by Carl Hoffman
Michael stuffed a change of clothes into his Ibiza bag and bought a third-class train ticket to Naples, there to catch a Turkish Maritime Lines ship deck passage for Beirut. Like Bruno, he would test himself over and over, undertake ever-riskier endeavors. Wandering the alleys of Naples, he came upon a Gypsy with three cups and a marble—yes, that old trick, which he hadn’t seen before—and in short order once again he’d lost much of his money. Someone told him if he had a gun he could sell it in Beirut. He bought a Beretta 950 semiautomatic .25 caliber pistol and climbed on board the ship and slept on deck. Stars. Blue waves. Athens. Istanbul. Beirut, where he sold the gun and pocketed the profit. A dolmuş, a public communal taxi, to Damascus, then on to Baghdad, where he checked into a cheap hotel in the old quarter. It was June 5, 1967, and Israel swept into Egypt and Syria and war broke out and the police arrived, rounding up foreigners and herding them to a five-star hotel for deportation to Cyprus. But Michael had a way with people. He wore his hair short and he shaved every morning and he looked like a movie star, not some dirtbag, and a friendly police officer let him continue on to Kuwait. Which he did, hitchhiking in the back of trucks, arriving in the old harbor to find an encampment of a few dozen foreigners living in Bedouin tents. He stayed for weeks, selling his blood every three days at the hospital and buying one-ounce gold wafers with the proceeds. And at night the Kuwaitis would swing by the encampment and scoop them up in their Mercedes and take them out to their desert party tents for long nights of drinking and dancing.
He crossed the Gulf on a blustery day in 1967, sailed upriver to the port of Abadan, Iran, where he caught a truck for Isfahan, and from there across a mean, hot desert, sometimes riding in the bed of the truck, sometimes in the cab. They drove for days across sand-blown roads, sleeping under the truck at night, eating flatbread and goat cheese and hunks of halva. To Kerman, to Zahedan, across the Pakistan border to Quetta. He paid for nothing, slept in people’s homes and ate their food, and then it was on to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and every day was better than the last. Every day was amazing. He was smoking hash out of chillums and wandering dusty streets full of men in pakul hats and turbans under a giant sky.
Michael was the tip of the spear; over the next few years a new tribe of hundreds and then thousands of Western hippies would follow his path across Iran overland into India and Goa and Kathmandu. But in the summer of 1967 he had the adventure largely to himself. In Kabul he found a café down in the old city center, by the Kabul River, with high ceilings and dirty floors and men in shalwar kameezes and balloon pants and vests and pakuls or turbans, the whole panoply of Afghanistan, drinking tea and smoking hookahs at little tables, served by waiters in white jackets with frayed cuffs. He could sit there for hours and never get bored.
One afternoon, a tall Afghan strode up to him, leaned over his table, said, “My master would like to invite you for tea.” As he did so Michael noticed a pearl-handled pistol tucked under his waistcoat. He pointed across the café to an Afghan who looked about the same age as Michael, wearing Levi’s and a sweater.
“My name,” the man said, “is Shah Mahmood Khan. Where are you from?” He spoke excellent English.
“California,” Michael said.
“I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“Where’d you learn English?”
“In England and France.”
They shot the shit, the usual traveler small talk, and when Michael asked where he lived, he said, well, a really big house. “Would you like to come over for dinner tomorrow?”
Michael did, of course, and he was picked up the next day in a Mercedes limousine and brought to a hulking concrete house fronted with armed guards belonging to Mohammed Zahir Shah, the king of Afghanistan, who’d ascended the throne in 1933. Khan, it turned out, was his son. Michael didn’t meet the king that night, but they ate sticky sweets in a library full of leather sofas and drank Johnnie Walker on the rocks. Khan was just three years younger than Michael, had been educated in Europe, and felt a thirst for the West. He liked Western clothes, Western cars—to him it felt exotic, sophisticated. For the next week they met at the café every day, and Michael told him about America, and the prince trundled him around Kabul, and as Michael prepared to leave for India the prince said, “When you come back, find me.”
Michael moved on. Kabul to Jalalabad and through the Khyber Pass to Peshawar to Rawalpindi to Lahore to New Delhi, India, where he sold his gold in the markets of Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi, a tangled bazaar full of smoke and the smell of marigolds and shit and sweat and it felt ancient to him, the world magnificent.
