Bali 9: The Untold Story (12 page)

If Rush and Czugaj were perturbed by the mission they were set to undertake, it wasn’t immediately obvious. They certainly didn’t stay locked in their rooms. The next day, 14 April, they left their hotel at 8 a.m. to try their hands at white-water rafting at Teras Ayung in Ubud, on the Ayung River, Bali’s longest river. Six hours later they were back at the hotel, resting for five or so hours before venturing out for a fifteen-minute stroll. It was about 7 p.m., and they were totally unaware that they were being followed. The two surveillance officers assigned to them, Nyoman Suastika and Wayan Warsa, were watching closely and following from a distance. Later that evening, at about 10 p.m., Rush and Czugaj were peckish so they ventured out for a walk, down the beachfront road a few blocks to the Circle K, a 24-hour convenience store. They returned with a few snacks before settling for the night.

Chan was busy—he had to make sure the other two mules were up with the plan too. He told Lawrence and Stephens that their return had been delayed and that they needed to move hotels—to the Adhi Dharma in Jalan Benesari, one street behind Jalan Legian. Room 124 had already been booked for them by Chan and Sukumaran. Lawrence and Stephens would have liked the room—it was right next to the swimming pool. Chen and Norman’s room was close by, too. They had also checked into the Adhi Dharma on that day, at about 2.30 p.m. They were in room 118; Nguyen was in room 105.

The Adhi Dharma was to be the new headquarters for the Bali Nine. It wasn’t a bad place from which to run a heroin-smuggling operation. It wasn’t on a busy road but, rather, secluded at the end of a laneway, and many of the blocks along the laneway leading up to it were vacant, reducing the number of eyes that could record the group’s comings and goings. But it wasn’t quite secluded enough—the surveillance squad was onto them, watching their every move. They monitored which rooms were booked in the group’s names, how and what time they came and went, with whom and in which taxis.

Chan and Sukumaran, who were still lodging at the Hard Rock, had fixed up the bills at the previous hotels and spent the day bouncing backwards and forwards between the Hard Rock and the Adhi Dharma. They were checking things, organising things, and then re-checking things. The surveillance team was watching it all, but still had no idea who Sukumaran was. His
name had not been included in the original list sent by the AFP; indeed, the AFP had never heard of him. Officers thought he was possibly Chan’s bodyguard, because they seemed to travel everywhere together.

Friday, 15 April turned out to be a busy day for all of the Bali Nine, starting with an early morning meeting all the way over at Sanur. A 25-minute taxi ride to the east of Kuta, Sanur is a beachside resort area favoured by families and Europeans. At 7.15 a.m., Lawrence, Stephens, Chen and Norman hopped into a taxi to the Grand Bali Beach Hotel in Sanur; a surveillance crew watched them. They stayed only an hour and by 8.50 a.m. were back in the Adhi Dharma. They had gone to delay their flights. At 10.35 a.m. another unlikely trip took place, this time to the State Hinduism Academy in Denpasar. Again it was only for an hour, then they returned to the Adhi Dharma.

Meanwhile, over in Rush and Czugaj’s room, things weren’t looking rosy. A day rafting had taken its toll and the hotel worker who provided them room service at 9 a.m. reported back to police that one of them was sick with the flu. They needed ice cream to cheer themselves up, and set off a couple of hours later to the Circle K store to get some. Later that day they ventured out again, this time to a local laundry where they got their clothes washed and pressed for a fraction of the price it would have cost at their hotel.

From a safe distance, surveillance crews watched. And watched. It was a slow process, waiting for
someone else to make the move, but it was paying dividends. For example, at 1.30 p.m. the Brisbane pair walked from their hotel, past the Hard Rock Hotel, where they met up with Chan, Chen and Sukumaran, who joined them on the walk to the laundry. Washing dropped off, the groups went back to their respective hotels.

Andrew Chan’s next job for the day was the most important of the lot—a 9 p.m. meeting with Cherry Likit Bannakorn at Seaview Cottage. She had arrived in Bali that afternoon at 5.30 p.m. with the second shipment of heroin, which Chan had been waiting on. The operation could now proceed. Taxi driver Dewa Gede Risdana Mesi remembers picking up Bannakorn from the international terminal at the airport. She had a black suitcase and he took her to the Seaview Cottage.

