He was making anything between 100 and 1500 euros a day.
‘That sounds good business,’ I said.
‘I treat them right, they never leave me,’ Peter assured, even though, of course, treating them right meant putting them on the game.
I was desperate to get him to the van, but had no reason to take him outside. It was more important to keep the dialogue open. He promised he would be back in two weeks’ time.
‘I’m off to New York,’ I bullshitted to sound in demand. I dragged the thing out to bait him to return with my standard Eastern European tease.
‘Are there any other business you might be interested in?’ One crook and one criminal sideline always led to another. ‘If it’s nice for me, it’s nice for you,’ he smiled like a game show host through his Slovak-cum-fake Irish accent.
There were more than just girls to his game. I couldn’t keep him much longer. He had a ferry to catch and he wasn’t producing today nor did he ask for money.
‘When you go back to Ireland, maybe we come to Ireland for a proper chat?’ I suggested.
‘I will bring girls to you who know the job. Seriously, dick in hand, five minutes finished.’ Peter made us laugh.
‘All right, my friend. Stay safe.’ I bid him goodbye.
We would meet again in another two weeks. After a further fifteen minutes, Paul and I upped and left. Once again, we would wait for his call. This time, it never came. We had to declare our hand at Television Centre. With 99 per cent of the show in the bag, we had been unable to pay it off. I couldn’t throw any more time at it and the Beeb couldn’t post any more resource or cash the story’s way – and now, they meant it. It was over.
Nobody seemed sharp enough to follow the scent to Ireland. We knew we would find Peter there – his wife was there, for goodness sake. It was yet another lead, but the best one yet.
‘You’re not allowed to ring them again,’ Home News told me.
I didn’t take it as a vote of no confidence. I understood it from an editorial and financial viewpoint. We had been here before and come back from the dead, but now they said Dublin wasn’t part of the story. I disagreed. The net was far greater than any of us could have originally known. We had exposed Kent and Dublin as hubs and learned that the trade route was also a goldmine for other activity. Furthermore, Kent Constabulary had made arrests after our work with them. If I hadn’t been on the Three Dogs, I would have found some way to work in a new angle and pushed for Ireland. I should have also gone to Panorama and asked them to take it from the Ten. The story was a timeless piece that would suit them perfectly, and they could return to it if we let it nestle quietly in the background. Collectively the Peters couldn’t do the deal in the time span that making a TV show allocated them. I wouldn’t have missed Three Dogs for the world but if I had stayed at home, I could have cultivated this to its conclusion. We didn’t hear from any of the Peters again.
Sex Trafficking never made it on air.
CIUDAD JUÁREZ
‘What do you reckon?’ I bantered with Ian Sherwood on email, early in January 2009. Ian was a Geordie looking after the Bureau in New York.
‘Do you have any contacts down there?’ he replied.
It was one of those sleeping stories that I had kept an eye on from time to time. ‘I haven’t, but I do have a contact in Mexico City called Dudley Althaus. I met him in Afghanistan after 9/11. He writes for the Houston Chronicle. I’ll put the word out.’
It was one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, located immediately south of El Paso, Texas … a border town on that infamous Mexican border. Hundreds had been murdered. The gangs were in control and out of control. Welcome to Ciudad Juárez, the most dangerous city in the world. It was a difficult pitch to sell internally. The Ten were interested, but not overly. It didn’t have top billing potential. Newsnight said they were in if the Ten didn’t want it. BBC America couldn’t get enough of it – they hadn’t reported this story, nor had anyone really. There was also some interest from radio. I knew it was good, waiting to be told and they would see that when we delivered.
Two untold aspects, which were almost unique, fascinated me. Firstly, the role of the sicaritos. These were the child assassins on the brink of society – often only thirteen or fourteen years old. Eighty per cent of the 2,000 dead in the previous year or so were under the age of twenty-five. The other angle that was almost unique was femicide. In the past ten to fifteen years, violence towards women had gone up significantly, more than anywhere else in the world. There had been approximately 600 killed in that time. Added to that, three thousand missing women were still unaccounted for.
