The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare (27 page)

Father Pat said Mass and turned to leave. ‘OK, boys, I’ll be seeing you soon,’ he said. I felt a bunch of rolled-up notes in my palm when we shook hands. ‘That’s part of the money your friend wired to me. Too dangerous to bring it all in at once.’

‘That’s fantastic, Father,’ I said. He really was a saviour. I was also over the moon that my mate had come through good with the cash for my passport after I had emailed him. Now we’d see if I could skip out of Venezuela with my very own travel documents.

‘PAUL, IRISHMAN, IRISHMAN, THERE’S ANOTHER IRISH.’ VITO WAS SHOUTING over to me in the yard. ‘Come, a guy from Ireland.’ My ears pricked up. Another Paddy? One more Irishman for Father Pat to take care of? He’d have to get himself the honorary consul job soon. I was absorbed in writing my diaries, but I put them down; curiosity about the guy got the better of me.

We shook hands. ‘How are you?’ he said. I could tell by his accent he was Eastern European. No way his passport had a harp on it.

‘Where you from, they all think you’re Irish?’

‘Poland,’ he said, ‘but I have been living in Dublin for seven years.’

‘Poland, yeah,’ I said, ‘there’s a couple of Polish bars down around Parnell Street.’

‘Yes, but I am liking Temple Bars very much,’ he said, referring to Dublin’s tourist area.

‘I’m Paul, by the way.’

‘Dimitry.’

He was wearing a Manchester United shirt – my favourite football team. It was the brand-new away strip. ‘I’ll give you twenty thousand bolos [about four euro] for that.’

‘Done,’ he said, and we shook on it.

‘That’ll get you started,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s free here.’

‘Yes, I am thinking that. Is no hotel.’

The new lads, when they arrived they had nothing till they got help from their embassy – if at all. Or at least till they got their first Western Union through to pay the jefe the ‘entry fee’ to stay in the wing. I knew Dimitry needed a few things to get himself started: a bucket, a cup, a bowl and a few toiletries, such as a bar of soap and toothpaste.

‘Go and see Macedonia,’ I said. ‘He sorts out all you lads with the bosses, interpreting for them if they have any problems. Speaks Spanish and Russian.’

‘He is Russian?’

‘No, from Macedonia.’

‘I see. Makes sense his name.’ Dimitry didn’t seem at all bothered by the wing ‘induction’, where the jefe and his henchmen would read him the wing bill of rights down a gun barrel.

Later I got to know him better. He’d been living in Castleknock in west Dublin with his sister and had a job in a well-known hardware store chain. He had been making good money but got laid off. He was approached by some gang to do a drug run, but he didn’t say who he was working for. No one ever did. We all guarded ourselves like that. You were afraid something might happen to your family if you fingered whoever you’d been working for back home.

Dimitry was one of the growing number of gringos in Los Teques. What had been around 200 was reaching up to 300, we guessed, out of about 1,200 prisoners. Every week another few arrived. Soon enough, I thought, we could apply to the United Nations for status: the Gringos’ Republic of Los Teques. Dozens of countries had an ‘ambassador’ here: Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, South Africa, Mexico, Colombia, the United States, Germany, France, Ireland, Macedonia, Turkey, Libya, Israel, Nigeria, Australia and so on. All caught at the airport. The cops there were getting good at sniffing out packages of coke stuffed in suitcases and collaring jittery gringos who’d swallowed johnnies packed with capsules of coke.

There was no shortage of characters among them. José was one, a Spaniard whom we all liked. He was a real clown, always out in the yard like a street entertainer: singing and dancing, and juggling oranges and lemons. One afternoon when a luz was called we all piled out into the yard to play statues, staring at the back wall while the bosses went to take out their guns. José had been in the wing only a few days and didn’t know the drill, and was bathing himself in the toilet area in the cells. The bosses ran in and dragged him out. He ran running into the yard naked, the lags kicking him up the bare ass.

He was the village idiot, but I could see he was intelligent. And, like every clown, he had a sad story behind the jokes and laughs. He was born into a rich family in Madrid but broke away from them and started up a business that went bust. He then found himself living rough on the streets. Like all of us, he was approached to do a drug run and make ‘easy money’.

