In a breezeblock hut at the edge of an Afghani field there are twenty parcels. They are relatively small, like you could send them in the post, tightly packed with something that nonetheless feels soft and shifting. They are mummified in thick tape, airtight. Each of them weighs precisely one kilogram, without the wrapping.
In this country, adjusted to U.S. dollars, the parcels retail at something around five grand.
They'll make their way across the world, with the majority headed for the richest, most developed countries. America, for instance. One goes to a small house in New Mexico, where it is weighed and measured. The man who weighs and measures it will say it is fifty grams short, and skim that much for himself. He'll get found out and then found dead.
The rest of the brick will be mixed with other powders. Milk sugar, baking soda, flour, Tylenol. And this new mix will be split into a lot of tiny packages, and each has its own price, and each will be sold. By the time the first hit goes to the head of the first junkie, the total value will be more than three hundred thousand dollars.
But it won't be any of these particular bricks, because Holmes visits. On the edge of an Afghani field a breezeblock hut burns.