Gauntlet (31 page)

Yousseff couldn’t believe his ears. The “and it must be cash” almost made him blink. Obviously this dolt did not know that he had suitcases full, safe houses full, and barns full of cash. Nor did he know that Yousseff’s greatest intellectual exercises consisted of finding ways to make the cash morph into other things, such as land, houses, ships, and loyalty. Of course he did not know these things — how could he? And yet it caught Yousseff by surprise to be so misjudged.

He paused for a moment and then decided to go double or nothing. “I will make it double. I will pay you $2,000 American a month, in cash, if you keep the union away from my client, and if you make the life of the KSEW Board of Directors a living hell. And I will do this for as long as you honor your part of the deal. If that’s for 50 years, it’s payment for 50 years.”

Now it was Sahota who could not believe his ears. He was 37 years old. The average wage in Karachi was a tenth of what he was being offered. The circus had come to town. Bring out the dancing girls and the beer, he thought. Good beer, in fact. The German stuff.

They rose to shake hands on the deal. Before the handshake, Yousseff hesitated and looked Sahota directly in the eye again. “If you forget this contract, Mr. Sahota, you will die. You will die slowly and painfully, as will your children, your wife, and your mistresses.” At this point, Yousseff named Sahota’s four children, from oldest to youngest, his wife, and three of his mistresses. He did this in a slow and deliberate matter, staring directly at Sahota. Mr. Just-call-me-Sahota was chilled to the bone. He found himself shaking terribly. Had he just leapt into bed with a dozen cobras?

“Do you understand me, Mr. Sahota?” asked Yousseff.

“Yes, Mr. Joseph. Yes sir, I do. I am your loyal and obedient servant always. Yes, yes.” Why worry? he thought. Why mess this up? This circus could be in town to stay, as long as he kept his part of the deal.

Yousseff, for his part, had no intention of wiping out the entire Sahota clan, including mistresses. He felt no need to tell Sahota that, however. The threat was all that was necessary.

From that point on, the fortune of Karachi Drydock and Engineering seemed only to increase. There were more sales, more jobs, more employees, and more of everything else. KSEW, on the other hand, became more and more mired in union strife, and had particular problems with the PASWEU.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” an angered Nooshkatoor cried during one dinner with Sahota. “What on earth are we paying you for? One thousand dollars a month, and it has to be American dollars, and cash to boot! That is an enormous sum of money. And still you can’t control your damned members. What the hell kind of business agent are you anyway?”

To this Sahota could only wring his hands and say what a difficult outfit the PASWEU had become. A few small labor relations victories would ensue, only to be met by yet another round of wildcat walkouts and ridiculous demands.

Yousseff only smiled when he heard the news. Nooshkatoor now ran the company with an iron fist, just managing to keep the huge corporation solvent. But try as he might, he could not find a way to snuff out KDEC, and that miserable little bastard child, Kumar Hanaman.

While Yousseff’s deal with Sahota kept Nooshkatoor from making trouble and provided for some entertaining moments, his arrangement with Kumar was paying rich dividends. Karachi Drydock and Engineering had strengthened his empire profoundly. A thousand tricks had been created by Yousseff, Omar, and Kumar to ease the transportation of product from dock to boat, boat to boat, and boat to dock. Ingenious devices were employed to create false hulls; many of Yousseff’s craft measured 30 feet in length from the outside, but only 28 feet from the inside. Kumar delighted in the construction of these invisible storage areas, and before long, they were being used not only in Yousseff’s ships but in his automobiles and airplanes as well. Yousseff and Kumar, working together, standardized the size of a pallet of heroin and designed all the transportation machinery to be the same size, so that transfers from craft to craft could be accomplished with even greater speed and efficiency.

Kumar obtained his engineering degree in a record three years and returned to KDEC as its full-time president when he was only 18 years old. He built his first submersible before he was 21.

In the case of PASWEU, the day inevitably came when Sahota approached Kumar and told him he needed more money. It would have to be $3,000 per month, or the agreement would be brought to the attention of Nooshkatoor, and perhaps even the police.

Kumar nodded slowly and said, “Yes, I see your point. Give me a day.”