Another quirky sort was an old Polish guy. He was a fat little fellow with a scrunched-up wrinkly face. I called him Mr Magoo. He was 67 and looked it. ‘What’s he doing in here?’ I said, puzzled when I first saw him. I couldn’t believe there was a guy this old locked up for being a drug mule. Despite his senior years, he was mad into the crack cocaine. He suffered from depression and you could tell he wasn’t right in the head. Roberto and a few of the others used to dress him up in hats for a laugh, and he’d parade up and down the yard like he was in a fashion show. It was sad, really – he was an old guy who’d already been locked up for four years. By this stage he should have been released on humanitarian grounds, or at least on parole, given his age, but he hadn’t. He probably didn’t have the know-how to get somebody in his embassy, or back home, on the case.

There were a couple of Krauts who lived up to their stereotype as being dour. One looked like a typical old-style German to me: he had a moustache, trimmed and curved down at the edges around his upper lip like handlebars. He reminded me of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the German emperor during the First World War. He was a fair bit older than me, in his 50s. I didn’t like him much; he seemed pompous. I used to walk up to his face and shout ‘Kaiser’. Or give him a Nazi salute and shout ‘Heil Hitler’, clicking my feet together. He just walked away, his nose up in the air. Despite the fact that all us foreigners were locked up for drug smuggling, he thought he was better than us all.

‘The Gypsy’ was a name we gave one Romanian lad. Like many Romanians of his social class, he went to nearby Italy looking for work but fell on hard times there and got roped into doing a drug run. One of the Italians in the wing used to slag him. ‘Go home, you Romanian bastard – taking our jobs.’ But it was just a laugh – I doubted any lobbying groups in Italy were campaigning for equal rights for foreign and local drug mules.

Most of the gringos had the same story. They had lost their job and were approached to do a ‘holiday in the sun’. The few quid was a big carrot. One Polish guy, Vladimir, had been working in the north of England. He had great work as a gardener and lived with his English girlfriend. But he lost his job, hit hard times and got roped into doing a cocaine run. One day he was sitting out in the yard next to me with his head in his hands. ‘Paul, what am I after doing? What am I after doing? I had a great life and a beautiful girl.’ Most of the young lads used to tell me their woes, seeing me as someone to talk to, probably because I was older. I didn’t mind listening to their problems; it was a chance to forget my own for a while.

Vladimir’s story was common. The rise in the number of foreigners coming into the prison started in the early months of 2010, which was in line with the recession biting hard back in Europe. Almost all of the drug mules coming into the prison were first-time drug runners, many of whom had lost their jobs in the downturn and were offered a ‘holiday in the sun’ to do a drug run to Venezuela. I thought the recession was a bonus for the drug dealers. They could walk into any pub or dole office back in Europe and take their pick of would-be mules. Offer them the going rate, between 5,000 and 10,000 euro, which to someone on the dole who’d fallen on hard times was a lot. But it was a good investment for anyone hiring them. If the mule smuggled back four or five kilos of cocaine, it could be mixed with sodium or something to double the volume; the coke would then have a street value of up to 500,000 euro.

Although most drug mules banged up in 2010 were first-timers, that’s not to say there weren’t seasoned mules too. Many of the Spaniards and Italians had been doing it for years. The Spanish, the biggest foreign contingency in the prison, numbering about 70, seemed to me to behave like drug running was their national pastime. And for some reason they were all crackheads. For many of the South Africans, too, it was their fourth or fifth run before they’d got caught in the airport in Caracas. And they had done time before, and would likely mule again.

One long-termer in Maxima was an old South African guy. He’d been in for four years. I put him down as between 60 and 65. He said he’d been working on oil rigs for years before returning home, hitting hard times and getting roped into a drug run. Like other South Africans, he said he got nothing from his embassy. He hadn’t a bean and walked around all day asking for ‘cigarillo, cigarillo’.

Most of the lags gave him one. You couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, a weary old guy locked up far from home. He had a crazy look in his eye, and he probably was. He was filthy stinking, too; he rarely washed and had messy hair. The jefes often shoved him into the toilet area, forcing him to have a wash, or paying the in-house barber to give him a haircut, so he’d look respectable in front of their families on visit days.

