Snowing in Bali (5 page)

‘Okay, let's be calm, calm. We're going to do this. Go to the Garuda desk and rebook on the next flight,' he said evenly, suddenly mindful not to spook Sparrow into bolting again.

Rafael was a little bit fed up with me.

– Sparrow

Sparrow flew out on the next flight at 7 am. For nearly three hours his heart beat hard and fast as he was absorbed by a movie in his head, imagining police with machineguns, a squalid little cell, his life razed, wiped, finished. Terrible visuals were rushing through his brain. He thought about his life. Was his dead father looking down disappointed? What would his mum think if he went to jail? Would he ever see his sister again? He questioned why he was doing this – he was a qualified architect – but he knew it was the lure of $12,000 fast cash. Even in these darkest moments, he didn't think of ditching the bag. All too soon he arrived in Bali, and the bag was sitting on the floor near the conveyor belt. He showed his ticket, grabbed the bag and walked over to customs. He was terrified. This was it, right now, the seconds he'd been dreading; mere seconds but they could wipe out the entire rest of his life. He breezed past. Ordeal over.

Suddenly, he felt like a rag doll that had been flung around interminably by a heavyweight champ. The mind-blowing nervous tension fizzled into limp-limbed exhaustion; the line of adrenalin that had sustained him had been cut. As he walked out, home free, into Bali's bright sunshine and cloying heat, he felt like collapsing. He was happy to see Rafael standing waiting for him among the tourists, vaguely disguised in a sports cap, with his hair scrunched up into it, and sunglasses. The old friends smiled at each other, but when Sparrow discovered Rafael had come on his motorbike and not in his car, he simply slung him the bag and teetered off on his spindly legs into the distance to get a taxi. He was way too wobbly to sit on the back of a bike.

Sparrow may have been a bit flaky, but he'd flashed past the post in the end. He went straight to the Bali Subak Hotel in Legian, where many runners stayed, and had a bit of a lie-down, daydreaming now of the sunny weeks ahead of surfing and partying.

A few hours later, Rafael picked him up in his Jimny, swung via Fabio's house – he was also an investor in this run – and went to a party where Sparrow met the island's big buyers, the Indonesians. It was rare that a horse got to meet them, but Sparrow was a friend of Rafael's.

Barbara had also met them, but she wasn't ever going to deal directly with them. That was no risk; she was a disaster. She turned up at Rafael's house one day wanting to buy some coke to use, but he was rushing out to a party at a big Indonesian boss's villa. She tagged along.

It was sophisticated and posh, with the rich Indonesians smoking cigars and bringing out a silver tray to serve up lines of coke for everyone in the room. They gave it to their trustable man, Rafael, first but he gestured to Barbara, saying, ‘Ladies first.' Barbara picked up the little straw and bent over the silver tray, but was finishing a mouthful of chips. She sneezed, spitting bits of chip all over the plate and blowing the coke to smither­eens. Rafael was embarrassed and apologised profusely, then pulled out his own coke to make new lines, after cleaning off Barbara's soggy chip bits.

I say, fuck, I cannot take this bitch anymore. She's too much. I was so embarrassed in front of the big boss at the table. I say, ‘Barbara, look what you did.' She says, ‘Sorry, sorry.'

The coke disappeared, flew, potato spit everywhere. I take care of the situation . . . I say, ‘Oh sorry, sorry,' and then run to the toilet, wash the thing. She was apologising but people were a little bit stressed. And then I make the plate dry, heat it up and take my own coke and make lines.

‘Sorry guys, she's a little bit too much. Barbara, don't come close, please.' I make it funny, but they were pissed off with her.

– Rafael

The night Sparrow met the buyers was also a glamorous party. These guys were the bosses in Bali. They tried to control the island, wanting the cartel players to sell solely and directly to them, so they could sell on to the many big international buyers coming to the island and the local gangs, particularly Laskar, who sold drugs with impunity inside some of the clubs where they did security. These bosses were now filthy rich and didn't only sell drugs but owned villas, restaurants, shops, bars and houses.

These guys . . . before they sell shells on the beach and now they have properties.

– Rafael

At this point, three of the top Indonesian buyers in Bali were Singapore Edy, Sumatran Nanang, and Taylor. Sumatran Nanang was an aggressive, pudgy-faced, overweight guy with wavy hair that hung past his ears. He usually dressed in tennis shoes, jeans and T-shirt. He was notorious for practising black magic against his enemies – usually with great effect, as the Balinese believed in it totally.

