Mr Nice_ An Autobiography Part 11

'Hard? No, not hard. I heard one of them say, "Stop that c.u.n.t. I'm going to take him apart," and he came up to me and said "Excuse me, sir," and I said, "Sir? No. Don't call me sir. My name is c.u.n.t. Please call me c.u.n.t." That dealt with him. Then the other one said, "Can I see your pa.s.sport?" and I said, "It's not my pa.s.sport, it's yours," and gave it to him. He asked what I did in Nepal. I told him I was a barman. Vodka and lime. What would you like? He asked if I smoked any funny tobacco. I asked if he meant Kinabis, and he said it didn't matter. Then I caught a bus to Fulham.'

I had to come straight to the point.

'Can you send stuff out from Nepal by air, John?'

'Ooh! No. No. I can't do anything like that. No. No. No. Now, I know a man. He knows a man who might know.'

'How much would it cost?'

'Well, money is the thing, and they always do things for a fair and honest price, I promise you.'

'What's a fair price, John?'

'You will tell me, I'm quite sure.'

'What will you want out of it, John?'

'If I help you do business, I'm sure you will give me a drink.'

'A drink?'

'Yes. If a man does something for you, you give him a drink. Please, if everything goes well, give me a drink.'

'Can you check that the quality will be all right?'

'I only smoke Tom Thumb, but I know a man who has a knife.'

I took this as a yes.

'Can you make it smell-proof?'

'Not if G.o.d made it smell.'

'Do you know a man who can?'

'No. But if you do, let him come and do it, or give me instructions.'

'How much can they send?'

'I should think it depends on when you want to do it by.'

'Well, John, the Americans will want to do a ton as soon as possible.'

'Now I was in America once, and the thing is that Americans will always want more, and there is no end to their madness. Lovely people, for sure, but you have to keep them in line. When my visa ran out, the Immigration asked me why I wanted to extend it, and I said it was because I hadn't run out of money. He stamped it and said, "Have a nice day." So, if the Americans ask for a ton tomorrow, say you will do half a ton when Wales win the Triple Crown. That will deal with their madness, and everyone can get on with their lives. It saves all that tidding.'

'Tidding?'

'Talking Imaginary Deals.'

Accurately conveying the contents of my conversation with Old John to Ernie wasn't easy. I told Ernie has.h.i.+sh could be exported from Nepal for about the same price as Robert Crimball charged in Bangkok, but 500 kilos was the most they could do at one time, and someone would have to be sent out to ensure the consignment was smell-proof. Ernie sent his right-hand man, Tom Sunde, with money, instructions, and smell-proof know-how. Tom came to London first before going to Kathmandu to meet Old John. He had been authorised by Ernie to keep nothing from me regarding the intricacies of the New York scam.

During the 1970s, the most powerful Mafia crime family in the United States was that of Carlo Gambino, the prototype for Vito Corleone in Mario Puzo's novel, The G.o.dfather The G.o.dfather. Born in Sicily at the beginning of the century, Gambino was still of the old-school belief that the Mafia should steer away from involvement in drug-trafficking. Carmine Galante, the main contender for Gambino's position as the G.o.dfather of the New York Mob, had no such scruples. The Mafia should control everything, including dope. Carmine Galante's organisation used the services of Don Brown, an Irish-American who made his money dopedealing in Queens, New York, and spent it in Los Angeles. Don Brown knew Richard Sherman, an extremely shrewd Californian defence attorney retained by Ernie Combs. Unwittingly, Sherman introduced Ernie to Don Brown. A scam was born.

Large quant.i.ties of missing goods provided strong evidence of the Gambino crime family's ability to remove items from John F. Kennedy Airport without going through the usual channels. Smuggling quickly followed. The preferred method was to send a cargo of legitimate goods from a New York company to the dope-producing country. The importing company in the dope country would ostensibly return the imported goods as faulty or different from ordered. In fact, a consignment of has.h.i.+sh would be sent and grabbed by the Mob.

As a prelude to the Nepalese scam, an air-conditioning company called Kool-Air had been formed in New York. It was ready to export real air-conditioning equipment. On separate flights, Old John and Tom Sunde, carrying a small suitcase full of Ernie's dollars, flew to Kathmandu to take care of business. First Old John had to form a Nepalese company capable of importing air-conditioning equipment and let me know its particulars. A week later, I received a telegram from Kathmandu. The message comprised one word, 'YETI.' I knew that yeti was the Nepalese name for the abominable snowman of the Himalayas, but this didn't help. Ernie was anxious for news. I didn't know what to tell him, so I cabled Old John in Kathmandu to call me.

