by Howard Marks
‘How have you been, Malik, since we met on that sad day?’
‘I am in good health. How well did you know my friend?’ he asked.
‘I know he was a policeman here for eleven years. I know he had a textile business in Dubai. I know he was a grandson of the former King of Afghanistan. He drank Johnnie Walker Black Label and smoked Benson & Hedges. I visited him many times at his house just outside Cannes. In my pocket I have a photograph of him standing next to me and my daughter, Amber.’
Suddenly, Malik’s eyes dug right into me. He turned away; then he looked alarmed. ‘Give me your hotel phone number. I’ll call you later.’
I gave him a Park Hotel card and scrawled my room number on it.
As I walked to the lobby doors, I was aware of being watched. I was going to be followed. I wondered by whom: Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, the Inland Revenue, people working for Malik, McCann’s henchmen, or the DEA trying to catch Ernie? It didn’t much matter. Hong Kong is one of the easiest places to lose a tail. I ran out of the hotel, turned left, crossed Nathan Road, and ran up to Chungking Mansions, a 1960s high-rise that had been converted to a warren of Middle Eastern-run emporia and cafés. No business licences were issued for premises on the upper floors. Each door there displayed a sign stating: ‘Do Not Knock. Private Residence.’ If one should knock, the door was immediately opened, revealing a small, illegal restaurant. Within a few minutes of leaving the Peninsula, I was eating a vegetable curry prepared by Bombay Muslims.
There didn’t appear to be any tail when I left Chungking Mansions, but just in case, I took a speedy walk through a maze of alleyways and dived into the Tsim Sha Tsui underground station. This was my first sight of Hong Kong’s new Mass Transit Railway. To familiarise myself, I took a train to another station a few stops down. I bought a Railcard. Next time, I would be able to do it much quicker. I emerged from the underground and went to the Park Hotel for a lie-down.
Malik called in a few hours.
‘Same place at eleven,’ he suggested.
I didn’t like the idea of giving the tail a second chance, but I agreed. The Peninsula lobby was a lot quieter, but Malik seemed infinitely more relaxed. His eyes twinkled, and he smiled broadly.
‘So, you are not the Mr Nice. You are D. H. Marks. According to hotel.’
‘You can call me Mr Nice if you want, Malik.’
‘No. I shall call you D. H. Marks. In Pakistan, we know your good reputation.’
‘Thank you, Malik. Are you happy to do business with me? Because if so, I have a proposition to discuss with you, at your convenience.’
‘D. H. Marks, I am always happy if, by the grace of Allah, I am doing business with honest people.’
‘Are you able to get the product?’ I asked.
‘Yes, inshallah, but I will not deal with the devil product.’
I presumed he couldn’t possibly have meant hashish and was referring to either heroin from the Golden Crescent area of Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan or black-market Stinger missiles. These latter had been donated by the Americans to the Afghan rebels for use in their struggle against the former Soviet Union, but an alarming number found their way to the weapon shops of Peshawar and were sold to a variety of terrorist groups.
‘Malik, the product I’m talking about is the one you used to sell in Hyde Park in 1965.’
His smile was broader than ever. He held out his hand.
‘D. H. Marks, this is the mother-business. I have got the best. And, inshallah, it can be got out of my country many ways. But no Americans. Already I have seen one DEA here in hotel this morning.’
‘Well, they’re everywhere, Malik. But the product might well end up in America.’
‘Where product end up and with who it end up is not my concern. I meet only you, D. H. Marks. How I give product, you say. How you give money, I say.’
‘Okay.’
We shook hands on it.
Malik had to leave that night. We discussed how we would communicate with each other in future and agreed that our next meeting should be in Hong Kong, and that its purpose would be for me to give him a reasonable deposit of cash, together with instructions for exporting a load of hashish. We looked forward to it.
The next day I opened up a bank account. You never know when you’ll need one. I chose Crédit Suisse. It was situated on the thirty-second floor of an enormous gold-coloured skyscraper called the Far East Trading Centre, situated in the Admiralty area of Hong Kong Island. I was told a Mr Stephen Ng would be my contact there on the bank staff. I deposited one thousand Hong Kong dollars.