After two months of wandering, he headed back to Europe via Kabul, rendezvousing again with Shah Mahmood Khan. “Let me show you something,” the prince said. They went to the big house again and Khan ushered Michael into a garage filled with cars. The long black limo. A Porsche. Lots of Mercedes. “Everybody in Kabul wants one of those,” he said. “If you want to make some money, go get a Mercedes and drive it here and I’ll help you sell it. Four-door. A sunroof. I’ll handle it and you’ll make a good profit.”
That sounded good to Michael, who promptly went out and acquired a range of goods, from old Afghan jewelry to other “things,” which he stashed in the false bottom of a suitcase. This time not across a single border, but across five: Kabul to Herat to Mashhad to Tehran to Tabriz to Istanbul to Sofia to Belgrade to Paris. It seems hard to fathom now, almost suicidal, but those were the days before hijackings, terrorist bombings, the war on drugs. Travelers were welcome in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Borders were open, no one was looking for anything, and guards just waved Michael through. Michael sold his goods in Paris, took a train to Frankfurt, bought a six-year-old four-door dark blue Mercedes sedan, and drove it overland back to Kabul, a round-trip journey of nine thousand miles. The prince promptly brokered the deal and Michael made a 300 percent profit.
He did it again. And again. Seven times in all, seven epic nine-thousand-mile overland round trips between Germany and Kabul, goods of one sort or another one way, the car the other, and each time he bought a better, newer Mercedes, and each time he made more profit. He started buying more jewelry; Michael had a good eye for beauty, for symmetry, and Afghanistan was full of old silver necklaces and bracelets and nose rings filled with lapis and turquoise that he bought by the kilo and that fetched a tidy profit in Paris. The process honed his eye, laid the foundation for his later dealing in tribal art. Had he settled down, had he studied art at university—even for a bit—and wrapped himself in the cloaks of a scholar, he might have gone to work for Sotheby’s like Bruce Chatwin, who himself never managed to earn a degree. That he appeared a pirate, a buccaneer of sorts, in the eyes of some was only because he lacked a certain gloss, a pedigree. In truth Michael’s hands were a lot cleaner than many in the art and antiquities market; he bought objects from the source, unlike many of the top-society dealers who turned a blind eye to the provenance of their merchandise.
In Paris in 1968 he watched the city unfurl in a burst of violence, threw a few bricks himself.
And then in 1969 in Kabul, in the midst of his fourth trip, the prince met Michael in their café, said, let’s take a walk. As donkey carts clip-clopped by and the Hindu Kush rose in the distance in that special Afghan air that was at once clear and smoky and crisp, Prince Shah Mahmood Khan lit a cigarette and leaned in close. There were problems, he said. His father’s cousin, Mohammad Daoud Khan, who had served as prime minister until 1963, was making trouble. The Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, under the aegis of the Soviet Union, was growing in strength; religious fundamentalists, too, were agitating, and the king’s family feared for its future. (Rightly so—Daoud would seize power in a coup in 1973 and the Soviet Union would invade six years after that.) The prince knew that Michael had been ferrying jewelry and other things to Europe—he reveled in the tales of his American friend—and Michael had proved reliable with the cars. We have some items we want you to carry to Europe, the prince said.
We’ll pay you well.
What? said Michael.
Jewelry, said the prince. Family jewelry. A suitcase. You can carry it on the plane. We need someone with no connection to the family, no political agenda, someone we trust.
Michael took a breath, a big drag on his cigarette. Said okay.
It happened fast. The prince took him to a tailor in Kabul. New slacks, a sports coat, and a light blue shirt with button-down collars. Bespoke. Took him to a barber for a tidy haircut. Michael left Kabul a few days later in a black Mercedes with little Afghan flags flapping from the front fenders. Him, the driver, and two Afghans he’d never met. To the Pakistani border, cruised right through. To Rawalpindi to the airport in Peshawar. There he and one of the men flew to Karachi. The man was big, serious, didn’t smile, didn’t joke, looked to Michael like a Hollywood Mafia hit man, and he carried a black leather bag, like a doctor’s satchel. They spent the night in Karachi, where the man said, I have a ticket for you. To Geneva. Tomorrow.
I want to see what’s inside the bag, said Michael.
No, said the man.
I need to see what I’m carrying, said Michael. I can’t do it unless I know.
They went to his room. He opened the bag. Some of the pieces were in little silk bags, others in boxes lined with velvet. A tiara. Earrings. Brooches. Bracelets. Necklaces. All studded with rubies. Sapphires. Diamonds. Big stones. Giant stones. Like pieces in the Louvre. Michael had already seen a lot, yet the things on the hotel bed blew his twenty-six-year-old mind.