Kumar called Yousseff. Yousseff called Marak. Just-call-me-Sahota disappeared. His body was found washed up on a nearby beach a few weeks later. His hands and feet had been cut off by some sharp instrument, while he was still alive. An autopsy determined that he had been shot once in the head with what might have been a Glock 9 mm. Ballistics analysis was inconclusive.

Y
OUSSEFF WAS 24 when he went to work as a deck hand on the
Arabian Queen II,
the tramp freighter owned and operated by Bartholomew. It was the same old ship that the smuggler had acquired more than a decade earlier; it had already been ancient when Yousseff first started bringing him heroin, and hadn’t been kept up. The only improvement, thought Yousseff, was that a few hundred coats of paint had been applied since then. The last few coats had been with the compliments of KDEC. The crew joked that the paint was the only thing holding the ship together.

Bartholomew himself didn’t exactly run what would be called “a tight ship.” He cursed constantly. He alternately bullied, then commiserated with, his crew. He was profoundly overweight, smoked heavily, and drank more than he smoked; as a result, most of his crew also drank and smoked. He was long overdue for a major cardiac event. His ship was in much the same shape. The engines were constantly failing, and every voyage was plagued by episodes of drifting aimlessly in the shipping lanes while some further makeshift repair was done. His seamen seldom lasted more than one voyage, and the crew was undisciplined and usually intoxicated to the point of insolence, fighting, and uselessness. The ship took on water constantly, and the two functional bilge pumps were badly overworked.

Yousseff had always been astonished that someone as lazy and undisciplined as Bartholomew could possess the skills and wit necessary to smuggle large quantities of narcotics. Perhaps it was all because of his ruthlessness and the way he treated other men, including his crew. Although he allowed them undisciplined run of the ship, he was prone to random bouts of bad temper; he had shot and killed a fair number of his crew over the years. It was rumored that he had even pitched a few overboard into the waters of the Pacific in the middle of their voyages. The only reason he was able to maintain a crew at all was that he paid them well. Even with the money, though, talk of mutiny was never far from the lips of the men. Luckily, they were usually too drunk to follow through.

The truth was that Bartholomew’s only true assets were his connections on the other side of the Pacific, on the west coasts of Mexico, America, and Canada. Those associations were what Yousseff was after. It was for them that he made himself as valuable as possible on the newest incarnation of Bartholomew’s ship. He did anything and everything, from cleaning the decks and toilets, to preparing food, to assisting in the engine room. As with everything else, he learned rapidly, and had a voracious appetite for absorbing more. He acquired an understanding of the fundamentals of navigation, and learned how to read the stars and navigational charts, the radar (when it worked), and the sonar equipment. He worked from dawn till dusk. The rest of the crew thought that he was completely mad. If he could earn his keep working five or six hours a day, why work 18? Why clean a deck when no one had asked him to? Why stand knee deep in tepid water, with poor lighting, in a steamy, stinking hot hull to fix a pump, when there was no order to do so, especially when he was so mechanically challenged? Why work in the kitchen to help the chef? Why clean the kitchen from top to bottom when the chef told him not to bother? Before long, Yousseff’s hard work and diligence were earning him enemies rather than friends.

I
T WAS N THE DECKS of Bartholomew’s ship that Yousseff first met Vince Ramballa. Vince was the first mate, and split his time between the engine room and the bridge, struggling to keep the aging engines going and the ship on course. He was the medium between Bartholomew and his crew, and through good people skills and clever negotiation, he had on several occasions prevented the crew from leaving en masse. Vince was the only man on the ship, aside from Bartholomew, who saw Yousseff’s value.

The rest of the crew took offense to Yousseff and his keen attitude and began to sullenly grumble about it. Late one night, things came to a head. Yousseff was on the bridge, with his proverbial bucket and mop, cleaning the floor. Most of the crew had been in a common room below deck, gambling and drinking heavily. They were on the third week of what should have been a two-week journey and were still a week away from Manzanillo. The voyage had been beset by breakdowns, storms, and misadventures. On the night in question, the seas were not calm, and moods were surly. Talk turned to Yousseff and his attitude.

“Trying to show us all up, him and that idiotic mop of his,” grumbled one man, reaching for the whiskey bottle.

“Trying to help out in the engine room when he obviously doesn’t have a clue how to hold a wrench or wield a hammer,” said another. “Just doesn’t belong on a ship.”

