El Infierno

by Pieter Tritton

  The prison had a doctor present most days and you could get a diagnosis from him and also prescriptions, but then you had to give them to a visitor to purchase and bring in the medication, which could take time. If you became seriously ill in prison and couldn’t pay for the medication, you died. It was as simple as that. If it was a medical emergency then you’d have to be carried to the entrance of the prison where you would have to wait until various people, including the director, had signed documents to allow you to be taken to hospital – as long as you could pay. A lot of people would die in the time it took for the director to sign, guard escort to be organised and the ambulance to arrive.

  The dentist was pretty much the same but he only came in twice a week. He would do the basics, such as extractions, but if you wanted your teeth cleaned or filled or anything other than essential work done, then you paid. Once your wallet opened, so did your mouth!

  Ideally you should be in perfect health when you started your sentence, with brilliant teeth and 20/20 vision. People who had been in the prison a long time explained to me that they were generally OK for the first three or four years, but after that their health deteriorated. I thought to myself, there’s no way I will still be in prison then.

  Most people on C wing had a two-ring electric cooker in their cells that they used for cooking food, along with a fridge. Some even had microwaves. Everyone had kettles and toasters and most had a TV, DVD player and hi-fi. Some had satellite TV, via a dish mounted on the side of the wing. I quickly understood that as long as you had money you could have pretty much anything you wanted. I even started to think that maybe it was lucky I had been arrested here rather than in England. At least here there were possibilities … as long as you had el dinero.

  On one occasion I was in our cell, congratulating myself with the way I was settling in and figuring out how the prison worked. I had a routine and there seemed to be lots of opportunities to arrange things for my own comfort, and maybe even make some money. Just then my cellmate Jean, who had been in D wing seeing a friend, came hurrying back in. He explained that one of the African guys had just been stabbed to death and all the Africans were up in arms about it – literally. They were being held back at the gate by the heavily armed guards, who wouldn’t let them past as they were hell-bent on taking revenge.

  Jean explained what had happened. One of the Africans had been using the payphone when another inmate came up to him and asked to use the phone. The African tried to explain his credit was about to run out and he didn’t have enough on his phone card. At this point the other guy pulled a large kitchen knife and stabbed him to death. Just for a phone call. That’s how dangerous this place was. Everything could change in a split second and with absolutely no warning or provocation your life could be ended quicker than you can blow a candle out. I was shocked and from then on treated virtually everyone with a degree of caution and trepidation.

  After the 8am count, the next count was not until 5pm. We would all have to be back on our own wing and in our cells for it, but after that you were left to do whatever you wanted. I would usually go to the gym for a couple of hours with my Russian friend Sasha, then have a shower and cook dinner. The remainder of the time would be spent chatting, making phone calls and playing games.

  The final count of the day was at 9pm when we were locked in our cells for the night. By this point I was usually relieved to finally get the door closed so that I could relax and not have to be constantly on my guard. There would always be a mad rush in the last 15 minutes before lock-up as people dashed about getting whatever they needed for the rest of the night – food, films, cigarettes, alcohol or drugs. You would quite often be able to spot who had drugs for sale on the wing as at this hour there would be a feeding frenzy with a queue of anxious people getting enough coke, crack or weed to see them through the long night – nothing worse than running out of supplies at 1am just as the party’s getting started, locked behind a steel door.

  I tried not to count the days, weeks and months too much as that is a sure way to send yourself crazy in prison. Time becomes meaningless unless you are nearing the end of your sentence or a parole date. I banned calendars from my cell but it is quite satisfying, to know you are one day nearer to hopefully going home if you can only survive.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHISKY GALORE

  I SOON REALISED that I was living with one of C wing’s main alcohol suppliers. One evening I interrupted Jean in the process of cooking up his next batch. I could see he was wondering whether or not I could be trusted to keep my mouth shut. I put his worries to rest by quickly offering to help out.

  Jean had developed a technique of distilling medicinal alcohol to make it drinkable and not lethal at the same time. He had someone at the clinic selling it to him as well as permission to bring in a certain amount on visit days. He would cook this up in the cell using his secret method, which involved burning some of it off and adding vinegar and I believe sugar. We would then decant it into half-litre water bottles and there you are – the best spring water you ever drank!

  Jean and Johann had dug out a section of the tiled floor below Jean’s bed, in the back corner well in the shadow. To cover this, they had cast a concrete top and painted it to match the rest of the black and white tiled floor. Nearly all the cells in the prison were peppered with these little cubbyhole hiding places the locals called caletas. Some of them were most ingenious and so well made that they would probably never be found. They were in the walls, floors, ceilings, doors, fixtures and fittings, furniture, electronics, drains, absolutely everywhere. You have to remember of course that these people were professional smugglers well used to concealing ton upon ton of blocks of cocaine in all manner of spaces.