Taylor always dressed in expensive outfits, tailored pants and long-sleeved Italian designer shirts. He now owned a restaurant on the beach near Fabio's. Singapore Edy was always sharply dressed too – shirt, tie, leather shoes, Rolex. He'd once done a stint in prison for possession of a range of drugs.

Another big case involved Edy Kusyanto – the owner of Ibiza restaur­ant in Kuta. He was caught in 1995 for possession of drugs, including 307 grams of hashish, 100 grams of cocaine, 9.8 grams of marijuana and 17.9 grams of ecstasy.

–
Jakarta Post,
16 September 1999

I think he got three years. Not so much, because he paid to get out and came back.

– Rafael

Rafael had met Edy in his pizzeria one day as he sat eating lunch with Fabio, who was already working with him. Fabio pointed across and said, ‘You want drugs, that's the boss.' Rafael was keen to meet him, and they soon went upstairs to his office, where Edy sat down at his desk and placed his briefcase on it. ‘Right, what do you want?' he asked. ‘What do you have?' Rafael enquired. Edy popped the locks and flipped up the lid. It was a pharmacy. ‘Everything: ecstasy,
ganja,
coke, heroin.'

Rafael asked if he was interested in buying. ‘Oh yeah, why, you have some?'

‘Not right now but soon. I can bring you a sample.' Edy was keen. Meanwhile, that afternoon Rafael bought a gram for $100, and the connection was made. But they didn't deal for long, as Rafael liked professionalism.

He says I pay you next week, and then next week, tomorrow, tomorrow, and I was, like, crazy about that.

Selling to the Indonesians was a win win usually. For the westerners, it was safer than trafficking it further, or selling locally, which these bosses didn't like anyway. For the Indon­esian bosses, they relied on the South Americans for the cocaine, as it was ubiquitous and cheap in their backyard and they had the contacts.

The Brazilians were the perfect suppliers, as it was safest to move the drugs across the border from the notorious coke countries – Peru, Colombia and Bolivia – to Brazil, and then fly out of one of its many bustling airports, easily camouflaged among the ceaseless throng of tourists. To buy coke in the three coke-producing countries was dirt cheap, usually $1000 a kilo.

In Peru and Brazil, cocaine is like sand in the Sahara, it's everywhere. There are a million places where you can buy a kilo of coke, it's like buying a kilo of sugar in the market.

– Alberto

Every time cocaine crossed a border, its price jumped. Across a single border to Brazil, a kilo cost $5000, and by the time it reached faraway party island Bali, prices hiked up to anything from $20,000 to $90,000 a kilo. The going rate was dictated by how much coke was on the island – that is, whether or not it was snowing in Bali. The cartels, like the Diaz brothers and Rafael, protected their sources, so the Indonesians had to rely on them to get the stuff.

If foreign dealers didn't play by their rules, the Indonesians got angry, as an Aussie rookie learnt. After months of partying on the club circuit, he came to know a couple of the Indonesian bosses. So when he met someone in the surf who'd arrived with 2 kilos in his bag, he acted as sales agent, offering it to Nanang first. Nanang was keen but overstocked and asked him to wait a few days. But the Aussie didn't, he sold it.

As soon as Nanang learnt of the treachery, he sent two of his men to deliver an ultimatum: leave Bali or die. The surfer went into hiding for six months, avoiding clubs and restaurants, until one of his Peruvian drug-dealer friends offered Nanang a sweet coke deal as a peace offering for him, which was accepted.

Dealer Alberto refused to live by the rules. As an agent juggling sellers and buyers, he usually couldn't sit on the stuff or the sellers grew impatient and angry. Most sellers pushed him to offload it fast and in Bali there were always big buyers arriving from France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and many other countries, with endless cash and runners ready to go. It was a frenetic business and Alberto was always keen to avoid sitting on coke.

You have to spend money on a hotel and it's a risk because you're sitting on a bomb, it can explode at any time.

– Alberto

One afternoon he offered Nanang a kilo of coke, but the boss needed time to organise cash. Alberto prevaricated, not promising to keep it, and when an Australian turned up with a briefcase full of cash, he sold it. A few days too late, Nanang rang to say he was ready. Alberto broke the news; it was gone. Nanang asked him to come to his shop.

