The meeting would have to take place somewhere other than Dubai, so no one could trace Klaussen back to his home. Cindric proposed Cyprus, in a few weeks' time. Klaussen agreed.

On the appointed day, Cindric and another DEA agent named Eric Stouch flew through Dubai and greeted Klaussen at the gate of a Cyprus-bound flight. Once on board, Klaussen took a seat in business class, while the agents who would become his employers trundled back to economy. The DEA had bought his ticket, but Klaussen had arranged for his own upgrade.

Cindric and Stouch booked a hotel conference room in Cyprus, where they all sat down to discuss what Klaussen could offer. "First it was me who had to convince them that I have what it takes," Klaussen said. But this was a moment Klaussen had imag- ined when he first abandoned the Somalia operation back in 2010. He pulled out an encrypted drive on which he had stored reams of material from his time working with Le Roux. There were emails about arms purchases, copies of Le Roux's IDs—real and fake— financial reports, weapons orders, contact lists. As he walked the agents through the files, he recalled, "They didn't really show ex- citement. They didn't really show emotion. But it's there. I can feel it. It's in the room." When he finished his presentation, the agents finally let on that they were ecstatic.

But the information Klaussen had wasn't enough. The agents explained that while the case against Le Roux would certainly be bolstered by it, what they really needed was help setting him up. Wherever Le Roux was arrested—be it the Philippines, Brazil, or any of a dozen other countries where he regularly did business— there was the potential that he could buy his way out of jail. Cin- dric and Stouch needed to somehow get him somewhere that they could control the environment. Le Roux wasn't dumb enough to travel to the United States, so it would have to be somewhere else. They would need not only to entice him into his own capture, but also to create an airtight case against him back in the States. To do that, they'd need Klaussen to go back to work for Le Roux.