by Howard Marks
At the Miami trial, Lovato explained several suitably selected snippets of telephone conversation in terms of smuggling dope from Pakistan to America. It wasn’t difficult because the conversations were so vague and almost never referred to anyone’s real name or any specific place. They were consistent with almost any scam happening anywhere. Lovato might testify that ‘over there’ meant California and ‘Mozambique’ meant Mexico, but equally, if not more, plausible interpretations were always possible. After all, when the Spanish began their investigation in 1985, they maintained I was smuggling into Spain. The Dutch, who it turns out were tapping Hobbs’s Amsterdam switchingstation telephone at the same time, thought they’d stumbled on to a plan to smuggle dope into Holland. Each of the two countries had plenty of evidence, aided by its own interpretations of the vague telephone conversations, to support its belief. Perhaps many of the countries involved could have made a case for believing they themselves were the countries to receive the dope.
My defence was beginning to take root. I felt excited. It might not be as intriguing a defence as being a secret agent, but it could work. I couldn’t begin to pretend I wasn’t a hashish smuggler, but I could make out I would never dream of smuggling it to America, not with the penalties being dished out these days. I’d be crazy even to think about it. Even Americans don’t smuggle to America any more. There are better places where you get a better price for the dope, where it’s not so easy to get caught, and where you don’t get much prison time if you do. Other than Lovato’s interpretations, there wasn’t much evidence to show I had imported hashish into America. Since 1973, the only consignment that had been busted in the United States was the two tons in the naval station in Alameda, California, the one shipped by the US Government on the American President Line. The DEA, with the help of Michael Stephenson, had already shot themselves in the foot on that one. Which country should I choose? To where could I pretend I’d smuggled ten tons of Pakistani hash?
It would have to be Western Europe, Canada, or Australia. Nowhere else could handle such a load. I began to construct three separate scenarios, one for each country, and tested them against the prosecution evidence. Each would require a lot of contextual research, but each had potential. Explaining away the evidence of millions of dollars in America might pose a problem, but money laundering was a global activity, and cash would transit through the most unlikely places. There might be all sorts of reasons why whoever purchased the hashish (at whatever destination) would want to pay for it in America in dollars, the currency of every international black market. As long as no one grassed, I would be all right, even if I was extradited.
Marcus came to see me with some most disturbing news. To give them a bit of a break, the children had been sent to Britain to spend time with some friends and relatives. While there, Francesca visited our family doctor, Basil Lee. She broke down in front of him and gave a horrific account of her living circumstances. Nigel was a hopeless junkie and drunkard. He was squandering my money. He was censoring all her letters to me and Judy. His pastimes included battering Masha and locking the children in their rooms for hours on end. Little Patrick had been discovered lying in a gutter in the middle of the night while Nigel had passed out in a nearby bar. Francesca’s life was nothing but screams and torment. She was desperate. She was eight years old.
Dr Lee wrote a very strong letter to Judy. Nigel and Masha had to go. Marcus explained that Natasha Lane and her two children were coming over to Palma. As long as I paid all expenses, they would stay there until Judy was home. I was shocked into deep silence. I knew there had been something weird about Nigel, but I had not suspected this. I suppose the problem had been given the best solution. Natasha would be fine. There was nothing I could do. But during the nights the pain of my children revisited me with a vengeance.
Marcus’s next visit also brought bad news. Johnny Martin had died of a heart attack in Brighton. Although towards the end he had become an unhealthy junkie and lost much of the character I loved, I had lost an old friend with whom I had shared no end of good times and adventure. My heart went out to his wife, Cynthia, and his children.
At last Marcus brought some excellent news. Although Patrick Lane had been facing a possible life sentence or 120 years, he had just been sentenced to a grand total of only three years.
