Snowing in Bali

by Kathryn Bonella

  – Sparrow

  American Gabriel often spoke by phone from his Bali cell to Marco in jail in Java awaiting his court verdict day. ‘I was on the phone to him all the time. And he would be all upbeat, amazing how he can do that.’

  Another friend, Danilo, a Brazilian photographer living in Bali, was often visiting him in jail to take photos, and Marco would use his culinary talents to cook up the food he brought in, then serve Danilo lunch in his private cell, always the same lively, laughing company.

  Only once did Danilo see any trace of worry. They were together in the holding cell at court, a week before the verdict, and Marco looked at him, asking, ‘Do you think they are really going to kill me?’ It was a poignant moment, and Danilo took a photo. In court, Marco testified that he’d needed cash from the run to pay a several years overdue $80,000 hospital bill in Singapore.

  On the day of his verdict a week later, Marco’s demeanour was as upbeat as always, as he stood at the barred holding cell door, chatting and laughing with journalists.

  He wasn’t taking it seriously, he thought he would get out somehow, he didn’t show any emotion – he wasn’t scared.

  – Danilo

  Before going into court, Marco told Danilo that he’d give him a good photo opportunity. ‘He said, “Pay attention, when they give the death sentence, I’m going to turn around.” ’

  The verdict of death was widely expected as Carlino hadn’t been able to cut a deal for him – the case was too high-profile, and raising big bucks had failed at Juri’s bust. So, the little boy with the big personality from the Amazon jungle sat in court with his head bowed as he listened to his fate.

  ‘He is guilty of importing a type one narcotic, cocaine, and the court punishes the defendant with the death penalty,’ said presiding judge Suprapto. ‘The defendant was one link in an international narcotics network that has threatened the country.’

  Moreira, 42, gave a courteous hand gesture to the court after the verdict and his lawyer said he would appeal. The judge chided Moreira for escaping at the airport in August when customs officers quizzed him about the hang-glider. Asked by reporters how he managed to slip away from airport authorities, Moreira said: ‘I’m David Copperfield’ – a reference to the US magician.

  – Reuters News, 8 June 2004

  Marco’s story was headline news in Brazil, with reports that he could be put to death by an elephant crushing his head.

  The Brazilian sentenced to death can be executed with an elephant kick crushing his skull. Or, if their executors employ what they call a ‘more humane method’, then he may be shot.

  – Istoé Independente, 16 June 2004

  The Brazilian Marco Archer, known among the communities of surfing and hang-gliding by ‘Curumim’, was sentenced to death yesterday by the Indonesian court . . . The executions are carried out by a firing squad or by crushing the head by the leg of an elephant.

  – Waves, 8 June 2004

  The head-crushing stories continued despite being refuted by the Indonesian embassy in Brasília.

  The Indonesian Embassy in Brasília denied, as was reported by the press, that if convicted and sentenced to death, Moreira will have his head crushed by an elephant. The convict is executed with rifle shots.

  – Folha de São Paulo, 26 May 2004

  Straight after his verdict, Marco was loaded back into the police van, and through the window asked Danilo to bring him two beers to the jail.

  I actually got three beers for him. I went straight after to the jail to see him, he was kind of shook up, you could tell he was a little bit emotional, he didn’t say anything, but he needed a beer to digest everything. I didn’t stay long, I didn’t really want to because it was kind of hard for me too, what are you going to say to the guy?

  – Danilo

  Seeing Marco get a death sentence, with his future now a dark tunnel towards a firing squad, was sobering for all the dealers. Execution had always been a vague unthinkable chance, but now it was a reality, and smart horses were suddenly thin on the ground. But it served as no deterrent for Dimitrius, who set up another run to Bali only weeks later, using a 32-year-old rich upper middle-class guy from South Brazil to do a run.

  Rodrigo Gularte was the black sheep in a rich family. He’d started sniffing solvents as a teenager and, despite his mother trying to set him up in various careers, he chose to traffic drugs. He was softly spoken, handsome and nicknamed Fraldinha (nappy) by the Bali crew ‘because he complained like a baby’. He flew out with eight surfboards, six loaded, and two friends to help camouflage the trip as a boys’ surfing holiday. At 3 pm they flew into Jakarta, transiting to Bali.

