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SNOWING IN BALI

the same holes they'd unpicked so that the alterations would be invisible. Like many horses before and after him, Rafael was ambitious and believed he could play this game on his own. But like most complicated things that looked easy, it wasn't, and the assumption that it was easy was why many mules got busted.

I start thinking, 'Mmm, fuck, I can do this myself. I don't want to ever carry anymore. Fuck off.' Then I meet these Peruvian guys in Bali, and then they say, 'Forget ganja, man, play with coke, it's much more money.'

– Rafael

Life was about to get beautiful.

*

Sitting on the tiled floor of his Bali bungalow, Rafael slashed open the lining of the Billabong surfboard bag and extracted the plastic bags of shimmering cocaine. He opened up one and put a little on his fingertips. He sniffed. His eyes shone. It was 100 per cent pure. Amazing. He'd flown to Peru to meet the supplier, buy it, pack it and then give it to a horse to carry back to Bali, where the deal was to take place. Carrying it himself was a job too risky and lowly paid for Rafael, when he could now be a boss.

Later that afternoon he was going to make his first bulk sale to an Australian surfer. The guy was buying a kilo for $48,000 – 48 times what Rafael had paid for it. He spooned the cocaine, bit by bit, onto a small digital Casio scale, then put it into a plastic Bintang supermarket bag. After measuring 1 kilo, he tightly folded the plastic bag and wound tape around it. It was crude. It was early days and he would become more sophisticated. But

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