In another era, Americans frequented Ciudad Juárez – now they largely stayed away. In one street of bars belonging to the drugs cartel, sixteen people had been wiped out in two months. One of the main problems was that the cops were also bent. Many, whether out of fear or looking for better pay packets, were controlled by the gangs. Only recently had the government thrown in the army – 10,000 soldiers had been tasked with cleaning up the city. It was plain to see as well; the military had taken the guns from the Traffic Police themselves. It was that bad.
Matthew Price was to be the reporter; Chuck Tayman was on the camera. Lightweight covert body armour was the order of the day. I also had a medical pack. As fixers go, we had pre-arranged the best in Ricardo Garcia Carriles. He had been chief of police between 2006 and earlier that year. The army knew we were coming, too – they would be our escort.
We touched down in El Paso on 15 March. This was cowboy country but it was also like any border town, busy with people crossing back and forth and packed with bars. I made a mental note to visit one in particular, The Kentucky Bar. Just like the Khyber Pass, the border had the bustle of commercialism – again probably as much legitimate as otherwise. It was the way of the world. Many international businesses were based here – labour was cheap and it was the gateway to both North and Central America.
Ciudad Juárez and El Paso were pretty much the same place; it was the line down the middle dividing the two cities and the two countries which caused many of the problems. For Mexicans, the desire to get out was paramount. The privileges on one side of the frontier far outshone those on the other. You were either on the Santa Fe Bridge side or the Bridges of America side. Indeed, many of the dignitaries from Ciudad Juárez chose to live on the El Paso side. That, alone, told you everything. Strangely though, when we arrived it just looked a military town, with hundreds of army vehicles hanging around and the odd civilian. Downtown Ciudad Juárez was idyllic – a lovely square and beautiful church the centrepiece of the attractions. But, like all these towns, everyone came out to play at night. We didn’t stick around.
The next morning, Matthew, Chuck and Ian went to the border to join the horseback patrol on the American side. What a gig: I would have loved to have been on that, taking control from the saddle, singling out who was a crook and who was genuine. But I had to go back over to Ciudad Juárez to set up ready for the interview with the Mayor the next day. A bit boring, but that was my job; it wasn’t all guts and glory. To be honest, I wanted to be that side of the border and it was fascinating travelling in with Ricardo. He took me in to the office, pointing out several crime scenes. He showed me buildings burned out by the cartels, and a huge restaurant on the corner of one of the avenidas that had been completely torched. Half a dozen guys had been killed inside – they hadn’t paid up. We passed other memorials to multiple shootings and a house where bodies were found with heads rifled with bullets. I loved it. Horseback could wait. This guy had seen it all.
I watched him work, talking to the mayor and making his calls, and then he took me to lunch. He brought his own security man in tow. Obviously, Ricardo must have had plenty of enemies in his time, and I would attract attention but, to his credit, he still had the balls to ride the city and dine nonchalantly in public. To the watching world, he would never display any weakness.
We pulled up outside this h
uge restaurant – it looked like one of those no-nonsense Gaucho restaurants with a cowboy menu. The place was packed. The security guy walked in first. Through the front door, we passed the grill on the left. It was a huge big open-planned room with wooden chairs and tables and a kitchen at one end. As we entered, everyone stared at the former police chief, and then at the bloke accompanying him – obviously, I wasn’t very Mexican. For a second they couldn’t take their eyes off us, before they realised it was Ricardo and carried on eating and chatting. To this day, every time I enter a restaurant, I always sit facing the door so I can see who is coming in and out. As I went towards the table, both Ricardo’s security guy and I made for the chairs and he got there first. Inside, I was impressed and pleased – the guy was a top-drawer operator, not that there would be much anyone could do if the cartels stormed the joint. Nor did it stop me shuffling my chair round at an angle. Old habits die hard.
