Don winslow Don winslow - The Border

But the question—if Barrera isn’t running the cartel, who is?—has yet to be answered, and the Mexican rumor mill is full to capacity with Barrera sightings in Sinaloa, Durango, Guatemala, Barcelona, even in San Diego where his wife (or widow?) and two small sons live. “Barrera” has even sent texts and Twitter messages that have fueled a cult of “ Adán vive ” disciples, who leave hand-painted signs along roadsides to that effect.

Members of Barrera’s immediate family—especially his sister, Elena—have gone to some lengths to not confirm his death, and any ambiguity surrounding his status gives the cartel time to try to arrange an orderly succession.

The Dos Erres theory believers aver that the cartel has a vested interest in keeping Barrera “alive” and is putting out these messages as disinformation—a living Barrera is to be feared, and that fear helps keep potential enemies from challenging Sinaloa. Some of the theory’s strongest adherents even posit that the Mexican government itself, desperate to maintain stability, is behind the Adán Vive movement.

The confirmation of Barrera’s death, if that’s what this is, Keller thinks, is going to send shock waves across the narco world.

“Who has custody of the body?” Keller asks.

“D-2,” Blair says.

“So Sinaloa already knows.” The cartel has deep sources in all levels of the Guatemalan government. And the CIA already knows, too, Keller thinks. D-2 has been penetrated by everybody. “Who else in DEA knows about this?”

“Just the Guat City RAC, you, and me,” Blair says. “I thought you’d want to keep this tight.”

Blair is smart and loyal enough to make sure that Keller got this news first and as exclusively as possible. Art Keller is a good man to have as a boss and a dangerous man to have as an enemy.

Everyone in DEA knows about the vendetta between Keller and Adán Barrera, which goes all the way back to the 1980s, when Barrera participated in the torture-murder of Keller’s partner, Ernie Hidalgo.

And everyone knows that Keller was sent down to Mexico to recapture Barrera, but ended up taking down the Zetas instead.

Maybe literally.

The watercooler talk—more like whispers—speaks of the ruins of a wrecked Black Hawk helicopter in the village of Dos Erres, where the battle between the Zetas and Barrera’s Sinaloans allegedly took place. Sure, the Guatemalan army has American helicopters—so does the Sinaloa cartel for that matter—but the talk continues about a secret mission of American spec-op mercenaries who went in and took out the Zeta leadership, bin Laden style. And if you believe those rumors—dismissed as laughable grassy knoll fantasies by the DEA brass—you might also believe that on that mission was one Art Keller.

And now Keller, who took down both Adán Barrera and the Zetas, is the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency, the most powerful “drug warrior” in the world, commanding an agency with over 10,000 employees, 5,000 special agents, and 800 intelligence analysts.

“Keep it tight for now,” Keller says.

He knows that Blair hears the dog whistle—that what Keller really means is that he wants to keep this away from Denton Howard, the assistant administrator of the DEA, a political appointee who would like nothing more than to flay Keller alive and display the pelt on his office wall.

The chief whisperer of all things Keller— Keller has a questionable past, Keller has divided loyalties, a Mexican mother and a Mexican wife (did you know that his first name isn’t actually Arthur, it’s Arturo?), Keller is a cowboy, a loose cannon, he has blood on his hands, there are rumors that he was even there in Dos Erres —Howard is a cancer, going around the Intelligence Unit to work his own sources, cultivating personal diplomatic relationships in Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Europe, Asia, working the Hill, cuddling up to the media.

Keller can’t keep this news from him, but even a couple of hours’ head start will help. For one thing, the Mexican government has to hear this from me, Keller thinks, not from Howard, or worse, from Howard’s buddies at Fox News.

“Send the dental records to D-2,” Keller says. “They get our full cooperation.”

We’re talking hours, not days, Keller thinks, before this gets out there. Some responsible person in D-2 sent this to us, but someone else has doubtless put in a call to Sinaloa, and someone else will look to cash in with the media.

Because Adán Barrera has become in death what he never was in life.

A rock star.

It started, in of all places, with an article in Rolling Stone .

An investigative journalist named Clay Bowen started to chase down the rumors of a gun battle in Guatemala between the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel and soon tripped over the fact that Adán Barrera had, in the snappy hip language of the story, “gone 414.” The journalistic Stanley went in search of his narco Livingstone and came up with nothing.

So that became his story.

Adán Barrera was the phantom, the will-o’-the-wisp, the mysterious, invisible power behind the world’s largest drug-trafficking organization, an elusive genius that law enforcement could neither catch nor even find. The story went back to Barrera’s “daring escape” from a Mexican prison in 2004 (“Daring,” my aching ass, Keller thought when he read the story—the man bought his way out of the prison and left from the roof in a helicopter), and now Barrera had made the “ultimate escape” by staging his own death.

In the absence of an interview with his subject, Bowen apparently talked to associates and family members (“anonymous sources say … unidentified people close to Barrera state that …”) who painted a flattering picture of Barrera—he gives money to churches and schools; he builds clinics and playgrounds; he’s good to his mother and his kids.

He brought peace to Mexico.

(This last quote made Keller laugh out loud. It was Barrera who started the war that killed a hundred thousand people, and he “brought peace” by winning it?)

Adán Barrera, drug trafficker and mass murderer, became a combination of Houdini, Zorro, Amelia Earhart, and Mahatma Gandhi. A misunderstood child of rural poverty who rose from his humble beginnings to wealth and power by selling a product that, after all, people wanted anyway, and who is now a benefactor, a philanthropist harassed and hunted by two governments that he brilliantly eludes and outwits.

The rest of the media took it up during a slow news cycle, and stories about 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.