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MARCHING POWDER

‘¡Basta!’ roared the colonel suddenly when Catalina put her feet on his sofa. Her lip started to quiver and she looked like she was about to cry. Luckily, her mother came into the room and sent both children outside to play. There were a few difficult moments when neither Colonel Lanza nor I knew what to say.

‘Another cup of tea, Mr Thomas?’ he asked, pretending nothing had happened. He was obsessed with the idea that Englishmen drank a lot of tea.

‘Yes. Thanks a lot.’

Through the open window we could hear Mario and Catalina’s screams as they raced around on their new tricycles. We drank three more cups of tea. The colonel smiled as he watched his children pedalling up and down the driveway. One time, when I looked over at the colonel, I noticed that he had stopped smiling. The corners of his mouth were drooping and I saw him glaring at the children with a look that was something like resentment or jealousy.

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I finalised everything that night. I rang my buyers in Europe and then my contact who worked in customs at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. I would leave the suitcases on the baggage-claim carousel and, when no one claimed them, they would be placed in the lost luggage room. My customs contact would then switch them with the two identical suitcases he had. From there, it was simply a matter of him getting them out of the airport which, for a trusted customs official, would not be difficult. While I waited for Colonel Lanza to collect the suitcases, I did one final check over my luggage and ran through the timetable for the following morning.

I had everything carefully planned. I had booked a wake-up call from reception. I’d also set my alarm clock as a backup. I’d estimated the time it would take to get to the airport, with an allowance for traffic. Officially, passengers were supposed to arrive at the airport two hours before take-off for international flights. However, I had booked the taxi to pick me up so that I would arrive about fifty minutes beforehand. This isn’t so late that it raises suspicion, but it doesn’t give customs much time to do a proper search. I also had two industrial hair machines with me – a steamer and a dryer. I had bought them in Paris as a present for a hairdresser friend of Holland who