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his passport later on, then stash the backpack in the room for a couple of nights; simultaneously, he booked a second room in another fake name, in a nearby hotel, so he could stay near the blow but not sleep with it.

If days rolled on without finding a buyer, he'd save cash by leaving the bag in hotel storage. ‘Oh, I'm going surfing in Lombok. I'll be back in five days, can I please leave my bag here?’ he'd lie, asking just what real tourists asked. In reality, he'd stay in Bali hunting for a buyer. Unwittingly, the hotel would be nursing a big bag of drugs. Most of the dealers were using this trick.

One of Alberto's friends was using it when he got busted. He'd left 1 kilo of hashish and 1.8 kilos of cocaine in storage at the Padma Hotel, telling staff he was going to Lovina in Bali's north for a few days. Actually he had been staying in Legian to find a buyer and was now sitting in a hot, cramped police cell, with all his cash tied up in the drugs in the Padma's storage room. Facing years in Bali's hellhole Kerobokan Prison unless he could get his hands on some cash, he was desperately pleading with his friends to retrieve the backpack. It was a big risk.

He needed money real quick, and asked many mutual friends, ‘Please somebody help me, I'll give you 30 or 40 per cent of what's there, please I need help, go and get my stuff and sell it.’ But everybody just ran away, as usual if somebody gets busted. Everybody gets so scared, ‘Hey, don't call me anymore.’ They all change their phones, throw the SIM card in the garbage. Nobody answers calls from this guy anymore because you never know if he is talking to the cops. Maybe he bargained to be set free if he gives names, sets people up. This happened a lot, people get busted and the police offer them a deal: ‘Okay, you work for us and we're going to set you free. You give us someone bigger and we “change heads” and you're free.’ And they

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