first, Rivera would only identify this Mastermind as the head of a powerful crime organization based in Manila. But he did tell me the motive behind the murder: The Mastermind had once enlisted Catherine Lee to purchase vacation property for him in Batangas, a coastal region south of Manila. He had given her money, at least 50 million pesos, or around a million dollars. "But the deal never materialized," Rivera said, "because the person who Catherine Lee instructed to do the verification of the land, to arrange the deeds and everything, went off with the money."

That person had also been killed, Rivera said. "The body was never found."

And then the Mastermind had ordered Lee's murder, too. Cath- erine Lee, it seemed, had stepped across the invisible divide be- tween her world and the underworld, oblivious to the chain of events she had set in motion that would end in her own death.

I asked Rivera if he would tell me the name of the Mastermind, and at first he refused. He had a name but he didn't want to say it. The DEA, he told me, would "neither confirm nor deny it."

But I already knew who it had to be. "If I tell you the name that I think it is, will you tell me if that's the person?" I asked.

"I will confirm," he said.

"Paul Le Roux."

Rivera slammed his fist down on the table, then held my gaze for several seconds in silence. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "This Paul Le Roux," he said, "is a very badass guy."