14
ONE OF THE LESSONS of life: white material in a plastic bag spells trouble, especially when slapped onto the counter of a dark shop in the outskirts of Djibouti by a man missing his front teeth and with a look that said, “Here’s the stuff, now give me the money.”
Trouble was, I had no idea what was in that bag, and neither did I have any money of the type that he would accept. I’d walked into his shop because Tamu at the hotel had told me this was where I could hire a pilot and I wasn’t going to become an accomplice in someone’s drug ring. With his teeth gone, the man could be a krayfish, the first we’d seen. Could be. Or he might just have bad teeth. I was starting to distrust everyone in this crowded, stinking town.
I eyed the white stuff, which looked like a bar of soap crushed un
