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MARCHING POWDER

the world to prove that it was a very successful business. Tito probably guessed it was a front – he knew I hadn't called him out to our meeting spot to discuss pineapples and papayas – but that was the way you had to talk to these people. It was all a game; I gave him some nice stories and he pretended to go along with them.

'Show me your passport, please,' he requested when I'd finished my sales pitch. He flipped through the pages and then said something I hadn't expected after all the deals we had done together: he wouldn't be able to help me this time.

'Why not?'

'The yanquis.'

'The what?' The way he pronounced the word made it sound like 'junkies', but he meant the Yankees. Tito explained that the US government was now heavily involved in fighting its 'war on drugs' in Bolivia. It had finally decided to clean up Santa Cruz Airport, which had a very bad reputation for trafficking because of people like himself and me.

'Too many stamps in your passport, my friend. You understand?' Apparently, things were now a lot stricter and Tito couldn't guarantee that I would get through safely when customs agents saw how many times I'd been in and out of the country that year.

At first I thought this was Tito's way of asking for more money. I offered him an extra fifty per cent. Then I offered him double. When he refused again, I knew it wasn't about the money. There must have been a real problem with the Americans. I felt my stomach starting to float. Without Tito's help I was lost. I had already bought the stuff, packed it, pre-sold it and was ready to fly.

The coke had been sealed up and hidden using a technique that I had thought of myself and that no one else was using at the time. You have to be smart and creative in this business, because whatever new way to smuggle drugs you might hear about, the drug police have already seen it a year ago. They have specially trained personnel whose job it is to think about these things all day, and they have technology for detecting drugs that the public don't even know about yet, so the only way to get through is to be smarter than they are. The three most important factors in transporting merchandise are the amount you take, disguising the smell, and where you hide it.

You should never strap it to your body; that went out in the 1980s.