Mr Nice: an autobiography (26 page)

‘What is closed scholarship?’

‘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 tranship 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 hashish, 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 passport.

I badly needed a false passport 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 passport holder.

On an early spring morning in 1978, Nik and I drove to Norwich, where I obtained a passport 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 documentation 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 massive 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 offshore 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 Embassy, Grosvenor Square, presented my Mr Nice passport and company documents, 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 Nob 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 hashish-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 clichéd 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 identity 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 hell 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 massive 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 hashish-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 hashish.

‘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 Offshore 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.

‘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
. 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 Lahore’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 Lahore court sentenced him to death, and he was being held in Rawalpindi, the twin city of Islamabad.

I had plenty of hashish 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-fashioned 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.