Snowing in Bali (27 page)

– Denpost, 20 March 2005

Even the Governor of Bali, Made Pastika – Bali's former Police Chief – got press when Chino's operations manager, Bejo, said in a statement that he'd seen his car taken out of M3 after the Jakarta police confiscation request appeared.

Meanwhile, Chino's wife had hired an expensive team of lawyers in Bali who argued that she, not Chino, owned the assets, although they were unable to prove it with documentation.

As Rafael confirms, ‘Chino had so many connections everywhere in the police.' Unsurprisingly, he had got wind of the police operation in time to flee and evade arrest. His real name was now useless to him, with Interpol issuing a Red Notice – its version of an international arrest warrant – so he established his headquarters in a nearby country, continuing to make millions from ecstasy production under a new false name.

*

When Rafael heard about Chino's crash, he instantly worried about becoming entangled. ‘I say, “Shit, now I'm fucked, they are going to come to me too.” Maybe they put cameras there [at M3] and see me there all the time.'

Rafael didn't get arrested, but was still perilously walking the high wire in Bali. Months after the first raid, two cops were back on his doorstep, trying to push their way into his house. ‘Police, police,' they jostled trying to get in.

‘Hey,' Rafael shouted, ‘I don't care if you're police, this is a private house. You cannot come in like this. What's wrong?'

‘I have information you are a drug dealer, we follow you for three years.'

Rafael laughed, ‘Man, you cannot come inside my house, please get out of my property, you don't have any warrant.'

‘They straight away go out, and then I know they're pussies. If they're tough cops, they say, “Shut up, motherfucker” and throw something in my garden to fuck me.' Rafael agreed to talk to them outside his gate, after his neighbour Wayan arrived as a witness. They wanted names, but they didn't have a hope: ‘I say forget me, you talk with the wrong guy.'

Around the same time, Rafael chanced an encounter with the chief narcotics cop,
Pak
Wayan, at Carrefour super­market, still pushing to ‘help'. ‘
Pak
Rafael, remember me?' the cop asked.

‘
Pak
Wayan, you still working for the police?'

‘Yes, if you need anything, you call', he said, then handed Rafael a business card.

‘Shut up, man,' Rafael snapped, sure he would never be calling him. Paying off one cop didn't stop another from busting you, as Chino's situation proved.

*

With the cops sniffing around and the island so hot, combined with the risk of his horses getting the death penalty, Rafael started doing all his business in Europe and his wife's native Sweden.

I was not selling in Bali anymore because I was afraid of somebody getting the death penalty. I was saying, ‘I don't want to have this on my bill. Somebody dead.'

With his years of expertise in the game, people were often investing in his runs, which he organised by making calls from public phones in Bali. Hells Angel Tota was using Rafael to organise and sell his coke.

Tota calls me golden boy because everything I touch becomes gold. He was very keen, ‘Let's do it in Stockholm, you have a wife there, easy.'

Did you do many deals in Stockholm?

Many.

Did you usually fly there?

Fly. First I send the horse from Brazil. They arrive, call me in Bali, say, ‘I'm ready.' I say, ‘Okay, tomorrow I come,' because Bali to Stockholm has flights every day. And I meet the horse there in the hotel in Stockholm with the windsurf board. I take the booms to my apartment, open, wait, sell, get the money, pay the horse, kick him back, fly to Bali full of cashhhh.

Rafael's wife also regularly flew in to help him carry the cash home.

Your wife was working with you?

All the time. She was more like a brain – calculations, numbers – and I was in the action, in the field. But I start to involve her a little bit too much. I'm not born to be a drug dealer, because I was too nice and she was always in my face, pushing me: ‘No, this price is too low. Are you crazy?' and pushing me to make bigger bigger bigger. She push me a lot too . . . to take the money and do something else. She says, ‘Let's bring 100 kilo, let's bring 200 kilo, and retire in good style.'

Did you ever do that?

We try, but the biggest amount was 20 kilos in one go.

And did she go on trips to take drugs or money?

She loved to pick up money.

By doing business remotely, Rafael was getting ripped off by some of his merry-go-round of partners and combined with horses busting, his finances started fluctuating wildly – soaring then crashing to zero. His lucky star seemed to be waning. The day Hells Angel Tota phoned with a project, wanting him to fly to Stockholm in two days time to pick up 2 kilos of coke, he was broke. But this was a dead cert.