They drove to the airport the next day, Michael in his new clothes, his shoes shining. He checked his personal suitcase, and only when they got to the departure lounge did the man hand over the satchel. Michael had carried all sorts of things across more borders than most people ever crossed in their lifetime, but this time he felt gripped with nerves. His heart thumped, he broke out in a cold sweat.
Don’t worry, the man said, putting his hand on Michael’s shoulder, looking him straight in the eyes. It’s all been taken care of. When you arrive in Geneva, someone will meet you at the airport and you’ll give him the bag and he’ll give you the money.
Michael was on his own. Minutes later he was sitting in first class, the crown jewels of Afghanistan between his feet.
In Geneva he walked smoothly through customs, collected his bag, and there stood another Afghan in a suit with a sign, “Mr. Palmieri,” as if he was arriving for a convention.
Michael kept the bag. They drove to a hotel. Went to a room where the man put everything on the bed and checked each piece off against a list in a little bound book. Okay, he said, when the last piece was counted, and handed Michael an envelope of hundred-dollar bills. A lot of them.
It was springtime. Michael flew to Paris for a few months, then went to Germany and bought another Mercedes and drove it back to Kabul. Made another jewel run, same as before, same guys, bought another Mercedes and did it all again.
By 1969, Michael had so much money he walked into a Ferrari dealer on Rome’s Via Veneto and bought an aqua twelve-cylinder 1963 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Berlinetta. With cash. Which he promptly drove to Bremerhaven, West Germany, and then shipped to Los Angeles.
Here Michael’s life becomes a blur that’s hard to keep track of, a haze of countries and airports and parties as he shot around the world like a silver pinball igniting the map in a psychedelic glow. Feeling invincible despite his draft evasion, Michael followed his Ferrari home to L.A., his first time back in the United States in four years. He was rolling in cash, had a closet full of European clothes, was as handsome as ever, drove that lovely, powerful car with its Pininfarina curves and little air scoops in a city of glam, rented a house on a ridge in Laurel Canyon. He partied at the Candy Store with Jim Brown the football star, Warren Beatty, the up-and-coming Don Johnson. Jay Leno, he said, pestered him, always jealous of his car and his women. He palled around with Bernard “Bernie” Cornfeld, an extravagant mutual fund king, who, according to his obituary in the New York Times, shuttled “around the world from his ancient French castle with a coterie of celebrity jet-setters” before attracting the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission and numerous prosecutions and lawsuits. In the midst of all this, Michael would jump on a plane for Europe, get a new Mercedes, drive it to Kabul, still making his last runs for the Afghan royal family. Then he met a long tall Cajun brunette wannabe actress from Baton Rouge named Danielle and bam, he fell in love. Crazy love. All-consuming love. Fuck it all, they said, and in 1970 he unloaded the Ferrari for a song to a Beverly Hills doctor and jetted to London and got married in a ceremony straight off the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. Velvet tuxedo with ruffles and flounces spilling out of his sleeves under a black cape. Hair to his shoulders and a curling mustache. Danielle in a long white silk dress and white flowers in her cascading hair, beneath a little white bonnet. They bought a Morris Mini with wood siding and drove to Ibiza for a long honeymoon, then to Italy, where they met the fashion photographer Franco Rubartelli, who shot Danielle and sent them on to Milan to Ricardo Gay, who had a modeling agency. The wheels turned, the stars aligned; Danielle was soon modeling and appearing in TV commercials and getting into drugs, heroin, which Michael wanted nothing to do with. One morning he wrote her a note, said he was out of her life, was heading to India. He left everything and climbed on a bus to the train station. Went to Switzerland, bought a used mail truck, ripped its insides out, welded it full of hidey-holes, and started on his way to Kabul. But he decided to pass through Milan en route and say hi to Danielle, who wrapped her arms around him and said, I’m coming with you.
