Mr Nice: an autobiography (28 page)

There were a total of fifteen cross-Channel runs. Thai marijuana was much bulkier than hashish, and each car could only take 50 kilos. Phil’s two friends, who included English international soccer star Eddie Clamp, did the last run. They got busted by Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise at Liverpool. This was the first-ever proof to the authorities that large quantities of dope were being smuggled through Ireland. It had been happening for over eight years. The method of entry remained unknown.

‘We’ll do another one, H’ard, but none of your fucking burglars, Third-Division Scottish footballers, and academics on that fucking Welsh ferry. This time the Kid will bring it over. You understand me, do you?’

‘How are you going to bring it over!’

‘As bananas.’

‘Bananas?’

‘Our Gerard’s got a fruit company. They take fruit from Southern to Northern Ireland every fucking day. And they take it from Northern Ireland to Scotland.’

‘Don’t they get stopped and searched, Jim?’

‘According to you Brits, Northern Ireland is the same fucking country as Scotland. So how can there be any Customs? I thought you were a fucking dope smuggler. You should know these things, man.’

‘I’m talking about the land border between Southern and Northern Ireland, Jim.’

‘That’s no fucking border.’

‘I know, but they still have Customs and searches, don’t they? Like the Welsh ferry.’

‘Fuck the Welsh ferry. And no fucker searches the Kid. If the boys can take guns over every day for the struggle, and farmers can take their pigs over to get bigger subsidies, I’m fucking sure I can take over some fucking bananas.’

Phil sent another load from Bangkok to Dublin. On a late summer’s morning, I sat in a rented car just outside the ferry terminal at Stranraer on the west coast of Scotland waiting for the arrival of the ferry from Larne. McCann’s fruit lorry was meant to be on it. Jarvis sat in a large van in a car park a mile away. I watched every vehicle drive off. There was no fruit lorry. There was no answer from Jim’s telephone in Killiney. I gave up waiting and set off for London, listening to the car radio. The lunchtime news described how a big articulated truck running north from the docks at Cork with a load of South American bananas had pulled into a lay-by on the main road just south of Dublin. A rented van was parked in the darkness. Men from both vehicles emerged and began to talk. By chance, a courting couple at the other end of the lay-by were watching the proceedings. A man with a strong Belfast accent spotted the couple and screamed, ‘Fuck off out of here.’

The couple left and called the police. A patrol car arrived at the lay-by. McCann confronted it with a pistol. A policeman got out and kicked the gun out of McCann’s hand. McCann dived into a car and drove it into a hedge. He was overpowered, yelling, ‘I did it for Ireland.’

The Irish Army bomb disposal team blew open the truck doors. There was no bomb. Instead, there were twenty-one tea chests full of Thai marijuana: the largest bust in Ireland.

During the late 1970s, most of the twenty-eight tons of marijuana that Americans smoked every day came from Colombia. Hundreds of tons a month were loaded on to large freighter ships in Colombian ports. These mother ships would anchor miles away from the South Florida coastline and offload, several tons at a time, to a fleet of smaller craft that would land their cargoes at private moorings and deserted beaches. Some of the imported marijuana would be sold in Florida, while the rest would be distributed to other dope-smoking populations. The first of these operations was the brainchild of Santo Trafficante, Jr., the chief of the Florida Mafia. Trafficante had inherited this position from his father, a partner of New York Mafia boss Salvatore ‘Lucky’ Luciano. Trafficante had set up casinos in Cuba in 1946 but was jailed when Fidel Castro took control in 1959 and ousted the Mafia. For some reason, Castro allowed Trafficante to leave Cuba with all his money. On his return to America, the CIA paid him to assassinate Castro. Trafficante took the money and tipped off Castro. According to Chicago Mafia leader Sam Giancana, Trafficante was then asked to assassinate President Kennedy. The rest is
uncertain, but Trafficante was certainly efficient, and Colombian marijuana was flowing in at such a rate that its wholesale price began to plummet. Consumers wanted something different. Eventually, ton loads were being sold on the streets of Miami and Fort Lauderdale at the rock-bottom price of $200 a pound, while hashish and Thai sticks were fetching $1,000 a pound. In London, the situation was very different. Moroccan and Pakistani hashish was plentiful and affordable at £300 a pound, and any decent marijuana would be similarly priced. It had always been possible to make a profit by smuggling hashish from London to America, as I had done with the rock-group scams, but now the low price of Colombian marijuana in America had made it equally possible to profit by smuggling marijuana from America to London. A few small consignments had made their way over, and Trafficante and his underlings were pleased to make some foreign-exchange earnings. They thought of the possibility of smuggling large quantities to Europe, not from America, but directly from Colombia. Trafficante, Louis Ippolito, and Ernie explored the thought. Ernie was happy to do any amount. Trafficante wanted to do a minimum of fifty tons. He thought anything less wouldn’t be economically feasible.

England’s consumption of marijuana and hashish was about three tons a day, considerably less than America’s twenty-eight tons. One to two tons was, and still is, consumed in London every night. But to sell that amount took longer. It would be difficult to sell more than a ton of Colombian marijuana a week, every week. Fifty tons would last a year.

Stuart Prentiss was ready to do another scam into Scotland, but he wasn’t able to handle fifty tons. He could get away with importing fifteen tons, but he would need money in advance to buy another boat. He could store five tons for as long as was necessary, but that was it. The other ten tons would have to be quickly taken from Kerrera,
preferably by boat, and stored elsewhere. Another landing place and some suitable storage facilities were needed. The Florida gangsters grudgingly accepted these terms.

Peter Whitehead, the person from whom I had obtained World-wide Entertainments’ office in Soho, bred falcons for the Saudi Arabian royal family in the tiny village of Pytchley in Northamptonshire. The building looked completely innocuous from the outside, but inside, fierce falcons occupied a complex of enormous purpose-built cages. It was ideal for storing marijuana.

