Mr Nice

by Howard Marks

  ‘I did, Howard, but this is a different ball game. Look how many Japanese factories there are in Wales. They aren’t trying to be Welsh. The Taiwanese are the new Japanese and want to get themselves in everywhere to make lots of money.’

  ‘Why aren’t they in Wales already?’

  ‘Because, Howard, no Welshman has presented the Taiwanese with a proposal embodying attractive terms: tax incentives, residency, and long-term naturalisation prospects. Why don’t you become the first person to set up a Taiwanese plant in Wales?’

  ‘How do I find Taiwanese likely to be attracted by such a proposal?’

  ‘I see about twenty every day.’

  The next week was spent wining, dining, and engaging in other forms of appointment with senior executives of Taipei industrial organisations and travel agencies.

  Armed with several folders of information on Taiwanese business regulations and a host of connections among the Taiwanese power élite, I flew back to London. Balendo was delighted with what I’d achieved and researched. He could better all the prices presently paid for tickets by the New Zealand Government and other visitors to Taiwan. Telexes chattered back and forth between Taipei and London and between New Zealand and London. In a few weeks, Hong Kong International Travel Centre became England’s biggest seller of China Airlines’ tickets and handled all the air travel arrangements for Evergreen, the world’s biggest container-shipping line.

  While in London, I engaged a researcher to find out what sort of incentives were being offered to industrialists to open up factories in South Wales. I summarised the information and put it into a presentable report form.

  During the course of these researches, I met an American Go player named Michael Katz. He was licensed to practise law in both the United Kingdom and the United States and was vaguely aware of my smuggling history. Over countless Go games, we developed a friendship.

  Starting from the time I learned from Tom Sunde that the DEA were on my case, I had determined to do some sort of legal research into the likelihood of my extradition being successfully sought by the Americans, but I had never got round to it. I brought the matter up with Katz. He said he would fly over to America, get hold of all the relevant extradition law, see various lawyers and authorities, and dig out any available files that might relate to my case.

  Back home in Palma, I asked Rafael if there was any way we could take advantage of Taiwanese tycoons’ desire to come to Mallorca and build housing estates and factories. He assured me there was. Although he would not consider breaking the Spanish immigration laws, he would be able to help in unique ways. He introduced me to Luis Pina, the gerente of Palma’s Universitat de Les Illes Balears, who prepared a lengthy report on Mallorca’s economic situation, and to Mallorca’s Minister of Tourism, who gave me masses of Spanish tourist propaganda.

  By June 1988, apart from still smoking over twenty joints a day, I was super-straight and very settled. Although I had visited Taiwan and London, I was spending time at home far more than ever before and enjoying it. Many of my legitimate business plans were now beginning to focus on Palma. I didn’t need to fly halfway around the world every time there was a meeting or payment. I toyed with the perverse idea of trying to become incredibly rich through purely legitimate means but soon abandoned it. The people who had succeeded at such endeavours seemed to be unhappy and obnoxious. The only intelligent and happy rich people I knew tended to be criminals and academic aristocrats. I had plenty of acquaintances among the former, but the latter had not really featured in my life since my Oxford student days. It had been silly of me to lose touch with them.

  Every seven years past members of Balliol College are invited to a reunion of their contemporaries. I had graduated in 1967 but had ignored the invitations of 1974 and 1981. I accepted the 1988 invitation and flew from Palma to London. Julian Peto met me at Heathrow airport, and we both drove to Oxford.

  It was strange to stroll through Balliol’s front quadrangle once again. My contemporaries had changed very little in twenty years, and old friendships and alliances were quickly rekindled. There seemed to be no disapproval of my exploits in the hashish-smuggling trade, just interest and polite curiosity. Names and addresses were exchanged. Tentative plans to meet were made. Mac, unfortunately, was not there, but there was news of him. He was in London and appeared not to feel any resentment towards me.

  One of my Oxford contemporaries, a fellow Welshman named Peter Gibbins, had become a successful academic. During term-time he lectured university students. During vacations he ran seminars in information technology aimed at managerial audiences from all parts of the world. We talked about Taiwan and the demand there for knowledge of European business practice. Peter asked if I would be able to recruit delegates from Taiwan to attend a seminar series which he would organise and for which he would arrange prestigious academic speakers. It might even be possible to provide accommodation for the Taiwanese delegates in under-graduate rooms in Balliol. I agreed to recruit as many as I could.