The scamming bug was now well and truly back. Bangkok was less than three hours away. Phil Sparrowhawk came to mind. Although we’d parted on less than perfect terms following the loss of 750 kilos of Thai sticks in McCann’s banana truck during 1979, Phil had written me a welcome-home card on hearing of my release from Wandsworth prison. He’d given me his Bangkok telephone numbers. I didn’t want them on my hotel bill, so I went to the Cable and Wireless building in Middle Road, which had facilities for making long-distance calls anonymously.
‘You’re joking, surely. Oh! No! It can’t be, can it?’
Phil still had his neutral accent, with just a trace of cockney.
‘I was thinking of coming to see you, Phil.’
‘Oh, yeah. When?’
‘Right now. I’m in Hong Kong.’
‘Fantastic! I’ll book you into the Oriental Hotel. It’s still the best in the world. Tell me which flight, and I’ll meet you at the airport.’
After I checked out of the Park Hotel, Cathay Pacific took me to Bangkok. I’d forgotten how good Asian airlines were compared to those of Europe and America. The air hostesses were smiling, happy beauty queens, as opposed to dowdy Pan American frumps. The in-flight entertainment was provided free of charge through electronic headphones rather than through farcical toy stethoscopes rented out to passengers by other airlines. The food was hot and spicy, and the drink endless.
Immigration and Customs officials at Bangkok’s Don Muang International Airport were friendly and welcoming. Phil stood just beyond them. He looked as nondescript as ever. One couldn’t tell if he was down to his last penny or if he’d just made a million. We started towards the airport car park.
‘Well, Albi, I … I suppose I call you Howard now. What’s it to be first, a massage, a drink, check-in at the Oriental?’
‘The hotel, I guess, but I tell you what I need, Phil, and that’s a few very strong joints of Thai weed. It’s murder trying to get any in Hong Kong.’
‘I thought you might say that. There’s some already rolled in the car.’
‘Great! You haven’t started smoking yet, though, have you?’ I asked.
‘No, but it’s easy for anybody to get any quantity. I mean any quantity.’
We got into Phil’s car. It, too, must have been nondescript. I can’t remember. But it was clean and had three tightly rolled joints in the virgin ashtray.
I was halfway through the second before I became very stoned. Like every other Bangkok driver, we were stopped at permanently red traffic-lights, listening to high-pitched Thai pop, and yelling and swearing at droves of persistent, windscreen-hammering kids trying to sell flower chains. We were sweating streams, and choking on black clouds of exhaust fumes. An elephant trundled past. Orange-robed monks held out saucepans for food. Oversized billboards depicted cartoon characters speaking in Sanskrit. Monsoon clouds gathered as we approached the Oriental. Phil dropped me off outside and went to park his car. Red-eyed and legless, I went to the reception desk.
‘Long flight, sir?’ queried the clerk, mistaking my stoned state for one of tiredness and jet-lag.
I smiled, vacantly.
‘You have been given VIP accommodation, Mr Marks, in the Joseph Conrad Suite. This way, please.’
Joseph Conrad had been instrumental in the founding of the Oriental Hotel. Other authors, such as Somerset Maugham and Evelyn Waugh, also wrote and lived there. Su
ites are named after them. White cane furniture, period photographs, bamboo, and leafy tropical flora abound.
A few minutes after I had been shown to my room, Phil arrived. We both said how glad we were to see each other and how stupid we’d been to let McCann’s banana madness split our partnership. Phil regretted not having stayed in England to benefit from the Colombian scam, but he’d done all right. Robert Crimball, Ernie’s original Bangkok supplier, had been badly busted and was serving a horrific 45-year sentence, but Phil was regularly visiting him in prison and was working on a way of buying his freedom. Robert had given Phil his contacts, enabling him to maintain good relations with suppliers of Thai weed. Moreover, Phil was still in touch with Jack ‘The Fibber’ Warren in Australia.
A few of Phil’s loads had worked, and he was all right for money, very all right. Some of his hard-earned dope money had been invested in a host of legitimate businesses. He had a Chinese partner with whom he operated a food export company, and he also partnered an American named Dennis in a manpower company. Both ventures had expanded their operations to encompass the Philippines, where Phil, through some Australian friends, had made the acquaintance of a British aristocrat and scammer named Lord Moynihan. Phil was glad I’d sent him to Bangkok all those years ago. He’d married a Thai who’d just given birth to his daughter.
