Mr Nice_ An Autobiography Part 12

'You have heard what has happened to crazy Irishman few days ago?'

'No, Mohammed, I haven't.'

'I will explain you.'

Durrani related how McCann had left New York for his wood and gla.s.s mansion in Brunswick Beach, Vancouver. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police came to his residence and took him away. Apparently, they had proof he wasn't James Kennedy of the Ma.s.sachusetts dynasty and reason to believe he was James McCann, a fugitive from British justice since his escape from Crumlin Road prison, Belfast, several years ago. Bail had been refused. The grounds given by the Canadian authorities were that 'the protection of the public demands the detention of the applicant. He has escaped custody twice, he has enormous financial backing and is an international fugitive. He is a public menace whose threats to public officials cannot be treated lightly.'

Over at Durrani's house in the Alpes-Maritimes, I sat down with Lebanese Sam. He found the proposal of being paid 35% of the wholesale price in America for all the has.h.i.+sh he could send from Beirut very attractive. We set up communication methods. There was time to kill before Sam was ready to export the Lebanese has.h.i.+sh and before a meeting with Raoul concerning export of Pakistani has.h.i.+sh could take place. Judy and I rented a Mercedes, and we toured France, ending up in the Dordogne Valley at the converted mill of her brother Patrick Lane. He had given up snail farming (the snails had run away one night) and was eager to restart one of his more lucrative past activities. I had always enjoyed Patrick's company and knew that Graham had high regard for his accountancy abilities. I thought it might be sensible to use Patrick to open up some foreign bank accounts. Keeping all that cash in safes and safe-deposit boxes in America was limiting its use.

'Patrick, what do you know about offsh.o.r.e banking?'

'Absolutely nothing outside Switzerland, which everybody knows about.'

'If I paid all expenses and gave you a few grand, would you study offsh.o.r.e banking and tax havens and fly around the world to test things out personally? Perhaps you could open up a few company and personal accounts.'

'When do I leave?'

Judy and I left the Dordogne, drove south, and couldn't resist visiting Albi. At the centre of the city was the cathedral, a vast fortress-like edifice containing a statue dedicated to St Judith. We took this as the ultimate confirmation that we were meant to be with each other. We went over the Alps to Milano, and, after a wonderful night at the Villa d'Este in Cern.o.bbio just outside Como, we drove across the ItalianSwiss border at Chia.s.so and along the sh.o.r.es of Lake Lugano. We stayed at the Hotel Splendide in Lugano, Europe's Rio de Janeiro, and had breakfast overlooking the lake.

'Albi, I have to tell you something.'

'Go ahead, love.'

'I'm pregnant.'

We both burst into smiles.

'But I'm not going to have the baby in America as Mrs Tunnicliffe. I want him or her to be born in England, Albi. They don't let women fly if they're very pregnant, so I'll have to live a train ride away from London.'

'You know I'll have to go to America sometimes, Judy, and maybe even Lebanon and Pakistan.'

'I know, Albi, but I have no choice.'

The sun's rays glistened off the lake's surface. On the opposite sh.o.r.e, framed by magnificent mountains, lay a little village.

'That place looks so beautiful, Albi. I'd love to go there.'

'Okay, love, we'll drive there for lunch and celebrate.'

It was a ten-minute drive. On the bridge over the lake we pa.s.sed a restaurant called La Romantica, drove through a village called Bissone, and came across an unmanned border post. There was a sign stating Campione d'Italia, and the Italian flag was flying. Cars were speeding through the border in both directions, so I carried on driving. The village was an exquisite mixture of old and modern architecture, and everyone seemed extremely wealthy. There was a large casino. We drove through the village, and after about a mile of country, the road split into two. We drove down the left-hand fork and were stopped by four j.a.panese guards. We tried the right fork. It terminated in a tennis stadium. This place was wild. We were in Italy but couldn't get to anywhere else in Italy. We must still be in Switzerland. In the centre of the village was a restaurant called La Taverna. Impeccably clad waiters ushered us to an alfresco table covered with gleaming gla.s.s, cutlery, and porcelain. Our waiter spoke perfect English.