  I got back to Palma to find that Roger Reaves had been leaving a series of frantic messages for me. We met in a café at Santa Ponsa, a small coastal resort midway between La Vileta and Roger’s home in Andraitx.

  ‘Howard, boy, that passport you got me was a dud.’

  ‘What do you mean, a dud? That passport came straight from the Passport Office.’

  ‘Well, wherever the son-of-a-bitch came from, it’s a dud. Last week I flew into Amsterdam. The Dutch Immigration took one look at the passport and asked me to come into a room for questioning. It’s gotta be a dud.’

  ‘But Roger, there could be any number of other explanations. You could have picked up some heat moving around.’

  ‘Hell, boy, all I’ve been doing is buying me a boat or two. That don’t pick up no heat.’

  ‘Well, it could, Roger. What did the Dutch cops ask you?’

  ‘I didn’t stay to find out. No siree. I just prayed to the Good Lord and ran my ass off.’

  ‘What! Did they chase you?’

  ‘Did they chase me! Boy, did they chase me! I had to run across a runway and jump over two real high barbed-wire fences on the airport perimeter. I was cut to shreds. I mean, maybe it ain’t the passport, but can you guarantee me it’s clean?’

  ‘I can’t guarantee it, Roger, no.’

  ‘Okay. Get me another one.’

  A few hours later, Roger rang me at home.

  ‘Howard, you’re either as hot as the Devil’s hell, or you’re a cop.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘As soon as you drove off from that café in Santa Ponsa, four plainclothes got out of a car and tried to arrest me. They gave me some bullshit about my car and having to see my documents. I pushed them away and escaped through a bakery. If it wasn’t for the Lord’s help, I’d be in the can. They’re on to you, boy.’

  ‘Then why haven’t they arrested me, Roger?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, Howard, that’s exactly what I was wondering. I probably won’t be in touch for a while.’

  ‘Roger, you don’t really think I’m a cop, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Damned right I don’t. But I feel danger. I feel danger real strong.’

  Tom Sunde rang the same day. He wanted more protection money. I told him I was still straight, and therefore skint. I also told him that I thought if I was going to be arrested by the DEA, I would have been by now. He said that a Grand Jury, whatever that might be, was in the process of indicting me. If I paid him $250,000, he would give me all the transcripts. I didn’t believe him. He said he would continue whenever he was able, on a purely friendship basis, to let me know if I was in danger of imminent arrest.

  The next afternoon, Marie, Roger’s wife, came to our house. Shortly after Roger’s last conversation with me, he and Marie had gone to pick up their son from his school at the edge of Palma. Several armed police surrounded Roger’s car and arrested him. After spending the night in Palma police station, he was taken to the Palacio de Justici
a to see the Magistrado, whose rooms were on the second floor. Wearing handcuffs, Roger jumped over the Magistrado’s desk, out of the window, and onto the roof of a parked car, severely denting it. He ran down the main street pursued by a horde of policemen. They apprehended him. He was now in Palma prison. His extradition had been sought, not by the Americans but by the Germans.

  I had to question Marie for a long time before anything made sense. It appeared that McCann had supplied Roger with a pile of Moroccan. Roger had hired a German cargo boat and German crew to take the hash to England. The German crew were busted when the boat later landed, empty of cargo, at a German port. Very quickly, they told the authorities everything they knew, which included details of Roger. German law prohibits anyone from using a German boat to transport dope anywhere. Roger was indicted in Lübeck, West Germany. Roger thought the Germans would also indict me.

  I took the next flight out of Palma. It was clearly no place to be. With me was a travelling bag full of papers and documents relating to immigrating Taiwanese to Palma, information-technology seminars, and setting up factories in South Wales. Once in Taipei I checked into the Fortuna Hotel. Although I had my William Tetley false passport with me (hidden in the cover of a hardback book), I used my real one. I was not hiding. I did not regard myself as being on the run. I felt safe in Taiwan. There wasn’t even an American Embassy there.