Only three years! Is this what we were all worrying about? Had Judge Paine seen through all the DEA sham? He must have realised that we weren’t that bad or that big and decided to let us out before all the nasty guys took over the hashish business. If Patrick got three years, what could I expect? Maybe twice as much. I could manage that. I’d be free in a few years. As for Judy, if Patrick got three years, she should be looking at a maximum of three minutes. She could no longer be forced to testify against Patrick, and it was clearly unwise for her to stay here in Madrid fighting extradition. The United States has a Speedy Trial Act. Judy could be extradited and acquitted within a few weeks. Even if she was convicted, and that seemed impossible, Judge Paine would hardly want her to spend any more time in prison.
The lawyer who obtained Rick Brown’s acquittal was Don Re from Los Angeles. In 1984 he had successfully represented John De Lorean, the Belfast car manufacturer who had been set up in a cocaine sting operation. His credentials were first class. I wrote asking if he would fly over to Madrid to see me and Judy. He would. It would cost $25,000. It had to be done.
Don Re was equally certain that the best strategy was for Judy to go to America. He would take care of her as soon as she arrived and get her home as soon as possible, for a deposit of a further $25,000. It had to be done. American lawyers were clearly expensive. Don Re had already received as much as Gustavo.
The more I studied, the more I realised that Australia would be the ideal country to pretend to have swamped with dope during the time of the 1986 telephone taps. Among the ten thousand pages of evidence were all sorts of references to Australia. There were documents showing that Ernie Combs had smuggled dope from India to Australia during the 1970s and that Philip Sparrowhawk had smuggled Thai dope into Australia during the 1980s. I was refused an Australian visa in 1985. The DEA and Australian police had put the bug on Gerry’s trawler while it was berthed in Australian waters in 1986. Carl had an Australian passport. I had a false passport which carried an Australian visa. Moynihan was documented both as having smuggled heroin to Australia and as having been an Australian intelligence agent. Judy visited Australia at the same time as I visited Moynihan in Manila. Joe Smith was Australia’s first big marijuana smuggler. Several codefendants visited Australia during the critical period. The telephone taps were full of references which, creatively interpreted, related to Australia. I could weave a plausible tale on the basis of that lot.
Through Marcus, I obtained detailed published chronologies of events in Australia. I linked suitable ones to vague references in the telephone taps. I studied Australian politics, crime, drug consumption, drug trafficking, and banking systems. I came across the tale of Nugan-Hand Ltd., a private Australian bank.
In 1973, a new banking business was opened in Sydney by Frank Nugan and Michael Hand. Frank Nugan was an Australian playboy whose family fruit business was centred in Australia’s marijuana-growing region. Michael Nand was a New York CIA agent. He was a former Green Beret who had participated in the CIA’s mass assassination Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He had been an employee of Air America, the CIA-owned airline responsible during the Nixon era for taking tons of opium from the Golden Triangle to lucrative markets. The declared source of the new bank’s funds was money invested in real estate by American soldiers taking a break from slaughtering Vietnamese women and children.
In 1977, a branch was opened in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Its office had connecting doors with the DEA’s. In no time the bank expanded its interests to include financing Las Vegas casino projects, handling some of the Shah of Iran’s fortune, dubious international arms dealing, and laundering the proceeds of opium and heroin traffic. The governi
ng body of the bank was peppered with high-ranking US brass.
In 1980, Frank Nugan was found dead. He had either been murdered or performed a suicide requiring the skills of a professional acrobat. Michael Hand disappeared. The bank collapsed. A large chunk of the cream of America’s military personnel had lost their money. The US Senate investigated the whole matter. The CIA gave sworn testimony in secret. The investigation closed.
Carl had once been wrongly accused of assassinating Frank Nugan. The Sunday Times had reported that Lord Moynihan was linked to Nugan-Hand Ltd.