'Are we in Italy or Switzerland?' I asked.

'We accept both currencies, sir. We accept all currencies and all credit cards. May I suggest you help yourselves to the antipasto table?'

'But which country are we actually in?' I persisted.

'Italy.'

'Do you live here?' I asked.

'Now, yes, but I am from Sicily.'

A London taxi drew up outside the restaurant. A handsome, bespectacled fifty-year-old German came in accompanied by a garishly dressed Rastafarian, a rich c.o.c.kney businessman, a Sophia Loren look-alike, and a blonde Teutonic beauty. The place filled up with eminently watchable personalities.

I had read somewhere that Mafia chieftains drank Brunello di Montalcino with their meat dishes. It was on the menu, and I ordered it. We ate and drank to our hearts' content.

'This is an amazing place, Judy. The telephones are Swiss. That policeman is Italian, but the licence plates on his car are Swiss. What is going on?'

Although one couldn't drive from Campione d'Italia to anywhere else in Italy, there once existed a cable car connecting the village to the nearest Italian mountain, and boats plied between Campione and harbours on the truly Italian side of Lake Lugano. Benito Mussolini built a casino in the village. A secret tunnel, known by everyone, connected the casino to the priest's house. I loved Campione.

Judy and I toured around Switzerland and opened a few bank accounts and safe-deposit boxes, she in her real name, I in the name of Tunnicliffe. In one of her safe-deposit boxes, Judy stowed away her Mrs Tunnicliffe pa.s.sport. Lebanese Sam was back in Durrani's house in the Alpes-Maritimes. Judy went to Campione to look for a flat to rent while I drove from Geneva to Cannes. Sam had arranged everything in Beirut and was ready to send a 1,000-kilo load of has.h.i.+sh to Kennedy Airport. Tom Sunde flew to Zurich with money from Ernie, which I took and gave to Lebanese Sam in Geneva for him to take to Beirut. Two weeks later, Judy and I were sitting in a newly rented flat in Via Totone, Campione d'Italia, overlooking Lake Lugano with breathtaking views of Lugano town and the towering peaks of San Salvatore and Monte Bre. I had just made another $300,000. Lebanese Sam went back to Beirut to repeat the successful scam.

Meanwhile McCann was making spirited attempts to be released from his Canadian captors. Using an intrigued Vancouver media, he declared, 'I'm offering you a deal. I'll leave. That's the deal. If you keep me arrested, the effect will be like a stone dropped into an Irish brine of violence. The ripple will peel you like an apple.'

McCann addressed Canadian Immigration spokesman Jack Betteridge with the words: 'Mr Betteridge, you are an enemy of the Irish people and will be tried in front of an Irish tribunal. You are also a f.u.c.king fascist pig, and justice will be served on you.'

Fascinated British Columbian television audiences heard McCann repeatedly explain that his arrest was engineered by MI6 as a result of his unearthing an Ulster Protestant gun-running organisation in Vancouver. He claimed he was a member of the Official IRA and had represented Sinn Fein in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1960s. He had a birth certificate in the name of Joseph Kennedy, and he carefully explained how 'Jim' was an old Gaelic abbreviation for 'Joseph'. Various bomb threats were made to Canadian emba.s.sies in Ireland and South America. The Canadian Mounties weakened, gave Jim back his false pa.s.sport, and put him on a plane for Paris, where he was seen escorting Aki Lehmann, wife of the prominent New York banker Robin Lehmann, at the fas.h.i.+onable Paris night-club Castell's.