'John, what's this message mean?'

'That's the name of the thing you wanted.'

I wasn't happy with calling an air-conditioning company The Abominable Snowman.

'That's really not a very relevant name, John.'

'It's very relevant, I promise you. They haven't caught one yet.'

I gave up.

'Okay, John, that's the name. Is everything else all right?'

'No. They don't eat spaghetti here; they like to use chopsticks or they eat wurst or smorgasbord. We can't get the thing to go for spaghetti.'

Each day I was finding Old John easier to understand. He was unable to ensure that the load would be transferred to Alitalia before it reached New York. He could only manage to ensure the consignment's New York arrival on other European or Far East airlines. I told Ernie. He said he'd work on it.

With the money Ernie had given me, I added some luxuries to the Regent's Park penthouse: a stereo system and records. Judy's father and his girl-friend had moved into the Brighton family flat, so Judy now had the use of her father's flat, which was quite near Regent's Park. At about four o'clock on a spring afternoon, I was alone in the penthouse, idly gazing at London's skyline and listening to Ladies Love Outlaws Ladies Love Outlaws by Waylon Jennings. I looked down and saw four hefty men with overcoats rus.h.i.+ng up the street towards the entrance to my block of flats. Something told me they were coming for me, but I didn't know who they were. The ground-floor entrance doorbell buzzed in the penthouse. I asked who it was, and a m.u.f.fled voice said something incomprehensible. I released the downstairs door, put on my stoned gla.s.ses, walked out of the flat, and started descending the emergency stairs, reasoning that the men would be likely to take the lift. When I got to the bottom of the emergency stairs, I noticed that the four men were still outside the gla.s.s double-doored entrance. The caretaker was holding open one of the doors and talking to them. They all saw me, and the caretaker motioned his head in my direction. I walked slowly and brazenly to the door as if to leave the building. One of the men took a flash photograph of me. by Waylon Jennings. I looked down and saw four hefty men with overcoats rus.h.i.+ng up the street towards the entrance to my block of flats. Something told me they were coming for me, but I didn't know who they were. The ground-floor entrance doorbell buzzed in the penthouse. I asked who it was, and a m.u.f.fled voice said something incomprehensible. I released the downstairs door, put on my stoned gla.s.ses, walked out of the flat, and started descending the emergency stairs, reasoning that the men would be likely to take the lift. When I got to the bottom of the emergency stairs, I noticed that the four men were still outside the gla.s.s double-doored entrance. The caretaker was holding open one of the doors and talking to them. They all saw me, and the caretaker motioned his head in my direction. I walked slowly and brazenly to the door as if to leave the building. One of the men took a flash photograph of me.

Then another said, 'That's not him.'

'We're sorry, sir. Excuse us,' said another.

I flashed them a look of irritation, walked to the street, and took a cab to Soho.

It was obviously the Daily Mirror Daily Mirror, with or without the police. How did they know? I had no idea, but I couldn't go back to the penthouse again and had to consider as lost the money and valuables left there. Anthony Woodhead, who was the penthouse's official occupant, might encounter a few problems, unless it was he who had tipped them off. I was meant to be masterminding the sending to the New York Mafia of the first-ever air-freighted has.h.i.+sh from Kathmandu, and I had nothing in the world but a few pounds in my pocket and a pair of stoned gla.s.ses. I telephoned Judy. She picked me up in her car, and we drove to Liverpool and checked into the Holiday Inn under a false name. The next morning, the Daily Mirror Daily Mirror was slid under the room door. Again I dominated the front page, which was headlined THE FACE OF A FUGITIVE. Underneath was a large picture of me wearing my stoned gla.s.ses and moustache. I shaved, put Brylcreem on my hair, and combed it straight back. Judy went out to rent the cheapest possible bedsitter, 4 a week with shared bathroom and kitchen in an area called Sheill Park. I telephoned my parents to let them know I was okay, and telephoned Ernie to tell him what had happened. He was unperturbed. I didn't have the nerve to ask him for more money. He had some good news for Old John. The load could arrive on j.a.panese Air Lines (JAL); the Italians had been talking to the j.a.panese, and an arrangement had been made. was slid under the room door. Again I dominated the front page, which was headlined THE FACE OF A FUGITIVE. Underneath was a large picture of me wearing my stoned gla.s.ses and moustache. I shaved, put Brylcreem on my hair, and combed it straight back. Judy went out to rent the cheapest possible bedsitter, 4 a week with shared bathroom and kitchen in an area called Sheill Park. I telephoned my parents to let them know I was okay, and telephoned Ernie to tell him what had happened. He was unperturbed. I didn't have the nerve to ask him for more money. He had some good news for Old John. The load could arrive on j.a.panese Air Lines (JAL); the Italians had been talking to the j.a.panese, and an arrangement had been made.

