Snowing in Bali (24 page)

– Sparrow

This was another project with Fox and Rafael as partners. Their horses Sparrow and his friend Narco, whose father was a Brazilian police chief, flew out of Rio to São Paulo to meet Fox, who collected them from the airport. Fox took them to his mother's ten million dollar mansion, where he gave them two loaded booms; the bigger one packed with 1.7 kilos, the smaller with 1.3 kilos. To boost their confidence, he dunked the booms in his mother's swimming pool. If the water didn't seep in, no smell would seep out.

Narco was the carrier, Sparrow the back-up. Deciding to try a different route, they flew to Buenos Aires first, then to Bali, where they breezed through. Despite the increasing numbers of high-profile busts – including Australian beauty school student Schapelle Corby, arrested with 4.2 kilos of dope in her boogie board bag, a month prior to their run – most horses were still getting through easily. Chino, who made it his business to know, estimated only 2 per cent of traffickers to Bali were getting caught.

After taking a taxi to their hotel, Sparrow and Narco picked up a hire car, tied the windsurfer board and booms onto the roof, and phoned Rafael as they drove to his house. Rafael was sitting at the beach café, drinking Coca-Cola and watching the waves. He didn't want to say anything on the phone, but the place to keep the booms wasn't ready. ‘Bro, can you stay with the booms until tomorrow? The boy in the bungalows where I want to keep them is busy,' he asked Sparrow.

‘Okay, yeah.'

That night Sparrow parked his car, with the loaded booms strapped to the roof, in the hotel car park in Legian. The next day he delivered them to Rafael and moved into his small room under the water tower, ready to start his surfing holiday. It was a couple of weeks later that Rafael asked Sparrow to move into the bungalows behind his house, where he still had one boom. Rafael needed Sparrow to babysit it for a while. He agreed. But typically, things went awry.

Sparrow was leaving on Christmas Day, and a couple of days earlier had asked Rafael for a little present of four or five grams. He wanted to sell it to his friend Beans, in Uluwatu, to make cash to buy sarongs to take back to Rio.

On Christmas Eve, Rafael and Anna threw their lavish annual Christmas party. It was a sumptuous spread of food from Brazil, Sweden and Bali, with fresh fish, turkey, beer, champagne, soft drinks and cocaine. Twenty-five people turned up. Kids ran around, music blared, people swam in the pool, dived from the balcony – and discreetly did lines of coke upstairs.

Towards the end of the night, Sparrow asked Rafael for his little Christmas present. Rafael told him, ‘No, you can sniff a bit upstairs, but that's it.' Rafael didn't want to risk Sparrow running around high with a little bag of coke. Things were too hot.

Sparrow was furious and a bit drunk. ‘You make me sleep one week with this coke, if police get me I'm fucked,' he shouted, slashing his hand across his throat.

Rafael was adamant. ‘Sorry, my friend. No. If I give you this, you're going to get crazy. You're gonna talk bullshit.'

‘Okay, no problem,' Sparrow snarled sarcastically.

As the party wound down, his pique rose. Sparrow felt he deserved some blow after sitting on a bomb for a week. Another mutual friend at the party, Julio, an addict – the guy Andre had once got Laskar thugs to threaten by putting a gun in his mouth – was inciting Sparrow. Sparrow had already proved Rafael's point that he was a risk by mouthing off about the boom to Julio. No one was supposed to know.

‘Come on, we can cut it open. Look what he has done to you,' Julio goaded. ‘You slept one week with this thing. Come on, let's get some coke from Rafael. You need money, you're bankrupt, you can't go to Brazil without money. You ask him, he says no, so let's go get it,' Julio urged, dead keen for a white Christmas.

Julio was putting a lot of pressure on me, and all day he was in Rafael's house, a friend of Rafael's – what a friend. If I was alone, I would not do it.

– Sparrow

About midnight, Julio raced to his nearby house, grabbed a sharp knife and silver tape, then met Sparrow at the bungalows.

Sparrow hacked into the boom. It wasn't easy. Rafael had perfected a technique using a pipe-cutting tool to clamp around each tube and slice it cleanly. It prevented aluminium shavings from mixing in with the coke. Unsurprisingly, Sparrow's method was slapdash. He sawed like a maniac, cutting his hand, while Julio sat like a panting puppy, holding a curled up restaurant menu, ready to catch the coke. But it didn't just spill out. It was compacted like concrete. Sparrow scraped out about 10 grams – $1000 worth – into the cardboard menu. Julio took four grams, Sparrow six, tipping it into the plastic wrapper from his cigar­ette packet. Before leaving, Sparrow used the silver tape Julio had brought to try patching up the boom. Then he fled to his friend's house in Uluwatu, aware Rafael wouldn't be happy to discover it had snowed on Christmas night.