The South African walked up to me one day. ‘Look, look, my invention. It will make me millions.’ He pulled out a bundle of folded-up pieces of paper from his pocket covered with squiggles and drawings, an idea he said he’d come up with on the oil rigs that would speed up the drilling process. He told anyone who’d listen, then quickly pocketed the pieces of paper containing his coveted invention in case you’d steal them. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He’d lost his marbles.

He saw me with my phone one day and got on my case to contact the British Embassy so he could ask them to represent him. That way he could get a few quid. Being from a commonwealth country, he had a decent chance, and if they did agree to represent him, it meant a little money from a prisoners-abroad welfare charity in the UK. I agreed and dialled a number he gave me.

‘Good afternoon, British Embassy,’ said a girl in the Caracas office. It was a novelty to hear a posh English accent: I was only used to hearing Eddy’s Mancunian twang, like listening to an extra in
Coronation Street
going to the ‘Rovers’.

I told her about the old guy’s request to get represented as a Briton. ‘Yes, we heard about him a long time ago. We’ll look into it. Can we call you on this number?’

‘Yes,’ I said. It was no surprise to them that an inmate was ringing from his own mobile. ‘And he should have been out a long time ago; he’s done two years more than most.’

Weeks later he did get a visit from British Embassy officials, but I never found out if he got help. He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask, not wanting to get involved with him if I could help it. He was later finally released on parole, and after a short stay in a halfway house I heard he was living rough on the streets of Caracas. Poor old guy: he probably died there, living under a bridge or in a cardboard box in the street.

* * *

Some fared better than others inside when it came to getting looked after by their embassies. The Brits seemed to do well, getting a decent payout from a prisoners’ charity at home. The Spanish did OK, too. The Italians were on a good number. They had good credit rating, too, running up tabs in the shop and with the bosses for perico. They had no problem getting it all on the slate; everyone knew they were good for it. I often watched Silvio coming back from his monthly meeting with his embassy official. He’d walk straight in to see the padrino and pay his coke bill, then would go to the Chief in the shop and square with him for food, coffee and other bits.

It was an Italian priest representing their embassy who came to visit them. A bonus for the Italians was that he gave them a big hamper of food every month. They’d walk back into the wing after the visit with goodies like fresh ham and cheese wrapped in fancy paper. It was weird; it seemed like their embassy was rewarding them for being drug mules.

They weren’t the best off, though. There was an Israeli locked up in a private cell upstairs in the jail – the only inmate to be on his own. We reckoned he must have been minted and paying a boss big money for it – but out of his own pocket, I guessed. I doubted any embassy was that generous. He rarely came out. I only saw him once, beady eyes poking out of a gaunt, bearded face. He looked a bit like Che Guevara.

Other nationalities were on the margins and got little or nothing as far as I could see: the Nigerians, Eastern Europeans, Turks, a Chinaman and so on. The Latino foreigners also didn’t seem to get a peso: Colombians, Mexicans, Ecuadorians – nada. They all had to work. Everyone could find their niche if they had to. There were jobs in the kitchen, but they were only for Spanish speakers. If you were an English speaker and getting nothing from your embassy, such as the South Africans, you were really looking at work in the wing for other inmates, such as hand washing their clothes or cooking food for the jefe and his henchmen, which many did.

As for myself and Billy, the Irish, we got nothing from the embassy. Zero. Like Billy, I got one visit from the consul after I was caught. That was that. In fairness, he was only an honorary consul and it was a voluntary job. They didn’t get paid. The nearest embassy that covered Venezuela was in Mexico. A plane trip there took about five hours, about the same as a flight to Ireland. But despite the distance, they were plugging away behind the scenes. They had papers on the go for Billy to be repatriated back to Ireland to serve the remainder of his time there. He would make history – the first Paddy to be repatriated from Venezuela. The Department of Foreign Affairs had also partly funded the pot of cash for the one-off payment we both got from the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas, dished out to us on the ground by Father Pat.

The influx of gringos into Los Teques seemed to be down to the Venos making strides in catching foreigners trying to smuggle coke through Simón Bolívar airport. For years it was seen as – and was – an easy touch, according to some of the gringo mules in Los Teques who’d been smuggling coke through there for years. The airport was now crawling with sniffer dogs, something I hadn’t seen when I was caught.