It was 1971. They drove to Kabul, loaded up on stuff to sell, drove to India, which was now full of hippies, drove to Kashmir, rented a houseboat on Dal Lake, where they lived in splendor with an albino houseboy. And what the hell, they got married again on Dal Lake in a gondola, both dressed in drapey, flowing white Indian clothes festooned with garlands of marigolds and beads, Danielle’s ankles cosseted with bangles. Then headed down to Goa, to Anjuna Beach, where the tribe was assembling. Life there was like a hippie dream and they unloaded the goods and camped right on the beach and they danced and sang under the starlight. Michael was still winging it, though, here, there, everywhere. He took a house in Kathmandu, did a last jewel run for the royal family before the coming coup, started a clothing business out of New Delhi with an American business partner and his Hong Kong wife, a designer, started buying antiques and more jewelry in Rajasthan, bought Tibetan thangkas, carpets, bronze statues, antiques from Tibet and Nepal, and opened a gallery near L.A. with the American partner. Danielle succumbed to her taste for drugs and peeled off. Michael made the mistake of sleeping with his business partner’s wife at an acid party in the Fonseca Hotel in Delhi. The husband found out and shut the business down and took everything, every penny. Whatever. Michael was a whirling dervish: going up to Kashmir, Kathmandu, southern India, Bombay, Calcutta, buying antiques, traveling for adventure, hanging by the Ganges River and watching cremations. For half a decade he’d been a smuggler and had to look straight, his hair always short and well kept, his face neatly shaved except for a little mustache. But in India he surrendered, let it all go, grew long straight hair past his shoulders, a beard, draped himself in beads.
It was around this time, passing through Delhi and having a drink at a café, that Michael met a man named Charles and his French wife. Charles was Michael’s age, handsome. Charming. Of indeterminate but vaguely Asian ethnicity. He spoke perfect English and French. The couple wanted to buy him drinks, take him out. Michael liked to party, loved to socialize, was usually up for almost anything. He couldn’t say what it was, but this couple gave him the creeps—his third eye again blinking, this time big warning signs. He ran into the couple two or three times on the hippie trail in India and each time he rebuffed them. It just didn’t feel right. Which was a good thing; a few years later Michael recognized his picture. It was Charles Sobhraj, an infamous serial killer, event
ually convicted of twelve murders, who preyed on his first victims on the hippie trail after escaping from prison in France.
In 1973 he went to the Kumbh Mela, the once-every-twelve-year mass Hindu gathering in Haridwar, the largest coming together of people anywhere on earth, on the banks of the Ganges, and he was living in a tent when in walked a five-foot-ten blonde with hair past her waist and eyes the color of turquoise. She was draped in Rajasthani beads and necklaces, with long earrings, and again Michael flipped. Danielle had been gone eighteen months, and this was love at first sight. It was meant to be. It was fate. She was from New Jersey; her name was Erma Loraine Ferintinos. Michael’s mother was Greek, her father was Greek: to Michael they fit together perfectly. She’d been traveling the hippie trail through Afghanistan and ended up living in Afghan villages, where she’d assumed the name Fatima. To Michael she was so beautiful he was certain even women couldn’t take their eyes off her.
After three weeks at the Kumbh Mela, Michael and Fatima headed to Goa. Most of the hippies lived in shacks on the beach, but Michael had money—he always had money—and they rented a white stone house with a roof of red clay tiles on a bluff overlooking Anjuna Beach. They set up house in the mecca of hippiedom. There were no police. No authorities. LSD. Hash. Opium. It was all sold and consumed openly. The tribes streamed in from America and France and Italy and Spain and Switzerland, young and beautiful. The only thing that kept them in line was a 1960s-era understanding that they had to police themselves. They held full-moon parties that went on for days. Walked naked on the beach, slipping on the skimpiest loincloths for trips to the market. “We were all brought up in Western cultures,” Michael said. “Taught to think a certain way. We were war babies. Baby boomers. But in Goa we found a totally different lifestyle with no authority. For the first time in our lives we were free. We had cut our chains loose from society and began our own society, our own clan. Just our peers; if we did something wrong, you answered to your peers. You fucked up. Chill. It was all about going within, leaving your body. Meditation. Yoga. Elevating your shakti through your chakras. Sex drugs and rock and roll and then you’d go clean yourself in an ashram.” The Goa season lasted from December to February, then they all moved to Kathmandu, then Kashmir and the cool mountains during the heat of the summer, then back to Goa again. Michael’s photos from Kathmandu look like a fantasy, a hippie culture so iconic it appears make-believe. Crowds of young people with long hair playing flutes. Beating drums. Smoking weed. Beads. Bindis on their foreheads. Guitars. Women dancing with flowers and feathers in their hair and hairy armpits. Men in orange shiny shirts. Tie-dyed pants and sandals. Beards. Leis. Garlands. Guys with blue eye shadow and big red hibiscus flowers behind their ears and red tribal marks on their bare chests.
