Bali 9: The Untold Story (13 page)

I
t was Scott Rush’s turn. He stood up and turned so his young, toned body was facing the bed. Ahead of him, a big piece of Balinese art featuring three ducks hung on the wall. Rush put one hand on the bar of the bed and lifted his right leg, balancing on his left, just as Sukumaran ordered. He had his eyes closed tightly, but every now and again he would sneak a look—just a little one—careful to ensure that Nguyen and his friends, Sukumaran and Chan, didn’t catch him out. Rush’s friend, Michael Czugaj, had just been through the same ritual, and now, for the next hour or so, Rush could expect that they would be making demands of him.
Move this way, bend that way, come closer
. The two Brisbane youths were scared witless: they had been
informed that their families would be killed if they didn’t do what they were told, if they did not obey every little instruction.

Rush closed his eyes again. His right leg rested on the bed as Sukumaran bent down and carefully attached a clear plastic package to his right thigh, then Chan wrapped a bandage around it. Chan then sprinkled pepper over the bandage before wrapping it another time, using a light-brown binding. Working in relay, Sukumaran and Chan continued. Rush put his left leg on the bed, Sukumaran attached a second clear plastic package to it, Chan wrapped another clear bandage around it, sprinkled it with pepper and wrapped it some more. And so it went on.

A third plastic package appeared, just as it had for Czugaj. This one required Rush to bend over slightly so it could be attached to the back of his waist. Again, Sukumaran and Chan worked as part of a polished two-man team: Sukumaran meticulously placing the package on Rush’s back before his former school friend wrapped it up like a Christmas present. First, a clear bandage, then a small sprinkling of pepper before the same light-brown bandage was wrapped around that. Around Rush’s waist they bound an extra bandage, again light brown in colour, but lined with a blue cloth this time.

Rush stood tall, now almost 1.7 kilograms heavier, his young body carrying a stash of heroin that could reap $500 000 on the streets of Sydney and beyond. But first he had to smuggle it through Indonesia’s
Ngurah Rai airport, out of the country that delivers death to drug traffickers and onto his flight to Australia. The gamble didn’t pay dividends at that point, either: he would then have to sit uncomfortably for hours knowing that his body was laden with heroin, without raising suspicions. After the flight landed at Sydney’s international airport, Rush and his friend, Czugaj, had to navigate their way past sniffer dogs, Customs officials and other staff, before being free to collect their promised booty.

Sukumaran and Chan began packing up what was left of their tools: a pair of scissors, adhesive tapes, cloth waist-belt and pepper powder. It had taken about an hour, but Rush and Czugaj were now ready. Rush was told to put on his shorts and shirt.

Their job complete, Sukumaran and Chan left the room.

It had only been a matter of hours earlier that Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen had swung by the Hotel Aneka to pick them up. Their friend from the southern suburbs of Brisbane paid for their room and the three young men grabbed a taxi, travelling to the Adhi Dharma Hotel, where they went straight to room 105. It was a nice hotel, quintessentially Balinese, two-storied and filled with Balinese architecture. The room was a deluxe one, demanding US$70 each night, and had been booked by Nguyen. He’d paid the higher rate for the three-star accommodation because it was the only room available.

When the Brisbane contingent arrived, Matthew Norman was already in the room; the grand four-poster bed with the crisp white and cream bedspread seemed at odds with the operation soon to get under way. Chan and Sukumaran, carrying a dark-blue suitcase, arrived soon after, and Norman was told to leave. That was only the beginning of the orders. Chan pulled out a wooden figurine and handed it to Rush and Czugaj, directing them to stuff it into their suitcase. And then the two older men left, promising to be back shortly.

True to their word, they returned at about 4 p.m., this time with a black and grey striped backpack, a black carrying case and a meticulous plan to evade investigators in two countries by using four young drug mules to deliver big chunks of heroin to the Australian market. And Rush and Czugaj were working for them, being paid to help them do that. They told them to have a shower.

When Czugaj wandered out, his body covered only by a pair of cycling shorts, Chan and Sukumaran set about the task at hand. They started on Czugaj. Using gloves, they took a big, clear plastic bag of heroin and placed it on the back of the nineteen-year-old. Using a brown and blue cloth bandage they fastened it, ensuring that it would not move in the hours between now and touchdown at Sydney airport. Next Chan told Czugaj to put his right leg on the bed before another 400 grams of heroin was plastered to his thigh, this time with clear adhesive tape. A similar amount was
then taped to his left thigh with bandages. Chan knew that with one slip all the punctilious planning would be undone. It was critical that none of the packages could be seen—their lives could depend on it.

