Mr Nice: an autobiography (36 page)

I had breakfast with Phil. We went over everything again and talked vaguely about smell-proofing marijuana shipments and their cost. Phil took me to the airport. He’d brought some more Thai weed, which I chain-smoked all the way to the airport car park.

It had been a productive twenty-four hours, and I felt invigorated as I climbed aboard the Thai Air flight to Hong Kong. The hostesses smiled seductively. These were real ones, not the phoneys in Pratunam. I accepted a copy of the
Bangkok Post
and was intrigued to read a headline: ‘Wales Hopes To Export Its Water’. The article explained how the Welsh Water Authority was attempting to sell some of its vast and never-ending supply of fresh water. Storage tanks and facilities would be provided in South Wales at Milford Haven, Britain’s largest natural harbour and oil-importing port. Oil tankers would be bulk-loaded with fresh water piped from the harbour’s storage tanks. Many countries were short of water, and this proposal, the article concluded, made a lot more sense than the recently aborted attempt to tow icebergs from the Arctic.

I had a strong urge to get involved in this business. I don’t know why, and I didn’t know how. Drinkbridge, the name of our wine company, would be a remarkably appropriate name for such a business. One of the keys to business success is to pretend to be doing what one ultimately wants to do. The Thai weed was still revving-up my brain. I decided to present myself to the Welsh Water Authority as the man who could buy their billions of gallons of surplus water. First I would need to learn all I could about the subject. That wouldn’t be hard: I’d read books, talk to my father, and employ a researcher. I would also need some credentials: namecards and Drinkbridge company notepaper that didn’t have grapes and bottles of wine all over it. Hong Kong would be a good place to begin getting that together.

There was no problem with Customs at Kai Tak airport. The small plastic bag of Thai marijuana in my sock remained undiscovered. I checked into the Park Hotel and walked down to Cable and Wireless to telephone Ernie and tell him supplies could be arranged from both Pakistan and Thailand. He told me that while in Hong Kong I should present myself to a friend of Patrick Lane’s, Bruce Aitken, who ran a finance company called First Financial Services. Investment money for the forthcoming Pakistan scam and generous expenses for me would probably be sent through him and given to me in Hong Kong sometime in the New Year. He would get Patrick to call him immediately.

Bruce was a likeable American who convincingly played the part of an investment broker. Patrick had already advised him about the investment money. I asked if he knew a reliable accountant for company formation. He suggested Armando Chung and made an appointment for me to see him the next morning.

It was the end of the business day, and Bruce offered to take me out before he went home. He left me in the basement of the New World Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui East, at a place called Bar City, a complex of several bars having different themes. I chose the Country Bar, where sixty Chinese were jiving, square-dancing, and singing along to a Filipino band playing Waylon Jennings.

I drank a lot, went to a few more bars, and found myself in Bottoms Up, Hong Kong’s notorious yuppie titty joint, which had recently been over-glamorised in the James Bond film
The Man with the Golden Gun
. It was about 2 a.m., and members of the Western and Japanese banking, business, and diplomatic communities were passing out, vomiting, quarrelling with their wives, and unashamedly leering at anything that was topless. There were several categories of African and Asian hostesses: noisy, rude ones who shoved their tits in the faces of men who bought them gallons of expensive coloured water, quiet ones who were prepared to
be shagged in the nearest doss-house, and beautiful rich geisha types who flattered and flirted in the hope of either changing or cementing their fate.

I sat alone for about ten seconds. Two Hong Kong geishas with the unlikely names of April and Selena joined me. They were terrified of the prospect of Hong Kong being governed by Chinese Communists.

I couldn’t fully sympathise with their fears, for as far as I could determine, China had been ferociously capitalist for about eight thousand years and had set up thriving business communities in every country in the world. It had been Communist for less than a century. They’d get over it. Already, the mainland Chinese had surrounded Hong Kong with fourteen gigantic skyscraper developments called Special Economic Zones. Each was a mini-Hong Kong. The worst that could happen to Hong Kong, the end product of combined Western and Chinese ruthlessness and the paradigm of Keynesian economic success, was that it would expand.

