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MARCHING POWDER

think the less they look around, the less attention they will attract. But that's exactly the opposite of what you should do. If you've got nothing to hide, then why wouldn't you look around? A typical passenger walks into a terminal and stops, looks at the departures board, goes the wrong way and then asks directions of people, all the while searching for the right counter and looking around them. They might even look up at the ceiling and notice the security cameras.

Gradually, I began to relax and slip into proper game mode. The police had stopped staring at me by then, and everything I observed confirmed my previous experience of Bolivian security: the system was going to be easy to get through. Apart from its size, the airport layout was standard, with the floor covered in those shiny, off-white tiles you get in all airports. The roof was the typical painted-cement variety. It looked like they hadn't renovated it in years. I knew straight away that there were no hidden cameras up there. It was the same with the walls. There were no observation rooms hidden behind advertising posters, that I could make out. Along the far wall was the row of check-in counters. The most obvious airline was the national airline, Lloyd Aero Boliviano.

Even though it was early in the day, you would have expected an international airport such as La Paz to be reasonably busy. There should have been airline staff behind all the counters and other employees rushing about all over the place. However, there was a total of four staff waiting to check people in. But I wasn't worried because I had already seen that there were no specialists around.

'Specialists' is the name I give to the security personnel in airports whose job it is to specifically target drug traffickers. You never really know for sure who might be a specialist or who the specialists might have helping them. It could be anyone from a Drug Enforcement Administration agent posing as a passenger, to an airline employee at the check-in counter or an innocent-looking cleaner. I have even heard of an airline flight attendant who was paid by a specialist to take note of people who didn't eat during a flight, because that can indicate they have swallowed merchandise. However, not eating during a flight may also say something about the quality of airline food, and the attendant pointed the finger at hundreds of innocent people until the specialist stopped paying her.

The regular police and army officials never worry me in the