by Rusty Young
‘Are you sure?’ I frowned.
‘Sí, seguro,’ he replied, pointing once more at the building and then holding out his hand to receive payment. ‘Fifteen bolivianos, please.’ It seemed he now spoke English. I shook my head and smiled to show I had been in the country long enough to know the cost of a taxi ride.
‘Six.’
‘OK. Thirteen.’ Eventually, he dropped his price a further two bolivianos, but he couldn’t go any lower than that. Cost cutting in Bolivian schools has resulted in generations of taxi drivers who do not know the numbers one to ten. They learn to count from eleven upwards. I paid him the correct fare and he laughed good-naturedly and then drove off.
I was still dubious about whether this was the right place. Apart from two uniformed policemen leaning idly against a metal railing, there was no indication that there was a jail behind those walls. Besides, many buildings in La Paz, even apartment blocks and private businesses, could afford to have state-paid policemen stationed outside. As it turned out, the driver was correct; this was the prison.
It was inexplicably situated on prime real estate, occupying an entire block in the city centre and fronting on to the beautiful San Pedro Plaza. As I looked up at the enormous walls again, deliberating on my next move, one of the policemen appeared beside me.
‘Tour, yes? You Eengleesh. You American. Prison tour?’ He motioned that I should approach the gates. It seemed I was in the right place. However, I baulked until he said something that caught my attention:
‘¿Necesita a Thomas?’
‘Sí, Thomas,’ I confirmed, still at a safe distance. He became even more excited and beckoned frantically for me to accompany him.
‘Sí. Thomas! No cameras, señor ! No fotos,’ he advised, leading me inside.
The outer gateway opened up into a high-ceilinged, spacious passageway and there, directly in front of me, was another set of gates, this one consisting of vertical bars. On my side of the divide was a wooden table manned by several indolent guards in green uniforms. On the other side, pressed tightly against the metal gate, jostling each other and vying for optimal viewing positions, was a sea of expectant Bolivian prisoners.
Scarcely had I time to take in this initial spectacle, before my appearance generated a clamorous uproar. Voices bellowed from all directions:
‘Tours!’
‘Mister. Hey mister!’
‘¡Señor!’
‘Cocaine?’
‘Marijuana?’
‘Tour! ’
‘Una moneda.’
Prisoners also called out from the wings that branched out to the left and right of this main chamber. They were like frenzied monkeys, screeching and rattling their cages and clambering over the top of one another to capture my attention. Hands gripped the bars and others extended through them, waving and offering drugs or appealing for coins. I stared back at them. At the same time, my policeman was tugging at my sleeve with his hand out. As I gave him some coins, I heard someone call the name ‘Thomas.’
The speaker this time was a diminutive inmate with dark skin and a shock of white hair at the front. I nodded to him and the din subsided instantly. The other prisoners resumed their intense vigil over the entrance, waiting for the next visitor, while the prisoner who had spoken yelled excitedly, ‘Thomas! Thomas. ¿Quiere que le traiga a Thomas?’ When he smiled, I saw that he was missing a tooth.
I nodded again and he whispered something to one of the officers through the bars. The officer stood up, opened the gate using a set of keys chained to his belt and nodded for me to go through. It was the gateway into the strangest place I have ever visited.
A group of about five or six Westerners was already waiting just inside the gate. A young man of medium height, dressed in a freshly ironed designer shirt and cream-coloured jeans, noticed me looking around uncertainly.
‘Hi. I’m Thomas.’ He smiled warmly, extending his hand to shake mine. He had a chubby face with intelligent eyes that engaged my attention immediately. ‘What’s your name, man?’
‘Rusty,’ I answered hesitantly.
‘Rusty,’ he said, still clasping my hand between both of his. ‘That is nice name, man. I like a lot. Strong name.’
This was not at all the Thomas I had expected.
First, he was black. Uri had told me Thomas was from Liverpool, in England, so I had expected him to be white. Second, he was charming and courteous in a way that I would not have expected of a prisoner. When four more tourists arrived, he shook hands with each of them in turn, looking them squarely in the eyes and repeating their names. Over the next hour and a half, he didn’t get a single name wrong.
Thomas had a strange accent for an Englishman. He called everyone ‘man’ and sometimes mixed up his words and tenses. But that didn’t matter. Thomas had a magical way of drawing you right in. He had an energy I have encountered in very few people in the world. There were nine of us in the tour group, but I never doubted for a moment that Thomas was speaking only to me. The tour itself was fascinating, but it did not end there. When the other visitors left, Thomas invited me back to his ‘cell’, which was more like a student room in a fraternity house. He had cable television, a refrigerator and said he had once owned a computer.
Without another word, Thomas produced a small wrap of cocaine and started chopping its contents into lines on a CD case. I looked at the door, which he had locked. Thomas sensed what I was thinking.
‘My prison cell is the safest place in the world to take cocaine,’ he assured me, laughing to himself. ‘I won’t get busted, man. I can have the police fired if they give me any trouble.’