Surveillance crews watched as Chan walked from the Hard Rock Hotel down the road to the Seaview Cottage, where he spent ten minutes inside before leaving. They had no idea what he was doing there or who he was meeting. They had no way of knowing that the woman he met inside for those ten minutes was someone they would turn out to be very interested in indeed. That wouldn’t become obvious for a few days yet. But the countdown was on.

P
olice called Cherry Likit Bannakorn, born in Thailand on 12 June 1983, their master key, and a very lucky one at that. At least twice she had travelled to Bali carrying special X-ray-proof suitcases full of heroin. Flying from Bangkok to Singapore, Java and Bali, twice she had escaped the police net. Twice she met with Andrew Chan and twice she stayed at the same Kuta hotel. But, despite a surveillance operation, she managed to evade those officers employed to keep a sneaky eye on the Bali Nine. The first time wasn’t hard—her initial meeting with Chan was held before the surveillance even started. But the second meeting was right in the middle of it. Except no one knew who she was.

About 160 centimetres tall with brown, shoulder-length hair, Bannakorn was a pretty good master of disguise, often wearing wigs to make herself look different. But the one thing she couldn’t disguise was the blue braces on her teeth. Eventually she was caught, but even then, like a cat with nine lives, she managed to slip away. Bali’s former drug squad chief, Lieutenant Colonel Bambang Sugiarto—who left Bali soon after the arrests, promoted to a new position—says the failure to nab her was one of his regrets. They needed her, he said, to unlock the bigger picture of the heroin trade in Indonesia, and to find out who was supplying the drugs and easing their path from Burma to Bali. It wasn’t to be.

Cherry’s brush with capture came on 30 May 2005, about six weeks after the Bali Nine were apprehended. She had been placed on an immigration watch, and on this day, on the Thai–Malaysian border as she tried to re-enter Thailand, officers stopped her. Thai Immigration authorities confiscated her passport and held her, pending questioning. An Interpol ‘wanted’ poster for her had also been circulated after authorities had managed to glean her identity from members of the Bali Nine. Police intelligence reports described her as strongly suspected of being a member or messenger of an international drug syndicate spanning half a dozen countries, including Australia, Nepal, Nigeria, Thailand and Indonesia.

The Thais told Indonesia about Cherry being nabbed, and by 2 June a team of officers from Indonesia and the
AFP were in Bangkok. But Cherry was not happy. She had no intention of dobbing herself or anyone else in; instead, she was evasive. She said she was not a drug syndicate courier or messenger, but a prostitute. While she admitted that she did know Andrew Chan, she said it was only in her capacity as a prostitute. Shown Chan’s picture, Cherry exclaimed to the officers, ‘Oh yes! True, I know this person. His name is Tony.’ She went on to say that she had had sex twice with the man she knew as Tony, whom police knew as Andrew Chan. Given time and evidence, though, they felt confident that they could wear her down.

The Indonesian police wanted Cherry brought back to Indonesia for further interrogation. But there was a hitch: under Thai law, an individual could not be arrested or detained unless evidence of narcotics was found on their person. In addition, the Indonesian police quickly needed an extradition application, which they didn’t have, to provide a basis for keeping Cherry detained in Thailand. They tried another way: perhaps Cherry would volunteer, freely, to come to Indonesia as a witness in the case?

Amazingly and miraculously, she agreed. As a sign of the sincerity of her pledge, she handed her passport to the female Indonesian officer. And she further promised, with all the sincerity she could muster, that the next day she would turn up to the Banyan Tree Hotel, where the Indonesian team was staying, and would spend the night there with them, getting reading to fly the next day to Jakarta.

Of course, it was too good to be true. What criminal, of any calibre, would agree to come back for punishment if the choice was to run away, freedom beckoning, or put your own head on the chopping block? Cherry never intended to spend the night in a nice hotel and wing her way to Jakarta to answer some questions that could put her before the firing squad. She intended to disappear with great haste, and could not get out of the Thai police office quickly enough that day. It had been a close call—too close for comfort—and she turned her phone off. She didn’t want the pesky Indonesian police tracking her down through the mobile phone records. She moved out of her home as well, an apartment in a Bangkok block inhabited by a large number of Nigerians.

