Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and pay the mules, then - and this was the only time he ever touched
the dope - personally take the bags to his client's room, where he
collected his money and immediately left. The chances of his
getting caught were virtually nonexistent, as he smugly told me.
His only problem was converting a hundred and twenty thousand
Canadian dollars, cash, much of it in twenties, into American
currency. Mission accomplished, he flew to Switzerland for another
appointment with his banker.
Purchasing the hashish beforehand was something else he always
did personally. He didn't want some mule getting ambitions.
I had imagined it would be fairly straightforward to buy hashish
in India, since every other person I met tried to sell me some. I was
wrong. For a start, you didn't buy it in India; and it was not hashish
Ray bought - it was hashish oil. And, he proudly claimed, he was
the man who had taught the Pathan hashish lords how to
manufacture the oil. This was what he promised to show me: his
secret plant, deep in the north west frontier province of Pakistan. As
Ray told it, he was treated like a deity up where the Hindu Kush
formed a bridge between worlds, where the Orient began its slow
metamorphosis into the Occident.
Ray and Debbie were a good argument for puritanism. Their
relationship was so open it didn't even have horizons. Both screwed
around prodigiously; Debbie boasting of the young boys fresh off
the aeroplane she picked up and fucked - she emphasised this:
she
fucked
them
- and Ray bragging of more complex pleasures, many
of them voyeuristic in nature, some involving local girls and animals.
Money was clearly the antidote to the ennui and apathy that
permeated their vacuous lives. Ultimately it would claim them both
completely. Money's like that.
As the three of us bade farewell to our hosts, I promised I'd be in
Bombay as we'd arranged, and that I was looking forward to a tour
of Ray's underground empire and the opportunity to be shot by
hostile tribesmen. It was almost guaranteed that I'd never see either
of them again. Their short-term memories consisted of seconds - if
their shorter attention spans even
provided
them memories at all.