By far the largest organised crime network in the world is the Yakuza, with a members.h.i.+p of several hundred thousand. Originating in the early seventeenth century as a group of young Robin Hood-type rebels defying samurai overlords, the Yakuza emerged after World War II as a more typically Western collection of gangsters with dark suits and sungla.s.ses. By the end of the 1960s, the Yakuza had forged important links with the Chinese Triads in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand; and an unprecedently powerful Chinesej.a.panese syndicate was beginning to send large s.h.i.+pments of heroin to the United States. Some of these went through Kennedy Airport. Now the Yakuza and the Mafia were waiting for Old John's Yeti to do its stuff.

I gave Ernie the number of the telephone box at the end of the road and told him I would be there between 8 and 8.15 every Tuesday night. I cabled Old John in Kathmandu with the same information and the good news about JAL, and I began to live the life of a Liverpool dosser about to be a rich man. A few hundred pounds was scrounged from some long-suffering friends and family.

My lack of ident.i.ty doc.u.ments began to worry me. A 21-year-old policeman had been shot dead by the IRA, and the Birmingham Black Panther and the Cambridge hooded rapist were at large. One could be stopped by the police at any time, and it would be embarra.s.sing for me to be unable to palm them off with a piece of paper showing some false ident.i.ty. The Driver and Vehicle Licence Centre in Swansea required no proof of ident.i.ty when applying for a provisional driving licence. I ordered one in the name of Albert Lane, and it was delivered to the Liverpool bedsit. I applied to sit a driving test and pa.s.sed. A full licence was issued. I joined the local library and opened a Post Office Savings Account, using the name Albert Lane. A bone-shaker of a Bedford van was purchased for next to nothing, and Judy and I set off on week-long vacations to a variety of campsites. We loved this perpetual holiday lifestyle, but Judy would often complain about my insistence that the tent was pitched adjacent to the public telephone box, whose number had been handed out everywhere from Los Angeles to the Himalayas. I had to make and accept telephone calls at all hours and did not want to be traipsing across moonlit fields in my pyjamas. The telephone box was almost invariably next to the campsite's bathrooms and toilets. Ours would be the only tent in the vicinity. During the day, we would either take advantage of the campsite's recreation facilities or join a local library under a couple of silly names. During the evening, we would attempt innovative ways of acquiring further false ident.i.ties.

Our favourite method was through fortune-telling. Judy dressed up as a s.e.xy clairvoyant and sat alone in a pub. I sat some distance away. Sooner or later, a man of about my age would initiate a conversation with her and find out she was an astrologer, palmist, and numerologist, capable of telling his fortune. She needed a few details, of course: date and place of birth, mother's maiden name, and his travels or travel plans. Some of them had no intention of going abroad because they didn't trust foreign beer. We ended up with enough information to procure several birth certificates from St Catherine's House, London.

On Independence Day, July 4th, 1975, 500 kilos of hand-pressed Nepalese temple b.a.l.l.s, some of the best has.h.i.+sh in the world, was flown from Kathmandu via Bangkok and Tokyo to New York. It was being smoked in Greenwich Village the next day. I was very rich again, and I was still in my twenties.

Ernie wanted to do another load right away, a bigger one. Old John wasn't keen. The suitcases of dollars that Tom Sunde had taken to Nepal had played havoc with the Kathmandu currency markets.

'This is the American madness. More, more, all the time. Next year the Nepalese won't plant rice, they'll plant the thing and all starve. They don't want money; they want medicine.'

