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SNOWING IN BALI

‘Shut up, man, it’s fine. He already knows you.’

‘What? How?’

Tota told him the cop had once come to Bali and met Rafael when Tota dropped off a bag of coke. Rafael was incredulous. ‘Fuck, man, you bring a federal police officer to Bali to meet me?’

Tota sweetened the deal by offering Rafael half the cash. Against his screaming instincts, Rafael agreed.

I was totally bankrupt in that time, crazy for money.

Tota even had to send him €800 via Western Union to buy the plane ticket.

Two days later, Rafael flew Thai Airways to Stockholm, stayed overnight with a friend, then took a taxi back to Arlanda Airport. He’d agreed to wear his sun-bleached blond curly hair out, without his usual masking Gucci sunglasses and cap, so the cop could quickly recognise him. Undisguised and exposed to the airport’s CCTV cameras, his life and freedom were on the line on the word of a Hells Angel. Rafael had no idea what this cop even looked like.

It was coming in my mind, ‘What am I doing? What am I fucking doing? If my friends know this, they’re going to think I’m a rat. How do I get involved with this shit? Hard to get out now. I’m already here; I have to get this done.’ Same feeling I had when I go to the police building in Brazil to buy the cocaine. I say to myself, ‘Let’s get this done.’

Standing at the designated spot in the huge, cavernous and sleekly modern Scandinavian airport terminal, he felt acutely vulnerable. This could be it. He was a sitting duck. His heart was pounding. It was far from his usual covert way of operating.