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be employed today, though some remain infallible.
For one brilliantly executed scam, Swan spent days
perfecting a technique for imperceptibly removing and
replacing the seals on jars of coffee. Finally satisfied,
he deposited a leaflet in a sealed jar, sneaked it back
into a store and waited. Days later, he received a call on
a phone that couldn’t be traced to him from an elderly
couple who’d found that they’d just won a free trip to
Colombia courtesy of the coffee company.
Posing as executives from the company, a heavily
disguised Swan and his sidekicks dispatched the couple
from the airport having extracted an agreement that
they would be photographed on their return with the
gifts they’d been given. Down south, still-disguised
Swan made a great show of handing over the souvenirs,
which were, needless to say, stuffed with the
finest toot. Abundant witnesses and the couple’s bogus
signed agreement – not to mention their genuine innocence
– meant they stood no chance of being convicted
if caught. Back home, the souvenirs were discreetly
swapped for identical if somewhat less valuable ones
during the photographic session and the contented
oldsters went on their way none the wiser.
BUY Robert Sabbag books online from and
Should you be naughty enough to read it as a handbook,
Snowblind boasts plenty of hints and tips for the
aspiring drug smuggler. (If you’re going to conceal your
stash inside that old favourite the hollowed-out ethnic
wooden ornament, choose something like medeira
wood, which has a high specific gravity.) But armchair
adventurers who’d prefer not to risk spending the rest
of their lives being sodomised by large South American
gentlemen in third world jails will enjoy it just as much
for the racy prose, period charm – the description of the
drug scene in 70s Harlem reads like the script for one of
those big-Afro Blaxploitation flicks – and terrific cast
of characters.
Sabbag’s rich turn of phrase brings brilliantly to
life such dramatis personae as the psychopathic Jago
(“There was always a look in his eye which seemed
to indicate that his body was metabolising raw flesh”),
Michel Bernier (who “embodied all those individual
characteristics that Americans find distasteful in a
man – he was French”), and the aptly named Billy Bad
Breaks, who was so inept that he achieved the singular
distinction of being jailed for attempting to smuggle a
joint into Mexico. �
421
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