Mr Nice: an autobiography (51 page)

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.

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?’

I arrived in Manila two days before Roger. For reasons that now escape me, I had promised Moynihan to join him at the memorial service commemorating Elizabeth Marcos, sister of ex-President Ferdinand, who had recently died. We duly attended.

Moynihan had opened a hotel in the Ermita area of Manila. Some time ago he had asked if I would put in $50,000. I paid him the money on condition that he would get me a false Philippines passport and allow me and whomever I nominated to stay in the hotel free of charge. With my money and considerably more of other people’s, Moynihan converted the Empire Hotel to the McArthur Hotel (motto: ‘you will return’). There was a full-on massage parlour on the ground floor called ‘The Dawn of Life’ and a magnificent luxury suite. It was called the ‘Howard Marks Suite’. Moynihan knew my weak spots.

I told him about Roger and his search for a quiet place to grow dope. Flushed with the success of finally screwing some money out of me, Moynihan chartered a private plane to fly around some islands that he felt he could persuade Aquino’s government sequestrators to grab and hand over to his control. Roger was delighted with this reception.

We flew to an island called Fuga off the north coast of the Philippines. It had a population of seventeen, no fresh water, and was completely flat. Totally unsuitable for marijuana cultivation. We walked about for a while. The islanders slaughtered a cow, which we ate. Just before the plane took off, Roger dashed out and grabbed a handful of soil.

‘I’ll take this for testing,’ he said.

Back in the ‘Howard Marks Suite’, I asked Roger if he was serious about growing dope on Fuga. It hardly seemed an ideal spot.

‘No, boy, taking that soil was just a show for this Lord. I’ll grow dope somewhere else in these Philippines in some mountains he don’t know about. I saw some from the plane. But I want that island. I want to live there. It’s right on the shipping lanes. Nobody would find me there. And if this Lord thinks I’m growing weed there, he’ll make sure no one knows I’m there. With the real Lord’s help, I’m made. Does this Lord know anyone who sells ships?’

Via a cluster of one-night stops in Asian capitals, I went to
London to attend to outstanding matters concerning Hong Kong International Travel Centre and Mehar Paper Mills’ London office.

Balendo and Orca were handling the travel agency beautifully, but although it was moving from strength to strength, there had been a couple of weeks of slack trade. During this period all the goldfish in the fountain at the front of the shop had died.

‘This usually means bad luck,’ said Balendo.

‘What kind of bad luck?’ I asked.

‘Can’t say.’

‘Why do we have to have this bloody fountain in here anyway? It makes an awful noise, it steams up the windows, and kills goldfish.’

‘Chinese always have fountain.’

‘But why?’

‘For good business.’

‘But why does a fountain give good business?’

‘Chinese word for water is same as Chinese word for money.’

‘What is it?’

‘
Soy
.’

‘What, like in soy sauce?’

‘Like in sauce. Today my uncle from Canton will come here and see what is the problem.’

Balendo’s uncle perceived the problem immediately. He took one look at the fountain and said, ‘
Fenshui
.’

‘
Fenshui?
’ echoed Balendo. ‘Ah!’

I smiled knowledgeably.

‘This seems strange to you, Howard?’ asked Orca.

‘Oh no. I know
fenshui
means geometric omen. We’ve either got to move offices or turn this bloody fountain around.’

Luckily it was the latter. At enormous expense, the twelve-foot-high stone fountain was dismantled and reassembled. It no longer faced outwards. It faced inwards. That way the
money would flow into the agency rather than out from it. It made perfect sense to me, but I was beginning to lose it.

Mehar Paper Mills had offices near Hyde Park Corner. Through a firm of head-hunters, I employed a beautiful and intelligent Pakistani lady as a full-time secretary. I had no idea what I was doing. She had no idea who I was. I just gave her and Malik each other’s numbers and let them get on with it. Large consignments of everything from ladies’ underwear to leather suitcases were regularly delivered. Malik was not concerned to sell them. They were all put into storage. On a visit to Pakistan, I asked him what was the purpose of this procedure.

