The Power of the Dog (Power of the Dog, #1)

by Don Winslow

What is on these tapes? He goes through a pack and a half listening to them. Lighting one cigarette from another, he listens to the tapes and pores through the documents. Memos of meetings, Cerro’s notes. Names, dates and places. A fifteen-year record of corruption—no, not just corruption. That would be the sad norm, and this is extraordinary. More than extraordinary—language fails. What they did, in the simplest possible terms: They sold the country to the narcotraficantes. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t heard it himself: Tapes from a dinner—$25 million per plate—to help elect this president. The murders of election officials and the theft of the election itself. The voices of the president’s brother and the attorney general planning these outrages. And soliciting the narcos to pay for it all. And to commit the murders. And to torture and murder the American agent Hidalgo. And then there was Operation Cerberus, the conspiracy to fund, equip and train the Contras through the sale of cocaine. And Operation Red Mist, the right-wing murders funded in part by the drug cartels in Colombia and Mexico and supported by the PRI. Small wonder Cerro is afraid of hell—he’s helped to build it here. And now I understand why he brought this evidence to me. The voices on the tapes, the names on the memos—the president, his brother, the secretary of state, Miguel Ángel Barrera, García Abrego, Güero Méndez, Adán Barrera, the literally scores of police, army and intelligence offic...