Snowing in Bali (20 page)

It wasn't surprising. He'd vanished right from under the noses of dozens of clearly inept, red-faced police and customs officers during a bomb alert. Security was meant to be watertight, but they had failed to stop a 42-year-old man with a limp. It was an international story and excruciatingly embarrassing; the Indonesians had lost face. This could cost jobs and now it was personal. They wanted Marco nailed, especially after they'd cut open the hang-glider tubes and found 13.7 kilos of blow. They were hunting with unprecedented force for a drug trafficker.

The customs and excise officers have closed down access to all airports and seaports in the country in an effort to find Moreira, who is still at large. Head of customs and excise at Soekarno–Hatta airport, Jusuf Indarto, said that Moreira was not only a courier, but that he was part of an international drug syndicate. ‘He's a Brazilian athlete,' he said, showing Moreira's picture in a Brazilian newspaper.

–
Jakarta Post,
6 August 2003

Eluding police would have been a lot easier if Marco hadn't left his professional book behind. It gave them hundreds of pictures of himself and his friends, and the cops were hotly pursuing the photographic trail, raiding all his haunts – the club, Bali Village, his friends' villas – and interrogating people, making the Kate Osborne search two months earlier look like a picnic.

After three days in the hotel, Carlino told Marco it was time to move. ‘Marco, it's very hot here, you have to go. Police have photos everywhere.' They decided to stock Carlino's luxury catamaran with food so Marco could sail to Brazil.

But Carlino, motherfucker, he doesn't want to give up the boat. I'm ready to sail from Indonesia to Brazil and he changes his mind. I say, ‘Brother, don't forget me – I have a death sentence, man.' But he didn't want the boat going back to Brazil; he wanted it in Bali for the girls and everything. The boat is a killer boat, worth US$250,000. Big one. Fantastic boat.

– Marco

Marco continued to behave bizarrely. He was scared but had a fatalistic confidence that all would be okay; after all, he'd defied the odds for years, twice even cheating death. But this time his sense of invincibility was deluded. He was being sloppy, casual, behaving as if this was a game he could afford to lose.

Marco was really, really calm. He didn't realise his life was in danger at this time. For him – just another adventure.

How could he not realise?

Marco after the accident, he was a little bit crazy. He think, ‘I will never die. If I don't die in my paraglider accident, nothing is going to kill me.' This he repeated 10,000 times, ‘I saw death up close, but death cannot take me.' But he's stupid, you know, he doesn't have any plan. Just go to Lombok. He didn't realise really how dangerous the situation was. If he realises for a couple of seconds how hot the situ­ation was, he wouldn't stay on the beach doing barbecues.

– Andre

He had no strategic plan, making it up on the run; it was a series of erratic moves – paying locals to take him island-hopping in their boats and finding random places to sleep – that kept him in front of police by a nose, but left a blatant trail.

I escape by motorbike, car, motorbike, boat, and Samuel came with me. He went one time to Bali to get money, get ganja, get food and everything. The second time it was all dangerous; he went to get my passport but it was gone. My friend set fire to my passport. He was afraid. I'm very stupid, man, you know, I escaped from the airport – nobody does that – but I made a mistake to trust my Brazilian friend Dimitrius with my passport and he burnt it.

– Marco

All the dealers were feeling the white-hot heat around Marco. Those close to him were terrified of getting entangled, especially the investors. Dimitrius had agreed to hold Marco's passport for him, but with police crawling everywhere, he was petrified of being busted with it, so first tried to palm it off to Rafael, then burnt it.

He showed me. I say, ‘Man, go far away from me, this passport is too hot.' He says, ‘Marco told me to burn it.' I say, ‘Don't burn it, man, keep it, maybe he will need it to escape, but I don't want to know. Ciao!'

– Rafael

Marco had slipped into a fake identity, calling himself Mr John Miller, a half-Mexican, half-Californian tourist. Together, he and his loyal friend and back-up horse Samuel were renting bungalows on Nusa Lembongan, an island close to Bali, and spending their days surfing, barbecuing fresh fish and lobsters, drinking white wine and beers and using cocaine and hookers, courtesy of $3000 and a bag of blow Carlino had given him.