Czugaj was told to walk around inside the hotel room, an opportunity for Chan and Sukumaran to inspect their workmanship. Seemingly satisfied, Czugaj was told to dress, and Chan and Sukumaran left the room. Nguyen remained. He sat with his two Brisbane colleagues for almost an hour in a small Bali hotel room, where almost 3.5 kilograms of heroin was fastened to the bodies of the two nineteen-year-olds. It is doubtful whether any of them would have ever owned anything quite as valuable.

Barely 50 metres away in room 124, just down the walkway bordered by a fish pond on one side and the hotel pool on the other, another two young Australians were preparing for their own dice with death. Room 124 was popular, often booked out, because of its proximity to the pool and its sunken bar. The pair had booked into that room a couple of days earlier, on orders, and had never heard of Scott Rush or Michael Czugaj, despite all four of them being bound together in a risky operation where they could all face the same fate. But that was part of the detailed plan: Rush and Czugaj, the two teenagers from Brisbane, and Stephens and Lawrence, the workmates and friends from New South Wales, didn’t need to meet each other now. Or ever, if things worked out the way Chan and
Sukumaran had planned. The mules had been in Bali for days and not even sighted each other. They were there to do a job, and it was safer if each group of mules was unaware of the other’s existence. That was the plan.

Matthew Norman walked through the door, a big black and grey backpack making little dent on his large frame. ‘I feel rich carrying this bag,’ some remembered him saying. He dumped the bag under the table and looked towards Stephens and Lawrence, two of his co-workers from Sydney. ‘Don’t touch it,’ he commanded. He wasn’t their boss at the Sydney Cricket Ground, but on this day he seemed to be giving the orders.

Norman left the room. Within minutes, Chan strode through the door, again with his friend Sukumaran, who was celebrating his twenty-fourth birthday. Chan had a bag slung over his shoulder and another one in his hand. Few pleasantries were exchanged before Chan ordered Stephens to open the bag Norman had just placed under the table, and take its contents into the bathroom. Chan and Sukumaran donned gloves and prepared for the operation ahead. They knew exactly what to do.

Lawrence was ordered to remove the shorts she was wearing and replace them with the blue Adidas short leggings packed in her luggage at the Formule 1 hotel in Sydney more than a week earlier. Lawrence did as she was told and then stood in front of the bed, lifted her right leg and let it rest on the bed in front of her. She had done this once before, about six months ago, and she knew the drill, even if her friend Martin Stephens, also in the room, did not.

Sukumaran started this time, on Lawrence’s right leg. He arranged two packs of heroin carefully, ensuring that the 668 grams remained intact. After wrapping the packs together in a white bandage and pepper, Chan secured them again, this time with a further two bandages. Then Chan attached the next two plastic wraps of heroin onto Lawrence’s left leg. Combined, they weighed slightly heavier, but it was almost impossible to tell that with the naked eye. The wrapping ritual was repeated by the two young men who had gone to school together: a white bandage, ground pepper, followed by a tighter white bandage and finished off with a brown bind.

Lawrence’s legs were now 1.2 kilograms heavier. But Chan was not finished yet. He had a large plastic bag of white powder next to him, and ordered Lawrence to bend over on the bed. When she did, he wrapped almost another kilogram of the powder to her waist. This one was secured with a fourth wrap made of red fabric.

Bandages secured, Lawrence stood up. She was told to turn around—once, twice, three times. Chan checked his work, then told her to put on her clothes, and, before moving on, he taught her how to pick up her luggage without bending over. Every movement mattered, and this was yet another detail not to be overlooked.

Martin Stephens had to take off his shirt, too, before the packages of heroin were stuck to his body: a red body pack on his back and on each of his thighs, held in place with brown sticky-tape and layers of binding.
With his body playing host to 2.3 kilograms of heroin, Stephens’s stash was bigger than those of his co-worker and roommate Lawrence and of the two young Brisbane drug mules he was unaware of in the room just across from the hotel pool.

Chan knew that in just a few hours the four drug mules would join him on the long flight back to Australia. They would leave in three separate taxis and walk through the airport without acknowledging each other, but with a total of about 8 kilograms of heroin attached to their bodies. Their flight home had already been delayed after a hiccup to the plan—the heroin had taken longer to source—but any hiccups at this late, crucial stage could create a real drama. Nothing could go wrong.