‘D. H. Marks, this is export rebate business. We can make fortune. I will explain you. Government of Pakistan needs to encourage export. Accordingly they will pay exporter a percentage kickback of price that exporter sells his product. Government of Pakistan do not look at what money is actually paid. This would make it too easy for people to cheat. So they send in government official to value product and give export price. Like in your country, D. H. Marks, it is Customs who decide value of all products. I have many Afridi friends in Pakistani Customs. This is in your knowledge. They come and declare big value. We get big kickback. For example, last week I buy two more container full of ladies’ knicker. In Karachi, ladies’ knicker cost maybe 10 rupees each. I show to Afridi Customs I have order for ladies’ knicker from Saudi Arabia. He sign form saying value is 100 rupees each. Government chart show that kickback for ladies’ knicker is 30% of export price. Government pay me 30 rupees for each ladies’ knicker.’

‘So, Malik, you’ve made a good profit without even selling anything. That’s excellent.’

‘This is what I am telling you. That is why Mehar Paper Mills’ London office has so many boxes of ladies’ knicker and other textile product. In Djibouti, where I have cowshit business, I have ten container of ladies’ knicker. Nobody wants.’

Gerry’s boat, completely free from any DEA surveillance, moved from the Arabian Sea, back through the Indian Ocean, through the Straits of Mallaca, and into the South China Sea.

Moynihan rang me while I was in London. He had just spent several hours being interrogated by Philippine Immigration Officers – a very novel experience for him. Scotland Yard were trying to get the Philippines to deport him so that they could grab him for the old British fraud charges. He’d sorted matters out, and in the process had discovered there was an absolute emergency regarding my security. He suggested that for my own good I come to Manila immediately. I didn’t like the sound of this.

Tom Sunde had come round to collect money from me. He was still coming through with interesting information about my past and present associates. He mentioned Lord Moynihan. He said Carl was very interested in this guy because of his closeness to the Marcos family. Carl was currently attempting, on behalf of the CIA, to uncover Marcos’s millions. I told Tom about Moynihan’s recent warning. He offered to go out to Manila, meet Moynihan, find out what it was all about, and report back to me.

Tom reported that Moynihan had been approached by a Manila-based DEA agent, Art Scalzo, to help him set me up for a bust: a sting operation. Moynihan felt he had no alternative but to play along. But I shouldn’t worry. He felt he could handle it without endangering him or me. He had my Philippine passport ready, and he would soon bring it to Europe to give to me.

Tom said not to trust Moynihan. I never did. There had never been any need to.

Gerry’s boat was almost motionless in the southernmost part of the Gulf of Thailand. A few Thai fishing boats carrying thirty tons of high-quality Thai weed left a small harbour near Rayong, South Thailand. The voluminous cargo was transferred to the waiting holds in Gerry’s boat,
which set off through the Luzon Straits between Taiwan and the Philippines and into the Pacific Ocean. It straddled the Tropic of Cancer for a while, then headed for the Bering Sea and the frozen wastes of North Canada.

Some weeks later, the same thirty tons were in a warehouse on Vancouver Island, and Gerry’s boat was in Lima, Peru. The scam, my and many others’ biggest ever, had worked without a hitch. The DEA were either looking for Gerry’s boat in the Arabian Sea or looking for ten tons of hash in California. We’d beaten them again.

Frederick, the marijuana-smuggling Dutch count, had his boat in position two hundred miles west of the Vietnamese port of Da Nang. A Vietnamese smuggling boat left Triton, a small, lawless island under joint Chinese and Vietnamese rule, well known as a safe haven for the world’s pirates and their wares. The boats met. Seven and a half tons of Vietnamese grass masquerading as Thai were quickly transferred. Frederick set sail for Canada.

Just after Frederick had picked up the load of Vietnamese weed, I went to Vancouver to pick up the money from the first sales of the Thai weed. Before going, I collected my ticket from Balendo.