April and Selena thought these views of mine to be rather naïve. They wanted out. Ideally, they wanted to marry yuppie millionaires from London and become British, but they would settle for less. They would even go so far as to pay good money for documentation that enabled them to become British residents. I thought of my Mr Nice passport lying dormant in Campione d’Italia. Would one of these geishas like to be Mrs Nice? I could get a load of false passports and marry twenty exotic Far East hookers and get handsomely paid.

April, Selena, and I went to an all-night Japanese sushi bar. After many cups of steaming sake, we exchanged phone numbers and addresses. I promised to get them and their friends some husbands. They assured me that anything I wanted in Hong Kong was mine: places to stay, the best business connections, admission to all clubs, and hookers. I asked if they could get me some marijuana, just to smoke. ‘Marks, I’ll get you anything under the sun, no problem,’
laughed April, pulling out a joint as we left the Japanese restaurant and asking a cab-driver to take us to a club called Nineteen Ninety-Seven.

Armando Chung, the accountant, saw me at his office in the Wing On building the next morning. I left him some money and instructed him to incorporate a company named Drinkbridge Hong Kong Limited and open up a bank account. I’d be back in the New Year. I spent the rest of the day and the rest of my money buying Christmas presents in the Kowloon arcades.

I couldn’t sleep on the plane back to London. I kept thinking of tankers full of water, plane-loads of hashish, suitcases of money, and honeymoon suites full of Chinese hookers.

‘You’ve been away a long time,’ said Judy as I fell through the door. ‘You said you wouldn’t be long.’

‘I’ve been gone only a few days. It’s a long way. And I’ve done a lot. I’ve been busy.’

‘You’re always busy, Howard. You don’t change. Another friend of yours from prison has been calling here. Jim Hobbs. I suppose you’ll be seeing him now.’

She was right on all counts. I promised myself I’d take her and Amber and Francesca to Hong Kong when I next went. They’d love it. Hobbs would be useful. He was a trustworthy and hard-working guy. Maybe he’d like to marry a Chinese hooker and earn his keep.

We visited my parents’ home in Wales over Christmas. The offices of the Welsh Water Authority were nearby. I had spent about a week reading all there was to know about the bulk transport of water and had made an appointment to see Roy Webborn, the Authority’s Assistant Director of Finance. I told him I represented a syndicate of Far Eastern businessmen who were interested in purchasing giant tanker-loads of water and taking it to Saudi Arabia. Webborn explained that Welsh water wasn’t yet available for
bulk export, but there was plenty of it in the hills, and oil tankers were leaving Milford Haven carrying nothing but sea-water ballast. If any business interest was prepared to pay for the installation of bulk fresh-water loading facilities at Milford Haven, the Welsh Water Authority would pay for the pipes to take the water there from the hills and sell it cheaply. I said I’d see what I could do. He gave me a stack of laboratory test reports and impressive multilingual, multicoloured brochures.

January 1984 was cold. The British public were still listening to last year’s big hits:
Karma Chameleon
,
Red Red Wine
, and
Uptown Girl
. Little was happening, so I was delighted to get a call from Ernie Combs.

‘Hi. How you doing? I got good news for you. Frank’s in Frankfurt with the contract. Can you see him right away?’

‘Frank’ was our code for money. ‘Frankfurt’ was code for Hong Kong. The contract was the instructions for whatever deal Ernie had decided to go for.

‘Sure. Shall I call you when I get there?’

‘I have a new number for you. It will answer “LAPD”, but it’s not the Los Angeles Police Department, it’s a friend of mine called Flash. He’s an electronic genius. Ask for me, and he’ll put you through to whichever hotel I’m staying in. I live in hotels these days.’

This time I flew British Airways, again booking my ticket through Hong Kong International Travel Centre. Arriving in the early morning, I took a cab from Kai Tak airport to the Park Hotel, checked in and walked to Cable and Wireless to phone Ernie. He told me to contact his friend Bill, who was staying in the five-star luxury Mandarin Hotel on Hong Kong Island. I travelled over on the Star Ferry.