Once the monsoon was over, the new marijuana crop would be almost ready. He was going to buy several tons. He could get any amount exported by air or sea. He could arrange to supply private boats, sitting and waiting 200 miles away in the South China Sea, with unlimited amounts of the finest Thai weed. His connections outside of Thailand, however, were limited to those who could smuggle into Australia. He needed others, particularly in America and Britain. Did I still know any?
I brought Phil up to date with my activities, carefully leaving out any mention of Pakistan. He was pleased that Ernie was raring to do business and was impressed with what I was running in Soho. He asked if West End Secretarial Services could serve as his London office. I agreed. It would make a good front for our future illegal activities. There clearly would be some.
Business over, we went out on the town to Patpong, two parallel streets containing over a hundred bars and noodle stalls and several thousand prostitutes, busily go-go dancing, stripping, and sticking Coca-Cola bottles, razor blades, and table-tennis balls up their vaginas. We bought lots of girls lots of drinks of non-alcoholic cordial. We were popular.
The hookers attempted to find out if we were naïve and rich.
‘Butterfly. You no like me. Fahlang, buy me one more drink. You velly handsome man. How many times you been Bangkok, fahlang? You like my body? Which hotel you stay?’
After about ten bars, the thrill wore off. We hailed a samlor, a three-wheeled motor scooter with a covered seat on its back axle. There are tens of thousands careering round the streets of Bangkok twenty-four hours a day. They are better known as tuktuks and sound like epileptic power saws. With an unexpected mastery of Thai, Phil asked the tuktuk driver in which direction he was heading. The tuktuk driver said he was going to have a late-night meal in Pratunam market where all tuktuk drivers ate. This sounded good. We agreed to pay for the tuktuk driver’s meal if he took us there. He couldn’t believe his luck, and we tore off at breakneck speed.
Pratunam market is a vast expanse of rustic kitchens and well-worn tables competing with each other for space and custom. Some tables and kitchens are under tents, others under corrugated tin roofs. The whole area is bathed in blinding fluorescent light. Everyone wears shades. Hundreds of hookers, some puzzlingly wearing fake Thai Air stewardess uniforms, focused intently on their food. There would be no potential clients here. Tuktuk drivers had no money. There were no menus. A few giant crabs and frogs had escaped from a kitchen and were scraping and hopping between tables and chairs. No one took a blind bit of notice, except us. I wanted to smoke a strong Thai joint. This was too good not to witness completely stoned. Phil had none left, and his house was too far away. The tuktuk driver was called Sompop. He could get ready-rolled ganja cigarettes in just half a minute at rock-bottom prices. I was beginning to like Sompop. We ate some unidentifiable reptiles. I got stoned. Phil got bored. We agreed to meet each other the next morning. Phil caught another tuktuk. Sompop took me to the Oriental Hotel. I asked him if I would be able to see him on my next visit to Bangkok. He said he would like that very much, but he had no address or phone number. I asked if there was anywhere other than the hopelessly chaotic Pratunam market where he regularly spent time. He said he went every Friday evening to the Erawan Buddha next to the Erawan Hotel. That would do fine.
I had breakfast with Phil. We went over everything again and talked vaguely about smell-proofing marijuana shipments and their cost. Phil took me to the airport. He’d brought some more Thai weed, which I chain-smoked all the way to the airport car park.
It had been a productive twenty-four hours, and I felt invigorated as I climbed aboard the Thai Air flight to Hong Kong. The hostesses smiled seductively. These were real ones, not the phoneys in Pratunam. I accepted a copy of the Bangkok Post and was intrigued to read a headline: ‘Wales Hopes To Export Its Water’. The article explained how the Welsh Water Authority was attempting to sell some of its vast and never-ending supply of fresh water. Storage tanks and facilities would be provided in South Wales at Milford Haven, Britain’s largest natural harbour and oil-importing port. Oil tankers would be bulk-loaded with fresh water piped from the harbour’s storage tanks. Many countries were short of water, and this proposal, the article concluded, made a lot more sense than the recently aborted attempt to tow icebergs from the Arctic.
