Book 1: Chapter One

We arrived at Alejandro Velasco Astete International at 6 a.m. for our flight from Cusco to Lima. Dozens of Europeans and North Americans milled around in walking boots and cagoules, many carrying rucksacks in what looked like a hikers’ convention. In contrast, locals gathered in family groups to say their goodbyes, while businesspeople carried their trademark briefcases.

Notorious for pickpockets and baggage thieves, the airport set my nerves vibrating like cricket legs. For the third time, I checked my jacket for my wallet and passport. The familiar leather lump wasn’t there.
Cold sweat chilled my torso.

The man in a grey suit beside me shifted away from the queue. I grabbed his arm. Most of my cash was in the suitcase, but the British passport was irreplaceable. He stopped dead, my grip unrelenting.

‘Helen, get the cops. He’s got my wallet.

’My wife looked at me as though I’d gone mad.

‘Simon, he can’t have. I’ve got it. You gave it to me at check-in.’

I blushed as my core temperature rose ten degrees. The poor man yanked his arm free and swore at me in Spanish while I apologised profusely in English, neither of us understanding the other. The words ‘loco’ and ‘gringo’ bridged the divide.

I blushed as my core temperature rose ten degrees.

The poor man yanked his arm free and swore at me in Spanish while I apologised profusely in English, neither of us understanding the other. The words ‘loco’ and ‘gringo’ bridged the divide.

I blushed as my core temperature rose ten degrees. The poor man yanked his arm free and swore at me in Spanish while I apologised profusely in English, neither of us understanding the other. The words ‘loco’ and ‘gringo’ bridged the divide.

We moved through security into the already crowded departure lounge. The room was split between the home team men in locally tailored suits, women in tight black skirts and boleros or traditional weaves and distinctive headwear, and the visitors in cagoules, blue jeans and inevitable rucksacks.

We didn’t fit either group.

Helen would rather die than wear a cagoule, Marks and Spencer’s being as casual as Mrs McCoyliked to go. I agreed. ‘Petty bourgeois’ usually meant invisible, but not here.

We found a pair of battered seats in neutral ground among the Brazilian and Argentine tourists.

‘Well, darling, all safe and sound. Sorry about the wallet thing. The little guy didn’t appreciate me grabbing him and calling him a thief.’

Helen nodded towards the door. ‘Don’t get too relaxed.

Your friend’s over there with the official.’

She was right. Our irate local was pointing me out to one of the security men.

‘Faucett’s flight to Jorge Chavez, Lima,’ came over the intercom to my rescue.

Eager to board before my victim officially identified me, I hurried to the gate with my passport already in hand. Helen lingered behind, keeping a safe distance from her psycho, paranoid husband.

I had a load of odd kit in my bag and was carrying just under thirty grand. Helen was carrying six.

A smiling girl in uniform glanced at my passport and boarding pass and waved me through without hesitation. I resisted the urge to run across the tarmac, but I took the steps to the plane quickly. The toilets were not an option.

I dropped into my allotted seat, slid low, and thought happy thoughts. Fifteen minutes later, Helen sat beside me and buckled up.

‘That chap’s still at the gate with the official looking for you. He’s really upset. You’d think you broke his arm. How hard did you grab him? Trouble is, you don’t know your own strength.’

I slid further down in my seat, willing the plane to move.

The doors shut, and the engines roared as both the plane and my heart lifted. Cusco looked magnificent from the air as we flew over the Sacred Valley. Lima looked less impressive an hour and a half later as we descended over the docks at Callao.

‘Tell you what, love, can you do me a favour and pick up the bags while I slip through and wait outside? Just in case my little mate still wants to duel at sunrise.’

She agreed with a pert nod.

I waited for my wife outside, a six-foot-five gringo trying to look discreet while surrounded by men barely scraping five feet tall, offering taxis, money exchange, and hotels. Fortunately, my accuser was nowhere to be seen.

Helen emerged with the bags and a new best friend in blue dungarees, both of them smiling. ‘Can you give this guy five dollars, please, Simon?’

It was a five-minute walk between the national and international terminals at Jorge Chavez in Lima.

I took the baggage and sauntered towards check-in, two hours before her departure.

‘Your flight to Rio is at eleven; mine at two. We should be able to go into the international section together. Jean-Noël’s picking you up, right?’

Helen nodded.

Jean-Noël was the village hairdresser, source of all gossip, and Helen’s best friend in Rio.

Chic, French and gay, he was a delight. Years later, I discovered he and his partner, Rémy, were Swiss bank robbers on the run. ‘Yes, I’ll be OK. Don’t fret.’

I’d handed her $6,000 the night before, enough for rent and living expenses for a couple of months, three at a push. Or a flight home if the shit hits the fan. We’d had a scratchy night. Helen was nervous about being “dumped in Rio alone” while I went to La Paz.

‘Helen, relax. This Rudi guy is going to be alright. As for the moving kit, they won’t know if I tell them nothing. Everyone travels with booze. It’ll be a fortnight, we’ll celebrate the holiday son Copacabana Beach.’

In time for Santa. ‘Oh, Simon, why don’t you just come to Rio? I’m sure we can find something. I have a bad feeling about all this, you know I do.’

Normally, I would have listened to that “bad feeling”. When I’d first started out on the other side of the thin blue line, my two main customers and mentors, Dave and Jeanine, used to rabbit on about having to “feel good” before doing anything. It took me about six months to realise what a crock of shit that whole feel-right hippy bollocks was.

