Mr Nice

by Howard Marks

  We flew on to Leite. I beat Moynihan at Trivial Pursuit. He blamed it on there being too many science questions. David became ill and blamed the jawbone. Joe slept.

  The sequestrators met us at the private airfield and drove us to the summer palace. The garden was an eclectic extravaganza of attempts to ensure an after-life. Statues of Egyptian and Hindu gods peeped out from behind a private Roman Catholic chapel. Golden Buddhas waited in lines outside a mosque. Inside the palace was resplendent with attempts to delay the onset of any after-life. There was a private intensive-care unit, a room devoted to homeopathic remedies, a gymnasium, and more shoes than one could try on in nine lifetimes.

  On the way out, Moynihan pointed to a nearby stretch of land.

  ‘Is that part of the estate?’ he asked one of Aquino’s sequestrators.

  ‘No, Lord Moynihan, that land must belong to someone else.’

  ‘A pity. It would make an excellent golf course.’

  ‘We would sequester it, whomever it belongs to.’

  Corruption did not seem destined to leave the Philippines overnight.

  David Embley and myself, however, were. We caught the Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong. His stomach upset over, he was having a good time. He had enjoyed Moynihan and the Philippines and was looking forward to Hong Kong. He had not been there since he was in the Forces and wondered how much Wan Chai had changed.

  Filing up to the Immigration counter, I got one of those flashes. Although I’d never had trouble in Kai Tak airport, I knew something bad was going to happen.

  ‘David, I think I’m going to get pulled. If I’m not out by tomorrow night, tell Judy. Let me go through first so you can see what’s happening.’

  David looked shaken. I walked up to the Immigration counter. The Immigration Officer looked up the name in her big black loose-leaf book. She double-checked the entries in my passport and her book.

  ‘One moment.’

  She disappeared holding my passport. Three police came to the counter. She returned with another Immigration Officer, again Chinese but more senior.

  ‘Please accompany me, Mr Marks, to pick up your baggage.’

  ‘I have no baggage.’

  ‘You fly to Hong Kong with no baggage?’

  ‘I just have carry-on baggage.’

  ‘Let me see your ticket. Are you travelling alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please come with me to my office.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We are performing a routine random stop, Mr Marks. There is nothing to worry about.’

  I was led into an office and asked to wait. A television blared away in Cantonese. A secretary bashed away at a computer. Immigration Officers walked in and out but took no notice of me. I chain-smoked cigarettes.

  ‘Mr Marks, I’m Detective Pritchard.’

  ‘Ah, a fellow Welshman to my rescue. What the hell’s going on here? Is it my past catching up with me?’

  ‘Why? Do you have a criminal record in Hong Kong?’

  ‘Oh no. But when I was younger, I got busted in England for marijuana.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t concern us here. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what’s going on. They don’t tell me half the time. They do these random searches on people coming in, and if a British bloke is stopped, I just come along and make sure all’s fair and proper. Let’s go to my office. It’s a bit quieter.’

  Pritchard’s office was a lot quieter. It was done out like a prison cell. Pritchard and I sat at the table for hours. We talked about disasters: the Chernobyl meltdown and the Welsh rugby team’s mediocre performance in last season’s home internationals (won 2, lost 2). We were waiting for Customs to come and search me.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Marks, but the Customs seem to be very busy today.’

  ‘Must be lots of random stops, Mr Pritchard.’

  ‘Aye, I expect so. They shouldn’t be too long now.’

  They eventually came, searched me very lightly, and took away my briefcase.

  Pritchard then disappeared, leaving me with a stonily silent Chinese. After a few more hours, Pritchard returned with my briefcase.

  ‘Sorry about that, Mr Marks. Took longer than I thought.’

  ‘A lot to photocopy was it, Mr Pritchard?’

  Pritchard blushed.

  ‘You are free to leave, Mr Marks.’

  I found out three years later that the documents had indeed been photocopied. Not that it mattered. My briefcase always contained only what I wanted others to see.

  I checked into the Shangri-La, much to the relief of an anxious David Embley. I transferred loads of money from Crédit Suisse to Malik’s man in BCCI. I took David to Bottoms Up and other Hong Kong night-spots.