‘Come on, Tota, how?' Rafael asked, uncertain. Tota told him that a Brazilian Federal cop, his friend, was escorting a Hells Angel on an extradition flight from Rio to Stockholm: ‘Nobody checks him.'

‘No, no way, man, I don't want to see any cop, are you crazy?'

Tota persisted, ‘You're fucking stupid, man; this guy is my brother, he's a cop but he's a
bandito
too. Fuck, don't be a puss, man. Take the plane.'

Tota wanted Rafael to meet the cop at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport in the frenetic international arrivals hall. ‘No way, man, there are cameras. I don't want to meet any cop in the airport.'

‘Shut up, man, it's fine. He already knows you.'

‘What? How?'

Tota told him the cop had once come to Bali and met Rafael when Tota dropped off a bag of coke. Rafael was incredulous. ‘Fuck, man, you bring a federal police officer to Bali to meet me?'

Tota sweetened the deal by offering Rafael half the cash. Against his screaming instincts, Rafael agreed.

I was totally bankrupt in that time, crazy for money.

Tota even had to send him c800 via Western Union to buy the plane ticket.

Two days later, Rafael flew Thai Airways to Stockholm, stayed overnight with a friend, then took a taxi back to Arlanda Airport. He'd agreed to wear his sun-bleached blond curly hair out, without his usual masking Gucci sunglasses and cap, so the cop could quickly recognise him. Undisguised and exposed to the airport's CCTV cameras, his life and freedom were on the line on the word of a Hells Angel. Rafael had no idea what this cop even looked like.

It was coming in my mind, ‘What am I doing? What am I fucking doing? If my friends know this, they're going to think I'm a rat. How do I get involved with this shit? Hard to get out now. I'm already here; I have to get this done.' Same feeling I had when I go to the police building in Brazil to buy the cocaine. I say to myself, ‘Let's get this done.'

Standing at the designated spot in the huge, cavernous and sleekly modern Scandinavian airport terminal, he felt acutely vulnerable. This could be it. He was a sitting duck. His heart was pounding. It was far from his usual covert way of operating. A man came up, passed him a plastic bag, said, ‘Sorry, I have to go,' and vanished as quickly as he'd appeared.

He gives me the bag, a lot of magazines, Playboy, surf magazines and 2 kilos of coke very well packed inside a woman's leather make-up case. I take a taxi to my friend's apartment, open the shit, try it, ‘Oh, good.' Call my contact, sell and then I send part of the money by Western Union to Tota. And I bring cash to Bali. Like Tota said, ‘It's the best deal you get in your life; we are going to share half and half.' I was stupid – I could say, ‘Oh, they pay only $30,000 [a kilo]', but I say the truth – ‘They pay $40,000.' And then he say, ‘Okay, $40,000 for you, $40,000 for me.' I say, ‘Fuck, thank you, brother!'

With the help of his wife's friend, he sent $20,000 to Bali by bank transfer, but carried the rest on the flight.

They pay me in Swedish crowns. I go to the money changer and change it for €500 bills, so it was easy to bring.

In your pocket?

Yeah, in my pocket, a little bit in my wallet, in my shoes, a little bit in my underwear. I never put all the cash together. When I have €70,000–€80,000, I put €10,000 in one foot, €10,000 in other foot, €5000 in my front pocket, €5000 in back, €5000 in my wallet, €5000 in bag, hand luggage, I put everywhere. You know the military pants, full of pockets, I love to travel with these pants. I put it here, here.

How many times have you travelled with thousands of dollars like that?

Many, many times. I hide it very well.

So it's all carefully done?

Yeah, I do it good. I was very well dressed, too. They never check me in the airports. Some people are afraid to travel with money; I'm afraid to travel without money.

Rafael was travelling more often to Brazil carrying cash to organise runs, to buy the coke and take it to the packers, to try to improve his success rate by being on the ground. His cash was low when he decided to do a high-stakes gamble with Fox, betting all his remaining chips on sending 20 kilos to Amsterdam.

I go to Brazil, I'm going to do, because these pussies there, they don't know how to do. Then, big shit, big shit, fall fall, fall, lose money, lose money. Fox wanted to be partner too, we want to make big shit.