After a few days, Marco sensed it was time to move on. They hired a small boat through a Balinese kid, Roni, who'd become their friend, and cruised to the nearby island, Gili Trawangan. Trying to create a break in their trail, they immediately took another boat to a famous surf spot, Scar Reef, on the island of Sumbawa. Roni didn't go, but knew their plan – somewhat undoing their strategy. There they spent more time surfing, drinking and using cocaine. They also both chose a whore from a local brothel to take back to their bungalows and use for a few days.

Marco kept up on news of the police hunt in regular calls from Carlino. Despite his bravado and swagger, he was feeling insanely paranoid. No amount of cockiness or blow could immunise him from the bone-chilling reality that hundreds of armed military and intelligence police were hunting him down like a dog. He hadn't slept for days.

But far from trying to be invisible by blending in with the tourists, gregarious Marco soon had the locals waving and singing out ‘
Hola
John,
como estas,
comrade,' whenever he walked past in his big Mexican hat. After eight days the surf went flat and Marco decided it was as good a time as any for Samuel to take a boat back to Bali to get supplies. He also felt it was time to split up for a while, given that in his professional book there were dozens of photos of the two of them together in Bali and Peru.

A day after Samuel had left, Carlino phoned with a red alert – ‘Get off the island now. Police are in a boat and on their way.' Marco hung up, then moved quickly, paying a local kid to take him to the marina on his motorbike. He escaped again; he was blessed, charmed, invincible, and was soon sitting pretty in a small motorboat, drinking cold beers in the hot sun, shaded by his Mexican hat, while a toothless old man steered him towards Moyo Island, on Carlino's advice.

Hours later, as the sun started to set, there was no sign of the island. The old man seemed to be going around in circles. Marco had been told it was only 15 kilometres from Sumbawa and he was starting to worry. Then finally, they saw lights.

As the old man dragged the boat onto the beach, several security guards and an Australian resort manager walked briskly across the sand towards them. Still wearing his Mexican hat, Marco asked if he could rent a cheap room. No, he couldn't. On this small nature reserve island, there was only one place to stay – the luxury five-star Amanwana Resort, comprising 20 stylish air-conditioned tents. This place was for A-list tourists who blew thousands of dollars a day on their ultra-posh holiday, flying in and out in private Cessna C-208 seaplanes.

The Australian manager told him the cheapest room was $800 a night. Marco knew exactly what he'd stumbled into. He'd stayed at one of Aman's three Bali resorts, paying about $1000 a night for a room.

Tonight he definitely couldn't afford it, but the manager offered him a bed for one night in an employees' bungalow beside the resort. Marco gave him his name – Mr John Miller – instantly cursing his mistake.

An hour later, he lay in a clean, comfortable bed, but couldn't sleep. He knew he shouldn't have used the name John Miller – police would know it by now. All night he fretted and by sunrise he was up, packed and standing on the beach with his bag at his feet, waiting for a fishing boat to pick him up. He'd booked it the night before with a local boy. Relief swept over him when he saw the boat in the distance and he waved. It was too late to run when he realised his mistake. The boat was full of police, all with guns pointed at him, twitching to shoot him if he made a move.

‘So, Marco . . . we caught you,' one of the police officers mocked, as he stood on the beach pointing a gun at his legs. ‘I'm going to put a bullet in each of your legs. The boss at the airport told me to do it.' It was something Indonesian police casually did to locals, usually defending their action by claiming the suspect had tried to run.

Marco instinctively started his fast-talking. ‘Tunggu sebentar, boss [Wait a minute, boss], I'm already hurt.' He pulled up his shirt and revealed terrible scars from his gliding accident. He begged them not to shoot him. He'd tell them everything.

It was most likely not their compassion, but the gathering crowd of 100 or so local witnesses that stopped the bullets that morning. Instead, police circled Marco, handcuffed him and tied his legs and arms, ensuring David Copperfield didn't have the slightest chance of performing his vanishing trick this time.