I had a strong urge to get involved in this business. I don’t know why, and I didn’t know how. Drinkbridge, the name of our wine company, would be a remarkably appropriate name for such a business. One of the keys to business success is to pretend to be doing what one ultimately wants to do. The Thai weed was still revving-up my brain. I decided to present myself to the Welsh Water Authority as the man who could buy their billions of gallons of surplus water. First I would need to learn all I could about the subject. That wouldn’t be hard: I’d read books, talk to my father, and employ a researcher. I would also need some credentials: namecards and Drinkbridge company notepaper that didn’t have grapes and bottles of wine all over it. Hong Kong would be a good place to begin getting that together.
There was no problem with Customs at Kai Tak airport. The small plastic bag of Thai marijuana in my sock remained undiscovered. I checked into the Park Hotel and walked down to Cable and Wireless to telephone Ernie and tell him supplies could be arranged from both Pakistan and Thailand. He told me that while in Hong Kong I should present myself to a friend of Patrick Lane’s, Bruce Aitken, who ran a finance company called First Financial Services. Investment money for the forthcoming Pakistan scam and generous expenses for me would probably be sent through him and given to me in Hong Kong sometime in the New Year. He would get Patrick to call him immediately.
Bruce was a likeable American who convincingly played the part of an investment broker. Patrick had already advised him about the investment money. I asked if he knew a reliable accountant for company formation. He suggested Armando Chung and made an appointment for me to see him the next morning.
It was the end of the business day, and Bruce offered to take me out before he went home. He left me in the basement of the New World Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui East, at a place called Bar City, a complex of several bars having different themes. I chose the Country Bar, where sixty Chinese were jiving, square-dancing, and singing along to a Filipino band playing Waylon Jennings.
I drank a lot, went to a few more bars, and found myself in Bottoms Up, Hong Kong’s notorious yuppie titty joint, which had recently been over-glamorised in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun. It was about 2 a.m., and members of the Western and Japanese banking, business, and diplomatic communities were passing out, vomiting, quarrelling with their wives, and unash
amedly leering at anything that was topless. There were several categories of African and Asian hostesses: noisy, rude ones who shoved their tits in the faces of men who bought them gallons of expensive coloured water, quiet ones who were prepared to be shagged in the nearest doss-house, and beautiful rich geisha types who flattered and flirted in the hope of either changing or cementing their fate.
I sat alone for about ten seconds. Two Hong Kong geishas with the unlikely names of April and Selena joined me. They were terrified of the prospect of Hong Kong being governed by Chinese Communists.
I couldn’t fully sympathise with their fears, for as far as I could determine, China had been ferociously capitalist for about eight thousand years and had set up thriving business communities in every country in the world. It had been Communist for less than a century. They’d get over it. Already, the mainland Chinese had surrounded Hong Kong with fourteen gigantic skyscraper developments called Special Economic Zones. Each was a mini-Hong Kong. The worst that could happen to Hong Kong, the end product of combined Western and Chinese ruthlessness and the paradigm of Keynesian economic success, was that it would expand.
April and Selena thought these views of mine to be rather naïve. They wanted out. Ideally, they wanted to marry yuppie millionaires from London and become British, but they would settle for less. They would even go so far as to pay good money for documentation that enabled them to become British residents. I thought of my Mr Nice passport lying dormant in Campione d’Italia. Would one of these geishas like to be Mrs Nice? I could get a load of false passports and marry twenty exotic Far East hookers and get handsomely paid.
April, Selena, and I went to an all-night Japanese sushi bar. After many cups of steaming sake, we exchanged phone numbers and addresses. I promised to get them and their friends some husbands. They assured me that anything I wanted in Hong Kong was mine: places to stay, the best business connections, admission to all clubs, and hookers. I asked if they could get me some marijuana, just to smoke. ‘Marks, I’ll get you anything under the sun, no problem,’ laughed April, pulling out a joint as we left the Japanese restaurant and asking a cab-driver to take us to a club called Nineteen Ninety-Seven.