Police intelligence reports describe Cherry as working as a freelance employee at two import and export companies owned by a Thai entrepreneur. She had received transfers of US$1000 into her Bank Asia account and had travelled to Cambodia and other neighbouring countries. Intelligence suggested that her livelihood was funded by a Canadian journalist boyfriend, and that she also had a Nigerian boyfriend.

It was, however, too late. Cherry, the disguise queen, had slipped the net, more through luck than anything else.

Not so for the recipients of the heroin she had brought over from Thailand. Mobile phones were their constant companions, and it’s often the case that too much talk on phones brings people doing the wrong thing unstuck,
especially when it comes to police connecting the dots in a criminal investigation. Connecting the dots here provided police with a further fascinating insight into the hierarchy of the nine. The most junior—and first-timers—Czugaj, Chen and Stephens didn’t even have a mobile phone supplied to them. Instead, their partners in the crime and roommates—respectively—Rush, Norman and Lawrence did all the communicating with the bosses and simply relayed the orders. They had been provided with phones, but those calling the shots did all the talking. Police charts showed that Chan spoke mostly with Norman, Lawrence and Nguyen, and most of his conversations were with Norman. And Nguyen and Rush spoke often with each other as well. At the top of the ladder, Sukumaran had no telephone contact with any of them, except a few calls with Chan. He was staying in the same hotel as Chan and obviously left the rest of the communication to those lower down the pecking order.

The members of the group were not unaware of the dangers phone talk could post to that plan. Chan, especially, knew this, and Lawrence would later tell police that Chan instructed them to speak only in code when using the mobile phones, all of which had pre-paid Indonesian SIM cards in them. Lawrence said that she was forced to fulfil all of Chan’s instructions to her every day, and that the deal was that if he called her, she was not allowed to ask any questions of him.

‘During the conversations via telephone we were not allowed to ask or talk about our hotels where we
stayed. In our conversations we used code,’ Lawrence told police during one interrogation session.

The codes went something like this: ‘Are you at home?’ was code for ‘Are you in the hotel?’. If they were not in the hotel they would say, ‘I am shopping’. Matthew Norman’s code name was, apparently, ‘John’ and some members knew Sukumaran as ‘Mark’. Lawrence said she had been instructed to remain together with Stephens at all times, and she was told not to hang out with Chen or Norman.

Prosecutors would later describe it as a neat and tidy organisation, the separation of the two groups a deliberate strategy to guarantee the secrecy of the operation. Only Andrew Chan ever met with Cherry—and police investigators couldn’t get her to answer her phone.

W
ords are not always what they seem. Sometimes they say one thing but mean something entirely different. Renae Lawrence knew that. On 16 April, Andrew Chan sent an SMS to her mobile phone:
Later, might take you out for a great dinner. Pray you don’t get Bali belly
. But Chan never had any intention of taking Lawrence out for any kind of dinner: the message was a code, not an invitation.

Chan had ordered all the mobile phone holders to speak and communicate only in code and never talk about anything important over the phone lines. They obeyed him, but he had stupidly overlooked the fact that as long as they were all using the phones, the devices would end up providing investigators with a golden opportunity to link members of the group to each other. This person called that person fifty-nine
times; another person called eighty times; this one made thirty-three calls out and received twelve calls in. Too easy, really, once all the phones were seized. All senior members of the group had bought local SIM cards once they arrived in Bali. Pre-paid SIM cards are a huge market in Indonesia, and they can be bought on any street corner anywhere for just 25 000 rupiah, or a few dollars. All you need then do is buy phone credit in vouchers of 50 000 or 100 000 rupiah. It made it very difficult for members of the Nine to claim, as some later would, that they didn’t know other members of the group. The amount of phone chatter between some of them spoke volumes.

While Andrew Chan was probably planning to have a good dinner that night, Renae Lawrence actually wasn’t invited. Neither was Martin Stephens. It was the Brisbane crew, along with the chieftains, who would sit down at the same table for what would become their last supper.

Lawrence knew, though, that the SMS from Chan had nothing to do with food. Instead, it meant that the drugs were ready and the group would soon be leaving Bali. Had Michael Czugaj known it would be the last time he would sit down and order dinner in a real restaurant—and a nice one at that—from a menu, he might well have ordered something far more substantial than a plate of hot chips with sauce. Or he might not. Perhaps it was the nerves, knowing that the next day he would be doing his first-ever drug run, that forced him to pass up the extensive menu of pasta, pizza, steaks,
lamb, fish and Asian dishes. Or perhaps he just wasn’t into fancy cuisine at all.