As the elite shores of Moyo Island faded into the distance, the police started opening hatches on the boat, with heads popping up of people they'd collected and arrested along the trail to find him. Balinese boy Roni had been badly beaten and given up all he knew, which took police as far as Sumbawa. There, locals all talked freely about the charismatic Mr Miller and the police soon found the boy who'd taken Marco to the marina the night before. At the marina, they had arrested the toothless old man as he'd docked his motorboat late the previous night. Not one of the suspects had had the faintest clue that they'd been aiding and abetting Indonesia's most hotly hunted fugitive.

Everywhere police went, they find these guys and beat them, and lock them in the boat until they find Marco on the beach.

– Rafael

On the trip back to Sumbawa, Marco was told that he'd caused acute embarrassment and rage, and the sacking of many officials. His story was breaking news, with people keenly following the hunt; even inmates were watching. After seeing his photo in a newspaper, one woman at Bali's Kerobokan Prison, nicknamed Black Monster, claimed Marco had fathered her baby – although the baby had actually been conceived through the bars of her cell door with a Scottish prisoner.

Now, as they pulled into the marina, police and spectators were swarming around the boat laden with the notorious fugitive and his suspected cohorts. Armed police took Marco from the boat, through the throng and across to a black Kijang with dark, tinted windows – and four armed police sitting inside.

The boy Roni sat beside Marco, and asked him en route why he had lied to him; if he'd known the truth he could have hidden Marco so well that police would never have found him.

They took the ferry to another island, Lombok. Again swarms of locals and police were at the harbour. It wasn't every day they caught such a big fish. The police blindfolded Marco, then pulled a black hood over his head. He was petrified, making no wisecracks now, not knowing what torture lay ahead. Roni, still sitting beside him, tried calming his anxious friend. At their destination, Marco was taken into a five-star hotel and handcuffed to a bed. When they took off the black hood and undid the blindfold, he saw a dozen police around the room, holding submachine-guns, with a continuous stream of others coming in and out, taking a look at the notorious fugitive.

The relentless interrogation went for three days. They were accusing Roni of helping the fugitive to elude capture. Marco kept telling them the kid had no idea, asking them to let him go. Police were also trying to locate the other man locals had told them about, Mr Miller's friend Samuel. But after the bust, Samuel had fled, flying from Bali to Batam Island, on to Singapore and home free. Marco was glad his friend was safe, but he now felt truly alone.

During the interrogation, Marco was treated surprisingly well, surrounded by guns, but watered and fed endless room service; mostly his choice of shrimp, nasi goreng and beers. Unlike Alberto, he was ostensibly co-operating, using his gift of the gab to answer their inexhaustible questions pleasantly and politely, telling stories of his boat ride up the Amazon, and confessing the name of his boss – the Californian man John Miller, who unfortunately had vanished.

I make a professional story. I say the boss is John Miller, the big drug dealer from America. I can never really tell the boss's name, because the only person to help me is my boss. If I report him, who will help me? No way, man. You have to shoot me to say my boss's name.

– Marco

John Miller is a fake name. John Miller doesn't exist. John Miller is Samuel and Carlino and Marco, because they were the bosses. They use John Miller because Miller in Brazil is a beer, an American beer.

– Andre

Three days later, Marco was again moved in a police convoy back to Bali and handcuffed to another hotel room bed – this time in downtown Kuta. He was finally charged with drug trafficking under Law No. 22/1997 on narcotics – which carries death by firing squad if convicted – and was sent to Tangerang Prison near Jakarta, to await trial.

Three days after Marco's escape, while he was hiding in Bali, a bomb had exploded in Jakarta. A 28-year-old Indonesian man had driven a Toyota Kijang through the taxi rank at JW Marriott Hotel and detonated his car bomb in front of the lobby. It killed 12 people, including himself, and injured 150 others. Six days later, the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda claimed responsibility, stating that the bombing was ‘a fatal slap on the face of America and its allies in Muslim Jakarta, where faith has been denig­rated by the dirty American presence and the discriminatory Austra­lian presence'. Police had received a tip from a captured militant two weeks before the blast, which had been the reason for the heightened airport security. Marco was another of its casualties.

His Bali partners all still blamed him for the bust, claiming his use of cocaine on the flight had made him nervous, fidgety and highly suspicious.