  Customs officers noticed the men acting ‘nervous and agitated’ and when the X-ray showed foreign objects inside six of the boards the three friends were taken to a security room. As they watched, one of the boards was cut open and it revealed two embedded plastic bags, each with 500 grams of white powder. The rest of the boards were then cut and another ten bags uncovered.

  Surfboards are very suspicious, obvious, doesn’t work. Frank [De Castro Dias] already fucked up that equipment. It was a bad job too. You don’t need to even put in an X-ray, you just hold it up to the light and you can see.

  – Rafael

  Incredibly, Rodrigo had agreed to do this run for Dimitrius just weeks after Marco was sent to death row.

  The death penalty handed down to Brazilian Marco Archer Cardosa Moreira on 8 June for attempting to smuggle 13.7 kilos of cocaine from Peru apparently failed to deter three of his countrymen from attempting the same thing last week . . . On Saturday, officers of the Interdiction Task Force at Soekarno–Hatta International Airport arrested the three Brazilians for trying to smuggle 6 kilos of cocaine from São Paulo in six out of eight surfboards they were carrying . . . ‘The agency strongly suspects that the three have a link with a John Miller, the person who gave Moreira the order to bring in the cocaine,’ Makbul [National Narcotics Agency Director] said, adding that Miller was still at large.

  – Jakarta Post, 6 August 2004

  Rodrigo admitted guilt straight away, absolving his two friends, and now faced the probable death penalty alone.

  *

  Meanwhile, in Bali, Italian jeweller Juri and American surfer Gabriel were trying to cut a deal.

  The two westerners had shared the concrete floors of the police cell, sleeping on towels, until Gabriel splashed out cash. ‘I always had $1000 in my pocket.’ He was the first to be allowed a thin mattress and was soon getting margaritas delivered to the police cell. When he moved to Kerobokan Prison, he slung the boss $1000 to transfer instantly out of the vile initiation cell into the foreigners’ block, sharing with Argentinian hashish dealer Frederico. Quickly renowned among the guards for his cash-splashing, they nicknamed Gabriel ‘America’.

  Like most, he was anxiously trying to do a deal and get out. One morning the police drove him and his lawyer, William, to a meeting with the prosecutors. Afterwards, William met with the judge and the deal was set. For $50,000, Gabriel would be sentenced to three years, six months. William just had to slip them the cash an hour before the courts opened at 7 am on the day of his verdict.

  Handcuffed in the bus, en route to his last day in court, Gabriel was stressed, desperately hoping the deal would work.

  William had the money in time for the deal, it was all set, and I was just ready to get this behind me, because your head is just so foggy when you don’t know what you’re going to get. I was all worked up. I went to the court, I’m sitting there in the cell waiting, and they called my name. But I hadn’t seen William yet; he was always there when I went to court – he would meet me at the bars.

  Then the prosecutor came to take me into court. He had an angry look. I was asking, ‘What’s wrong, what’s wrong? Where’s William?’ I was freaking out and he wouldn’t even look at me. He just grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the courtroom and rammed me down. I was sitting in court and William never showed up. So all the
judges who were supposed to get paid that morning, they didn’t. They were pissed off, man. They were all stinking mad at me and I got eight years. Then the prosecutor dragged me back to the cell and didn’t say a word.

  I was speechless. I’d given the shirt off my back to help my cause and it had been working. Then I found out when I got back to jail that William died the night before. We’d just sent like $50,000 and he died before he handed them the money. All that time I had built up hope, all the money spent, all the planning for this one big court date and the guy croaks the night before. I couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Everyone was completely blown away. I thought, ‘Oh my god, my problems aren’t ending, they’re just beginning. I can’t be here for eight years. The guy who set up the Marriott bombing in Jakarta and killed 12 people got ten years.’ I’m thinking I got eight for this pillow dope, and this mass murderer got ten. I couldn’t live with that. That’s when I turned into a ghost. I was like a walking dead man.

  Did you get your money back?

  No, not a dime. His wife was a rotten bitch, she took all my money.