There were five people at dinner that night. Chan, Sukumaran and Nguyen arrived first, at 9.40 p.m. They had just been at the Adhi Dharma visiting those of the Nine who would not be dining with them. Chan must have been looking forward to the dinner—he had been out and about all afternoon, to and from the Adhi Dharma and the Hard Rock, finalising arrangements for the return to Australia. The trio was joined almost one hour later by Rush and Czugaj. Sitting around a table, Rush and Czugaj were on one side and the bosses were opposite them.

They were at The Maccaroni Club in Kuta. In Jalan Legian, and almost opposite where Paddy’s Bar stood before it was destroyed in 2002, the Club was another one of those trendy bars and restaurants that have sprung up in the area.

And it offers an extra incentive—free wireless internet terminals in the upstairs section. First opened in 1996, it was refurbished after the 2002 bombings which destroyed large parts of the building. It wasn’t a bad place for a last supper, even if the prices were a bit on the steep side compared to other less upmarket places.

Candles surrounded by traditional banana trunk burnt on the table where the five Aussie lads sat. Some had ordered full meals with the works. Others, like Czugaj, had something simple. Chatting, the younger guys appeared relatively relaxed, at least outwardly, and looked like regular tourists.

Chan and Sukumaran were less at ease. Their furtive eyes constantly darted around, looking upwards to the club’s second floor. But they weren’t sharp enough—sitting upstairs, pretending to be yet another regular tourist with a Handycam, was a man called Herry Pribadi. Had the Australians known about Herry, they would have made themselves very scarce indeed, for Herry was one of the surveillance officers charged with filming and taking photos of this group, and on this night he captured them sitting down to supper. It was dark, and the ambient lighting didn’t help matters, but Herry didn’t dare turn on the video camera’s light or try to use the night-vision mode which would have projected a red beam and alerted the group to his interest in them. It didn’t really matter, though—he got what he needed: five of the nine sitting down together, chatting like old friends.

At one stage Sukumaran, who appeared suspicious, looked up and around. But Herry was out of sight and nonchalantly doing his best disinterested-diner impersonation. Earlier, he had walked into the Maccaroni minutes after the group and passed right by them as he went upstairs. He had also filmed Chan and Sukumaran as they left the Adhi Dharma and got into the taxi that took them to the restaurant. The evidence was growing.

Much earlier in the day, around 11 a.m., Rush and Czugaj were captured both on video and in still photographs frolicking in the swimming pool at their hotel; they were told that day to change their departure date to 17 April.

Perched on the other side of the wall, near the reception area, Herry held his breath. He was desperately worried that he would be spied and caught out. It was the first time he had ever done a surveillance job like this and he was operating more on instinct than on training. Unlike his counterparts in Australia, or those portrayed in television dramas, Herry had not received any special training, and this kind of surveillance was new to the officer.

Aside from some contemplative moments, when Rush held on to the side of the 20-metre-long pool, lost in his own thoughts, the pair looked pretty calm and relaxed, like they didn’t have too many problems in the world. There was, however, no laughing and tomfoolery. They were having a gentle swim, playing with a float and having a drink or two from the sunken pool bar. They stayed in the pool for two hours, until about 1 p.m., before resting up and getting ready for the last supper.

While the Brisbane recruits swam and relaxed, Chan and Sukumaran were busy, starting from the early hours of that morning. Only the evening before, Chan had met Cherry Likit Bannakorn to collect the rest of the heroin. Police surveillance crews watched them; everything was documented.

2.45 a.m. The target [Chan] and his black-skinned friend went out riding Bluebird taxi 002 carrying two suitcases to Plamboyan Hotel in Dewi Sartika Street.

3.15 a.m. They arrived back at Hard Rock Hotel riding Komotro Taxi 056 without the two suitcases.

7.40 a.m. The target left Hard Rock Hotel, went to Plamboyan Hotel and returned with two big suitcases.

The surveillance records went on.

4.50 p.m. Arriving by taxi, Andrew Chan together with a black-skinned man entered Adhi Dharma and went to room 105, where Nguyen stayed.

6.50 p.m. Andrew Chan with a black-skinned man leave Adhi Dharma hotel on foot.

7.40 p.m. Arrived on foot, Andrew Chan together with the black-skinned man entering back to the hotel.

