And Rojas learned it was true. Not just marijuana and the occasional mushroom—all drugs. Cocaine included.

How they’d all laughed back then, thinking what did it matter what this loco president wanted, the American people would never accept it. But then as more information flowed in from Carlos’s big shot source, la compania began serious research. What they learned scared the living mierda out of them. Emilio Rojas himself made a trip to the United States to meet with Carlos. Emilio came here.

Carlos remembered sitting in this very room, just the two of them, and listening with a sick feeling in his gut as Rojas told him how, with a plan promising lower crime rates and lower taxes, backed by support from the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and the tobacco states, this Thomas Winston just might do it. Not total decriminalization, perhaps, but a beginning that would eventually finish most antidrug laws. And where America went, the rest of the world would surely follow.

Rojas admitted that for a while he and la compania had been panicked. But when they calmed themselves, they set about making plans. They examined every possibility. No cost was too great. How could it be? With billions of dollars coming in every month, they would spend any amount necessary.

Although Rojas had tried to appear calm and confident, Carlos could sense his fear, his rage. This was not some little brawl for a bigger piece of the market—this was a war for their very lives. This upstart gringo, this Thomas Winston, could wipe out their global empire with the stroke of a pen.

Carlos agreed that he had to be stopped. But how?

A bullet was the first thought, but that was discarded immediately. Assassination would make a martyr out of Winston—the last thing they wanted. They could hear the speeches: A heroic president has been shot down by the evil drug lords. We must carry his brave plan forward and put an end to these criminals so powerful and arrogant that they will kill our president to preserve their profits! Do not let the drug lords get their way! Honor the slain president’s commitment! Legalize drugs now!

No… a martyred President Winston would be an even more formidable enemy than a live and healthy one. They had to find a way that would look like an accident—or his own fault.

La compania peered into Winston’s past with a microscope and found many instances of youthful wildness, but nothing that would discredit or disgrace him. It had looked hopeless until… until Carlos’s mystery source came through with a bit of history that Winston had thought he’d destroyed. Some U.S. agency had unearthed it in a background check during his first run for office and filed it away.

Carlos had passed it on, attaching little importance to it. But it had proved to be very important.

And so the two of them had sat here in this very safe room and devised a wonderful and terrible plan…

“It’s about drug decriminalization, isn’t it?” Gold said.

Carlos bolted from his reverie. “What do you mean?”

“The kidnapping. You’ve had it poised to go for weeks. And then as soon as the President speaks last night, boom!—you’re on the phone to MacLaglen. There’s got to be a connection.”

Was I that obvious? Carlos wondered as he hoisted his bulk out of the chair and waddled around the office. Or was Gold simply too bright? That was why Carlos had brought him in.

He knew Alien would not be shocked by a plan against his President, but the fewer who knew, the better. An old paisa saying went: Three can keep a secret—if two are dead.

He stopped before a framed autographed photo of Richard Nixon. It was inscribed to someone else, but that didn’t matter. The man was what mattered.

“I am not worried about a pipsqueak like Thomas Winston. He has no courage.” He pointed to Nixon’s photo. “How does he have the gall to sit in the same office as this man? Here was a president!”

“Nixon?” Gold said, his voice jumping an octave. “He was a jerk.”

Carlos turned as quickly as his girth would allow and pointed his finger in Gold’s face.

“When you speak of this man, you will show respect. He is the president who first declared war on drugs in 1972. You would not be standing here if he had not. You would not be wearing that fancy suit or driving that German sports car you prize so much. You owe this man everything—him and all the presidents who continued the war after him. They were men.” Carlos turned back to his photo of Nixon and stared at that smiling face.

“Why can’t Thomas Winston be like the others and follow in their footsteps? But no. He is a cowardly hijo de puta who will ruin everything!”

“He hasn’t got a chance,” Gold said. “The only thing he’ll ruin is his political career.”

If only you knew what I know, Carlos thought.

He returned to his desk and dropped into his chair. The automatic massager was still on. He adjusted his back against it for full effect but it gave him only minimal relief. He’d have to call that Chinese girl—Tree Flower, or whatever her name was. She was the only one who could soothe his pain. When she walked up and down his spine with her little feet and massaged him with her toes, he found the closest thing to heaven… next to his wife.

The thought of Maria saddened him. He had met her on a visit home. A girl then, barely out of her teens, pure paisa like him, no native blood, able to trace her family all the way back to Spain. For the first time in his life Carlos had known love. He wooed her, married her, and brought her to the United States. For ten years he knew bliss.

And then Maria began to change. She became moody, unhappy. She moved to another bedroom. And then three weeks ago, she rented a townhouse in Georgetown and moved out. Carlos had never thought he could be so devastated by a woman…

But he hadn’t lost her. This was a temporary thing. She’d come back. He could bring her back, of course, but what good was that? He didn’t want to be her jailer. But he was her watchdog, keeping her under round-the-clock surveillance.

“What is the latest from P Street?” he asked Gold.

Gold shrugged. “She shops. Goes to museums. Shops some more. Goes to the library. Shops. She’s enrolled in a course at G.U. She—”

“What course?”

“Something in the Women’s Studies program. I have the exact name in the report. Want me to—?”

“Never mind.” He sighed. “No other man?”

Alien shook his head. “Or woman. It’s like she’s become some sort of female monk… with an Amex card.”

Carlos knotted his fists in frustration. La perra! He did not understand her.

Yes, he did. He knew what the problem was: the United States. She was being corrupted. Becoming… American. He had to get her away from the talk shows and soap operas and magazines that put crazy ideas into her head. He had to get her back home—to Colombia— whether she liked it or not. When he was finished with this business here, when he was a billionaire, he would build an estate bigger than Jorge Ochoa’s Hacienda Weracruz, where he would raise magnificent caballos de paso, just as Maria’s father had done. And there, back in her homeland, she would regain her senses. She would become his Maria again.

But all that was dependent on bringing down President Winston. Everything depended on getting rid of that cabron.

Carlos picked up the TV remote. The sixty-inch rear projection screen buzzed to life. He saw two vaguely familiar politicians, one white, one black, standing behind a podium at what looked like a press conference.

“Talk about politics making strange bedfellows,” Gold said. “Good Lord, it’s Jessup and Wagner side by side. Stay here.”

The banners at the bottom of the screen identified the black man as REP. FLOYD JESSUP (D-NY) and the white man as REP. QUINCY WAGNER (R-SC). Each was outdoing the other in flogging the President. Congressman Jessup was shouting about “genocide on a level that will make Adolph Hitler look like a piker!” while Wagner was warning about “the unraveling of the very moral fiber of America!” Gold was laughing. “First time I’ve ever seen those two agree on anything! This is awesome!”