  The caleta that Jean and Johann had constructed was big enough to be able to hold several bottles of the finest liquor, our mobile phones and chargers, all the cutlery, kitchen knives and any drugs that may have been in the cell. In the event of a search by the police or guards after our doors were locked at 9pm, it would be my job, being closest to the caleta, to hide everything quickly. Once I had my mattress down and we were about to watch a film, as we did most evenings, I would make sure the caleta was slightly open and all the items to go in it were close to hand so I could act at a moment’s notice. If a search did happen, we would usually have advance warning, as other prisoners would start shouting ‘onze, onze’ – the number eleven in Spanish. The phone number for the emergency services in Ecuador is 911, hence onze.

  I had learned this system the hard way. During my first few days at the CDP before we were moved to the main prison, I was sitting on a bunk bed happily chatting away to a friend in Britain using Hassan’s phone when there was some shouting – including a word I later found out was ‘onze’ – and a guard appeared and promptly seized the phone, still hot from my ear, as I was trying to finish the conversation. Hassan got it back after bribing the guard, which was when he explained the onze system to me so that I wouldn’t lose any more phones.

  As we were the suppliers of the alcohol, obviously we would have a few drinks ourselves and sometimes a few bags of cocaine to go with it. The prison was awash with drugs of almost every kind, but the four main ones were cannabis in weed form, cocaine, base and heroin. The drug the locals called ‘base’ is what we in Europe and America normally call crack cocaine. However, base in Ecuador, and apparently Colombia too, is actually a by-product of the cocaine purification process. This they called polvo, which is Spanish for powder. This powder was a yellowy colour and had a texture rather like breadcrumbs or molasses sugar. It had a horrible smell from all the chemicals it contained and the use of gasoline in the process, which probably caused the yellow colour. When it was smoked it absolutely reeked.

  The effect was similar to crack cocaine, just not as strong or intense and not very pleasant. I had never seen this drug in Europe. The reason for this was that all the pure cocaine – the best product – is exported to the countries where it will fetch the
most money and only the rubbish by-product is sold locally. We would sometimes get our hands on something good, but not that often. My trafficker’s brain immediately kicked in when I saw an opportunity; no one was selling crack cocaine or highquality coke. A lot of the foreigners were complaining about the quality not being good as they were used to buying good Peruvian and Bolivian flake. This and the fact that I was living on the wing with all the foreigners, who generally consumed the most and had the most income, added up to one thing. An opportunity. I would have to tread extremely carefully as I didn’t want to rock the boat and piss off any of the locals, who would probably take umbrage at some foreigner suddenly taking over their patch. I would have to take my time and build up friends and backing, hence protection. I estimated it would take quite a while.

  Johann and I would sometimes go over to B wing or D wing looking to score some coke, which Johann was particularly fond of. I remember one occasion, towards the end of Johann’s sentence, when he had persuaded a fairly heavy character by the nickname of Commando to give him 50 grams on credit. Johann had convinced the shaven-headed, thuggish Commando that he was going to sell the coke on C wing and become the wing dealer. He had picked the cadada, bi-weekly sleepover, as the day to commence operations as everyone had a party then. Commando came over to C wing and met with Johann in the cell I had rented for the night in order to give Johann the coke and explain when he wanted his money. Once he was done explaining everything, he produced a sizeable bag of white powder he had stashed in his boxer shorts. Johann’s face lit up at the sight of this extra-large ‘party in a bag’ and I just knew he was not going to sell a single grain of that coke. As soon as Commando departed the cell Johann turned to me, smiled and said, ‘Fancy a line then?’ Here we go, I thought and sniffed the first of the evening. I turned to Johann and asked him whether or not he planned to sell the coke, to which he replied in his German accent, ‘Pa! Sell zis coke, nein tu es quazy. I going to have a big fiesta hahaha!’

  I said, ‘Are you mad Johann? That guy’s a bloody psycho who will cut your balls off for a couple of dollars, let alone a few hundred. He’s going to kill you if you don’t pay him.’

  By now Johann was as high as a kite caught in hurricane winds and couldn’t care less.

  ‘Ha. Fuck him. That faggot don’t do nothing. Anyway, I go home very soon, ha ha. Another line,’ he said, holding out the bag with shaky hands. He lay back on the bottom bunk, made himself comfortable, rested the bag of coke on his chest and from his pocket produced a small teaspoon and began to literally shovel coke up his nose. I became so worried he was going to overdose that I asked him to leave as that was the last thing I needed. Luckily for Johann there were no delays in him going free and he made it out by the skin of his teeth.

  A favourite pastime of crooks and villains is planning further escapades or capers. A great deal of this took place within the walls of Garcia Moreno. If you think about it, within the same prison there were people involved in the drug trafficking business from the very bottom to the very top. There were members of mafias from Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Italy, Albania, Africa and Britain. We had cartel bosses and capos, captains of boats and planes, mules. Nationalities from all corners of the globe were represented, nearly all of whom knew people hidden away in those remotest corners all wanting to buy that crystalline analgesic white powdery substance: cocaine. Let the game commence!