I, however, agreed with Ernie and persuaded Old John to reluctantly commit himself to send a 750-kilo load. It worked. Other loads were sent from Nepal, but none were bigger. After one of the loads, Old John drove an ambulance to Kathmandu stuffed with antibiotics, bandages, and other medical supplies and left it there. He refused to do any more loads. 'Let Nepal be Nepal.'

Ernie generally sent one of his couriers over with my profit, and I had acc.u.mulated a stash of several hundred thousand dollars in cash. I rented flats and cottages in various parts of the country. My main preoccupation was still acquiring false doc.u.mentation, and addresses were needed to send driving licences and other useful proofs of ident.i.ty. I became a little silly and even successfully applied for provisional driving licences in the names of Waylon Jennings and Elvis Presley. The Swansea computer didn't bat an eyelid; it didn't remember the 1950s. I took the astrologically obtained birth certificates to Post Offices and obtained British Visitor's Pa.s.sports.

Johnny Martin introduced me to Philip Sparrowhawk, a jack of all trades from Epsom who, for a price, could obtain bits and pieces of identification. His main source of income was importing textiles from the Far East, but he was also able to do useful things like get back-dated insurance; obtain new, second-hand, and rented cars with minimum formalities; and supply accommodation addresses and telephone lines for short-term use. Through this involvement, Philip and I became friendly, and it wasn't long before we joined forces and rented office premises at 38A, High Street, Ewell, Surrey. This quickly became the registered office of the Ewell Group of Companies, a cl.u.s.ter of 100 off-the-shelf companies staffed by falsely named directors and secretaries who never failed to give a suitable reference for an application for a pa.s.sport or bank account. Some legitimate business transpired at Phil's insistence, but it was usually of the slightly shady kind: second-hand car dealing, mini-cabbing, backed by overtones of long-firming and insurance fraud.

Apart from the preoccupation with false ident.i.ty, there was little to indicate I was Britain's most wanted fugitive from justice. I saw Rosie and Myfanwy frequently, as I did my parents. My social life extended. I re-established friends.h.i.+ps with Oxford and Suss.e.x a.s.sociates, almost all of whom were happy to call me Albi, and made many new ones. They knew who I was, and I was fully aware that any one of them could turn me in to the authorities at any time. I just big-headedly a.s.sumed that anyone who knew me liked me and wouldn't do such a thing. I was too nice to be gra.s.sed.

Denys Irving, now fully retired from composing lewd lyrics and enthusiastically pursuing his new hobby of hang-gliding, was working with Mike Ratledge, another friend from Oxford. Mike was the sole surviving member of the Soft Machine, who were, along with Pink Floyd, the freaks' house band. He had been repeatedly voted Melody Maker Melody Maker's best keyboard player in the world and featured on Mike Oldfield's smash hit, Tubular Bells Tubular Bells. Now he and Denys were experimenting with integrated circuitry and electronic music. Both spent all day with soldering irons and circuit boards. My telephoning experiences on the campsites had led me to fantasise about an ideal telephone system. I wanted to be able to carry around a few pieces of change, rather than a bagful, go into any phone box, and phone a specific number, which would automatically divert me to whatever number I then dialled from the phone box. I would have to pay in coins at the phone box for the local connection and whoever rented the specific number would be charged by the telephone company for the onward call to wherever was dialled, be it domestic or international. Also, I wanted to be able to telephone this specific number from a phone box and 'give' it the telephone box number so that anyone else calling this or another specific number would be automatically diverted to the phone box. With such an invention, I could telephone wherever I wanted for pocket money and be reached by whomever I wanted to reach me without his knowing my precise whereabouts. Today, this would be a simple matter. Then, not so, but Denys and Mike, on hearing my fantasy, felt competent enough to be able to make such a machine. Mike devised the circuitry, and Denys did the rest. It worked, most of the time. I ordered the latest and best hang-glider from Ernie to give to Denys. He made me G.o.dfather to his and Merdelle's newly born son, Arthur. Denys went to Lagos, Nigeria, as an audio engineer. He met a marijuana grower and seller. I asked Denys to go back to Nigeria to determine whether marijuana could be air-freighted from there. He came back and said it couldn't. The hang-glider from Ernie arrived. Denys flew into the ground and died. I felt as if I'd killed him, one of my dearest friends.