  We flew to Bangkok. Customs tore me apart. We flew to Rome. Customs tore me apart. We flew to Palma. No problem. I stayed in Palma for several months. I’d had enough of travelling.

  During that summer of 1986, the rest of the ten tons of Pakistani was successfully sold. All the money had been collected by John Denbigh and paid to those who were due. We were very rich. Although it had been a very successful scam, there was no feeling of elation when it was all over. It had gone on for so long, Ernie was in prison, and there had been so many problems. And, of course, we wanted to get richer and do another successful scam.

  Gerry Wills, Ron Allen, Flash, and a friend of theirs called Roger Reaves visited Palma. They came by private plane from the French Riviera, where Roger, an escape artist, a fugitive from US justice, and a one-time cocaine pilot and marijuana grower, currently hid. They stayed in Mallorca’s luxury hotels and spent fortunes. They wanted to do another load from Pakistan, this time twenty tons. Would Malik oblige?

  I met Malik in Seoul. Hyundai, Korea’s largest company, was intending to invest several million dollars in Mehar Paper Mills. We could be seen together in Seoul by anybody. It didn’t matter. We were well covered. Malik and I answered questions on Malik’s paper-mill in Lahore. The Hyundai senior executives seemed impressed. Malik mentioned the necessity of receiving an under-the-counter payment for facilitating Hyundai’s investment. The Hyundai senior executives said this was perfectly normal. In the evening, we were lavishly entertained by Hyundai’s own private team of geishas.

  Malik agreed to do another load, but only if I agreed to set up a central London office for Mehar Paper Mills. I agreed.

  After further hectic global travel and money transfers, Gerry’s boat was ready to leave Australia, and Malik was ready to complete the production of a further twenty tons. This time Gerry had chosen ‘Crumble the Kremlin’ as his logo.

  Judy and the children had gone back to London to live. She knew through an ultrasound test that she was having a son. She wanted him to be born in Great Britain. On November 16th, the world welcomed our son. I was the first to see him breathe in harmony with the universe. We called him Patrick, after both my great-great-grandfather and Judy’s brother.

  Two weeks after the birth, I went to answer the door in our Chelsea flat. It was Tom Sunde. I had not seen him since 1980 or talked to him since knowing he was some sort of spook. He was brandishing a sheaf of papers. Without any pleasantries, he launched into his mission.

  ‘Look, these are the names of the people on your boat, the Axel-D, in Australia. Check it out. Your phones in Palma, including the ones of your friends and the ones in bars that you used, were all tapped for the first eight months of this year. A DEA agent called Craig Lovato returned to the US with a briefcase full of cassette tapes. They know you just brought in a load from Pakistan. They know you did that Alameda scam. They’re going to indict you. Howard, you know I’m your friend. I was on that beach in Scotland with you. Don’t forget that. I’m not shitting you.’

  ‘Come on in, Tom. Start again.’

  ‘Ernie’s telling the DEA all he knows. Plus, they’ve got a couple of other snitches close to you. They already know about John Denbigh, a guy called Jim Hobbs, and Malik in Pakistan. By the way, it was he who ripped
off that five-ton air-freight scam from Karachi, not me and Carl.’

  ‘How do you know all this, Tom?’

  ‘From Carl.’

  ‘Where does he get it from?’

  ‘You don’t ask. But he’s got access to what the fuck he wants. He’s an amazing guy. He saved my life.’

  ‘So what can I do?’

  ‘If I were you, Howard, I’d disappear right now. Really disappear. But I know you ain’t that kinda guy. Carl really has been a good friend to you. He can save your ass again.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Same way he did last time. Whatever it takes.’

  ‘Will he do it for old times’ sake, or will I have to pay him?’

  ‘Money is his only reason for doing it. But he is a good friend.’

  ‘So how much will it cost to stop the DEA busting me?’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that, Howard. You just give us what you can. We’ll do what we can to stop you being busted and keep you informed of what the DEA know. But at the moment, Carl desperately needs $50,000, and he’s giving you something really hot.’

