📸 Photo

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CHANGE OF PLANS

The colonel’s full name was Colonel Mario Toro Lanza. I had met him through a friend of mine named Tito in Santa Cruz, a city in Bolivia where I had a lot of contacts in the trafficking business. Tito was my best contact – he worked in customs at Santa Cruz Airport. He was an expensive friend, but he always got me through airport security without any problems. Before I did this last run, we met up at our usual spot – the bar at the Continental in Santa Cruz.

Tito looked exactly the same as when we had been introduced years before. Out of work, he always wore loose-fitting casual clothes because of the tropical heat, as well as gold bracelets and a nice watch. However, you could still tell that he was a cop by his short hair and moustache, which made him look slightly Arabic. All the cops in Santa Cruz had moustaches and wore gold in those days. It was almost part of the uniform. You could spot them a mile away.

‘What you are doing back in Santa Cruz again?’ he asked me in his broken English, which was still better than my terrible Spanish.
I signalled to the barman to pour a beer for Tito.

‘I’m working,’ I answered, refusing a beer myself. Tito raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘No. I’m serious.’

The barman stayed out of earshot while I gave Tito my routine about the new fruit juice company I was managing. The previous time I had done a run out of Santa Cruz, I had a lot of spare cash and was looking for ways to expand my operations. I set up a fruit juice business as a front. As company manager, I would be required to travel in and out of South America frequently. The Bolivian Fruit Juice Company S.A. never sold so much as a glass of orange juice. Nevertheless, I had an office, a temporary secretary and faxes from all over