to be there. I also thought, if what they were doing was illegiti- mate, why would they let us stay with them? If they are running a criminal enterprise, why would they invite us in?"

The next morning, the group accepted a ride back to the airport and flew out. When Gettleman won a Pulitzer Prize for his report- ing on Somalia three years later, Klaussen sent him a congratula- tory note.

Whether Le Roux's intentions for Somalia changed or he was just slowly rolling out a plan he'd had all along, Klaussen wasn't sure. But late in 2009, he felt his boss's priorities shift. The fishing proj- ect was burning $50,000 to $100,000 a month, Le Roux said, and it was time for self-sufficiency. Fortunately, he had plans for how to create it. For starters, he'd had Klaussen arrange for a license to import and export prescription drugs in bulk-supplementing the pharmacy recruitment network he'd built for RX Limited-and resell them in Europe or the United States.

But that was just the beginning. The Somalia operation, he an- nounced, would become sustainable by growing drugs. He began shipping in seeds to experiment with: poppies (code name "car- rots," as Le Roux established in one email to Klaussen), cannabis ("beans"), and coca ("mustard"). He also hired a Filipino agricul- ture expert and shipped him to Galkayo, where he converted a room in the compound into a mini-greenhouse for test plantings while Le Roux arranged for a large-scale version to be imported. Le Roux sent obsessively detailed plans about how to set up the operation, including the required pressure for the irrigation sys- tems, initial fertilization quantities, space between planting rows, and water needed per day. "Also there's no soil in Somalia suit- able" for growing drugs, Klaussen said. "So we had to basically import loads and loads of soil and fertilize it constantly." No mat- ter, Le Roux was already barreling ahead, forwarding résumés of chemists and agriculturalists that he could hire to ramp up produc- tion.