He sniffed a line, slid the CD case over to me and then started talking. Soon, I did not want him to stop.
It is impossible to convey adequately the way in which Thomas related the events of his life to me. He did not simply narrate them; he acted them out as if he were reliving the entire experience. From the moment he started talking, I did not shift from my chair. Thomas, on the other hand, stood or moved around almost the entire time. As new people entered the story, he played their various roles. He imitated their voices, their mannerisms – even their facial expressions. He used objects and furniture in order to tell his stories. He even tapped himself on the shoulder when describing how two policemen had approached him in the customs queue at La Paz’s airport four-and-a-half years earlier.
Thomas’s experiences in San Pedro and his life beforehand were the stuff of books – the types of true stories that are so bizarre they seem like fiction – and when he finally paused for breath, I told him so. He said that it had always been his intention to write a book, but he was yet to find someone to whom he could entrust the telling of his life story. He did another line of cocaine and then continued his narrative.
I was completely mesmerised for another hour until a bell sounded. All visitors were now supposed to leave. However, there was something the official guidebooks had failed to mention: for a small bribe, tourists could also spend the night in San Pedro.
That evening, Thomas took me into the dangerous sections deep inside the prison. Some of the things I saw there made me cry with laughter; others utterly repulsed me. I saw a side of life that I had never seen before. Many of the inmates were addicted to drugs – some so severely that they cut themselves deliberately in order to come down or because they were paranoid. I even made the acquaintance of a cat that was addicted to smoking cocaine. It was the craziest night of my life and the most fascinating. I do not know what possessed me to take the risks I did. I think it was Thomas. In the few hours since I had met him at the gate, I had come to trust him almost completely. As long as he was there, I felt certain that no harm would come to me in San Pedro.
By the end of the night, I understood why Thomas McFadden was so famous. With Thomas holding court, the entire evening was bathed in magic. It was also powdered with cocaine. However, that was only part of the experience. The coke he dispensed that night was of the quality that Uri, the Germa
n backpacker, had boasted, but it was used in the same manner as the furniture and other objects in his room; it was merely another prop to help him narrate. His life story was also as fascinating as the Israelis on the Inca trail had described. But it was not that, either. It was Thomas himself. I had never met anyone like him in my life, and I doubt I ever will again.
Something clicked between us that night. We talked non-stop until daybreak and then I decided to stay another night. Around four o’clock in the morning of the following day, it was decided: I was going to write his book for him. We hugged and Thomas told me I was his white brother. He bought a dozen bottles of beer to celebrate.
The next day I had a hangover and a vague recollection of having made a very serious pact. I was now Thomas’s brother and I had to stick to our agreement. It would be a risky undertaking; if the prison administration or other prisoners were to discover our intention of exposing the corruption in San Pedro, there would be grave repercussions. There was also a catch that Thomas had neglected to mention: I would have to live in San Pedro with him. Otherwise, I would never genuinely understand what it was like to be a prisoner there.
‘The tourists only see the easy side of prison life for an hour when they do a tour,’ he told me. ‘But there is a lot of suffering here, man. A lot of suffering.’
I went back to Australia for six months in order to work and save up money, before returning to Bolivia. For the next four months, I spent time with Thomas in San Pedro every day. It was not long before I discovered that Thomas was right – it seemed like a relaxed place for a prison, but it was a prison nonetheless. Fortunately, he had obtained permission in writing for me to come and go as I pleased. Unlike the real prisoners, I could take a cheap room in a hotel on the outside for the night whenever things became too much.
In taking on this project, I knew from the outset that Thomas McFadden was no angel. Very few foreigners end up in prison in South America for no reason. Thomas was a convicted cocaine trafficker, but he was also one the most magnetic people I have ever met. However, I will allow you to discover that for yourself.
This is Thomas McFadden’s story.
PART TWO
THOMAS
1
EL ALTO AIRPORT
When I stepped through the automatic sliding doors into La Paz’s El Alto Airport carrying five kilograms of pure cocaine concealed in my luggage, I got a shock. There were police everywhere. Some were ordinary policemen dressed in green, but many others wore the blue uniforms of Bolivia’s main drug squad, the FELCN. As soon as I walked into the terminal, every single one of them looked up. It was as if they had been waiting for me.
Normally, whenever I walk into an airport anywhere in the world carrying merchandise, I treat everything as a game. I try to see the funny side of things. If you think too much about the risk you’re taking, it makes you nervous and you make bad decisions. Of course, you’re always going to be a bit nervous, but thinking of the whole thing as a game stops those nerves from showing on your face.
It took me a while to slip into game mode this time because there were so many police and because the terminal was so small. La Paz is the biggest city in Bolivia, so I had expected its airport to be truly international. But it wasn’t. It was tiny. However, now that I was inside, it was too late to turn around.