  As well as the local internal trafficking, there was a huge potential for making some very good new contacts. Prison, wherever in the world you are, can be turned to your benefit if you view it as an opportunity to meet new people and expand your contacts. In the Quito prison at this time there were members of Colombian and Mexican cartels ranging from workers all the way up to the very capos themselves. On top of this you also had people from all over the globe with access to untold numbers of buyers and also means of entry via airports, seaports, container ports and a multitude of other ways in which to get drugs into a country. I immediately saw the huge potential to organise something that could prove to be very financially rewarding. We had the suppliers, the shippers and the buyers all under one roof, literally. It just needed someone to try to organise everyone into action, which would take a good deal of diplomacy. That someone was me.

  I already had a fairly well-organised network with far-reaching contacts, who were all still there and keen to work. I decided to start putting the word out that I had buyers in Europe ready and waiting with cash for whatever quantity could be delivered. It wasn’t long before people started to approach me asking if this or that were possible. The only thing I was interested in was if the cocaine was on the ground in Europe, preferably Britain. Trying to arrange people in airports and seaports with guarantees was almost impossible and also very dangerous because if anything went wrong they would be coming to me for their money.

  I was told three things when I arrived at the prison: don’t get into debt, don’t do drugs and don’t do business unless you want problems. The problem here was there was no getting away from your problems. You had to face up to them and deal with them. If you had become involved in a drug deal with someone else in the prison and it went wrong, leaving you owing them a serious amount of money, there was literally nowhere to run or hide. I didn’t intend to undertake any business unless I knew that I had it covered in the event it all went horribly wrong. I decided that, on the whole, it was best to wait for a few months to get the feel of things, wait for my sentence to be confirmed and take it from there. After all, there was no real rush. I was possibly looking at a very long sentence.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NICKY

  ONE OF THE first things I had arranged after I arrived at Garcia Moreno was a mobile phone because I was spending a fortune on the cabinas – a percentage of which was enriching Youseff, the caporal, and his junta as they had a monopoly over all the phone cards sold in the prison, as well as a host of other items. The phone allowed Nicky and me to maintain daily contact, which really kept us going. She was totally unaccustomed to a prison environment, let alone in a foreign country with everyone speaking another language. The worst part of the whole thing was the fact that she was genuinely innocent and had merely come out for a holiday and to keep me company for a couple of weeks. She was finding it agony being separated from her daughter Emily, who was now being looked after by Nicky’s parents. I was adamant that I would do anything to get her released and promised her that she would not be getting sentenced.

  The Ecuadorians were concerned about keeping the statistics relating to drug arrests nice and high. That way the press and governments of the world would think they were doing a fantastic job. The mere fact that she was present in that hotel room condemned her. However, the Ecuadorian justice system at the time was suffering a terrible backlog and had come to a virtual standstill. Nicky was going to have to sit it out until we could push the case through the courts.

  My lawyer Eva warned that it could take over a year before the case was put before a judge. The only way to speed it up would of course be with money. Nicky kept telling me not to pay as she was innocent and there was no evidence against her. Eva tried to explain that this made no difference in Ecuador. Nicky was in prison now and the only way she would be getting released any time soon would be to pay.

  Luckily, at the time of my arrest I had plenty of money, some of which was put aside for a contingency such as this. I instructed Eva to come up with an overall figure for how much it would cost me to get Nicky out. I didn’t care about the money; I just wanted her out of there as fast as possible. The weeks were becoming months and Nicky was becoming more and more depressed and homesick.

  Eva intended to have the case against Nicky dismissed due to lack of evidence at the first hearing and was in the process of negotiating with the judges and court officials as to how much they wanted in order to release her. This was great news. Things were not looking so good for me, however. In order to guarantee Nicky’s release, even with the payoff, the judges were
insisting that I plead guilty to the charges of international drug trafficking. There had to be someone convicted for the crime. I would have to change the first statement I had made, in which I had denied all knowledge of the cocaine present in the groundsheet of the tent. Eva set about making the arrangements with the fiscal’s office – the South American equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service – to fix a date for the new interview. I knew I wasn’t walking away from this, so why should Nicky suffer as well?

  The day of the new interview came and a couple of police officers from Interpol collected me and transported me back to the Interpol offices on the other side of Quito. It was bizarre being driven through the streets where I had walked not so long ago. We drove past tourists wandering around and I wondered if any of them were also here arranging shipments of cocaine.

  The colonel at Interpol who had been in charge of the case was there, along with Eva and a fiscal from the prosecutor’s office. We got down to business and I gave my new ‘version’ of events, admitting that yes, I was transporting cocaine back to Europe. I said I was to be the one carrying it, which in fact I wasn’t. I had only ever once carried the drugs myself. Mules or passengers would be hired who could do that job for us.