Rafael learnt of the theft early the next morning. After trying to call Sparrow, he walked across to the bungalows, unlocked the room with his spare key, checked the bag and saw the traces of snow and the destroyed boom. His temper blew.

I get crazy . . . I want to catch him and punch him very hard. But he escapes.

– Rafael

What made this worse was that the boom was set to fly to Singapore. Now it would be a huge job to get the coke out and repack it in a new boom, minus the stolen grams and the stuff mixed with aluminium shavings. Rafael picked Narco up from his hotel and spent Christmas Day tearing around Bali, hunting for Sparrow. He didn't find him. Sparrow had gone to the airport hours before his flight to hide out.

Rafael was chasing me like a cat catching a mouse, ‘Where's Sparrow, fuck him,' fed up with me. All that day he was looking for me; he ran looking for me in a lot of places, couldn't find me, then took Narco to the airport. Narco told me on the aeroplane, ‘Rafael's very fed up with you.' I was fed up with Rafael, too. If I saw him, maybe I want to fight him – want to punch him. He was angry but he had a lot of money in his pocket. I was angry and no money. I was bankrupt. I knew it was going to make trouble for Rafael, but fuck him.

When I arrive in Brazil he says all the time on the internet, ‘You better watch out, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you,' all the time, ‘I'm going to kill you.' I say, ‘Ah, you're going to kill me . . . Remember you have family here, your father, your mother . . . I like them, but don't talk too much because even if I can't get you, I'm going to get your family.' Nobody's good all the time. I'm not perfect. If I have to kill someone, then I would do it. I was fucking crazy.

There is not too strong friends in this business, in drugs. We think we are, but any trouble we have, all the friendship's gone. We become enemies.

– Sparrow

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

OPERATION PLAYBOY

It hadn't been a very good Christmas for Andre either. It was the high season in South Brazil, which he usually spent at one of his glamorous restaurants. Not this year.

The Brazilian cops had been watching the zigzagging jet-set lifestyles of the Bali crew.

Andre had known he was hot ever since Rabbit had phoned from jail in Paris, telling him about the DEA asking questions. He was paying more attention now, noticing the zips on his bags always in a different spot after a flight. He was sure cops were waiting for him to do something stupid, catch him red-handed. But he was too smart; they needed a snitch. With his girlfriend Gisele, he'd spent most of the year in Bali and Hawaii. He was now wary of returning to Brazil, but he was the best man at his best friend's wedding in his beautiful restaurant in Santa Catarina.

He and Gisele flew in and went straight to the restaurant. They stayed at the wedding for two hours, then drove to Andre's house. Nobody but those at the restaurant knew he was back, but his home phone rang. He looked at it, debating, then snatched it up. ‘Hello.'

It was the mother of a horse who'd been busted weeks earlier, but not on a run for Andre. ‘Hey, you need to send money to my son, he needs your help.' Andre's pulse was racing. This was not a conversation for a landline.

‘Sorry, you have the wrong number. I don't know you. I don't know what you're talking about,' he replied.

She hit back. ‘I know who you are, Andre.' He hung up. It was a trap: she'd used his name to link him in. The cops were closing in and he had to get out fast. Within moments he vanished. After telling Gisele to go to her mum's house, he grabbed his bag, switched on the lights as a decoy, then raced out through the garden, and across 3 kilometres of mountain and jungle to a friend's house. His friend drove him to the airport and he flew straight back to Hawaii.

For 25 days he stayed in a friend's luxury ocean-front condominium set on a golf course. But even such a glamorous abode lost its lustre when he wasn't there by choice. The high season was kicking off in South Brazil and his restaurants would be buzzing. Gisele kept calling asking him to return for Christmas.

He acquiesced. The cops didn't have anything on him; he was a reputable businessman. He flew into São Paulo, where his bags were delayed. When they turned up, the zips had moved. Unpacking at home, he saw his neatly folded clothes were dis­arrayed. It was indisputable – he was in their sights. He had to be supremely careful.

That night he slept in his beach house, waking early for a sunrise surf. It was a stunning spring morning as he stood in his driveway, putting his kiteboard in the back of his car. Then he glimpsed two men lurking outside his front gates. His pulse raced. They were cops, for sure. He turned and walked briskly around the side of his house towards the beach.

As he strode around the pool, the sun was rising across the ocean – the blue hour, creating exquisite morning light. He barely noticed, focused on escape. It was too late. The garden exploded into action. Men sprang out of bushes, jumped over fences, coming at him screaming, ‘Stop, stop, don't move.' They surrounded him, pointing AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, screaming, ‘On the ground, don't move or we'll shoot.'