At the beginning of October 1977, Judy and I locked up the Campione flat and travelled by train and ferry to Victoria Station. We checked into Blake's Hotel in Roland Gardens and began searching for a suitable London flat. Judy was nervous about using a phoney ident.i.ty to rent the flat in case there were any complications during the birth which might reveal the falsity and get me into trouble. In her own name, she had no bank account, other than a few Swiss ones. We had to find someone prepared to rent a flat for us. Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger were two friends whose slight acquaintance we had made before leaving for America a year earlier. They were living together in Chelsea. Both were extraordinarily talented individuals. Educated in the sciences, Nik produced records and managed pop groups in the early 1960s; moved to Spain and developed new techniques for utilising solar energy in the mid-1960s; studied Sanskrit, Tibetan, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Tantric Yoga in India, Tibet, and Nepal in the late 1960s; and studied homeopathy, Indian medicine, and Eastern alchemy in the early 1970s. He had published many books on Eastern culture and religion and had directed a film, Tantra Tantra, which had been produced by Mick Jagger. Penny held a first-cla.s.s honours degree in Fine Arts. Her surrealist art had been published and exhibited on several occasions. When I met them, they were working together on a number of art and literary projects. I was excited and inspired by them and their work and decided to help them out in whatever way I could. They had never asked me to give them any significant money, but I knew they could use it.

At the end of October, at St Theresa's Hospital, Wimbledon, I watched Judy give birth to our daughter, who was too beautiful to be called by any of the names we had experimented with over the last few weeks. For days she remained magically unnamed and mysterious. Then Penny, who visited Judy's bedside with Nik, said, 'She told me her name was Amber.'

It was, and Judy and I went to register her birth at the registry office. We put down the father's name as Albert Waylon Jennings, a singer for the group Laughing Gra.s.s. Years later, when I was in prison, Amber discovered her birth certificate. She was right in the middle of an adolescent ident.i.ty crisis. It couldn't have helped much.

While in London, I ran into Sally Minford, the sister of John Minford, my Balliol Dramatic Society friend. She was now living with Michael O'Connel, a talented musician and recording engineer. They wanted to open up a recording studio and needed capital. Without disclosing the source, I provided some money, and a Pimlico recording studio called Archipelago was formed. In a short period, artists such as Elvis Costello were using the facilities, and Island Records were subletting them.

At a social function in Islington, I ran into Anthony Woodhead. He had not been suspected of foul play after the investigation into my disappearance from the Regent's Park penthouse. This he had achieved by putting the blame on his Czechoslovakian girl-friend and getting her to admit she had sublet me the penthouse without his knowledge. I had never seen anyone so relieved to see me. He had spent a year in San Francisco and had befriended a bent US Customs Officer who could clear air-freight at San Francisco Airport provided it arrived on a Pan American flight. Woodhead asked if I knew anyone who could export has.h.i.+sh. I said I knew someone who could do it in Lebanon, and another person who could do it from Thailand. We agreed straightforward terms: he and his friend would pay half the costs in Lebanon (or Thailand); my source and I would get half the money from the sales in San Francisco.

Lebanese Sam's second deal to Don Brown in New York didn't make it. Sam got busted in Beirut just before another 1,000 kilos of has.h.i.+sh were about to be exported. There were inquiries made in New York, but Don Brown and the Mob were not questioned. Business could continue, but not for some time, and the method would have to be considerably refined. On arrival in New York the consignment would have to appear as if it had been exported from a non-dope-producing country. The air waybill could no longer show Bangkok or Beirut as the airport of the consignment's loading. If it did, it would certainly be busted by US Customs. Phil Sparrowhawk flew in and out of Bangkok with message after message and idea after idea. Changing the origin was difficult. There would be no air-freight scams from Thailand to New York for a while, but there might be one to San Francisco from somewhere else.

Durrani came to London to discuss the implications of Lebanese Sam's bust. He stayed at his house in Dulwich, and I visited him there.