I chased after my porter. He had slowed down a few metres inside the door, waiting for me to catch up and tell him which airline I was with. I pulled out my ticket and pretended to be flustered because I had arrived so late. We studied the ticket together and then searched for the correct counter. All the while I was looking around in order to make a more thorough assessment of the airport’s security system. Because it was so small, I could have got all the necessary information in a single sweep, but I took my time and made all my observations very openly. That’s the first mistake amateur traffickers make: they think the less they look around, the less attention they will attract. But that’s exactly the opposite of what you should do. If you’ve got nothing to hide, then why wouldn’t you look around? A typical passenger walks into a terminal and stops, looks at the departures board, goes the wrong way and then asks directions of people, all the while searching for the right counter and looking around them. They might even look up at the ceiling and notice the security cameras.
Gradually, I began to relax and slip into proper game mode. The police had stopped staring at me by then, and everything I observed confirmed my previous experience of Bolivian security: the system was going to be easy to get through. Apart from its size, the airport layout was standard, with the floor covered in those shiny, off-white tiles you get in all airports. The roof was the typical painted-cement variety. It looked like they hadn’t renovated it in years. I knew straight away that there were no hidden cameras up there. It was the same with the walls. There were no observation rooms hidden behind advertising posters, that I could make out. Along the far wall was the row of check-in counters. The most obvious airline was the national airline, Lloyd Aero Boliviano.
Even though it was early in the day, you would have expected an international airport such as La Paz to be reasonably busy. There should have been airline staff behind all the counters and other employees rushing about all over the place. However, there was a total of four staff waiting to check people in. But I wasn’t worried because I had already seen that there were no specialists around.
‘Specialists’ is the name I give to the security personnel in airports whose job it is to specifically target drug traffickers. You never really know for sure who might be a specialist or who the specialists might have helping them. It could be anyone from a Drug Enforcement Administration agent posing as a passenger, to an airline employee at the check-in counter or an innocent-looking cleaner. I have even heard of an airline flight attendant who was paid by a specialist to take note of people who didn’t eat during a flight, because that can indicate they have swallowed merchandise. However, not eating during a flight may also say something about the quality of airline food, and the attendant pointed the finger at hundreds of innocent people until the specialist stopped paying her.
The regular police and army officials never worry me in the slightest, no matter how many there are. In fact, the more the better. When there are a lot of them, they relax, thinking that someone else will cover for them. But you do have to look out for the specialists; they never rely on the support of a lazy and incompetent team. They work alone and take all the credit themselves. Even when they get you, they don’t like to reveal themselves; they stay undercover and keep working until they catch the next one, and the next one after that. A lot of traffickers who get caught never even find out that it was a specialist who got them. They think it was a sniffer dog, or a lucky customs search or a tip-off, when actually it was a specialist who pegged them in the terminal.
The normal police and customs people are there just to earn a living, but the specialists are properly trained and actually enjoy their jobs. It’s like a challenge to them and they really like busting traffickers. They have discipline and that’s how they get to the top of their field. In fact, many of them are as passionate about and dedicated to their jobs as I am. We’re in exactly the same business, just on different sides. I think of the specialist as my direct enemy in the airport, like the opposing number on a sports field: to beat him, you have to know who you are up against and how to outsmart him, because you can’t be successful at anything unless you are better than your opponent. The best specialists and drug traffickers think alike. They are looking out for me, and I’m looking out for them. Luckily, I’m smarter than they are and have never been caught by one. Well, there was that one time they got me in Nairobi with the heroin, but I still don’t know to this day if it was a specialist who got me. I eventually got out of that one anyway.
Usually, I can see through their disguises easily, although some of them are very good. I often know who the specialists are because they are too casual; they are trying too hard to blend
in. But just knowing who the specialists are doesn’t mean you have won; they can still get you. In fact, if they catch you catching them, then you’ve lost, because only a trafficker would be looking out for a specialist. At the same time, not looking around at all when you are in an airport is also suspicious behaviour.
With all my knowledge of the way this business works, I was thinking about becoming a specialist after I retired, just to keep myself in touch with the industry. I think the best disguise for a specialist would be as a drug trafficker. Or they should at least wear bright clothes and be more extroverted. No one would suspect them then – who ever heard of an attention-seeking undercover agent?
I’m only joking, of course, but that’s my point. When I’m working, I treat the whole job as a game and I like to play with them. And in a game, you have to laugh. Whether it’s the drugs game, or any other game. But the only thing the specialists don’t have is a sense of humour. They take things way too seriously. That’s why I’m smarter than them and why I elude them every time. But there was no need to worry about them this time. There were no specialists in La Paz airport.
I paid the porter and checked in my suitcases at the airline counter without any problems.
‘You’ll have to hurry, sir,’ said the girl, pointing to the departure gates. ‘You’re running very late.’
‘I know. There were protestors blocking the highway.’
‘Yes, sir. I understand. We’ve been informed of that and take-off has been delayed slightly. But you must hurry, please.’
In order to reduce the time the customs police would have to ask me questions, I wasted a few more minutes buying some cigarettes in the duty-free shop. I got my passport stamped and cleared customs easily. I was completely relaxed as I joined the queue for the departure lounge. It was when I was waiting in line that the real trouble started.