She opened the album and swiped clumsily through the photos. She found the one she wanted and held it up so that Milton could see it. It was a picture of a young boy; Milton wasn’t the best judge of a child’s age, but he guessed he was five or six. He was looking into the camera with a glum expression on his face. The background to the shot was what looked like a squalid bedroom: Milton saw the bars of a cot, dusty naked floorboards and a scattering of cheap-looking toys.

“That’s your son?”

She nodded. “They sent that yesterday, before I…” She paused, but Milton knew what she was going to say: before I swallowed the drugs. “They send me pictures to remind me… to tell me that I have to do what they want. So you’re wrong. You’re wrong, John. I don’t have a choice. I don’t.”

This wasn’t good, he told himself. Not good at all. The yakuza were blackmailing her into a career as a mule. As a body packer. She would smuggle their contraband across the border inside her stomach and then deliver it once it was safe to do so. It was exceptionally dangerous, and not only—as appeared to be the case here—if one of the packages leaked. The Balinese authorities took drug smuggling seriously. Very seriously. He remembered reading about a middle-aged British woman who had been arrested with cocaine in her suitcase; she was still on death row, waiting for her appointment in front of the firing squad. Sakura would face a similar fate. There was no way that she would be able to get through immigration without help.

Milton had no time for drugs, but he was not about to abandon her.

“I’ll help,” he said. “But you have to do exactly as I say. Understand? Exactly.”

She nodded.

“I’m going to say that you’re drunk.”

She shook her head. “Only had a sip of champagne.”

“They won’t know that on the ground. I’ll say that we met on the plane and that you were knocking them back.”

He tried to work out his own risk. He thought that he was safe enough. He didn’t know Sakura. He had begun his journey in Panama, and Sakura had started in Turkey. There was nothing to connect them save the chance encounter in the queue. If he was asked, he would tell the truth: he didn’t know her, she had arranged for him to be upgraded, and he had gratefully accepted. He would say that he thought she was drunk. How would he know what the real reason might be?

He would help her get into the country, and then he would get her some help.

After that?

He would wait and see. One step at a time.

12