“Where is that skinny Pashtun bastard anyway?” chimed in a third. “Let’s teach him a lesson.”

“I think he’s on the bridge,” said the first. “Let’s have some fun.”

The six sailors, liquor in hand, proceeded to the bridge where, sure enough, Yousseff was cleaning the floor and the insides of the windows and doors.

“Hey, shit boy,” said one, “clean this.” He picked up Yousseff’s bucket, which was full of dirty water, and threw it at Yousseff, drenching him from head to foot with the grimy liquid. Yousseff did not look up, nor did he speak. He continued with his task as though the sailors weren’t there.

For a few seconds the sailors were perplexed. But the ringleader refused to be put off. He walked up to Yousseff, who was a mere 5′6″. The sailor was at least 6′1″. He gave the smaller man a mighty shove, throwing him hard into the rear bulkhead. Yousseff’s head cracked into the hard steel, and a trickle of blood ran from the wound, staining the floor on which he’d fallen. Still he did not utter a word. He simply got up, reached for the mop, and attempted to resume his mopping. While he did this with slow deliberation, his mind was racing. The situation was turning ugly. The sailors were in a foul mood, and there was no telling where things would go.

“Yo, the outside hull is filthy,” said the first sailor to one of his comrades. “Grab a rope. Let’s give this little bastard a real job to do.”

Within seconds, Yousseff was on his back on the deck, his feet tied together with a section of nautical rope. Three of the sailors picked him up and unceremoniously tossed him over the rail. He found himself hanging dangerously just over the side, suspended head first by a thin stretch of rope.

“Clean it, you little bastard!” roared one of the sailors. “Clean the damn hull! Never been done yet. It’s got to be filthy.”

A stiff wind was blowing, and there were 20-foot swells, cresting in whitecaps, raging below Yousseff. From what he could see, there were only two sailors hanging on to the rope. Two men keeping him from falling into the sea that raged below him. He glanced at the ocean and gulped; he’d never learned to swim.

“Hang on, you Pashtun peasant, you’re going for a nice little ride,” said the ringleader, as the sailors let the rope slide through their hands.

Yousseff, heart pounding, was buffeted by the wind, and crashed against the hull of the ship as the sailors played out more and more rope. He was starting to have visions of his own death. The tops of the waves began to catch his body, knocking him back and forth some 40 feet below the level of the deck. He was unable to brace himself and became totally disoriented, upside down, first in, then just out of the of the black, raging water. As the sailors let out even more rope, he heard the distant shouts of the drunken men above him. “Clean it, you little desert runt. Clean the hull!”

Yousseff’s head and torso were caught in the waves, which smashed him ever more violently against the hull. The salt water stung his eyes and burned his throat. It was one of the few times in his life that Yousseff felt the gnawing teeth of fear. Was this to be his end? Was this how he would die? The salt water was rushing into his mouth and nose and filling his throat. He gasped every time his head broke the water, desperate for the life-saving oxygen.

Just when he was certain that his death was near, Yousseff felt the rope being pulled, and his body being lifted upward, away from the black water and toward safety. He felt strong hands reach for him and pull his body back over the railing and to the security of the deck. He was completely disoriented, and had several gashes and bruises on his head and forearms. He couldn’t feel his feet or hands. It was several moments before he could breathe properly again. When his vision finally cleared, he saw Vince, pointing a revolver at the sailors and ordering them to untie the rope and get some towels.

Somehow, over the noise of the wind and waves, Vince had heard the commotion and had come to Yousseff’s rescue. And not a second too soon.

“Come down to my quarters, Youss,” he said. “I’ve got some first aid supplies there. I can fix you up.”

“You saved my life, Vince. Those pigs would have dropped me into the Pacific.”

“I know. They’ve done it before. When we get back to Karachi, we’ll get a new crew. Just stay close to me until then,” the first mate answered. “We don’t want a repeat performance here.”

Yousseff followed Vince to his quarters, and they stayed up until dawn, discussing life. On that night, Vince became one of Yousseff’s closest friends; he was given access to Yousseff’s inner circle, and became a party to many of the less-than-legal operations devised by Yousseff. The way of
badal
and
nunwatel
applied here too. For saving his life, Yousseff became Vince’s servant, and gave him full entry to his multifaceted operations.