9.40 p.m. Andrew Chan together with Nguyen and the black man leave the Adhi Dharma hotel using Bali Taxi number 422 towards Maccaroni restaurant in Legian Street, Kuta. At that place they met Scott Anthony Rush and Michael William Czugaj.

The same day, 16 April, Lawrence and Stephens were watching DVDs in their room at the Adhi Dharma. They had rented a DVD player from a tiny shop just down the road, and it had cost them less than A$10 for two days. Wayan Sudiarta and his wife remember the pair coming to their small convenience
store, called Amka. They looked innocent enough and certainly no different to the other tourists who drop by to stock up on the cigarettes, bottled water and beer the couple sell. Wayan Sudiarta likes a chat, but he remembers that this pair never hung around to shoot the breeze with him. In and out, they got what they wanted and left again. Ever the diplomat whose business relies on tourists, it worried Wayan. He thought he must have done something wrong or somehow offended Stephens, hence his reluctance to even engage in small talk whenever he came into the shop. Wayan also remembers that some days, while Stephens was inside the shop, a black man would be waiting outside, silent as a tomb, he never returned greetings. Wayan thought it was rude and again wondered what he had done to offend these guys, and why the black man never, ever ventured inside his shop. He would always wait sullenly on the sidewalk.

Departure day was fast approaching: 17 April 2005. Rush and Czugaj ate breakfast in their room at the Hotel Aneka. It really would have been far more pleasant and relaxing to head down to the hotel’s restaurant area, next to the pool, to choose from the extensive buffet, but they were more content to order room service. They had done it the previous day as well.

Nguyen then called to tell them it was time to check out, and at about 11.20 a.m. they met Nguyen in the lobby. It was Nguyen who paid the bill for their extra days before the trio headed off to the Adhi Dharma
Hotel and into room 105. The point of no return was beckoning.

Later that day, between 2 and 3 p.m., Stephens was blissfully unaware of an encounter with one of his pursuers. He was returning the rented DVD player to Wayan’s shop when he almost ran straight into Herry Pribadi, who was waiting outside the Adhi Dharma for his next order when he glanced up and standing right there, within arm’s reach, was Stephens. Herry didn’t actually know what Stephens looked like, as he had not yet been called upon to film him, but something told Herry the man walking towards him was one of the nine targets. He adopted his best ‘I’m just hangin’ around with nothing to do’ poses; Stephens didn’t seem to be the least bit suspicious and kept walking, barely even glancing in the officer’s direction. Herry breathed a sigh of relief. It would not do for the team to be sprung at this late stage of the operation.

Chan was up and about early on 17 April. He had to be—it was time for action. The mules needed to be ready, both physically and mentally. Everything else was almost in place.

At 7.40 a.m. Chan caught a taxi from the Hard Rock to the Adhi Dharma, where he met with Stephens, giving him a wooden statue that he was to put into his luggage. He also gave him a bag. By 8.30 a.m. Chan was at the tiny reception desk of Yan’s Beach Bungalow in Kuta. Yan’s is not a flash establishment, but it does have one thing on its side: location, location, location.
It is on Jalan Dewi Sartika, within easy walking distance of the Kuta markets and Kuta Square shopping area, and directly across the street from the Melasti bungalows, where Sukumaran and the other three would check in later that evening. In terms of price and plushness, Yan’s is not a bit like the Hard Rock. It is a budget place, designed and priced for backpackers or those with little cash who still want a Bali holiday.

It didn’t much matter anyway, because Chan had absolutely no intention of staying there. He wanted to use the room for storage.

The rooms at Yan’s are cramped, with simple single beds, dark interiors and very few extras, but cost a meagre 150 000 rupiah or A$21 per night for air conditioning or 100 000 rupiah (A$14) for ceiling fans only. Chan chose fans: he didn’t need cool air, because he intended spending no more than a few minutes inside before heading back to the Adhi Dharma.

Using the fictitious name of David Yu, Chan checked into room C5. It was straight up the stairs behind reception. With him he took two suitcases—a silver one and a dark blue one. By 9 a.m. Chan was out of there again and on his way to the Adhi Dharma. Three hours later, he and Sukumaran left the Adhi Dharma and went back to the Hard Rock; within one hour they were back at the Adhi Dharma, entering room 105. And now, to load up the mules.