From there, Klaussen and the agents began working their scheme around the clock. Their motives may have been divergent— Klaussen was out for revenge, the agents for a scalp—but in the intensity of the operation they quickly forged a bond. “Everybody was on full standby 24/7, for six or seven months,” Klaussen said. Both Stouch and Cindric had honed their skills as cops on the streets of Baltimore. Stouch, who’d also worked as a detective in Pennsylvania before joining the DEA in 1999, was a triathlete, wiry and fit, with a closely shaved head. “Eric is the quiet but very observant one,” Klaussen said. Cindric, who’d started as a DC cop and had a cynical streak, wore his opinions more on his sleeve. “Tom will say what he thinks,” Klaussen said. “If it offends you, it offends you.” There were endless debates about when and how to push Le Roux, what he would believe, what might make him sus- picious. Stouch and Cindric had the benefit of experience with criminal mindsets, while Klaussen knew Le Roux, his methods and his madness. Klaussen admired how thoroughly the agents pre- pared him, creating a story with enough details to make it believ- able, but enough flexibility to adjust on the fly. “They always asked me if I was comfortable with it,” Klaussen said. “Always. If I said no, it was no. They never pushed me. At any moment if I felt uncomfortable I just had to say the word and it was done.”

As the months went on, they methodically laid the trap. If Klaussen told Le Roux he was meeting a contact somewhere— whether Panama or Paris—he and the agents convened there, so that Klaussen could always prove his backstory. “The guy is not stupid,” Klaussen said. “You can’t just tell him a story. He’s going to check it. It has to add up. Everything has to be very, very real.” They had photos of the Colombian cocaine, newspapers bought locally as casual proof that he’d been there, emails sent from IP addresses in the right location, airline tickets that matched the trip dates he’d given Le Roux. “For a guy like him, why would he not be capable of hacking into flight manifests?” Klaussen said. “Espe- cially for somebody who is that paranoid.”