O
VER THE COURSE of the next two years, Yousseff ingratiated himself with Captain Bartholomew. The ship had never run or looked better. Before long Bartholomew was allowing Yousseff to take the wheel on their expeditions. Within a year Yousseff was plotting his own courses and navigating the small ship through busy sea lanes. Vince remained first mate, but was content to relinquish the captain’s duties to Yousseff. While Yousseff was not mechanically gifted, he had great skill in dealing with people, and the crew was becoming more professional. Within 18 months, Yousseff successfully completed his first docking maneuver, at the busy port in Manzanillo, Mexico.

Back home, Omar, Ba’al, Izzy, and Kumar were maintaining their shares of Yousseff’s empire, and there were few events that required his intervention. Yousseff’s directions regarding the police were simply to steer clear of them. Nooshkatoor was a thornier problem, as he seemed intent on putting the upstart Karachi Drydock and Engineering Company out of business. But with the property paid for and an abundance of work, mostly in retrofitting old freighters and river craft, KDEC was established, and there was not much that Nooshkatoor could do. Still, he remained a problem, sending union agents to Kumar’s door, reporting the business to the port authorities for fictitious infractions, and implying to anti-narcotics agents in Karachi that KDEC was a cesspool of drugs. It was obvious to everyone that Yousseff would have to find a way to deal with him at some point.

More importantly to Yousseff’s immediate plans, however, was that he had started accompanying Bartholomew on the all-important drug transfers. In Vancouver, Manzanillo, and Panama — places where security was low, where boarding a ship was easy, or where dropping a small boat in the water and running a mile or two to a more isolated area was not a big deal — Yousseff was Bartholomew’s shadow. These moments were always nerve-wracking, even for the normally calm Yousseff. They dealt with rough characters, for whom killing, murder, mayhem, and death were normal job hazards. Bartholomew, Yousseff, and a couple of crew members, all armed to the teeth, would make their way to some prearranged rendezvous for the exchange of drugs and suitcase. There they’d go through the rituals of sampling, inspection, and counting, always under a cloud of fear, the men alert for ambush or theft. These exchanges took place many times each year, and every time a substantial quantity of drugs was sold.

Yousseff had already been traveling with Bartholomew for two years, learning the business. His many hours as Bartholomew’s confidant, advisor, and organizer were starting to pay off. Soon, he knew, he would possess not only the ship but also Bartholomew’s legitimate and illegitimate businesses. He could see that the pirate was tiring of the trade, and was looking to cash out. When Yousseff was 26, Bartholomew came to him with a proposal.

“I am getting on in years,” he said. “All this time at sea is beginning to wear on me. I want to spend more time at home. I want to retire. Perhaps I can interest you in buying this ship.”

Yousseff pretended to think about it for a while. He had known that this was coming, and he knew that he would buy the ship. But not too hastily.

“Well, Bartholomew,” he said. “She is old and rusting. The motors need to be replaced, and I would need proper navigational equipment. She might not survive a hard storm. Even in a 50-knot wind she might buckle and sink. You yourself have not bought proper insurance for years because the old lady just isn’t insurable. And I am just a sailor. Where would I get the money for something like this?”

Captain Bartholomew had never been told how wealthy Yousseff actually was. At this point, the young man owned many properties in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He owned Karachi Drydock and Engineering, which was making spectacular profits, given that most of its expenses, including labor, were paid for in cash supplied by Yousseff. Any company profits were invested in high-quality equipment and additional harborside and downtown property in Karachi. Yousseff also owned an extremely profitable river ferry company, which now had a dozen 40 and 50-foot ferries shipping cargos of various sorts up and down the Indus. Bartholomew had never been told about any of the companies. He didn’t know that Yousseff owned a string of safe houses on both sides of the Khyber Pass, or that this diminutive man was becoming the largest cultivator of opium poppies in Afghanistan. As far as the captain knew, Yousseff was just another sailor in his mid-20s, sailing because he enjoyed being on the water, and in different ports, coupled with the thrill and profits of dealing with illicit contraband. Unlike the other sailors, though, Yousseff had shown intelligence and interest in the venture; two things that had led Bartholomew to think that this particular young man might be interested in something more than just sailing. It was what had led to the offer.