Already, though, this trip was proving vastly more successful than their last one, just four months earlier. A few of them had come to Bali then, but left empty-handed; that certainly wasn’t the case this time. Chan’s Sydney co-worker Renae Lawrence was carrying 2168.97 grams of heroin and Martin Stephens, whom he had also met through his casual catering job at the SCG, was transporting a bulk of 2341 grams. And the two Brisbane youths introduced to him by Nguyen were carrying their share too, Czugaj with 1754 grams and Rush with 1692 grams. Four mules. Eight kilograms of heroin. One flight. And just a couple of hours to fill.

Sukumaran and Chan strode purposefully back to room 105, where Nguyen, Rush and Czugaj waited. They doled out 150 000 rupiah, giving clear instructions as to what it was to be used for: the taxi fare to Ngurah Rai airport and the departure tax they would need. Nguyen then made a final promise to the two youths who had been enticed into the Bali plan in a Brisbane karaoke club only weeks earlier: A$5000 would be swapped for the packages that clung to their body, if they managed to get them to Australia.

They had hours of work ahead of them now—the most important part of the trip—but had the telephone number to call on arrival at Sydney airport programmed into their mobile phones. With the clock ticking, Chan provided a few final orders: Rush was to call him when they were in the taxi on the way to the airport, and again when they stepped out of the cab and into the international terminal. And with those final orders made clear, Chan called reception to order a taxi. A few minutes later Czugaj and Rush’s free ride to Ngurah Rai pulled up at the hotel. Lawrence and Stephens were heading in the same direction in another cab, their luggage now home to two wooden statues and a wooden jewellery box. Those items, chosen by neither Lawrence nor Stephens, were a final insurance policy by organisers who were banking on the items diverting the attention of Customs officers away from the young people and their bodies.

With every detail of his plan taken care of and his work done, Chan called a taxi for himself, and soon
climbed into Komotro Taxi No 099, giving the driver orders to go directly to Ngurah Rai airport.

Nguyen and Sukumaran headed back to the Melasti Bungalows to meet up with Si Yi Chen and Matthew Norman. It was Sukumaran’s birthday, and there needed to be some celebrations.

Chan’s taxi pulled out from the Adhi Dharma Hotel and headed in the same direction as the taxis carrying Lawrence and Stephens, and Czugaj and Rush. Three taxis delivering five young Australians to a date with destiny. And none of them knew that surveillance teams were onto them, recording their every move.

T
he passenger in Komotro Taxi No 099, taking the journey from the Adhi Dharma Hotel to Bali’s Ngurah Rai airport, exuded confidence. He talked big, like a rich man, and walked the walk. He was as smooth as silk. He laughed and joked with the driver, the short journey punctuated by the easy-going banter between driver Muhammad Zakaria and his lone passenger. In contrast, the atmosphere inside Bluebird Taxi No 081, which was making the same journey from the Adhi Dharma hotel to the airport, just slightly ahead of Zakaria’s car, was one of deathly silence. Driver Komang Surat Nata was struck by how solemn his two young, male passengers were for the entire journey. Barely a word was spoken, between the pair or with the driver. There was no banter, no laughing and no joking, just a funereal pall. Nata
wondered what was up with these two young fellows. He would never have guessed the truth, even if he had tried.

The journey from that particular Kuta hotel to the airport takes about ten to fifteen minutes, depending on the traffic. About 4.5 kilometres in length, it begins by weaving through side streets and laneways with dodgy surfacing, potholes and ragged edges. Then there is one last drive down Jalan Legian, past the haunts of the Bali Nine—the Mbargo Bar and Maccaroni Club, meeting places for their secret plan, which was now nearing completion—and the bustling myriad streetside stalls where some of the nine had shopped and whiled away some time.

On this Sunday evening, the taxi drivers ferrying the five young Australians from the hotel to the airport were unaware of the million-dollar merchandise they were carrying. With no speed limits, the shops flashed by quickly before they were in the business end of Kuta, with its mobile phone shops, motorbike service centres and food stalls offering the local Balinese delicacy of
babi guling
or suckling pig, cooked pig heads displayed grimly in the windows. The trip costs only a few dollars in Australian terms and the drivers are always keen to impress in the hope that departing passengers will throw them the remnants of their rupiah as a tip.

Bali taxis are not always known for their cleanliness, and often the air conditioners don’t work. Some drivers
talk incessantly with their passengers, giving them a last-minute guided tour of their homeland and handing over business cards with their mobile phone numbers, urging tourists to pass them on to their friends who might also visit.