Andre's heart was pounding hard. This was the moment he'd long feared. He fell to his knees and stuck his hands in the air. From all directions men were pointing guns at him, screaming, ‘On the ground, get down on the ground.' Andre fell down flat on his stomach, turning his head to the side. Rifle muzzles came in close. They were still shouting, ‘Hands behind your head.' Andre clasped his hands at the nape of his neck. A boot smashed down on them, thrusting the side of his face deeper into the grass. ‘Don't move or I'll blow your head off,' a cop shouted.

As he lay with his face scrunched into the grass, frantic thoughts rushed through his brain: call a lawyer . . . no drugs in house . . . bribe the cops. Before he even realised it, he was shouting out, ‘I've got money. My money is in my safety box. You don't need to use violence.' If he were an innocent businessman, not expecting cops, he'd think these guys were thieves. So he acted the part. ‘My money in the safety box – I'll just open the safety box, and then you can go.'

He then first heard the voice of a man who would become his nemesis. ‘We're not thieves, Andre, we're Federal Police.' The cop bent down and flashed his badge in front of Andre's flattened face. ‘I'm the Narcotics Police Chief and I've been watching you for three years. Sua casa cai, Andre, your house falls.' The chief ordered the cop to remove his boot from Andre's neck. Another took his hands and cuffed them at his lower back. ‘Get up,' the police chief ordered, grabbing his shirt and yanking him up.

When he stood, Andre saw at least 15 cops surrounding him.

They are fucking scared. They don't know what's going to happen. For them, it's more stressful than me because this is a fucking big operation. They see I'm a drug dealer, they don't know if I'm going to shoot them, or maybe I have a security guard who shoots them. These guys prepared this for weeks, and 5 am that day they get a call and are given the mission. Before that nobody knows where they're going, so the information doesn't leak. They call everybody 4 am, 5 am . . . ‘Now we go to this house, you go to this house.' So the guys come full of adrenalin and do this Hollywood scene.

– Andre

Andre had prepared for this day too. He'd played in his mind how to react to a bust since his last escape dash to Hawaii. He wasn't going to cower, he'd play hardball – he was a reputable businessman. Their guns didn't scare him. Brazil was full of guns; he had one in his restaurant and even traffic cops carried them. He knew cowering and acquiescing to their every demand would just make it worse. He had to play tough, act like the respectable entrepreneur he pretended to be.

The cops took Andre into his house, and he realised the Chief and his partner were the two men he had glimpsed at the gate. Chief Fernando Caieron was head of Operation Play­boy, an investigation – one year so far – into the rich playboys trafficking drugs between Indonesia, Holland and Brazil. Andre was his first big catch.

Inside the house, more than a dozen cops were searching and Chief Caieron was asking Andre where he kept his money. Andre hoped this was a sign the cop was interested in cutting a deal, unaware at this point of the scale of the investigation.

‘Okay, let's go to my bedroom.' Andre led them through into his opulent stone and marble en-suite. They uncuffed him so he could reveal his hiding spot. He tweaked invisible locks on a marble bench and, like magic, it floated down the stone wall, revealing a safe behind it.

Andre put in the code, opened it and was brusquely told to stand back. Chief Caieron rifled though the safe, finding documents and his passport, but no cash or drugs.

Heading back to the living room, Andre had a quiet word to Chief Caieron, offering him €150,000 to leave now and take his men. The Narcotics boss had worked hard on this, he'd personally instigated Operation Playboy, and even if he'd wanted to take the cash, his hands were tied. ‘No, I cannot. A lot of people are involved in this operation and I need to put somebody in the media.'

Back in the living room, the men told Andre to sit down on his wooden Balinese daybed, covered in cushions, as they kept searching his house. Chief Caieron started using the Federal Police's well-known tactic of mind games.

This cop, Fernando Caieron, is a specialist in this kind of mental pressure. He doesn't give one slap to anyone, doesn't punch anyone, just uses pressure on the mind.

– Andre

‘I'll give you 30 years in jail, Andre. It's a long, long time,' he started. ‘But if you help us, you will maybe only get ten years. If you don't help us, I'll give you 20, 30 years in jail.'

Andre threw it straight back. ‘Hey, don't talk bullshit – you don't give me anything. You're a policeman. If you want to be judge, you need to go and study at least another ten years. Don't treat me like a kid, please.'

‘Tell us where your money is and we can help you,' Chief Caieron pushed.

‘Ho, right! You want my money to help me? You come inside with guns and want to put me in jail, and you want my money to help me? Please don't play me for a fool. If you want to help me, then tell me how much you want – maybe I can help you or not. But if you just want my money to use against me, don't talk to me; lock me up, call my lawyer.'

‘Ah, you think you're smart, Andre, but we got you. Now I can come to your house with girls, use your swimming pool, use your car.'

Andre looked at him with incredulity: he felt the tactic was so blatant, not worthy of the master manipulator. ‘You can try,' he said.