This was great. I could throw in all the exciting stuff that juries love to hear. I could maybe even resurrect a part of my MI6 mythology. I was just a gentle pot smuggler, doing my business in various parts of the non-American world and keeping an eye open for anything really evil to tell my Oxford chums at MI6. I used Gerry Wills to land a load of hashish in Australia and used Jacobi and Sunde to launder the proceeds. Australian currency controls were unbelievably stiff. Jacobi knew CIA agents who held vast cash hoards in the United States and would happily exchange it for cash within Australia’s borders. We had ways of getting cash out of the United States, so we would take it from there and pay all concerned. No dope ever saw America. I had given a full report of the affair to my non-existent MI6 superiors, who were most interested in the details of CIA agents holding suitcases of dollars. In a desperate attempt to cover up, the CIA/DEA, with the help of the Australian police, turned to their Nugan-Hand banking associate Lord Moynihan and asked him to help them set me up. They were keen to convince the world that the dope was purely an American scam which had not involved the CIA’s Australian money-laundering activities.
I was convinced this Australian defence could work. It wasn’t even as bizarre as the successful Mexican secret agent defence. But did American juries have a sense of humour?
In 1989 summer heat began to stifle Alcala-Meco. I religiously adhered to my daily yoga sessions, worked on my defence, smoked joints, and walked the patio with John Parry. Roger was working on an escape plan. My fight against extradition was now totally in the hands of Gustavo and the courts. A plethora of time-consuming issues was before the Audiencia Nacional’s appeals division, the slowmoving Spanish Supreme Court, and the almost stationary Spanish Constitutional Court.
At the end of July, a forty-minute documentary about me was shown on Spanish national television. It was sympathetic to my plight and was followed by dozens of letters from Spanish citizens offering everything from paying my legal fees to the best shag I could ever imagine. They all expressed shame at the way the Spanish were giving me up to the Americans.
After the television programme, Judy and I were separately visited by Amber, Francesca, and Patrick. They knew this would be their last visit before Judy left for America, and the girls were very frightened. Patrick was happy but still hadn’t spoken a word since our arrest a year ago. Amber and Francesca spent the whole visit sitting on my knee and sobbing.
‘Will we see you here, Daddy, when Mummy’s gone?’
‘Of course, my loves. You’ll probably come to see me every couple of months. We’ll see each other soon enough.’
I was wrong. It took almost five heartbreaking years before I saw them again.
Jacques Canavaggio came up to me in the patio.
‘Marco Polo, I cannot help you. I have been told by someone whose business it is to know that if any of my people say you were involved in my Lebanese load in the Costa Brava, the American pigs will extradite me for being part of your organisation. These DEA bastards are crazy people.’
‘I understand, Jacques. Please don’t worry.’
‘You always have a friend in Corsica, Marco Polo. Remember that.’
Jacques walked off. Darin Bufalino approached.
‘Hi, Limey. What’s happening?’
‘I’m not a Limey,’ I protested. ‘I’m Welsh. You Yanks are all the same.’
‘I’m no Yank. I’m half-Irish and half-Italian.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘You got me there, Limey. But listen. They’re extraditing me to the good old US of A in a few days. Is there anything I can do for you over there? I’ll be in prison, but I got connections, Howard, you know that.’
I had been worrying about keeping my Australian defence secret and had already resolved to send out via Gustavo all my research materials. I also wanted to lead the DEA to believe that I was going to try another, completely different defence, so that I could take them by surprise.
‘Darin, would you be prepared to leak some information to the DEA? It would be false information. It would only hurt them and no one else, and it would really help me.’
‘Hey, I don’t doubt you, man. But if I did that, I’d be down on record as a snitch. That could seriously damage my career prospects. I’ll do anything else to help, I promise.’
The criminal ethic was proving inconvenient. I had to think of another way. John Parry joined us. I explained the problem to him.
‘It’s easy, Howard. If they take you to America – please God they don’t – but if they do, take your phoney defence notes with you. Those DEA bastards are bound to grab them when you get to Florida. They’ll photocopy the lot, give them back to you like nothing had happened, and think they’ve got one over on you. Then you can stick it right up them with your real defence.’
That would work.
Judy left. Just before she was taken on the plane at Madrid international airport, she was allowed to send me a telegram. ‘Pray for me,’ it said. I prayed and cried and heard the wails of my children.