Nobody in their right mind feels good walking through international borders carrying a bag of Charlie. If you’re not on edge, you’re stupid, and stupid people end up in jail.


Bad feelings? Bollocks.

Get the work done, prepare as well as possible, and strap that pair on tight. It’s a wild ride, and you wouldn’t want to lose them.


‘Good morning, can I have your tickets and passports, please? Are you travelling together?’
The girl studied the tickets suspiciously. One was for Rio, the other for La Paz.

‘No. I’m going on to La Paz. My wife is returning to Brazil. Back to work, I’m afraid.’

She examined both passports carefully: mine battered, Helen’s pristine.‘

Your baggage, please, Mrs McCoy.’

I placed it on the scales. The girl hesitated, then caught the attention of a stocky man in mufti, who came over and took our passports.

‘Would you please pick up your bags and follow me?’ Somehow, I didn’t think we were about to get upgraded.

An indigenous woman in an ill-fitting olive-drab uniform joined us as we followed the narco security man through the airport. Within minutes, we were deep in the bowels of the terminal; all pretence of us being welcome visitors had evaporated.

Ancient beige filing cabinets lined the unpainted cement walls. The concrete floor seemed to suck at my feet. Stark lighting burned my eyes. Uniformed cops in olive drab sat ignoring us while our captors led Helen and me to a stainless-steel bench.

The woman pointed to Helen’s bag.

‘Open, please.

’As Helen unlocked the deep blue Globe-Trotter, the man examined our tickets again before turning to me.

‘So you are not travelling together? Why is that?’‘ My wife has to return to work next week, and I’m going on to La Paz to meet my brother. We’re staying a couple of weeks.’

Helen was cool as a cucumber as she stood back and let the woman rummage through her clothes. She had no reason not to be.

I, on the other hand, was on edge and trying not to show it.
Nothing strictly illegal. But complicated.

The guy pointed to one of my Globe-Trotters, and I hefted it onto the stainless-steel bench. Mine was a different matter.

It contained my working tools and twenty-odd grand in cash, which would have been a problem if he’d found it.

I opened the case and turned back to my interrogator.‘ How long have you been in Peru?’ He’d spent the last five minutes studying my passport and knew perfectly well we’d been therefor three weeks.

We’d spent much of that time in Miraflores, staying with our Brazilian landlady’s sister while looking for something we could export as a business.
Hand-painted mirrors and ceramic figurines filled the case, all very nice, but far too ethnic to build a business around.

Fun to look at, disappointing to buy.‘ We arrived three weeks ago from Brazil.
’‘I see you travel often to Brazil.

’I nodded.‘ Mr McCoy, what is your business?’ ‘Salesman. I work in export sales for a gaming company.’

I had Luke’s business card in my wallet, along with a few of my own: Simon McCoy, Sales Director, Playing Card Promotions.

Luke had been my mate for years. He was a major customer of the game factory and a major supplier to my stores and franchises. When the shit hit the fan, he financed my first African run.
I pulled out a card and handed it to him. The woman had finished with Helen’s baggage and was about to start on mine.

The cop glance dat the card, then at Helen, who looked utterly bored. I was heading to La Paz. If anything was travelling anywhere, it probably wasn’t headed for the world’s cocaine capital.

He nodded to the woman and handed my paperwork back. Sherlock had decided he’d picked the wrong horse and torn up his betting slip.‘ Thank you, Mr McCoy. I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mrs McCoy, but you must understand we have many problems with drugs here in Peru.

Foreigners come here and are tricked in to taking cocaine back to their countries. Please go straight to your plane. Your baggage will be placed on board shortly.’ Luke owed me ten grand. He’d just paid back part of it.

Once we were back in departures, I finally relaxed into the role I’d been pretending to play downstairs. My shoulders loosened, the tension draining from my neck.‘ That was fun, eh?’ Helen stared at me and grimaced.‘ One day your luck is going to run out, Simon McCoy, and when it does, I don’t want to be there.’ With that, she stalked off to the duty-free shop to buy perfume. Perhaps to mask the smell off ear.

We hung around the departure lounge for another hour until Helen’s flight was called.‘ Alright, love, have a good journey. Give Jean-Noël and Rémy my love.’ We parted with a perfunctory kiss. I thought I saw a tear in Helen’s eyes, though it could just as easily have been wishful thinking or her contact lenses. She joined the queue without looking back.

She was pissed off, but it’s all very well criticising when you don’t have to come up with aviable alternative or pay the bills. Still, I felt lighter as her back disappeared through the gate. I sat reading while I waited for my own flight—too much time to think, which wasn’t ideal right now.

Frankly, I was scared. It had been a bloody tough year, and it had started in Bolivia, where I’d been busted on the street with a kilo of cocaine. The experience had terrified me, and now I was going back. I hadn’t allowed myself space to feel that fear while Helen was there.
Maybe that was what had fueled my paranoia in Cusco, cracking through the wall I’d built against it. But the best thing to do with fear is face it head-on.

So, while we wait for the plane, I’ll tell you about it. Break Point Helen was cool as a cucumber as she stood back and let the woman rummage through her clothes. She had no reason not to be.

I, on the other hand, was on edge and trying not to show it. Nothing strictly illegal. But complicated. The guy pointed to one of my Globe-Trotters, and I hefted it onto the stainless-steel bench. Mine was a different matter.