27

The Mole

2012 . . . An encounter in Brazil . . . The Liberian trap is set . . . Meeting the Colombians . . . An in-flight decision

Felix Klaussen arrived in Rio for his meeting with Le Roux on May 11, 2012. Without his 960 group handlers to back him up, he’d be forced to trust Brazilian agents he’d never met. After he landed, he checked in with Le Roux by phone. A local DEA liaison drove him to a hotel a few minutes’ walk from Le Roux’s condo. There, the GISE team that had been monitoring Le Roux arrived to brief him. They were concerned that it wasn’t safe for Klaussen to go alone to Le Roux’s apartment. Better that he ask for a public meeting, they cautioned. They could have agents stationed in cars outside, with snipers on the roof, and in the condo next door. (They’d cleared out the residents with a cover story that they were investigating a pedophile. “When you say it’s a drug dealer, people can get scared,” one of the agents said.) But if Klaussen was walk- ing into an assassination, they still wouldn’t get there in time. “You have to be careful,” one agent told him. “You are dealing with Le Roux, not some street criminal.”

I know him better than anyone, Klaussen thought. Demanding his boss meet in public would be as good as announcing he was