Although I had been unable either to persuade Old John to restart operations in Nepal or to find an air-freighting has.h.i.+sh source in some other country, Ernie had allowed me to invest some profits in his Bangkok to New York Thai stick scams on the condition that Judy and I come to America to spend the pile of cash that was now acc.u.mulating in his Californian safe-deposit boxes. We were both dying to go, but one needed a full British pa.s.sport and an American visa to visit the United States. I could have used one of the birth certificates I had and the batch of referees at the Ewell Group of Companies to get a full pa.s.sport, but I was always worried that the person named in the pa.s.sport would suddenly apply for a pa.s.sport himself. Ideally, I needed someone who knew I was using his pa.s.sport, would never apply for one, and would back me up in whatever way was needed. Judy thought of an old childhood friend of hers, Anthony Tunnicliffe. He lived near Birmingham and was a few years younger than I, but not too many. Judy was certain that for a reasonable sum of money he would forgo the ability to travel abroad. Judy also suggested that she take on her friend's wife's ident.i.ty. That would make things doubly safe: Mr and Mrs Anthony Tunnicliffe. The real Tunnicliffes were overjoyed at the proposal. They truthfully filled in their pa.s.sport application forms and took photographs of themselves. Their local doctor signed both photographs and forms as being authentic. The Tunnicliffes gave the signed forms and photographs back to me. Phil Sparrowhawk got a rubber stamp made which approximated that of the Tunnicliffes' doctor. Judy and I then filled out new pa.s.sport application forms in our own handwriting. In appropriate handwriting, Phil filled out the doctor's bit on the form and on photographs of me and Judy and rubber-stamped them. We gave the forms back to the Tunnicliffes, who posted them to the Pa.s.sport Office. The only check the Pa.s.sport Office was likely to make was to telephone the doctor and ask if he'd countersigned the Tunnicliffes' application and photographs. No worries. Full pa.s.sports bearing our photographs were delivered to the Tunnicliffes' Birmingham address within ten days. Now we needed American visas. To get them we had to show ourselves able to afford an American visit. We rented a flat in Birmingham in the name of Tunnicliffe. One of the phoney companies at Ewell, Insight Video, opened up a branch office in New Street, Birmingham, and employed a man named Anthony Tunnicliffe as the Midlands General Manager and a lady called Jill Tunnicliffe as secretary. A Tunnicliffe bank account was opened at the Midland Bank. We mailed our US visa application forms and pa.s.sports to the United States Emba.s.sy in Grosvenor Square. They were sent back with visas valid for multiple entries not exceeding two months each visit.

In late 1976, with an over-abundance of caution, Judy and I flew as Mr and Mrs Tunnicliffe from Birmingham to Denver, Colorado, via Brussels, Frankfurt, New York, and Chicago. A chauffeur-driven limousine took us from Denver to Vail, where Ernie, who had put on a tremendous amount of weight, Patty, and Tom Sunde shared a large and luxurious house. The snow was thick, and we were in time for Thanksgiving, with which I was totally unfamiliar. There was lots of mindless television. In freezing temperatures, I rode a horse over the Rockies and played with guns. I didn't like Colorado life.

Ernie also had a huge apartment in Coconut Grove, Florida, where he liked to spend the Christmas and New Year. The five of us flew from Denver via Dallas/Fort Worth to Miami. Judy and I checked into the Mutiny, a hotel immortalised by some Crosby, Stills, and Nash alb.u.m, and were given a deluxe suite with a mirrored ceiling, sauna, Jacuzzi, bar, and four televisions. Lots of Colombian dope, dope dealers, gangsters, nubilia, and exotica flooded the streets. I liked Coconut Grove life. We took a year's rental of an apartment in a luxury condominium complex overlooking Key Biscayne and fitted it out with up-to-date everything, including a safe full of $100 bills. I bet $10,000, my first and last football bet, on the Oaklands Raiders to beat the Minnesota Vikings in the Superbowl. I won. I bought hot jewellery and a Cadillac Seville from a Mafia friend of Ernie's called Luis Ippolito, took a driving test, and got issued with a Florida Driver's License in the name of Anthony Tunnicliffe.

Our two months' permitted stay was running out, so Judy and I decided to visit Canada and then re-enter the United States. We went via New York, where we stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria and took a tourist helicopter ride through Manhattan's skysc.r.a.pers. New York had a kind of magical energy. We noticed its absence when we got to Toronto, where we were totally bored and took a Canadian Pacific flight to a slightly warmer Vancouver. We checked into the Seaporter Inn and watched the seaplanes taking off. The next day we visited Stanley Park, and in the evening went to the planetarium. We sat near the centre. At the circ.u.mference of the almost deserted auditorium, peering at me through the twinkling darkness, was Marty Langford's face, agape with astonishment.

