The Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare (3 page)

My eyes drop down and I see that the handle is sticking out, not sitting right. I want to puke. I can’t believe it. Bollocks. This has got to be ten years minimum. Fuck. The boys back at the hotel must have got greedy and messed up packing the case. Fuckers – they should be here, not me.

The guard now cuts off the plastic wrapping around the case, like a metaphor for my life peeling away in front of me. Three tiny black darts are poking out of the side of the case, a technique they must use to find coke packed into luggage. Small white circles of powder have formed around the arrow tips.

The boys in green move in closer. A skinny guard opens my case and rummages through my belongings. He pulls out the fake designer clothes I was bringing home as presents for my son and daughter, and others in my family: a Hugo Boss T-shirt and Ralph Lauren shorts, a polo shirt. Now he pulls out plastic bags and scrunched-up newspapers packed in to fill out the case. The officers know the score. They easily spot the telltale signs of a mule’s luggage. The troops and cops gather round, forming a circle. Their smiles widen. My tie feels tighter.

The guard leans over the black Wilson suitcase. He pulls out a small knife and rips the lining inside the case. At the bottom I can see a layer of black plastic, which is carbon paper meant to fool X-ray scanners. So much for that. He cuts the material again. The cops behind me move in closer. Others are standing on tables to get a better look. The guard cuts again. This time there’s a layer of clear plastic, revealing white, densely packed powder. I slowly shake my head. This can’t be happening. The circle of cops moves in closer again and starts to crowd me. I can see one guard, his hand resting on the barrel of his pistol. Others train their mobile-phone cameras on me.

Saturday, 11 October 2008. I was about to be a star.

* * *

Earlier, I’d stepped out of a taxi at the departures. The cab was a beat-up ’70s sedan from the US. I flagged it in the centre of Caracas, where the cab inched through the city’s grinding traffic jams while motorcycles whizzed in and out between the cars. Outside the urban sprawl of the city we reached a motorway. The traffic eased and fanned out across about six lanes. I watched the city pass by, soon leaving behind the hazy fog of fumes, the grim buildings of the urban centre giving way to the shantytowns of little red-bricked houses clinging to the hills around the valley walls looking down onto the motorway. The crudely built homes with tin roofs are where the poor live in Caracas, Venezuela’s teeming capital city of some three million people.

I rolled down the window a bit. Hot air rushed in at me, but it was a fresh breeze blowing in north from the Caribbean. I ran through the events of the last couple of weeks in my head.

I followed orders, arrived in Caracas and checked into a hotel to wait for the call. ‘There’s been a delay. Get yourself a hooker or something to pass the time.’

That I didn’t do. Instead I passed my days in a bar in Sabana Grande, a shopping area for cheap designer goods in Caracas. By night it was deserted – even the rats didn’t seem to venture out amid the hundreds of bags of rubbish that clogged up the streets. I drank my time away in the pub, sipping beers while writing a crime book set in Dublin. Other than that I watched a bit of football, catching the odd Manchester United game. At night I had a meal, drank a bottle of rum and headed back to my cheap hotel.

Then the second call came.

‘The bar on the corner. Five minutes.’ A Dublin accent. Had to be him.

Damo sat in a booth. He was a tough-looking guy, stocky with a bald head. It was the first time we’d met. I slipped in beside him.

‘Paul, sorry. You’re getting on OK?’ He seemed distant.

‘OK.’

‘There’s been a change of plan,’ he said, drumming his fingers on the neck of a bottle of beer. ‘We need you to stay a bit longer. We haven’t got the stuff yet. Can you change your flights and stay another week? We’ll give you the money for it.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I was thinking of my plumbing business back home and my teenage daughter, who was living with me, and the story I’d told everyone about going away for two weeks, not three.

‘Look, I know you’ve a business back home and I understand if you have to go.’ He was giving me a way out, which surprised me, for a drug smuggler. I thought for a minute. Another week, I can swing it.

‘Yeah, it’s all right, I can do it.’ It was a decision I would regret for a long time.