  ‘Tell me what it is, Tom.’

  ‘Oh, I will, don’t worry, whether you pay me or not. I’ll tell you right now. A radio transmitter has been placed by the DEA on the Axel-D. It’s functioning now. The boat has left Australia for Pakistan. The DEA are going to get this one, Howard. They are so pissed with you it’s untrue. You got that last one through right under their noses, while they were watching your every move. Man, are they pissed. And the Alameda scam upsets them because it’s the government. You’re not going to get this one through, Howard. Push the abort button.’

  What a challenge.

  ‘Where is this radio transmitter?’

  ‘It’s at the top of the main mast, dug into it. Do I get the $50,000?’

  I paid him.

  I told Gerry I had to meet him on virgin territory as soon as possible. We met in Copenhagen. He got through to Daniel on the boat, who changed direction and headed for Mauritius. Flash, the electronic genius, flew down. They found the bug. It would have been stupid to deactivate it and alert the DEA we were on to them. We’d get rid of it when we had to.

  Gerry felt that too much had been compromised to risk doing another load from Pakistan to Mexico. He wasn’t giving up, and he still wanted to use the same boat, once the bug had been safely removed. But he wanted to do a load of Thai weed from Thailand. No one would expect that because it hadn’t even started to happen. He wasn’t quite sure where he was going to land it. Maybe Mexico again if he couldn’t find anywhere better.

  I cancelled the Pakistani twenty-ton load. We had paid a $1,000,000 non-returnable deposit. We had tons and tons of the finest hash in a Karachi warehouse. It would probably come in handy some time.

  There was little problem persuading Phil to supply Gerry’s boat with a large load of Thai grass. Details were thrashed out in seedy Bangkok bars. It was decided to do a thirty-ton load. This would be the largest scam I’d ever done.

  Another series of global circumnavigations at 30,000 feet commenced. Cash tumbled in and out of my arms in cities throughout Europe and Asia. Wire transfers of several hundred thousand dollars apiece maintained temporary residence in my account at Crédit Suisse, Hong Kong. We all kept moving. We met and discussed plans in strange new places. The DEA would never figure out what we were up to. From the tail end of 1986 to mid-1987, I based myself in both London and Palma and made visits to Bangkok, the Philippines, Karachi, Hong Kong, Kenya, Denmark, Tangiers, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Canada.

  A casualty occurred: Mickey Williams was busted near Bristol attempting to import heroin. I was sad to hear of his arrest but also very upset to discover that he had been dealing smack.

  There was a particular reason for visiting Canada. Jarvis introduced me to a friend of his, an American named Bob Light. Some time ago, Bob had been involved in bringing Jamaican marijuana into England. Jarvis had sold it. Bob’s problem was simple. He had a source of supply in Vietnam. The marijuana was identical to Thai marijuana in every respect. It was also packaged the same way. It could be taken out to sea and loaded on a boat. Bob also had an ideal landing spot in north-west Canada, near the Queen Charlotte Islands. What he needed was a suitable boat and crew to make the journey across the Pacific.

  At about the same time two new characters walked into my fragmented social life in Mallorca. One was a Dutch count named Frederick, half of the well-known, hit-making singing duo, Nina and Frederick. He had long ago given up pop singing and taken up sailing boat-loads of marijuana. He had neither sources of supply nor landing spots. But he did have a fully crewed boat.

  The other was Rafael Llofriu, a chief inspector of Palma’s Policía Nacional and head of security at Palma’s San Juan Airport. I met him at Geoffrey Kenion’s Wellies, which had now become the trendy bar for the hip and the cool to be seen at. He had heard from regulars in the bar that I was some sort of successful entrepreneur and made it plain to me that should I wish to invest in business projects in Mallorca, he would be most happy to facilitate matters. Rafael was not offering to do anything illegal. He made that plain. He was concerned only to promote business among those whom he felt would enhance the island’s prosperity.

  I was not suspicious of him for one second and was sure that the only possibility of any ulterior motive was his ensuring that his family or friends got some piece of whatever action took place. I liked him and enjoyed his company. It would be fun to do business in Mallorca with the backing of the police. If the DEA were making enquiries about me, maybe he would at least let me know.