'Howard, thank you for British pa.s.sport you sent. It is perfect. Unfortunately, I think you should get new one for you, too. Sam knows you use Tunnicliffe pa.s.sport. Maybe he wrote down detail which police now have. Maybe not. I don't know.'

'I'll get another one, Mohammed. Thanks for the advice.'

'I need one more favour from you. I want my son to go to the Oxford University. You can arrange?'

'It's not like that, Mohammed, I a.s.sure you.'

'I will pay handsome price.'

'That's what it's not like. You can't buy your way into Oxford.'

'But I meet many rich people here in London. They all say their children go to the Oxford University.'

'That's because rich people can afford to send their children to expensive schools, and it's easier to get into Oxford from an expensive school, partly because the teachers and facilities are better and partly because expensive schools have closed scholars.h.i.+ps to Oxford and Cambridge.'

'What is closed scholars.h.i.+p?'

'Some places in Oxford can only be given to those who have attended a particular school.'

'You know names of these schools?'

'Some, yes. Eton, Harrow, Winchester ...'

'Please help me get my son into one these schools so he can go to the Oxford University.'

'I'll try my best.'

'I am obliged, Howard.'

'Mohammed, is it possible to send merchandise from Karachi in such a way that it appears to come from some other place? Also, another question. Is it possible to load merchandise on a Pan Am flight in Karachi?'

'Raoul is coming to London this week. We are buying hotel in Knightsbridge, and he has agreed with me to meet you as you requested some time ago. You can ask him. If it is possible, he will do.'

Raoul had no doubts.

'Pan American flight to San Francisco is no problem. For the one to New York, we can do the needful in many ways. Two I can tell you now. We can take merchandise from Karachi to Dubai in dhow, then send from Dubai airport. You can choose any airline. We have to pay men in dhow. Otherwise, same price. There is other way. We put merchandise on PIA flight from Karachi, but we arrange different air waybill to say merchandise only trans.h.i.+p in Karachi; it come from some other place in Far East where PIA do service to and from Karachi.'

'What sort of place, Raoul?'

'I am thinking Singapore or Hong Kong. I am back in Karachi very soon. Durrani will let me know your decision.'

Don Brown was still not ready to accept any freight at New York, but Anthony Woodhead's San Francisco connection was, and he had paid Woodhead the agreed $100,000 deposit. I took the money to Mohammed Durrani in Dulwich and gave him the address to which the has.h.i.+sh, placed in boxes described as containing surgical instruments, should be sent. Less than two weeks later, Woodhead rang me at the Richmond flat and said it had gone through perfectly. Would I please come to San Francisco to pick up my and Raoul's cut and to meet his bent US Customs friend? I said I would once I obtained a new pa.s.sport.

I badly needed a false pa.s.sport of the same calibre as the Tunnicliffe one, which could no longer be safely used in the light of Lebanese Sam's bust. I spoke of my problem to Nik Douglas, who thought he knew of someone in Norfolk who would be prepared to sell the privilege of being a pa.s.sport holder.

On an early spring morning in 1978, Nik and I drove to Norwich, where I obtained a pa.s.sport in the name of Donald Nice. By the end of March, I had become Mr Nice (my real name is Donald, but please call me Albi) and had all sorts of doc.u.mentation to prove it. Patrick Lane had returned from his global investigation into the banking of hot money and related matters. Apart from opening five current accounts in Montreal for reasons he could not properly articulate, he hadn't actually done anything other than collect a sun-tan and a ma.s.sive library of books on tax havens. But he had read most of the books and felt competent to do whatever I asked. I was spending more time with Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger and getting very interested in the work they were doing in esoteric Eastern practices. I met some fascinating people, including the renowned psychiatrist R. D. Laing and best-selling authors Lyall Watson and Robin Wilson. The financial aspects of Nik and Penny's work were becoming increasingly complex with the royalties from the sales of her pictures and his various media productions and the buying, exhibiting, and selling of oriental antiques. I introduced them to Patrick, who had now taken occupancy of our flat in Campione with his wife and young daughter to set up a tax consultancy business called Overseas United Investors. Coincidentally, Campione happened to be one of the best tax havens in the world. Nik and Penny were suitably impressed with Patrick, who formed three offsh.o.r.e companies: Sceptre Holdings, Cayman Islands, to hold all Nik's antiques; Buckingham Holdings, British Virgin Islands, to receive all royalties; and World-wide Entertainments, Monrovia, Liberia, to handle all audio/video media business. All the companies had bank accounts at the Foreign Commerz Bank, Zurich. Donald (Albi) Nice was appointed managing director of World-wide Entertainments and a consultant to the other two companies.

