When Klaussen said yes, he, Cindric, and Stouch became a kind of subunit within the DEA, a team whose work was largely walled off—even from the likes of Bailey and Brill, who were still dog- gedly working the case from Minnesota. Together, the three of them outlined a plan to lure Le Roux into the kind of global sting that the Special Operations Division reserved for the world's most dangerous kingpins. Step one involved Klaussen contacting Le Roux to ask for his job back. To do that, he couldn't call empty- handed. He would need to bring his old boss the kind of deal Le Roux couldn't resist.

Every detail had to be perfect. When it was time for Klaussen to make contact with Le Roux in April 2012, the agents flew him to New York to do it, to help establish a U.S. “nexus” for the crime. Sitting on the front steps of the elegant federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, Klaussen dialed Le Roux's number. He picked up.

“How are you?” Klaussen asked. “You still have that job for me in the U.S.?”

Le Roux was friendly, but told him he had given the job to someone else, months before.

Klaussen said that job or no job, he had something to offer. He had made some interesting contacts in the world of narcotics traf- ficking, he told him, but lacked his own funds and organization to make anything of them. “They are big people, big deals,” he told Le Roux. “Colombians. Hundreds and hundreds of kilos.”

Later, Klaussen would marvel that Le Roux never questioned why he had had such a dramatic change of heart, from quitting the organization over its illegal activities and threatening to turn in Le Roux to suddenly approaching him with a Colombian drug deal. “He didn't even ask about it,” Klaussen said. “Didn't even bother. He knows what people are capable of when they are really in need of money. Most of his employees are willing to cross the line every time. I was one of the first that stood up and said, 'No, I'm not