He put us ashore by backing up to the bows of one of the charter cruisers. ‘Just remember what I said,’ he called down to us. ‘I’ve been in politics as well as business and I know what these boys can do, the sort of hoodlums their money buys them. It may seem all right in England, but over here …’ He laughed, raising his hand in a casual salute, screws frothing as he eased away. ‘And look after the little lady, eh?’ The American voice came faintly back to us across the water. We went up to my room and I did my best, lying there, naked between the sheets, the lights fading, the water blackening, a world of beauty nodding off to sleep. And in the dawn, in the first greying of the light, the hills upside down in the flat mirror of Burrard Inlet and the ashtray beside our bed full of stubbed-out butts, in that dawn reality stood like a silent ghost staring in at the big windows — a golden future for us both, and all I could think of was those bloody hunters waiting up in the Yukon, the two of us lying in each other’s arms and the shadow of the drug ring hanging over us …