‘I will try.'

Andre wasn't going to break. ‘Okay, do your best, man, you can use my swimming pool, you can bring girls. This is just one of my houses around the world; you think I care about this house?'

‘We know you, Andre, we've been spying on you for three years.'

‘Well, then you know I don't have drugs in my house; so why do you come here with this big operation?'

‘Not just your house, Andre. Right now police are in your restaurant, at your girlfriend's house, at your storage.'

Police came to my four houses in my city, my two houses in the other city, many places, eight or nine places at one time in Brazil – 6 am.

– Andre

Andre continued trying to play the cop at his own mind games, as he thought himself a master of mind power, having used it for years on his horses. The more personal Chief Caieron got, the more ironic Andre became, sensing he was starting to rile the cop.

‘Now I'm going to Gisele's house and will put your girlfriend in jail,' Chief Caieron said.

‘Why do you talk to me like that? One thing . . . do your job, but don't make it personal, because you have a family too and I can also make it personal.'

‘Oh, so now I can charge you with threatening me.'

‘No, I'm just advising you.'

The cops were still searching his house. In truth, this was Andre's dream home, with a huge wow factor. It had graced the pages of Brazil's glossy magazines. It was a large four-bedroom Balinese-style house with a high thatched ceiling, built on a slope in front of the beach. All the decorations, from silk cushions and chairs to the larger furniture had been tailor-made in Bali. Andre's sideline business was importing Balinese furniture – which had also helped him with money-laundering – and this house was the ideal showroom. The business also gave him a good cover story for why he spent so much time in Bali.

This Balinese furniture was a good cover for my family, for the society in my city. Everybody look – the guy's doing well, the guy's working. Sometimes people say, ‘Wow, you work a lot; every month you need to travel.'

– Andre

In his back garden was his oceanfront swimming pool, which provided a spectacular view from the living room, with Balinese god statues trickling water into the pool. Beyond that was the beach, then the endless blue of the sea; the house was surrounded by mountains and jungle, huge bamboo plants and scrub. It was the sort of glamour home he'd pictured back when, as a teenager, he collected the pineapple tins on the beach.

Andre was growing angry as he watched the cops still rifling through everything, coming up with what he quickly disparaged as idiotic evidence. They pulled a pile of nearly 80 green striped plastic zip lock bags out of a cupboard and turned to each other, excitedly shouting, ‘Look, look this is proof, bags to pack the cocaine.'

Andre interjected. ‘Whoa yeah, can you please open my freezer for me?'

‘Why?'

‘Open my freezer, can you?'

‘Okay, you want to show us drugs inside the freezer?'

‘No, my fish, my beef, my food, all inside those bags. What, you think I keep bags I use to pack cocaine in my house?'

After about 30 minutes, he lost patience. If he couldn't buy his way out, there was no point being civil to these cops, and the longer they stayed in his house, the more chance they had to plant something. He wanted to get out fast; there'd be no more chitchat. He started using a new tactic – screaming like a maniac, ‘Please, please, somebody help me, please help me.'

I get like crazy, freak out. Screaming, screaming for my neighbours.

– Andre

Turning to Chief Caieron and his men, he yelled, ‘What are you fucking doing in my house? Get out of my house. Where's your warrant? I want to see the court paper. I haven't seen any court papers yet. I want my lawyer. You busted me, now you take me to the police station. I need to see my lawyer.'

Unaware of the Federal Police raid, state military police turned up. They were responding to a call made 40 minutes earlier by a neighbour who'd heard the shouting and seen the dark figures jumping Andre's fence. Two Federal agents walked out to talk to them. Chief Caieron now agreed, ‘Okay, Andre, let's go.'

As Andre sat in an office at the police station, a door to the adjacent office swung open. Sitting there on a chair was one of his horses: a childhood friend, Luiz Renato Pinheiro. Andre instantly knew the guy had snitched. He raised his handcuffed hands and slashed his thumbs across his throat. Luiz looked scared, quickly clasping his hands together in a ‘please forgive me' gesture. He was deluded. Andre was never the forgiving type.

This guy Luiz, he got arrested with 6000 ecstasy pills. I loaned him the money to buy them because two days before I went on a trip to Hawaii with Gisele, he came to my house and says, ‘Hey, Andre, I'm totally broke, please can you help?' I say, ‘Man, I'm not working, I'm going with Gisele to Hawaii for a vacation. I don't want to move drugs now, I'm being quiet.' He says, ‘Oh brother, please can you loan me some money, call your contacts in Amsterdam?' I say, ‘Okay, I will loan you €10,000, you go to Holland buy 10,000 pills, bring them yourself, sell them and just give me my money and 100 grams of weed so I'll have something to smoke during the summer.' ‘Oh Andre, that's great, thank you, you are my brother.'