The drive that evening wasn’t particularly comfortable for Martin Stephens. The heroin strapped tightly around his waist was pinching, but it was only a small dress rehearsal for the six-hour flight to come. His taxi colleague, Renae Lawrence, wasn’t bound as tightly. Within thirty minutes she would need to detour to the toilet to rescue hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise that was threatening to slip down her right thigh.

Just before the airport is one last and lasting memorial of Bali: the huge, imposing stone statue of Gatot Kaca, a mythical character. It is near the airport because legend has it that Gatot Kaca can fly. Legend also has it that Gatot Kaca is immortal. Did Lawrence and Stephens and those following behind, in two other taxis, think they were immortal as they passed by the gleaming white statue?

Scott Rush and Michael Czugaj were not far behind the taxi carrying Stephens and Lawrence. As the final stages of their mission approached, their nerves betrayed them. They were as silent as tombs. Aussie tourists—especially young fellows like these two—were not generally like this on their final ride to the airport; after two years of driving taxis, Komang
Nata’s experience told him this. Normally they were boisterous, friendly and happy, cracking jokes after having imbibed their last few Bintang beers before heading home.

To Nata, glancing in the rear-vision mirror at his two back-seat passengers, it seemed that the pair’s thoughts were a million miles away. They looked solemn and confused; clearly, something was irking them. Nata wondered why they didn’t speak at all, not even to each other—it was not normal for passengers to be like this. The only sound in the taxi that evening was from the base radio, delivering instructions to drivers around the island. And the only time either of the passengers spoke was as they neared the Gatot Kaca statue, when one of them made a very quick phone call.

Rush was calling Andrew Chan, as instructed, to tell him they were approaching the airport, just as Lawrence had done moments earlier. There probably was no need, as Chan was only minutes away from the airport himself, destined for the same check-in queue and the same flight to Sydney. But none of the four in the first two cabs dared deviate from their instructions. They would later be asked why they didn’t perhaps ask the cab driver to take them to a police station to report the crime, instead of continuing with it. Their answers were the same: they feared for themselves and their families, and they feared that Chan’s men were watching them to ensure they carried out their mission.

In contrast to the atmosphere in Nata’s taxi, the driver of Komotro Taxi No 99, Muhammad Zakaria, was having a ball with his passenger, Andrew Chan, who was displaying none of the nerves of his younger cohorts. Chan told Zakaria that he worked for Pioneer, the electronics company, and that his time in Bali had been part work, part holiday—he had been working to begin with and then tacked some time on the end for a break. Chan even named the shopping centre—Centro in Jalan Kartika Plaza—where he had gone in his duties as an electronics technician. As part of the banter about his job, a confident and boastful Chan volunteered to Zakaria that he earned a whopping 9 million rupiah (A$1260) per day. Zakaria could only marvel at the handsome salary—it took him a whole month of driving his taxi to earn only one-third that amount, and he told Chan so. Chan responded by telling him, ‘Don’t worry, I will give you a big tip.” A tip would have come in handy, but Zakaria wasn’t bothered either way. He was used to tourists—some tipped and some were stingy, treating every rupiah like it was their last.

The pair talked all the way to the airport, Chan showing no signs of the nerves that were plaguing the others. And he was talking himself up. His style was that of a rich man who was sure of himself. Zakaria thought he had the swagger and demeanour of a ‘big boss’ and remembered Chan fielding a couple of mobile phone calls as he drove.

At the airport, Chan made good his promise to give Zakaria a big tip. The meter read 16 000 rupiah but
Chan handed over 50 000 rupiah, telling Zakaria to pocket the change. It was a good tip and Zakaria bade his passenger farewell, not thinking another thing about him until much later, when Chan’s face appeared on the TV news and in the local newspapers.

The taxi carrying Lawrence and Stephens arrived at the airport first. Each had a backpack and a suitcase, along with their bodily cargo. Rush and Czugaj were next with just their suitcases. Chan had the most luggage, but it was nowhere near as valuable as the cargo he had helped strap to the other four. He knew how they felt, though—he had carried the same kind of valuable cargo once before on his own body.

In addition to his bags, Chan had two Bali souvenirs: a big wooden fish and an odd-looking voodoo stick contraption with a hairy face at one end. No one took much notice—Aussie tourists cart home all manner of odd and strange-looking souvenirs from Bali, giving Customs officers in Australia something to check and to laugh about.

Even though this group had arrived at the entrance to Ngurah Rai airport only minutes apart, the two pairs with heroin strapped to their bodies didn’t know each other, so there was no chance of an awkward meeting. Within moments they would all be walking through their first test—hoping to shake hands—their date with destiny a success.