Bill was a heavily set US military type. He had been in the Special Forces in Vietnam and spoke fluent Russian. Ernie knew some strange people.

‘There’s exactly $1,250,000 in that suitcase. I counted it myself. My orders are to give it to you.’

‘What am I meant to do with it?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. You mean you don’t know? You guys are something else. It ain’t like working for the Government, I can tell you.’

‘Ernie give you any instructions for me, Bill?’

‘Who is Ernie?’

‘The guy who gave you the suitcase of money to give to me.’

‘He was no Ernie. He was some gook who works in a bank a couple of blocks away. But you are for sure the guy I gotta give this money to. You’re British, right? And I want you to take it right now. I’m fixing on getting me a couple of Chinese broads tonight, and I don’t want all that cash cramping my style. It’s heavy. I’ll carry it downstairs for you. I’m on my way out anyway. You can get a cab.’

I stood outside the foyer of the Mandarin Hotel. There wasn’t a cab in sight. Then suddenly an endless snake of red and white Hong Kong cabs came driving past at a snail’s pace. The cab-drivers were yelling out of the windows, and their hands were continuously pressing the horns. It was a taxi strike, and the strikers had decided to block up Hong Kong’s streets as part of their protest. No road traffic was moving. I was stuck. I could hardly lift the suitcase, let alone carry it to the Star Ferry. Luckily a Mass Transit Railway underground station, Central, was just on the corner. Sweating and heaving, I dragged the suitcase down the thronged steps to the lengthy ticket-machine queues. I couldn’t get it over or through the turnstiles. My trousers got ripped in the attempt. A couple of Chinese schoolboys helped me carry it to the densely packed Tube train. I pulled the suitcase out at Tsim Sha Tsui station, and, on the point of collapse, reached the top of the station steps.

The strike had turned into a riot. Swarms of screaming Chinese were tearing around throwing missiles through shop windows and looting the wares. Piles of electronic machinery and cheap jewellery littered the pavements and disappeared
in armfuls. People were robbing whatever they could. The contents of my suitcase were more valuable than the sum total of all the stolen goods I could see. I began panicking. My heart was racing, and I was so weak I simply could not budge the suitcase. I sat on it and watched the riot. Eventually, I found the strength to lift it and stumbled into the Park Hotel.

‘I take your bag, Mr Marks,’ said a diminutive Chinese porter, picking up the immense weight, putting it on his shoulders, and running down the corridor to the elevator. I went running after him. He put down the suitcase, smiled broadly as I gave him a 100-Hong-Kong-dollar tip, and ran away.

I collapsed on the bed, jet-lagged and exhausted. I’d smuggled in a few ready-rolled joints from London. One of them put me to sleep.

A couple of hours later, I woke surrounded by three room attendants.

‘Ah! Mr Marks, you must close door. Maybe robber come. Today crazy day in Hong Kong.’

This was most irresponsible. I’d gone to sleep leaving a suitcase containing well over a million dollars in the middle of the floor with the door wide open while I fell unconscious puffing away at a large joint. I couldn’t risk leaving the room, not even to go downstairs. I couldn’t telephone Ernie from the hotel room. That would be uncool. It was still morning in London. Hobbs should be at the Soho office. I’d given him some odd jobs to do for Drinkbridge. It would be all right to phone there from the hotel.

‘Jim, can you get the next flight to Hong Kong? Ask Balendo at Hong Kong International to give you a ticket on my account.’

‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Howard.’

‘Bring your birth certificate, Jim. You might be getting married.’

The Park Hotel was not Hong Kong’s best-equipped
hotel. There was a black-and-white television and some piped muzak. I had enough hash for only three joints. I put the suitcase in the wardrobe and smoked three joints. I telephoned April.

‘Ahh, Marks, you back in Hong Kong. Me and Selena think you never come back. You go Bottoms Up tonight?’

‘No, I have to stay in my room to receive telephone calls.’

‘You want me and Selena come see you. No problem. Where you stay?’

‘Park Hotel.’

‘Where?’

‘It’s on Chatham Road. April, can you bring some …?’