Darin Bufalino was extradited to Boston. Other fellow-prisoners were extradited to various countries. Roger had requested them to write to him giving full details of the travel procedures they had to undergo. Some of the letters had arrived.
‘Let me tell you something, boy. Escaping from that airport in Madrid is a piece of piss. If I did it in Amsterdam, I’m damn sure that with the help of the Good Lord I can do it here.’
‘But, Roger, you’ll have handcuffs on. You didn’t in Amsterdam.’
‘Hey, I had handcuffs on when I jumped out of the court in Palma. They don’t mean shit to me. But that don’t matter anyway because the cops take the handcuffs off at the departure lounge. I bet you ain’t ever seen a guy with handcuffs on in a departure lounge or a plane. No siree you ain’t. I’ll just get on another plane. Maybe go straight to South Africa. I can’t wait to hit that Madrid airport.’
Shortly after this conversation, Roger was extradited to Germany. He was driven all the way by car. As planned, he pleaded guilty and snitched on me and McCann. The German authorities gave him a seven-year sentence and housed him in a maximum-security prison in Lübeck.
On Friday October 31st, Gustavo came to see me. He was flustered and angry.
‘Its incredible. Absolutely incredible. The Audiencia Nacional appeals court and the Constitutional Court have dismissed our cases against extradition. The acción popular appeal has also been dismissed. Usually these cases take years to resolve. In your case they have acted almost immediately. It’s completely without precedent.’
‘Do I have any chance left, Gustavo, or am I on my way to Miami?’
‘The Supreme Court still has to rule. They shouldn’t extradite you while that is pending. I have some other ideas which I will discuss with you on Monday. Just try to relax over the weekend.’
The next day, Saturday, I worked on my false defence, the one to mislead the DEA. The papers relating to my real Australia defence and my detailed analysis of every item of the prosecution evidence had been given to Gustavo. I created the sort of phoney defence the authorities would believe to be mine: after I had worked for the Mexican Secret Service and been acquitted of any involvement in marijuana smuggling, MI6 posted me to the Khyber Pass. It was declared United States and United Kingdom policy to support the mujaheddin against the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. Some financial aid was officially given, and cove
rt encouragement was given to illegal fund-raising such as that resulting from the export of Afghan hashish. It was clear that the 1986 hashish load came from the mujaheddin. The stamp on each slab said as much. It was clear that the 1984 American President Line load involved the CIA. I was not breaking American law. I was carrying out in Pakistan the work assigned me by MI6 and the CIA, helping to rid the world of the Communist scourge. It was monstrous even to charge me.
In a file headed ‘Try to use if possible’, I put in newspaper reports on CIA hot money finding its way to the Afghan rebels, the IRA purchasing Stingers from the mujaheddin, the September 1986 hijack by the PLO of an American airliner on the runway of Karachi airport, mujaheddin bases in the Khyber Pass being used to train Arab and Filipino terrorists, and theories of who assassinated President Zia ul-Haq. For good measure, I also threw in some stoned nonsense about a Communist cell in Nepal controlling the world’s hashish supply.
Just the sort of defence the DEA would expect.
I spent all of Sunday morning and most of the afternoon lying on my bed smoking joints. At four o’clock, when we were locked in to eat our meal, there was a polite knock on the cell door. It was one of the friendly young English-speaking funcionarios. He called from the other side of the metal door.
‘Marco Polo, pack up your things, if you please. You are leaving now. I will be back in twenty minutes when all the cells are opened. Please be ready then.’
The funcionario’s footsteps receded. I went cold. I started to tremble. Shakily, I started to put my phoney defence notes and other possessions in a pillowcase.
‘Did I hear that right, Howard?’ asked John Parry from the next-door cell. ‘If so, you’d better roll yourself a good strong joint of that Moroccan hash. It might be your last for a while. Don’t worry. You’ll be okay. Keep your chin up. Think of all them hamburgers and hot dogs. Beats this paella.’