Now his smile is the smirk of a salesman who’s sure he’s closed.
“What’s the quid?” Keller asks.
“I’m sorry?”
“In the pro quo,” Keller says. “I’m guessing you’re not offering me this in exchange for nothing.”
Howard’s face goes to stone. “I think you know.”
“I think I do, too.”
“I’m not going to waltz into an obstruction trap here, Keller.”
“Then waltz out.”
Howard stands up. “I’ve never l
iked you, Keller. I’ve always thought you were a hypocrite, maybe even a criminal. But I never thought you were stupid. Until now. Think about our offer—you’re not going to get a better one.”
There’s the silver, Keller thinks. Where’s the lead?
It doesn’t take long.
“When you leave this office,” Howard says, “and I take over, I’ll launch an investigation of my own, about certain things that happened in Guatemala. You know what I’m talking about, and you know it will land you behind bars.”
Bang.
The bullet.
The night lasts forty years.
A sleepless recounting of forty years fighting this war.
Four decades ago, the night told him, you were burning poppies in Sinaloa. You were saving Adán Barrera’s young life, God help you. Fast-forward, as fast as an endless night goes, five years, you and Ernie Hidalgo were trying to tell the world that the Mexicans were running Colombian cocaine through Guadalajara, but no one would listen.
More late-night movies—you busting Adán in San Diego, his pregnant wife falls trying to run, his daughter is born with a birth defect. He blames you. You and Ernie uncover the Mexican Trampoline—small planeloads of coke bouncing from Colombia to Central America to Mexico and the United States, fueling the crack epidemic. M-1 threatens your family—Althea takes your kids and leaves. Ernie is going to transfer out but Adán grabs him first—tortures him to find out who his source is but there is no source—you made it up to cover an illegal wiretap.
Ernie dies for your sins.
You swear to bring down the Barreras.
You arrest M-1.
Turns out he was funding an NSA op against the contras in Nicaragua. Part of something called Red Mist—an overall, ongoing operation to slaughter Communists in Central America. You could have blown the whistle, you didn’t. You made a deal instead—like O’Brien said—you lied to Congress about Red Mist in exchange for a license to go after the Barreras.
You got them.
Not before Adán killed Father Juan, the best man you ever knew. Not before you used Adán’s mistress Nora to betray him.
You did something filthy to lure him across the border—told him his daughter was dying. Put him in cuffs outside the hospital.
The cartel had Nora.
You were going to trade Nora for him.
More movies—the meeting on the bridge.
