MEXICAN DRUG AGENT CROSSED THE LINE ONCE TOO OFTEN

REYNOSA, Mexico, Feb. 13 - The border is its own country. The Mexicans go
to work "al otro lado," on the other side. The Texans come south to drink.
The men wear the same kinds of cowboy boots, speak the same Spanglish and
mix Miller Lite with their tequila in the border bars that double as bordellos.

Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni was partly reared here. He started crossing
over to the other side, to McAllen, Tex., when he was a schoolboy. Thirty
years ago, he became a Mexico drug policeman. By 1985, he was a unnaturally
powerful one.

By then, he had crossed the line so many times no one was sure which side
he was on. Maybe he was crooked as the day is long, but his American
colleagues swear that he was straight when their lives were on the line.

It may not matter now: he is dead. An assassin walked up to his silver
Mercedes in McAllen on Feb. 5 and shot him right there on the sidewalk. He
was 54. The McAllen police, who have identified no suspects, think it was a
professional job.

He was buried on the other side, in McAllen, where he had fled for his life
nine years ago. He was under the threat of death from Carlos Salinas, the
president of Mexico at the time, his American friends testified.

No matter who killed him, his story now seems as remote and romantic as
cowboys and Indians. Only yesterday, the border guards' biggest worry was
drug trafficking, not detecting dirty bombs.

Some battle-scarred American drug warriors knew and loved Mr. Calderoni
from the days when their war was the most important thing in the world down
here. More than a couple came to his funeral on Feb. 8.

Two of them, Hector Berrellez and Phil Jordan, both highly decorated
American drug-enforcement agents, were happy to vouch for Mr. Calderoni in
telephone conversations. Others, more circumspect, wanted to stay anonymous.

They all swear that Mr. Calderoni had quite a career back in the 1980's.
They say he took a million dollars from one drug lord, Amado Carillo
Fuentes, to murder another one, Pablo Acosta.

They say he weighed and rejected taking $5 million from another cocaine
kingpin, Miguel Felix Gallardo, an offer made immediately after Mr.
Calderoni withdrew the barrel of an AK-47 from Mr. Gallardo's mouth and
informed him that he was under arrest. They say he was taking money from
the gulf cocaine cartel, then run by the brother of a boyhood friend, Jose
Garcia Abrego.

He was "given the ultimatum - lead or silver," take a bullet or take a
bribe, Mr. Jordan said. "He was an opportunist. He saw an opportunity with
Abrego."

None of this really mattered to the American agents. What mattered was the
Enrique Camerena case.

Enrique Camerena, an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration known as
Kiki, was captured, tortured and killed by Mexican drug dealers in 1985.
The investigation into the killing "reached into the highest levels of the
Mexican political apparatus," said Mr. Berrellez, who worked 24 years for
the D.E.A. and considered himself among Mr. Calderoni's closest friends.

Mr. Calderoni, he said, broke the Camerena case for the United States.
Nothing else counted. In their eyes, he became the most trusted police
commander in Mexico - admittedly, not a long list.

"He was the only one who truly helped us in the Camerena case." Mr.
Berrellez said. "And he was the only one who stood up the Salinas
government and exposed their corruption. His information caused Carlos
Salinas to have to leave Mexico." That information included accusations of
large cash payments by drug lords to President Salinas's brother Raul.

Carlos Salinas left Mexico after his term ended in 1994 and lives in a kind
of self-imposed exile, mostly in Ireland. Raul is in prison on charges
including murder.

Mr. Calerdoni himself fled Mexico for McAllen a decade ago, pursued by
charges of corruption and torture filed by the Salinas government. In 1994,
Mr. Berrellez, among others, convinced a federal judge in Texas that the
charges were bogus.

Mr. Calerdoni settled in McAllen, married a Mexican beauty queen and
started a second family. By all accounts, he was a happy man. McAllen, a
town of 106,000 that is mostly Hispanic, poor and striving, felt like home
to him.

Mr. Berrellez called him from California two days before he died. "He'd
been hunting that weekend," Mr. Berrellez said. "White-tailed deer. And
then they came hunting him."

A long list of people had a motive to kill him and the money to hire a hit man.

Now the question is whether the power of his old loyalties will prove
strong enough to break the case of his killing. The American agents who
swore by Mr. Calderoni are retired or ready to hang up their badges; their
drug war is a sideshow now.

But they know they have a blood debt to repay. "Every agent that worked
with him, regardless of his corruption, knew that he single-handledly
opened a lot of doors for us to get to the murderers and torturers of Kiki
Camarena," Mr. Jordan said. "He was a colleague, the s.o.b."