The next day, on Damo’s advice, I moved to Altamira, the banking district of Caracas. It was an upmarket area: lots of tall glass buildings; wide, leafy avenues lined with palm trees; four-by-four jeeps cruising into the drive-thrus of McDonald’s and Wendy’s. Little Miami. This was where the other half lived. It was the place to be, Damo said. ‘The cops won’t hassle you down there.’ And they didn’t. In Sabana Grande the police stopped me for a shakedown three times. I was pushed against a wall, spread-eagled and patted down. The sight of a gringo there was like waving a red flag to a bull. The cops knew what many were up to. But I never had anything on me.

* * *

I was in my hotel room, crashed out on the bed watching the TV. The only thing in English was the CNN news. The local stations in Spanish all seemed to show the same thing every evening: Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez dressed in a red shirt and beret and endlessly talking about a
revolución.

Three dull thuds banged out on my hotel door. I sat up with a jolt. I stood up and slowly eased the door open. I saw Damo’s baldy head.

‘We’re in the hotel in another room. Number 443. Come on up.’

A dark-skinned Venezuelan guy was in the room gathering up plastic bags on the floor. He looked up at me but didn’t bother saying anything. ‘It’s all tidied up,’ said Damo, on his knees leaning over a suitcase on the ground. ‘Everything will be grand,’ he said, now rolling up old newspapers to fill out the inside of it.

The room was clean and unused. Two single beds were still made up. Two bars of soap were propped on fluffed-up pillows. No other luggage. The lads weren’t sticking around.

Damo stood up. ‘There’s the case, good luck,’ he said, passing me the handle so I could wheel it. He looked relaxed. A normal day’s work for him, I supposed. ‘Be cool when you get to the airport. Nice and
tranquilo
. When you land in Dublin, call the lads. Somebody will meet you. Give them the case and you’ll be sitting pretty, ten grand richer.’

I thought there should be more to explain. There wasn’t.

* * *

The guard cuts into the plastic and takes out a sample of the white powder, balancing it on the knife blade. He puts it onto a piece of paper, opens the lid of a bottle and pours on a chemical. The National Guard and the airport cops are laughing now, jostling each other. My hands form fists. I know the test is a formality, but I want the gods to be on my side. Please let it be a bag of talcum powder.

The white powder fizzles orangey-red, then blue. ‘
Es positivo,
’ he says. It’s the real thing. Game over.

‘
Muy bueno, gringo! Muy bueno,
’ (‘Very good’) roar the soldiers and police standing around, laughing and cheering. I can’t believe it all. Cameras flash. Snap. Bit early for the press, I think. The guard tilts the case up so they can get clear photos of the booty. With a further probe with his knife the cop rips the lining on the other side of the case and finds another stash of cocaine packed across the entire side. Now several of the soldiers take turns putting their arms around me and posing for pictures, like holiday snaps. Another gringo mule bites the dust. More cheers, louder this time. ‘Heeeyyyy.’ Hands clap. The soldiers step in for more photos with their catch. It must have been six months since they caught their last drug runner. I wonder how many mantelpieces around Venezuela will be decorated with my mug shot.

‘We’re arresting you for the transportation of illegal drugs,’ says the interpreter, cool as a cucumber. Just another day’s work catching a mule. The guard standing behind me slips handcuffs on me that bite into my wrists. Two soldiers lead me away.

* * *

Simón Bolívar International Airport, Maiquetía: 30 minutes’ drive north of Caracas, set amid gentle hills covered in lush vegetation that seem to spill into the sea below. A runway peppered with weeds poking out from worn tarmac. Jets take off and soar over the sea a few minutes north. Waves wash up on the Caribbean shoreline there that stretches west to Colombia and east towards the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, a short hop off the mainland.

Venezuela is a major route for smuggling cocaine from neighbouring Colombia, mostly to Europe. Some 200 tonnes of the drug pass through its borders every year, US anti-drug chiefs say. The Venezuelan government fires back by saying there wouldn’t be this problem if gringos didn’t want to shove it up their noses. The oil-rich country shares a frontier with Colombia – the world’s biggest producer of cocaine after Peru – stretching more than 2,200 km along Venezuela’s western border. Much of the frontier is porous, made up of mountains, jungles and even a desert to the north, making it impossible to entirely secure. The Venezuelan authorities have a mostly deserved reputation of being crooked, which doesn’t help seal the borders to tonnes of cocaine in the multibillion-dollar global business. Much of it is smuggled out in freight containers or aboard private planes, mostly bound for rogue West African states, where it is processed and shipped to Spain and the rest of Europe. Smaller hauls of single-digit kilos also form part of the coke business, swallowed in condoms or hidden in suitcases on commercial airline flights. The people behind it are drug mules – people like me.