As soon as Alberto walked into Nanang's office, he copped a fist in the face so hard that he reeled back into the wall. It hurt like hell, but he didn't retaliate. He couldn't forget it was their country, especially as Nanang's soldiers were now surrounding him. But fury blazed in his eyes. Nanang saw it and his temper blew. He grabbed a chair, lifted it above his head, set to smash it down on Alberto. Two of his men stepped in between them.

It gave Alberto a second to interject. ‘Hey, wait a second. It's not my fault, you know, it wasn't me calling the shots.'

Nanang was trembling with rage. ‘I don't give a fuck.'

Alberto grabbed his phone, saying, ‘Hold on one second, I'm going to put you on the phone to my friend.' Alberto called the seller. ‘Man, this is fucked up; the guy just punched me in the face. Now you fucking sort something out.'

The seller located another kilo of coke for Nanang at the same price. All the dealers knew the Indonesians were volatile – charming one minute, ready to kill you the next – and Nanang was the worst.

There were also fractious tensions between the cartels that flared up when tentative rules of business were violated. The cartels wanted to keep the price as buoyant as possible, but sometimes it collapsed when a Peruvian undercut, sabotaging the market for self-interest. It was easy for them to sell it dirt cheap, as they bought it for so little at home, and had minimal outlay if they carried it themselves. It was fine if they sold it cheap to the cartels, but not to the Indonesian bosses or other international buyers. The rate was usually around $50,000 a kilo, but if supply was weak it shot up to $90,000 or if strong could drop to $20,000. These were Bali's market trends.

Their drug businesses were volatile enough, with busts constantly blowing the bottom line, so when it was one of their own sabotaging the market, it exacerbated the fury.

Jose Henrici, aka Borrador, was living between Peru, where he had a son, and Bali. His expertise was stitching the bags, often working for Rafael packing coke in Peru or Bali into backpacks and surfboard bags. He'd worked with Rafael on Sparrow's second run, meeting the horse in Cuzco, Peru, to give him the bag. Borrador was part of the business, but a soldier not a boss. He'd started getting constantly high, sweating profusely from overuse. Now he'd brought in some coke he bought for $1000 at home, packed and trafficked it himself, and was undercutting everyone.

The Peruvians were putting down the price; that was big fight sometimes with them. We say, ‘What the fuck, you fuck the business.' We were selling a kilo here for $50,000, $48,000 and in the end they sell for less than $20,000.

Good quality?

The best. And they start to fuck us, and then we catch one, one time, and tell him get out of the island, motherfucker.

– Rafael

Rafael went out hunting for Borrador the night he discovered his crime. Nanang had been asking Rafael to alert him as soon as he got more coke, but when Rafael offered it to him for the low price of $25,000, as supply was strong, Nanang declined. The boss was now stocked up because Borrador had just sold a few kilos to him for $18,000 each.

Rafael was apoplectic. It was vital for the Bali cartels to keep the prices above at least $25,000 a kilo. Random tourists who lobbed with stuff often naively sold for crazy low prices to the cartels or professional agents like Alberto, but they didn't know the big Indonesian buyers, so it was usually only each other they had to watch.

That night Rafael and his friend and self-appointed bodyguard Jando, a purple belt in Jiu-Jitsu, jumped in the car and went out hunting Borrador. As they drove along a dark narrow road in Canggu, they spotted him going in the opposite direction on his motorbike.

Rafael did a fast U-turn, tore after the bike, quickly overtook it and swerved in front, forcing Borrador to slam to a stop. ‘Hey, Rafael,' he waved uncertainly.

‘Fuck you, man,' Rafael yelled out the window as Jando burst out of the passenger door, rounding on the bike, kicking it over and propelling Borrador to the ground. The Peruvian had no chance to react. Jando grabbed his hand and snapped his thumb back in the Jiu-Jitsu cowhand technique. Borrador writhed in agony with his arm up in the air as Jando snarled, ‘What the fuck do you think you're doing, motherfucker?'

Rafael stayed in the driver's seat keeping an eye on passing traffic. He'd told Jando to scare the guy to death, not actually kill him, but to let him think tonight they were going to dump his corpse into one of the surrounding rice paddies.