Over an authentic Mexican lunch, I couldn’t help but notice that Ricardo was knocking back brandy after brandy. He wasn’t even trying to conceal it. He looked like he did this every day. He would soon stop if it cost £500 a bottle! Was this just the custom, was it the stress of the job that had got to him, or was he an alky? Unsurprisingly, he was delighted when I let the BBC pick up the tab.
That afternoon Ricardo showed me to the mayor’s office in preparation for the interview. You could see he was afforded maximum security. The underground car park beneath was like Fort Knox, each car heavily armoured. You could see why the key players didn’t live in Ciudad Juárez and needed this kind of protection. At the same time, Matthew and the others were picking up some cracking border shots of where the Mexicans regularly penetrated the fence. The Americans couldn’t patrol the whole thing all day long but it was important footage, showing how locals on the Mexican side just ran for it with no thought of what their second day in America would be like without documentation or any kind of legitimacy, arriving with just the clothes they were wearing and presumably heading for a given location where friends and family had fled before. And it was happening all the time. We weren’t running a story on border control, but it was integral to our piece on the most dangerous city in the world. Indeed many of the shops in El Paso were selling guns that found their way on to the streets of Ciudad Juárez, and much of the tension clearly came from the line dividing the two cultures.
That night, Ian and I crossed back into Ciudad Juárez to survey the bar scene, synonymous with much of the killing. Taking our chance, we got lucky, wandering as close to the border as we could – this time in an unofficial capacity. The captain of the Mexican army challenged me on whether we had permission to film. I lied and said we had. Those three famous letters, BBC, opened so many doors. He was happy to chat, too, explaining that he had 150 men here. Since their arrival in this area, the number of murders and shootings had fallen. But it had moved to another area and this was a huge city – they were always fighting a losing battle. His parting words went against everything I believed in when sniffing out a story.
‘Don’t go too far off the beaten track,’ he advised. On this occasion I took him at his word.
The next day we were back in to see the mayor, José Reyes Estrada Ferriz. The office was very dark, very wooden and very close to the border. In fact, you could see it from his window, just across the rail track. I felt this was deliberate and Matthew took him to town on the fact that he didn’t have the balls to live in his own city. Occasionally, he would stay over, but he had to protect his family. The signs were all there – he spoke very good English with an American twang. It’s almost as though he was a Yank, freelancing across the border on a daily basis.
In answer to the question on why the police couldn’t contain the violence, he said he had taken up the offer from President Calderón to use the military – corruption was right at the heart of the police. That’s why a blind eye had always been turned. We had half an hour with him, and his mobile never stopped ringing. He could only see us first thing in the morning. Everything about him and his entourage said stressful life, a man with a never-ending problem which wasn’t getting any better. He was on a hiding to nothing, and it would always be that way. The threats, he said, came with the territory. Hence, his close protection team. I asked him if he varied his routes.
‘That’s a bit difficult,’ he replied. ‘There are only two routes.’
But he did vary his times for going home, and he had the benefit of sitting in a VIP lane. Otherwise he would be unlikely to serve the three-year term without someone having a pop at him as he sat in traffic every night. It was a thankless task.
From the mayor’s office, we were taken to a military parade – many wore balaclavas to protect their identity so there would be no repercussions in their civilian lives. Then, we asked to film at the morgue as the latest round of bodies were brought in. In the end, they decided that we didn’t have the right permits, so Ricardo suggested we go out to the cemetery. Funerals were two a penny. Indeed, as we pulled up, a cortège was leaving. It was like a Clint Eastwood movie, bouncing along this dirty old track in the dusty red hot desert – this slow convoy departing the graveyard. As we approached, there was almost a stand-off as Ricardo wound down the window to ask if we could film and if they would talk on camera. We were gutted to miss the main event, as heartless as that sounds. Their crying and wailing would have been the ideal shot. As the statistics verified, the victims were young.