*

Fox and Rafael had become good friends during the three years they'd been working together, sending coke to Sweden, Europe, Bali, Malaysia and Australia. They hung out in Rio and São Paulo visiting high-class brothels, packing cocaine, organising runs, partying and sniffing blow.

Rafael spent time at Fox's Bali-style house on a lagoon in Florianópolis, as well as Fox's mother's $10 million mansion in São Paulo's ultra-exclusive
Jardins
district. Fox had his own wing, where he played his games of guns, girls and cocaine, often storing his loaded booms there.

At the mansion one day, Fox showed Rafael a new gun and silencer. ‘This shit work?' Rafael asked, screwing on the silencer.

‘Never tried,' Fox replied. Rafael walked across to the window, opened it, pointed the gun to the sky and fired. The bang exploded in their ears. ‘Fuck, man, this silencer shit doesn't work,' Rafael laughed. ‘The police are gonna come.'

Fox's well-to-do family had no idea what he did. His Brazilian mother and grandmother were very wealthy and his father, divorced from his mother, was a consul from France.

His family was very rich. Amazing. His Brazilian grandmother was fucking rich. I met his mamma, his brother, his driver who did everything for us.

Fox and Rafael were unlikely friends. Fox was plain-faced, tall with a stooped posture, a pear-shaped physique, long arms and dark, razor-cut hair.

He looks like kind of pussy guy, not tough guy, skinny, little bit big bum, shoulders smaller than bum. A shy guy; not a charismatic person. Nobody liked him. From the beginning people say, ‘Why you go with this guy, man?' I say, ‘I wanna help him.'

The charismatic, gregarious Rafael was also opposite to his friend in his sartorial style. Rafael was often aghast at what he deemed Fox's bad taste. Despite splashing a fortune on his wardrobe, Fox dressed in clothes that Rafael wouldn't wear in a casket, like pairing a €5000 Dior leather jacket, which Rafael abhorred, with jeans and white Nike shoes. Fox was obsessed with his collection of Nike's most expensive sports shoes with the Shox feature – foam springs. He kept a dozen pairs on display on special shelves in his living room.

Totally ugly, these shoes. I don't use training shoes with jeans, but Fox loves white Nikes. If he got one drop of something on his shoes, he got so mad, he went home to change. He uses them one time, brings them home, and cleans them using a toothbrush. This guy is sick with the shoes. Sick.

Rafael often had hookers asking him if his friend was gay.

Sometimes we go to the best prostitute house in Brazil, São Paulo. I don't like this shit much, but Fox says, ‘Let's go, I pay for you.' ‘Okay, let's go.' High-level girls. Sometimes people who work in TV go there. Normally girls cost $100, but if you get one they call the artists, it costs $1000, $2000, the expensive program.

Did you try an artist?

Sometimes we take, cos they do a show with the poles, and we ask ‘How much for this one?' ‘$2000.' ‘Okay, bring.' But we always play with the girls, pay one time and get the phone number, and then we meet outside, so they don't pay for the place.

But when we sit in the prostitute house and all the girls come out and take you to a room, they always think Fox is gay. ‘Oh, your friend's gay?' I say, ‘No, why? Fox, they say you're gay.' ‘No, I'm not gay.' But the way he dress, he spent €5000 on the Dior jacket, totally ugly. I would never buy something like that for myself. With the pocket down the front, like a suit, so ugly this shit. I say, ‘Fox, how can you buy this shit?'

So he had a lot of cash?

Yeah, but that time he started taking money from the business. He says, ‘Oh, I get money from my grandmother for my birthday.' It was bullshit, he already started taking from me.

On their latest high-stakes gamble, Rafael desperately needed a win. He packed himself with €75,000, flew to São Paulo and delivered it to Fox, then flew out to Amsterdam to wait for the horses. Often runs expected to take days stretched out for weeks, but as time passed and the horses didn't arrive, Rafael was hearing more and more excuses from Fox.

He say, ‘Tomorrow', ‘Next week', ‘Tomorrow', but they never come, they never show. Then he disappeared, don't answer the phone. The guy bullshit me. He was going behind my back, selling to another friend in Amsterdam while I wait. He robbed me. I didn't know he's gonna fuck me and I stayed in €300-a-night hotel, eat in the best restaurants every night, and then suddenly, he disappears, and I'm poof, totally bankrupt.