  Putting together Bob’s facilities with Frederick’s boat would be child’s play. Bob would put one of his men who knew details of the loading and unloading parameters on board Frederick’s boat. I would just wait to get paid. I could do it with my eyes shut. And I did.

  I wondered whether Bob’s Canadian offload would appeal to Gerry more than Ron’s already used Mexican one. Details were thrashed out in Vancouver’s seedy night-spots.

  During one of the very few quiet evenings at home in La Vileta, the phone rang.

  ‘So I tracked you down, you fucking Welsh cunt. You think the Kid’s some stupid fucking Paddy you can hide from?’

  ‘I’ll pass on that, Jim, but my name is in the phone book, here and in London.’

  ‘That’s fucking stupid. Youse haven’t learned nothing I taught you about security. You won’t find my fucking number in any phone book.’

  ‘No one ever wants to call you, anyway, Jim.’

  ‘Still the same slimy Welsh scumbag. Listen. I need to see you. I’ve got something for you. It’s real important.’

  I turned up for a meeting with Jim McCann in the South of France. Through means not specified, he claimed to be in possession of a ton of the finest Moroccan hash. He needed someone to come to a remote Moroccan beach, pick it up, take it somewhere, and sell it. Regrettably, he knew no one to ask other than me. He’d heard I was doing all right.

  Twelve

  MR TETLEY, NOT

  Gerry’s boat sailed from Mauritius to the northern end of the Arabian Sea. Just a hundred miles off shore, one of the crew climbed to the top of the mast, took the DEA’s radio transmitter from where Flash had carefully replaced it, and with a certain amount of riotous ceremony hurled it into the sea. It had been packaged by Flash to float. It floated. The DEA would expect the boat to be fairly stationary for a while if it was waiting for a rendezvous with the Pakistani hash supplier. They wouldn’t realise until too late that we’d found the bug.

  Gerry’s fugitive friend and major investor in the Thailand to Canada scam, Roger Reaves, decided Mallorca was also the sensible place for him to live. He had a deep South Georgia accent.

  ‘Howard, let me tell you, boy, you sure got some shit together in these Europe and Asia places. Now with the help of the Good Lord, I’ve moved tons of cocaine and hundreds of tons of weed from Colombia to the US. I want to do the same over here. This
is how I deal. I never rip anyone off or cut them out. No siree. But I gotta meet the guys involved. Like if you wanted me to move gear from Pakistan to England, I’d have to meet this Malik dude and the guy who offloads me in England. That’s the way I operate. If I do business with anyone I meet through you, you get paid, even if you didn’t know a damn thing about it.’

  ‘Roger, I have no objections to anyone meeting anyone. But Malik, for example, would definitely object to meeting any American. He doesn’t like Americans at the best of times.’

  ‘Well, fuck him then. What about this Lord in Bangkok?’

  ‘You can meet him any time you want. But Lord Moynihan lives in the Philippines, not Bangkok.’

  ‘Do they grow weed in these Philippines?’

  ‘Yeah, Roger, it’s just beginning to get commercialised. A friend of mine produced some great stuff last year.’

  ‘Well, I could help you out there. What about this IRA terrorist friend of yours, the one who’s always in the newspaper stories about you? I sure would like to meet him.’

  ‘Well, he’s got a ton of Moroccan he wants to move. If you’ve got some money and can take it off him, he’ll be very keen to meet you.’

  ‘I’m ready, boy. Do you know good offloading places on the coast here in this Europe?’

  ‘Only in England, Roger.’

  ‘Will you show them to me?’

  ‘Of course. What I’ll do is introduce you to a friend of mine, Johnny Martin, in England. He’ll take you round them if you like. If you did ever take anything to England, he’d also be the guy I’d suggest to sell it.’

  ‘Do you know people who sell ships?’

  ‘You’re on your own there, Roger.’

  ‘I sure would like to meet all three of these friends of yours, beginning with this Lord. Can we meet the Lord right away?’