  While I had been in Europe, Roy Richards had been back to New Zealand for a few weeks. He had talked about me to various of his friends in Wellington. One of them had read David Leigh’s High Time. Roy had brought the book with him. He wanted me to sign it.

  With Roy’s help, I obtained China Metal’s tentative agreement to open a factory in South Wales and a long list of Taiwanese millionaires wishing to live and invest in Mallorca. A number of industrial managers expressed interest in attending seminars in Oxford. To keep things alive with Malik, I also made arrangements to purchase some empty toothpaste tubes. Everything was working wonderfully well.

  Gerry Wills found out my hotel phone number in Taiwan from Balendo. I hadn’t spoken to Gerry for almost a year. He said that he had a lawyer with connections in the DEA. This lawyer had told him that a Grand Jury indictment had been returned against him, me, and others in Miami. I was apparently the ringleader. The Americans were about to request my extradition.

  It was night-time. I went for a stroll around the campus of the University of Taiwan. Should I go on the run again and use my Tetley passport? Could I possibly survive seeing my wife, parents, and children only in hurried and clandestine meetings? Should I stay in Taiwan? It was, after all, one of the very few countries in the world without an extradition treaty with the United States, and I seemed to survive quite well in the place. My family could at least visit me for extended periods.

  I went into Nesty’s bar and had a drink with him. The place was unusually empty.

  ‘Where’s Maria?’ I asked, noticing the absence of Nesty’s wife.

  ‘Oh, she’s gone to the Dog Temple with her uncle.’

  ‘What the hell is a dog temple?’

  ‘There’s only one Dog Temple, Howard. It’s on the beach near Tanshui, about one or two hours’ drive away. Thirty years ago, a fishermen’s sampan was wrecked in a storm, causing the deaths of all thirty-three people aboard. They were all buried in the same grave. One of the fishermen’s dogs jumped in the grave and would not come out. It was buried too. The dog has now become a god of loyalty and lies in a temple built on the beach. Loyalty is very important to a criminal. All criminals now worship there for solutions to their problems.’

  I asked Nesty for the directions to the Dog Temple and took a cab there. It arrived in the early hours of the morning. The temple had a car park. Vehicles of every conceivable description, from scooters to Mercedes, ploughed in and out. A thousand beggars, gangsters, and hookers milled between the car park and the temple. Inside the temple was an eight-foot statue carved out of black rock. People were on their knees praying to the dog. Others were plastering it with small rations of gold leaf. I made a simple prayer: ‘Let me be with my wife and children.’ Just thinking of my children made me cry. Myfanwy was coming to spend the summer with us. It was so rare for me to be with all four of my children. In a few days it would be my wedding anniversary. I wanted to be with the woman I loved.

  Michael Katz flew from Los Angeles to see me in Taipei. He had a stack of papers on extradition and a file of documents relating to Ernie Combs, which confirmed that there had been telephone taps on my home in Spain. In Katz’s opinion, there was no indictment against me; my extradition had not been asked for. Without questioning I took Katz’s words as an answer to my prayer to the dog. It was safe for me to go back to Palma, and that’s where I should be.

  After finalising as much as I could, I flew from Taipei to Vienna and Zurich. At the PTT at Zurich airport, I called Tom Sunde. He advised me not to stay in Palma more than forty-eight hours. I telephoned Rafael, and he met me at Palma airport. We bypassed Immigration and Customs. He drove me home. I showered my children with Taiwanese presents before taking Judy out for a Friday night wedding-anniversary dinner at Tristan’s in Puerto Portals, followed by some drinks with Geoffrey Kenion at Wellies. The weekend was spent in the bosom of my adorable family.

  Thirteen

  DENNIS HOOWARD MARKS

  Amber cried from the back seat, ‘Daddy, Daddy, don’t drive fast. Please, Daddy, don’t drive so fast. I’m scared.’

  It was almost 1 a.m. on Monday morning, and the five of us were returning from extended eating and drinking sessions at the Taj Mahal and Taffy’s Bar in Magaluf. I wasn’t driving fast. Amber usually enjoyed the sensation of speed, so I was doubly puzzled by her words of caution. I looked back and saw terror in her lovely blue eyes. What was frightening her? What did her subconscious know that I didn’t? Was she foreseeing some disaster that only a child’s mind, cluttered with neither prejudice nor preconception, could apprehend? I slowed right down and changed the compact disc from Simply Red to Modern Talking. No other sounds were made during the remainder of the fifteen-minute journey home. The children went quietly to bed. Amber still looked terrified.