* * *

Earlier, I’d walked into the airport. It was no Heathrow – just a couple of badly lit poky halls with yellowed walls. The law was everywhere. Police busied about checking IDs. National Guard troops armed with machine guns roamed. I wasn’t bothered; I was sure all would go well.

In the departures area I saw a worker in a red jumpsuit wrapping cases in cling film. I paid him a few euro to do mine; I liked the extra security. I walked over to the Air France check-in desk. The stewardess was a typical Venezuelan beauty with sallow skin and perfect sheen hair.

‘
Inglés?
’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said with a warm smile.

I handed over the black suitcase. She checked it in. No problem. I watched it disappear behind a plastic curtain. That was it. Down the chute. Home and dry. All was going to plan. I could already see my debts at home disappearing off my bank statement. And I felt OK; I was sure the case was packed well. Only a proper search would suss it out.

I went through a few formalities, queuing up to pay a departure tax. I fished out a few scrunched-up notes of the local currency – bolívares fuertes – from my pocket. I then passed through immigration and flashed my passport at an official. He curtly nodded, his eyes barely looking at me. Not a hitch. It was all plain sailing.

I had a couple of hours to go until my 2 p.m. flight to Charles de Gaulle. I walked around the duty-free shop. The usual cheap cigarettes and booze, mostly locally brewed rum and Scottish whisky, which upper-class Venezuelans are fond of. On the short walk down to the terminal I stopped at one of the bars. It was busy enough, but I saw there was room for one more at the bar and eased myself onto a stool. I ordered a steak sandwich and a local Polar beer. It was good and hit the nail on the head. I opened up the only book I’d found in English in a shop in Caracas: Snoop Dogg’s autobiography.

* * *

The officers led me away from the baggage area. I was brought to the main building of the airport, where the drug squad had its office. I was seated at a table in a room with an antique-looking printer and a filing cabinet. It looked like a spare room rather than an interrogation room. I was left alone. The officers only popped their heads in now and again. Some security. A couple of cops appeared at the door along with the interpreter, who was around when anything important was happening. They were there to strip search me, he explained. First I had to empty all my belongings out on the table. I had a bunch of cash in my wallet in a mix of currencies: 500 euro, 200 dollars and 100 sterling. And of course my mobile phone. All in all, the tools of an international trader – or drug mule, in my case. I then whipped off my shirt and slacks and threw the tie on the ground. So much for my formal dress throwing the drug squad off the scent. I was told to lower my boxer shorts as well. I had to bend over and spread my cheeks.

‘Have you swallowed any drugs?’ said the interpreter.

‘Don’t you think there’s enough in the case?’

He laughed.

I put my clothes back on but left the tie on the ground. No use for it now.

The other guard sorted through my belongings on the table and scribbled a report. I knew I’d never see the cash or the phone again – and I didn’t.

‘Can I make a call home?’ I asked the interpreter. He gave me my mobile phone back, warning me I couldn’t ring any drug-smuggler friends. ‘Family,’ I said.

‘Two minutes only,’ he said, still holding a poker face.

I scrolled through the contacts. Mick, my nephew’s name, came up. I knew I could rely on him to break the news to the rest of the family without giving them a heart attack. At 19, he was young but had a good head on his shoulders. I dialled the number. After a few rings he answered. I was relieved. I knew it might be another ten years before I could talk to anyone from home again. It’d be a phone call neither of us would forget in a hurry. ‘Mick, listen, this is your Uncle Paul.’

‘Ah, Paul, where are you? Can I pick you up or anything?’ said Mick, thinking I wanted a lift from the airport in Dublin. I kept in mind that I’d told everyone I was off sunning myself in Spain on a working holiday, helping a mate in his nightclub.

‘No, Mick, just shut up and listen. Right, I’ve got two minutes to say what I have to say.’

‘Why, what’s wrong? What?’

‘Mick, just shut up. You know the way I’m supposed to be in Spain on a working holiday?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’