Howard Marks - Senor Nice

HOWARD MARKS

Straight Life from Wales to South America

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Epub ISBN 9781407092713

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Published by Vintage 2007

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Copyright Nowtext Limited 2006

Howard Marks has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

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First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Harvill Secker

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During the mid-1980s Howard Marks had forty-three aliases, eighty-nine phone lines and owned twenty-five companies trading throughout the world. At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to thirty tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and had contact with organisations as diverse as MI6, the CIA, the IRA and the Mafia.

Following a worldwide operation by the Drug Enforcement Agency, he was busted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison at Terre Haute Penitentiary, Indiana. He was released in 1995. Seor Nice tells the story of what happened next.

ALSO BY HOWARD MARKS

Mr Nice

The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories

Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Edna Rhyfelgar Marks

I would like to thank Giles Cooper, who has been my close friend and a perfect manager of my live shows for the last eight years. Without his tenacity, kindness, and understanding, this book would never have been started.

The following family members, friends, and associates deserve far more than mere acknowledgements. You know what you did. Thank you so much.

Jamie Acott; Richard Allen-Turner; Martyn Baker; Angelina Basco; Dave Beer; Dafydd Bell; Crofton Black; Martin Blackhall; Scott Blakey; Ernesto Blume; Leroy Bowen; Charlie Breaker; Mike Broderick; Arthur Brown; Alun Buffry; Tina Butler; Mary Carson; Anna Collings; Tim Corrigan; Dave Courtney; Tel Currie; Bernie Davies; Suzanne Dean; Dirty Sanchez; George Duffin; Briony Everroad; Emily Faccini; Claudette Finnegan; Mark Gehring; John Goad; David Godwin; Goldie Lookin Chain; Maria Golia; Adenor Gondim; Simon Greenberg; Lee Harris; Lisa Harvey; Rhys Ifans; JC001; Les Johnson; Ian Johnstone; Justin Kerrigan; Jimmy Knight; Marty Langford; Christian Lewis; Nick Linford; Kelly Major; Patrick Marks; Amber Marks; Francesca Marks; Myfanwy Marks; Polly Marshall; Mike and Claire McCay; Biff Mitchell; Amanda Monroe; Les Morrison; Claire Nicolson; Observer Travel Section; John Oliver; Jimmy Page; Jason Parkinson; James Perkins; Johnny Pickston; Werner Pieper; Joey Pyle; Justin Rees; Mark Reeve; Bruce Reynolds; Charlie Richardson; Sharon Robbins; Susan Sandon; Jim Shreim; Phil Sparrowhawk; Frank Steffan; Stereophonics; Super Furry Animals; Pauline Townsend; Marcus van der Kolk; Hywel Williams; Stuart Williams; Clare Wilshaw.

A very special thank you to Caroline Brown and to my editor Geoff Mulligan.

When a person endeavours to recall his early life in its entirety, he finds it is not possible: he is like one who ascends a hill to survey the prospect before him on a day of heavy cloud and shadow, who sees at a distance some feature in the landscape while all else remains in obscurity. The scenes people events we are able by an effort to call up do not present themselves in order but in isolated spots or patches, vividly seen in the midst of a wide shrouded landscape. It is easy to fall into the delusion that the few things thus distinctly remembered and visualised are precisely those which were most important in our life and on that account were saved by memory. Unconscious artistry sneaks in to erase unseemly lines and blots, to retouch, colour, shade, and falsify the picture.

Far Away and Long Ago, W. H. Hudson

Wherever I travelled, whatever scam or profession I was engaged in, I always returned to my birthplace Kenfig Hill: as an Oxford student on vacation, a source of pride to my parents and no doubt mystery and resentment to my friends; in the 1970s before skipping bail while awaiting an Old Bailey trial for smuggling tons of hashish in the equipment of rock bands such as Pink Floyd; in the 80s celebrating my acquittal, having been charged with importing fifteen tons of Colombian marijuana into the UK (I persuaded the court I was working for the Mexican secret service); in the 90s, having served a lengthy sentence at the maximum-security US Federal Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Indiana, to spend time with my parents, who had hung on to life just long enough to share my experience of freedom.

Winter 2001. Paddington, looking like an airport with its check-in facilities, escalators and shopping malls, was wet and windy a foretaste of South Wales, to where its trains, on the hour every hour, were constantly bound. I bought a ticket to Bridgend, 200 miles away, gateway to the coal mining valleys and the nearest railway station to Kenfig Hill. Notices depressingly announced that all Great Western services were now strictly non-smoking. Outside the ticket office a conveyor belt of sushi and sashimi plates trundled around in front of delayed passengers. I sat down, took half a spliff out of my top pocket, lit it, and stared at the raw fish and rice whizzing around.

Sorry, sir. No smoking, the sushi chef commanded abruptly.

How could anyone purporting to be Japanese disallow smoking? Japan has always had the highest cigarette consumption in the world and the lowest rate of lung cancer, a fact I found most comforting.

Are you Japanese? I asked the menacing, knife-wielding chef.

Korean.

Maybe that explains it.

Irritated, even slightly enraged, I ambled off to the platform, got on the waiting train, and sat down at an empty table as the train began to fill with people off to see Wales play England at rugby at Cardiffs Millennium Stadium.