I suppose remarkable coincidences happen often enough, but this was a bit much. The man who had been my closest childhood friend for at least fifteen years and whom I had not seen since 1973 and had no way of contacting was now a few yards away. What is it about Vancouver planetariums that attracts Welsh dope fugitives?

Marty and I talked. He had been living with McCann and his Dutch wife Sylvia since he fled to Ireland three years previously. Other members of the Tafia had gone their separate ways. McCann, now using the name James Kennedy and claiming he was a close relative of the late President Kennedy, was doing very well for himself. He had an office floor in the Guinness Tower in Vancouver, oil interests in Venezuela, and had partially financed the film Equus Equus. He had a warm friends.h.i.+p with James Coburn and his wife, Beverley. Marty declined comment on the source of McCann's wealth. I gave Marty my new name and room number in the Seaporter and told him to give it to McCann, who rang the next morning.

'How's British Intelligence?'

'Slightly greater than that of the Irish, Jim.'

'You f.u.c.king Welsh a.r.s.ehole. Still as smarmy as ever, aren't you, H'ard? But I got to give it to you. You got out of it and did it by yourself. I'll be over in half an hour.'

I quickly introduced McCann and Judy to each other before Judy excused herself from our hotel room on the pretext of needing to go to the hotel shopping centre.

'Are you still dope-dealing, H'ard?'

'When I can, yes.'

'Those days are f.u.c.king over, man. Dope dealers are history. High finance is where it's at.'

'What's that?'

'Revolving letters of credit, sh.e.l.l companies and offsh.o.r.e banks. I'm spending money hand over f.u.c.king fist, and it's all other people's.'

'So, what's different?'

'What's different, you stupid Welsh p.r.i.c.k, is that I'm living in the fast lane, and I'm legit.'

'I take it you're no longer a revolutionary.'

'I'm a f.u.c.king revolutionary until I die. Since when is selling dope on Brighton seafront a revolutionary act, for f.u.c.k's sake?'

'It's a bit closer than all this upwardly mobile corporate stuff you're into, Jim.'

'Is it f.u.c.k? H'ard, doing this business I meet the people who matter, the high rollers. You understand me, do you? There's only five hundred people in the world who control anything worth a f.u.c.k. And I've met them all, every f.u.c.king one of them.'

'Where's Graham, Jim?'

'He's become a poof. He's living in San Francisco or some other poof place. He's probably still dope-dealing, like you.'

'Did you do any more Shannon deals after I got busted?'

'I'm not telling you, H'ard. Graham never could control those idjits in Kabul. I found out who they are and their addresses in Kabul. I've got them when I want them. But those days are gone, H'ard. You need to wise up, but we'll keep in touch. If you ever get a real problem, you can ask for the Kid.'

Judy and I had arranged to meet Ernie, Patty, and Tom Sunde in San Francisco. A load of Thai sticks from Robert Crimball in Bangkok had just been cleared by Don Brown in New York, and the West Coast was considered the best market for top-quality Thai weed. This is where the money would be. After sales, Ernie was going to introduce me to his lawyer, Richard Sherman, and a friend of theirs who worked in the safe-deposit vaults in the Wells Fargo Bank. We flew there from Vancouver and stayed at the Mark Hopkins on n.o.b Hill. I didn't much like the views of Alcatraz, but I was interested to see, for the first time, the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, one of the main candidates for the birthplace of the Sixties movements. It was disappointing and looked identical to every other area of San Francisco, which itself wasn't that different from most American cities. There wasn't a hippie in sight. Maybe they were all at home smoking Thai sticks. I filled up a safe-deposit box in the Wells Fargo Bank with the money I'd made by investing in this last Thai scam and took Judy to Las Vegas. When we weren't attending one of several dozen star-studded performances, we were gambling. I had bought a book on how to beat the system playing blackjack and studied it intensely. I gave Judy a $1,000 stake to play on whatever table she fancied. She chose Baccarat. I also allowed myself a $1,000 stake. After the first all-night session, I was ahead by $100 while Judy had won a total of $16,000. It was most humiliating.