Peter Whitehead also continued his profession of producing and directing films. He would sometimes have to rent locations in strange places. In Scotland, one can rent stately homes with land down to the sea. Whitehead could make a film at a location rented for the purpose of landing and storing marijuana. It was an excellent front.

The following letter was written on stationery headed ‘World-wide Entertainments Inc., European Head Office, 18, Carlisle Street, London’, to the Lochaber Estate Agents, Fort William, Inverness-shire:

Dear Sirs,

During the winter period, our company will be producing a semi-documentary film located in the Western Isles, and set in the latter half of the last century. We intend to rent a large lochside property capable both of accommodating the staff (about 6 to 10 people) and of featuring in certain parts of the set.

We would wish to assume tenancy by about December 1st of this year and stay for a minimum of three months. Adequate funds are available for the right property. If you have anything which you might consider suitable for our purposes, would you please let me know as soon as possible?

Yours faithfully,
Donald Nice.

Conaglen House, a baronial mansion on the coast just by the entrance to the Caledonian Ship Canal at Fort William, was available for £1,000 a week.

James Goldsack, after a brief spell of being in prison and a long spell of being a junkie, was now back to perfecting his business of wholesaling marijuana and hashish. Jarvis, Johnny Martin, and Old John were also keeping body and soul together in similar fashion. The three of them should be able to sell a ton a week.

Patrick Lane was now in a position to move almost unlimited quantities of money from one part of the world to another. If given cash in London, he could credit it to any account in the world. Patrick and his family moved from Limerick into an expensive mansion overlooking Hyde Park.

Karob
was a deep-sea salvage tug, an ideal craft for smuggling large quantities of contraband. Salvagers could be found anywhere on the ocean without attracting suspicion. If questioned, the captain could claim to be acting on a tipoff of a boat in distress. Communications between salvage tugs were often covert and coded. Loading and unloading equipment was in abundance on the decks. In December 1979,
Karob
picked up fifteen tons of Colombian marijuana and steered through the hot Caribbean towards the chilly and stormy waters of the Irish Sea. Stuart Prentiss’s two 40-foot yachts,
Bagheera
and
Salammbo
, slipped north from the island of Kerrera into the maze of deep-sea lochs round the Inner Hebrides.
Salammbo
returned to Kerrera with five tons of Colombian marijuana. Prentiss’s family and friends unloaded the cargo.
Bagheera
took ten tons to Conaglen House, where four large three-ton box-vans were waiting. Tom Sunde, Ernie’s number one, was there to help unload. By his side were eight vegetarian New Yorkers, friends of Alan Schwarz, who had been flown in for the occasion. They had no idea where they were. Jarvis took five tons to the falconry in Pytchley. James Goldsack took five tons to a stash he had in Essex. On New Year’s Day, 1980, fifteen tons of
the highest quality Colombian marijuana lay poised to hit the streets of England. It was the largest amount of dope ever to have been imported into Europe, enough for every inhabitant of the British Isles to get simultaneously stoned.

While the builders were fixing the bathroom at Cathcart Road, Judy, Amber, and I moved into a £500-a-week flat at Hans Court, Knightsbridge, directly opposite Harrods. We would have breakfast of caviare omelettes at the Caviare House. Judy became pregnant again. I asked her to marry me. She refused. She would marry me only in my real name. No Mrs Nice for her. But she did approve of our getting engaged. We threw a disgustingly lavish party at Hans Court. The food was limited to caviare and foie gras, the drink to Stolichnaya and Dom Perignon, the décor to swans carved out of ice, and the sounds to the Pretenders. Peter Whitehead married Dido Goldsmith, daughter of Teddy and niece of Sir James. I was Peter’s best man. Bianca Jagger was Dido’s best lady. Our daughters met. Jade played with Amber.

Every head in England was stoned. The streets were awash with Colombian marijuana, and everyone knew it, including the police and Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, but they couldn’t bust any. It was selling at the predicted rate of a ton a week, but the Florida gangsters couldn’t believe sales were so slow. Something had to be wrong. Were they being ripped off? They thought so and strong-armed Ernie to agree that they send some representatives to England to make an inventory of unsold marijuana. The Florida representatives were Joel Magazine, a Miami defence lawyer, and a Sicilian with the unlikely name of Walter Nath. They stayed at the Dorchester Hotel. While checking the quantities of unsold marijuana, Nath also made private enquiries with his own London friends to determine whether they could sell the Colombian marijuana at a faster rate. Nath’s friends unwittingly introduced him to an undercover officer of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, who followed
him to Scotland, where he was with Stuart Prentiss checking the marijuana stored there. Stuart Prentiss noticed they were being followed, lost his pursuer, and threw a few tons of marijuana into the sea. For the next few weeks, large bales of Colombian marijuana were being washed ashore on the Scottish coast, smoked, handed in to the police, and eaten by sheep and deer. The news media were amused. The Florida gangsters were not. But sales carried on.

Marty Langford helped out by occasionally driving marijuana to London from Pytchley, where Jarvis’s friend, Robert Kenningale, was keeping an eye on the stash while feeding dead rats to the falcons. Marty also kept in touch with McCann’s wife, Sylvia. While British Customs Officers were closely watching London dealers and Scottish beachcombers making fortunes out of Colombian marijuana, McCann’s trial for the importation of Thai marijuana into Ireland began in Dublin. McCann had been beaten up by the IRA while awaiting trial but had recovered sufficient poise to mount an inspired defence: he was tracking down an enemy of Ireland, an agent of MI6, who was poisoning Irish youth by importing marijuana. The name of the agent was Howard Marks, who used the alias Mr Nice. McCann was acquitted.