  I was almost out of hash. Judy’s sister Masha and her boyfriend, Nigel, had been staying with us for a few days. They had gone out to buy some hash in Plaza Gomila, but had not yet returned. A small bedtime joint would have to suffice. Judy and I made gentle love and slept peacefully in each other’s arms.

  At 8.30 a.m. the phone rang. David Embley wanted to play tennis. He said he’d come round in an hour or so. I got out of bed. Francesca was already up, so I made both of us a light breakfast. I checked my dope box. It was no longer empty. Well done, Masha. She’d left a note. She and Nigel had just gone to the Club de Mar to look for work on the boats anchored there.

  The phone rang again. It was McCann.

  ‘Get my fucking dope and get my fucking money. My wife and kids have been threatened. It’s heavy, man, and it’s your fucking fault bringing the heat on everybody.’

  ‘It’s not my fault you and Roger carried on without me and it’s not my fault Roger’s in the nick,’ I protested.

  ‘Well, find out from him where everything is. Send someone to Palma nick. It’s on your fucking doorstep. You arsehole!’

  Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Roger’s wife, Marie, was the next to ring. She wanted to come round. She had just seen Roger and had some important news.

  As soon as I’d finished talking to Marie, the phone rang again. A long-distance call by the sound of the hiss. No one spoke, and the line went dead. It rang again. This time it was Tom Sunde. He talked about some trivial matters for a minute or so and hung up.

  Tom and I had devised a code. If he began his telephone conversation with the words ‘how things are’, then I should infer that extreme danger was imminent. I went over his conversation in my mind. I couldn’t remember how he’d started. Never mind. The authorities never busted anyone halfway through a Monday morning. They pre
ferred Friday evenings, when no lawyers would be available for sixty hours, or dawn on any day, when the victims were suffering from hangovers and unprepared.

  I decided to take a quick swim. I looked at the chain of three Thai Buddhas hanging around my neck. Sompop’s words rang through my mind: ‘Wear in sea but not in bath.’

  What was our swimming pool? Was it a small sea or a large bath? It was outside like the sea but enclosed like a bath. I never could work it out. Sometimes I wore the Buddhas when swimming in an outside swimming pool; sometimes I didn’t. On this occasion I took them off.

  I emerged from the pool to the sound of the entryphone at the front gate. I rarely asked callers to identify themselves. I released the gate lock. It was Marie. She drank some coffee and talked with Francesca while I put on some shorts and a tee-shirt.

  The entryphone buzzed again, and I let in David Embley, suitably dressed for tennis. Ten minutes later, he left. He promised he’d be back within the hour.

  Yet again the entryphone buzzed. I presumed David had forgotten something and was coming back to retrieve it. Instead three overweight and casually dressed middle-aged men ambled into the courtyard and gazed at the tops of the five palm trees. The night before, Judy had mentioned something about some locals agreeing to trim and tidy up our palm trees. I guessed these were they. I began walking into the yard to greet them.

  Suddenly, one of them pulled out a revolver and stuck it into my stomach. His lips were quivering, his glasses were steamed up, his hands were shaking, and his breath stank of peppermint. Twenty years in prison ran through my mind. Francesca let out a scream which I still hear every day. These guys were going to kill her daddy. Instinctively, I put up my hands and said, ‘Tranquilo! Tranquilo!’

  My hands were handcuffed behind my back, and I was shoved on to the kitchen sofa. Francesca, trembling violently with fear, ran to me and began kissing and hugging me. One of the intruders pulled her off. In a panic she ran upstairs to where Judy was sleeping. A few more men barged into the kitchen and tore after her as if pursuing an escaped lunatic. Marie turned to stone as one of the cops grabbed her handbag and poured its contents on to the table. One of the three fat intruders made himself at home on a kitchen stool. His eyes were sadistic, and his smile indicated he was having a quiet orgasm. With his open white shirt and Zapata moustache he looked Spanish enough, but he had the unmistakable aura of the DEA. Was this Craig Lovato?