Our only other option was to talk to the staff at the graveyard. They would know more than most. The manager told us to walk down past these tacky ready-made wreaths for sale in the direction of the unmarked graves. That was the true face of war. Bodies that had been blown to bits or for whom no descendants had ever come looking were dumped at the end, paid for by the council. For some, they had found ID and attached a cross to them. To the right, little metal plaques stood on sticks – all unmarked. Further back, some had been identified and had roses on them. We spoke to the main gravedigger – a real cowboy-type character aged around sixty-five. He was paid per grave, and he did as he was told.
Day in, day out, he dug. That was all he did. It was a horrible job but somebody had to do it. He looked withdrawn, slightly haunted. What on earth did he go home and say at night? I looked him in the eye and knew that ‘seen too much death’ look which made you immune to it. He had probably seen as much as me, but for him it had a lasting legacy. Each body that he buried was a message from the cartels. Mess with us, and this is where you will end up. And there was no emotion about it – you wouldn’t get two days resting in a refrigerated morgue like at home. Here, you just get dumped in a box and buried in the ground. It was a strange, quiet, eerie place – a real rarity to find a marked grave. This was so different to the aftermath of the tsunami, when the unmarked graves were understandable. There, hundreds of thousands were killed in an instant and there weren’t the resources to clean up immediately. This was self-destruction, and you would surely know if a family member didn’t come home that night. We were talking only small numbers every day but the statistics came in the accumulation. There hadn’t been a natural disaster wiping out communities in Ciudad Juárez.
Were they unmarked because they had brought shame on the family? Or was it simply that some had had hands and heads cut off and were nearly unidentifiable? It was that brutal at times. The price of life was minimal. I hadn’t even seen such atrocities in Bosnia. If you were on the wrong side of the cartels, then you were doomed. It didn’t shock me but it left its mark. Had anyone seen more death and burials than me, and indeed, had anyone seen more different ways to die?
It was the first time this story had aired at home. News were happy. Generally, it was a part of the world that the traditional audience weren’t over-bothered about. Equally, coverage of Central America was poor on domestic television. I knew it was a fantastic story, and we would be coming back. I would position myself in the office as the expert in Ciudad Juárez security. Next time, we had to go out and film
at night, hoping to get lucky. Of course, in Ciudad Juárez, our luck would be somebody else’s misfortune.
By 13 November, we were back out there. In between, I scanned the net for anything and everything to do with Ciudad Juárez. If it was reported that there were more than ten deaths, I made a special note in my Juárez book. (When there was another free trip coming, like the class swot, I always gathered as much evidence as I could to help the story on its way.) I read an article which put the number of deaths for 2008 at 6,000. In the world of news, sometimes you only needed an anniversary or a landmark number to get a story moving again. Remarkably, the total number of women dead stood at 2,754 including the first decapitated female. It was clearly unusual for the majority not to be overwhelmingly male. Since 2006, a total of 28,000 people had died. To put that into context, it was more than the number of American military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
And yet, since our previous visit, the story had barely been covered. I started up on the email again with Ian and drip feeding the Ten, whetting their appetites so they couldn’t ignore me. There was no specific reason to return now, such as an election for which this would be a key issue, but Ciudad Juárez was clearly in meltdown. Our motivation to go was that if we didn’t, somebody else would have our story. It was time to get back out there. Suddenly, Juárez was back on the agenda.
Money was again an issue: it was hard to justify funding a great story that on paper prompted minimal interest in Britain. The window to make the story was so short and things were so tight in stumping the cash that I had to fly Economy to New York. Not even Craig Summers wanted a news story that bad! Life had been pretty normal this year. I’d done a job on fraudulent call centres in Delhi, been out to check out South Africa for next year’s World Cup and was just back from the Afghan elections with John. Oh yeah, I’d bought some armoured cars in Salt Lake City too. Nothing too interesting, then! I did the decent thing. As a Gold Card member, it was time to cash in some air miles and get an upgrade! Why break the habit of a lifetime?
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