Mr Nice had reasons to do legitimate business just about anywhere in the world. I was beginning to feel dangerously invulnerable, and I felt not a trace of nerves when I walked into the United States Emba.s.sy, Grosvenor Square, presented my Mr Nice pa.s.sport and company doc.u.ments, and asked if I could be issued with a multiple indefinite entry visa as soon as possible. I got one the same day.

Leaving Amber and Judy in Richmond, I flew to New York and transferred the apartment on East 77th to the name of World-wide Entertainments. The next day, I was at the Mark Hopkins Hotel on n.o.b Hill, San Francisco, waiting for Woodhead to bring me just over $1,000,000, 25% of which was mine, the rest belonging to Durrani and Raoul. Woodhead didn't show up. I waited a week and called every person I knew who might be able to locate him. He had vanished.

There is a general rule in most has.h.i.+sh-smuggling ventures: if the scam gets busted by the authorities, the scam shareholders lose their investment, pay any costs, and no one else is held responsible for the loss. There is another general rule: if there is any kind of rip-off, the shareholders do not lose their investment, get paid their profit, and the person who was ripped off is held responsible. The logic is sound: bonding together against the enemy during troubled times but paying the penalty for trusting the wrong person during untroubled times. Most criminal organisations abide by these principles. Many, however, particularly the Sicilian Mafia and the tightly-knit gangs of South and East London, modify the rule by eliminating the responsibility of the person ripped off if he kills the person who did the rip-off. This principle has become cliched as 'Either a body on the floor or a body in court.' Only these actions can excuse nonpayment. This chilling modification can serve as an effective deterrent because the ident.i.ty of the rip-off perpetrator is usually known. In normal society, most deterrent measures fail because the detection rate is so low. According to the rules, I owed $750,000 to Raoul and Durrani. I could pay it, but it would set me back a bit. I returned to London a miserable and vulnerable Mr Nice.

'Okay, we're ready. Here's what you do ...'

It was Ernie. Don Brown and the Mob were ready again to receive in Kennedy Airport, New York, and Ernie was giving me the details to put on the airway bill. He favoured the dhow to Dubai and then air-freight to New York method. What the h.e.l.l could I do? I went to see Durrani at Dulwich and told him exactly what had happened. He said as far as he was concerned, he would wait for his cut until I contacted Woodhead, however long it took. Durrani would talk to Raoul that evening and conjectured that although Raoul would have to be paid some money, he would undoubtedly be understanding. I called Durrani again the next day. A tearful female voice answered. Durrani was in Westminster Hospital recovering from a heart attack. I went to the hospital. Durrani was ghostly pale, his voice was almost inaudible. A man with strong Afghan features sat at his bedside.

'Howard, Raoul's numbers are on this paper,' whispered Durrani, 'and if you have any problems, this gentleman, Salim Malik, is also from Karachi and in our business. Please send my commission to my Amsterdam bank account, also written on paper.' Not a muscle moved on Malik's face as he pulled out his business card and gave it to me.

'Do you like London, Mr Malik?' I asked.

'I have been coming here since 1965. I like the Hyde Park. London is a good place. British peoples are good peoples. I am here visiting my friend tomorrow, then back to Pakistan.'

