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SNOWING IN BALI

head crushed by an elephant. The convict is executed with rifle shots.

— Folha de São Paulo, 26 May 2004

Straight after his verdict, Marco was loaded back into the police van, and through the window asked Danilo to bring him two beers to the jail.

I actually got three beers for him. I went straight after to the jail to see him, he was kind of shook up, you could tell he was a little bit emotional, he didn’t say anything, but he needed a beer to digest everything. I didn’t stay long, I didn’t really want to because it was kind of hard for me too, what are you going to say to the guy?

— Danilo

Seeing Marco get a death sentence, with his future now a dark tunnel towards a firing squad, was sobering for all the dealers. Execution had always been a vague unthinkable chance, but now it was a reality, and smart horses were suddenly thin on the ground. But it served as no deterrent for Dimitrius, who helped set up another run to Bali only weeks later, using a 32-year-old rich upper middle-class guy from South Brazil to do a run.

Rodrigo Gularte was the black sheep in a rich family. He’d started sniffing solvents as a teenager and, despite his mother trying to set him up in various careers, he chose to traffic drugs. He was softly spoken, handsome and nicknamed Fraldinha (nappy) by the Bali crew ‘because he complained like a baby’. He flew out with eight surfboards, six loaded, and two friends to help camouflage the trip as a boys’ surfing holiday. At 3 pm they flew into Jakarta, transiting to Bali.

Customs officers noticed the men acting ‘nervous and agitated’ and when the X-ray showed foreign objects inside six of the boards

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