High in the hills of Pakistan, field upon field of waving opium poppies start to shed their petals. And local tribesmen begin to harvest the only crop that grows with ease in their dry, barren soil, the only crop they can sell at a profit--and the only crop that men and women across two continents are prepared to fight and kill for: heroin. To Jack, a high-ranking British government minister, the drug problem has always been an abstract election issue, until a fact-finding mission to Pakistan coincides with a volcanic upheaval in his personal life. With the horror of heroin addiction suddenly very close to home, Jack find political expediency in direct conflict with his instinct for justice. The choice that faces him is simple--his career or his family. For Karl and Helen, it's the source of their wealth--as long as no one talks. To Fazle, it's a means to feed his family and to fuel his self-respect. To Caroline, pretty, privileged, and hopelessly hooked, it's a necessity. And for Dieter and Ulli, it could get them promotion, but it's more likely to kill them. From the slums of Karachi to the Houses of Parliament, from the Hamburg docks to the Afghanistan border, "Traffik" is a tense and gripping journey through the twilight world of international drug smuggling--a world ruled by greed, paved with gold and shadowed by violent death.