'I'll see you both tomorrow, then. Get better, Mohammed. Very pleased to have met you, Mr Malik.'

The next day at the hospital, the staff nurse told me Durrani had suffered a ma.s.sive heart attack overnight and had not survived it. He was forty-two years old.

Raoul was waiting for me in the lobby while I was checking into the Intercontinental Hotel, Karachi, looking forward to my first visit to a has.h.i.+sh-producing country.

'So, you are now Mr Nice,' said a grinning Raoul, 'and you are most welcome in Pakistan. Let us go to your room.'

In my room, Raoul pulled out from his pocket two enormous bundles of Pakistan rupees and a piece of Pakistani has.h.i.+sh.

'For spending and enjoying, you will need. So, how things are?'

Sheepishly, I explained the position.

'Mr Nice, I am always reasonable man, but I have already paid my people their profit. Simple reason being: you told me merchandise had arrived in San Francisco. I am bit short of money. I need $500,000 to settle account. Please do the needful, and I will get dhow ready to take merchandise to Dubai for New York.'

I had to pay him. Patrick Lane, now producing a weekly newsletter called The Offsh.o.r.e Banking Report The Offsh.o.r.e Banking Report and handling a large chunk of my money, arranged for Raoul's account in Geneva to be credited with $500,000. I gave Raoul the air waybill details and stayed in the Intercontinental Hotel for days waiting for the telephone to ring. Raoul called and came round with the air waybill as soon as the load was ready to leave Dubai airport. I checked the details, wrote down a coded version of the air waybill number, and flew to Zurich, from where I telephoned Ernie. A few days later, Ernie called me in London. and handling a large chunk of my money, arranged for Raoul's account in Geneva to be credited with $500,000. I gave Raoul the air waybill details and stayed in the Intercontinental Hotel for days waiting for the telephone to ring. Raoul called and came round with the air waybill as soon as the load was ready to leave Dubai airport. I checked the details, wrote down a coded version of the air waybill number, and flew to Zurich, from where I telephoned Ernie. A few days later, Ernie called me in London.

'It worked. I guess you want Judy's brother Patrick to take care of the money, yeah? Let's do it again in two weeks.'

I saw Nik and Penny in London, and they introduced me to Peter Whitehead, the film director who had reached fame in the Sixties with his film of the 1965 Beat Poetry Conference at the Royal Albert Hall, Wholly Communion, and his film Let's All Make Love in London Let's All Make Love in London. He was the leaseholder of the two upper floors above the Pizza Express at the corner of Carlisle Street and Dean Street in Soho and wanted to sell the lease. I thought the premises would make excellent headquarters for Mr Nice's World-wide Entertainments. The flat was right in the trendy middle of London's entertainment industry, a few yards from Paul McCartney's office in Soho Square, a few yards from where Karl Marx had lived, and a few yards from Lulu's place. The top floor was speedily converted to living quarters, that below to offices. Judy, Amber, and I moved in, then I flew back to Pakistan to repeat the successful scam.

This time I stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel in Lah.o.r.e's fortress city waiting for the telephone to ring. My duty was to ensure I remained in the room all the time. Ernie would telephone if the deal had to be called off. A few minutes could be vital. However, I sneaked out to have a look at the famous starving Buddha sculpture in the local museum and at Rudyard Kipling's 'Kim's Gun'. Again there were no problems, and in a couple of weeks I found myself back in London being told by Ernie that the scam had worked. The year was beginning to show a healthy profit.

We did it again. The Holiday Inn, Islamabad, provided me with a phone. This time my sojourn in Pakistan was longer than a few days. Delays had been occasioned by political, civilian, and military unrest. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, had been accused of rigging elections in favour of his People's Party, and violent riots had become commonplace. Bhutto imposed martial law but had been arrested by his appointee General Zia ul-Haq, the Chief of Staff of the Pakistan army, on charges of murder. A Lah.o.r.e court sentenced him to death, and he was being held in Rawalpindi, the twin city of Islamabad.