  – Gabriel

  Italian Juri had also been working on a deal to try to avoid literally being a walking dead man. Busted with 5 kilos of coke at the airport, he was facing Marco’s fate. His devoted family in Italy was trying to scrape together cash to help, but airport busts were intrinsically more high-profile, more scrutinised and trickier to deal. Anything less than life would create suspicion. Using the priciest lawyer in town saved him. Juri was sentenced to life in prison, with a very expensive wink that it would drop to 15 years later.

  Gabriel was devastated by his double whammy of bad luck. He was trying to figure it out; make sense of it . . . maybe it was karma for the drugs he had tucked away. Moping around the jail, he was miserable, zombie-like, drinking beers to blur reality, dazed at the idea of waking up in hell every day for the next eight years. Then he got a tip from the prison boss advising him to call Juri’s lawyer.

  I call the guy and he comes in all cavalier and swagger, ‘Yeah Gabriel, tell me how much time you want.’ ‘How much time do I want to do?’ ‘Yeah, tell me how much time and I’ll tell you the price.’ I open my mouth and say, ‘I can’t do more than two years.’ I should have said one. Stupid. But anyway, he says, ‘All right, two years, I give you two years for $30,000.’

  I call my parents and they’re like, ‘What, more money? Another scam?’ They didn’t want any part of it. And the worst thing I could say to my brother was, ‘More money?’. But I talked him into it. So I ended up paying some crooked lawyer to get my sentence brought down. He got some lady at court to change it from eight years to two, so that when the paperwork came from the court to jail it said two years. The warden knew about it, but it was a secret at the courts. This one lawyer, he was doing a lot of the foreigners’ cases, he was the guy.

  – Gabriel

  Like most westerners, Gabriel was also flinging money around just to survive, paying for all the basics in Kerobokan Prison like toilet paper, soap, water and food. For his sanity he was also bribing the guards to bring in beers, dishes from his favourite restaurants and for days out. The westerners were injecting a fortune into the coffers of guards, police and the judiciary.

  Hotel Kerobokan was just a cash cow for the Indonesians who were involved in it, from the cops, to courts to the jailers. They don’t see $30,000 in their life, and then all of a sudden there’s this blitz by the cops and they’re all getting the money – the judge, the warden and the staff at the jail. These people had made this Kerobokan a machine to make money.

  They set out in a way to extort money from westerners with their little bit of drugs, that’s the way I saw it. It wasn’t so much they were trying to stop crime or drugs, they were trying to get these people, like me . . . to try to get all the money out of them, scare them into having their families send money.

  The cops were busting everybody doing anything. People were coming in once a week, from all different countries – Greece, France, Brazil, Peru, Australia, you name it, Africa – and every one of them like me, thinking the same thing: we need to raise money to bribe these people to let us go home. Everybody had a plan or a deal to make. I didn’t know any foreigner in there who didn’t have a deal worked out about how they were going to get out of this mess.

  It’s incredible just how much money they make. I had to pay the warden $1000 just to go to [a better part of ] the jail; the chief of police took my $2000 set of golf clubs; I paid them to type up my paperwork; it’s just pay, pay, pay. They are just bloodsuckers. It cost me $200,000, that whole thing.

  – Gabriel

  Rafael went only once to visit the guys in Kerobokan, arriving with armfuls of bags of food from the Bali Deli. The guys swarmed, happy to see him, passing on letters to send, asking him to buy phone credit. Ruggiero offered to sell Rafael cheap drugs, explaining the jail was a frenetic drugs market with the best and cheapest prices on the island. Ruggiero was already selling to customers, often girls who he’d instruct to come into visits wearing skirts so they could insert the package like a tampon to avoid any risk of being busted as they walked out.

  I always say, ‘The only condition I make is you put it in your pussy, not in your pocket. If you get searched and arrested, I get a problem.’

  – Ruggiero

  Rafael also saw Chino’s twin brother Toto inside. ‘All his teeth were black. He was addicted to heroin, I think, and looks like a junkie.’ After his first visit, Rafael didn’t go again. It was depressing and too chillingly close to the bone.

  I had to go home and lie down, it sucked all my energy. That’s why I refused to go there again. I sent people to take food, money, phone credit, but I didn’t want any connection anymore, I didn’t need to go there.