Most of the upper-echelon marijuana dealers in America had apartments in both Miami and New York. I wanted the same. Judy and I flew from Las Vegas to New York and booked into the Plaza Hotel. Elvis Presley's death was announced while we were checking in. We found an apartment with huge rooms in the Pavilion Building on the corner of East 77th Street and York Avenue and filled it with the trappings of financial success. Ernie had a warehouse full of furniture to which we could help ourselves. Ernie also gave me the telephone number of his has.h.i.+sh and marijuana wholesaler in New York, Alan Schwarz, a charming multimillionaire who was the darling of Manhattan's hip and cool. Alan had a whole network of dealers who worked for him in Manhattan and a team of drivers who were continually hauling Colombian marijuana from Florida coastal stashes to the streets of New York. He was very professional and efficient and the best guide possible to Manhattan social life. I first met Alan on his 21st birthday, which he gave at Regine's. Guests included Margaux Hemingway and Bernie Cornfield. The British residents of New York had not yet acquired the label 'Eurotrash'. John Lennon and Mick Jagger both lived in the Upper East Side, and they and their entourages would sometimes grace our apartment with their presence. The beautiful Guinness sisters, Sabrina, Miranda, and Anita, often visited us, as did Jane Bonham-Carter and Lady Antonia Fraser's daughter Rebecca. I hired a full-time Black chauffeur called Harvey who took us everywhere in a long black limousine.

McCann got in touch. He was coming to New York.

'I'm giving a dinner at Elaine's restaurant. Some really f.u.c.king important people are coming. You and Judy can come too. I'm opening the door for you, H'ard, the door to high finance and the fast lane.'

Elaine's was a well-known actors' haunt at 88th Street. McCann headed a table for ten, at which were seated various people including Fakri Amadi, the head of Hertz in Dubai, Al Malnik, the Wall Street whiz-kid who had married the daughter of Meyer Lansky, and, to my utter astonishment, Mohammed Durrani. McCann had obviously met him through Graham and won him over. Durrani was introduced as Michael, a name I knew he sometimes used, the Crown Prince of Afghanistan. Durrani's very loud 'very pleased to meet you' and his facial contortions clearly indicated that he did not want me to reveal that I knew him. I was introduced as Howard ap Owen, the leader of the Welsh Nationalist Party. McCann insisted on drowning everyone in champagne and kept pestering Peter Ustinov, who was sitting alone at an adjacent table, to play him at backgammon. Durrani and I arranged to meet the next day at my apartment. Judy cooked him roast beef.

'Howard, please do not think I am doing business with crazy Irishman. My cousin needs false pa.s.sport for her husband, who is European, and Irishman is only man I know who can maybe get.'

'I can do that for you, Mohammed.'

'I am obliged, Howard.'

'It's no problem. I had to get one for myself. You heard about my problems, I suppose?'

'I hear some things, but I pay no attention. It does not affect you and me, Howard.'

'Do you still have the ability to air-freight merchandise from Karachi?'

'Of course. Raoul, he is doing every day. You have met Raoul, no?'

'Yes, but I don't know how to get hold of him or if he's prepared to do business with me.'

'Raoul is always prepared to do business under proper terms. I will speak with him and arrange meeting. Sam, too, is doing from Beirut. You should see him. Sam will be staying with me in my house in French Riviera in few weeks' time. You and your wonderful wife are most welcome to come.'

I telephoned Ernie and related to him the new possibilities now presenting themselves. He caught the next flight to New York.

'That's fantastic. When can they send it?'

'In about a month or so, Ernie. I should think.'

'Hmm! That long, huh? Okay. I'll get started and set up the companies. We'll do it like the Nepal one. By the way, can you help me out on the next Bangkok deals? My guys are p.i.s.sed with flying over to Bangkok and back with messages and money. They always get ha.s.sled by US Customs for having Thai stamps in their pa.s.sport. Do you have any guys we could use?'

I called Philip Sparrowhawk. In two days he was in Bangkok giving Richard Crimball a bag of money he had picked up from Tom Sunde in Hong Kong. Phil based himself in Bangkok for the next couple of years and developed his own personal relations.h.i.+p with Richard Crimball and others working in the business of exporting Thai marijuana.

Judy and I took Concorde from Was.h.i.+ngton to Paris and after a few days flew to Nice. We checked into the Carlton in Cannes. I rang Durrani.