I had plenty of has.h.i.+sh to smoke, plenty of Pakistani rupees, and a few days to myself. I had been advised by Raoul to visit Murray Hill Station on the borders of Kashmir, a few hours' drive from Islamabad. Foreigners were not allowed to rent cars, so I made a private arrangement with a local taxi-driver who spoke a little English. We were driving on poor roads through the foothills of the Himalayas. I saw and smelt fields of marijuana. A large, five-foot-long, prehistoric-looking lizard ambled across the road in front of us and disappeared into a marijuana bush. The taxi screamed to a halt, and the driver pointed and yelled, 'Krow! Krow!'

'What is it?' I asked.

'It is Krow, Mr Nice, burglar best friend.'

'I don't understand.'

'You want to come to my brother cousin, Mr Nice? I will show you.'

'Yes, please,' I said, well in the mood for arbitrary adventures with burglars' friends and brother cousins.

We took a track off the road, drove for miles, and stopped outside an old, meandering group of dusty yellow buildings. An old man dressed in colourful rags came out through a hole in the wall and grunted at the taxi-driver.

'This is Mohammed, Mr Nice. He is pleased to meet you, Mr Nice.'

The two babbled away in some unknown tongue and beckoned me into a walled courtyard full of Krows of all sizes. At a signal from Mohammed, one of the Pakistani workers caught hold of a large Krow by its tail, body-slammed it against the high wall, and let go. The Krow stuck to the wall. The Pakistani climbed up the vertical Krow as if it was a ladder. I could see why the Krow was the burglar's best friend but still found it hard to imagine housebreaking with a giant lizard. I needed a joint.

We continued to Murray Hill Station and had lunch at the Cecil Hotel, which was run by a Pakistani who spoke perfect English. Murray resembled an old-fas.h.i.+oned ski resort, complete with primitive cable-car lifts, but there was no snow and it seemed unlikely that there ever would be. There was a brewery which produced a bottled drink named London Lager. It was the best bottled beer I had tasted in my life, owing its quality to a strict adherence to a hundred-year-old recipe imported from the British when they knew how to make beer.

Back at the Holiday Inn, Islamabad, Raoul came round. He confirmed the existence and uses of the Krow. He also gave me the air waybill for the new s.h.i.+pment of has.h.i.+sh ready to leave Dubai. I flew to Paris and stayed overnight at L'Hotel d'Alsace in Rue des Beaux Arts, where Oscar Wilde spent his last days. I called Ernie. He was in poor health as a result of a persistent thyroid problem and asked if I would handle things in New York on this occasion. Handling things meant collecting a couple of million dollars from Alan Schwarz once he'd sold the has.h.i.+sh and giving Don Brown 25% of it.

I caught an Air France flight to New York, freshened up at the East 77th Street apartment, and met Don Brown at Mortimer's, an Upper East Side restaurant run by an Englishman, John Beamish, and popular with free-spending culture-vultures and cocaine dealers. Don was a portly, redheaded man with thick gla.s.ses. He was jovial and liked corny wisecracks. He seemed an unlikely candidate to be running the criminal side of Kennedy Airport. I met Don again the next day for dinner. This time he brought one of his friends, an Italian called w.i.l.l.y. We were eating at Nicola's, a restaurant popular with gangsters, actors, and CIA refugees. On the wall, next to covers of recently released books about the Mafia, were notices that cash was the only form of payment allowed in the restaurant.

'So you're called Don, too, huh?' said Don Brown in a cla.s.sic attempt to promote unease, trying to make me wonder whether he was having me followed and checked out. Ernie had probably told him I was trotting around the world as Mr Donald Nice and getting a kick out of it. We weren't supposed to divulge these details to each other, but we did. Likewise, Ernie had told me Don's surname was Brown. I wasn't supposed to know, of course.