  – Rafael

  *

  While Gabriel and the guys were dealing with corrupt guards and cops in Bali, Rafael was about to fly to Brazil to buy 10 kilos of confiscated blow from his cop broker Claudio, who worked for the São Paulo Polícia. When Rafael arrived, Claudio told him the bust had been delayed; he’d have to wait a week. Rafael wasn’t keen. So, Claudio suggested they go to talk to his boss, who was already sitting on 100 kilos that he could sell right away.

  Rafael was incredulous. Dealing with cops was dicing with the devil and the idea of walking into their lair was insane.

  ‘Are you crazy, man?’ Rafael retorted. ‘The guy’s gonna give me the cocaine, take all my money, then give me a bracelet.’

  But Claudio assured him it was safe. ‘No, the guy’s cool, he’s a surfer too. I’ve talked about you, about your surf camp.’

  ‘No man, no way,’ Rafael snapped.

  ‘Okay, man, but unless you make a deal with him you’ll have to sit and wait for a week.’

  Denying his screaming instincts, Rafael acquiesced. ‘Okay, let’s go . . . let’s go to meet this motherfucker. But is he going to give it to me today?’ Rafael asked.

  ‘Yes, he has storage of 100 kilos.’

  Then I see myself go inside the police building in São Paulo, six floors, lots of rooms. I take the elevator, walk, look, everybody looks at me too, all the police, you know. They’re full of gold, they’re so bad taste to dress. Ah fuck, like farm people, like they are not good dressers, they have boots, hats. Then he brings me to the office of the boss to negotiate. The big boss is the fucking drug dealer. I was thinking this must be a dream when I sit at the table of one of the biggest delegados [police chiefs] in São Paulo to buy coke.

  – Rafael

  After a quick introduction, they got down to business. ‘How much?’ Rafael asked.

  ‘€7000 each kilo.’ He’d been promised €5000 by Claudio.

  ‘Come on, man, you say €5000, why now €7000?’ he hustled.

  ‘Because this is good stuff,’ the police chief argued.

  ‘Well, I brought €50,000 to buy 10 kilos. That’s my offer,’ Rafael countered.

  The cop played hardball. ‘Whoa, canno
t. It’s €7000,’ he said.

  Rafael quickly created a convincing white lie. ‘You’re gonna fuck my packing because my cargo fits 10 kilos and I don’t have money to buy 10 at €7000,’ he argued. ‘So please, man, €5000 a kilo is a lot of money, you don’t have any costs, man. You just go out and kick some door to get this shit. Come on, you guys, don’t be greedy.’

  And then it works, my words work. The guy says, ‘Okay, €5000.’ And then he says, ‘Where are you gonna pack this shit?’ I say, ‘Man, I talk about the miracle but I don’t tell the address of the angel.’ ‘Okay, well the coke is here in the police car, and I can deliver it for you, otherwise you might get busted on the way.’

  So we go in the fucking black and white camburão [police car]. My friend and another cop, not the boss, they sit in the front, I sit in the back seat with the window open, the big bag of 10 kilos by my side, and then they say, ‘Let’s smoke a joint.’ I say, ‘Yes, let’s smoke a joint.’ There was a little bit of traffic, so I say, ‘Let’s light the joint and put on the siren, let’s go fast.’ ‘Okay.’ . . . Everybody pulled their cars to the side of the road, and we just pass through. So funny, you know. I was like . . . the world is crazy.

  – Rafael

  Rafael’s crew of packers was waiting to put it into windsurfer booms. He was sending the coke to Amsterdam in two lots. Often now he was using FedEx and DHL. The success rate was slightly less than horses, but with fewer hassles. He could easily send one board with two sets of booms – a smaller one for strong wind, bigger for lighter – which was normal for windsurfers to carry, and meant he was able to traffic more coke without it looking odd.

  This time he put 1.5 kilos in each of the four tubes and sent the 6 kilos via FedEx to his friend Fabio, aka Psychopath – a top horse, who’d already done about five runs to Bali. But there was a hiccup. Despite computer tracking showing its arrival in Amsterdam, the courier didn’t deliver to Psychopath on the due day. He phoned Rafael, who was still in Brazil waiting for news of the safe delivery before flying in to pick up the cash; ‘Fuck, man, the stuff hasn’t come.’