Mr Nice_ An Autobiography Part 38

'I said Teach, Teach. You want to teach. I call you Teach. You know what I'm saying?'

'Okay, call me Teach.'

'Teach, what gives you the motherf.u.c.king right to teach me English?'

'I am English, Tee-Bone,' I lied. I usually corrected those who called me English. I was Welsh. These guys would have never heard of Wales.

'So? Is you saying that makes you speak better English than us n.i.g.g.e.rs here?'

'Of course. We invented the language.'

'We has our own language, Teach.'

'I accept that. And it's no better or worse than English. But if you want to pa.s.s this English examination, I honestly want to help you.'

'What motherf.u.c.king use is English going to be to me, Teach? I ain't trying to be disrespecting your language or dissing you about no motherf.u.c.king thing, but I ain't trying to be no writer, Teach. You know what I'm saying? I ain't trying to be no writer, Teach. I don't be seeing no streets again, Teach. This motherf.u.c.king Government got us homeboys here till we die, Teach. We n.i.g.g.e.rs ain't trying to be no bada.s.s Americans. If it wasn't for you crackers, we wouldn't be here. Our ancestors was brung here against their will from our own country in chains.'

'So was I. And you know who brought me over? A Black US Marshal.'

Tee-Bone stood up.

'What the f.u.c.k is you saying, Teach?'

'You know what I'm saying. Whoever we are and however we got here, we all want to get out. Look, guys, I've only just got into this system, but I've already worked out that there's only three ways out of here: you pay a lawyer a few million dollars, which none of us have; you get over the fence and give government lunatics like Webster here some target practice; or you write your way out.'

'How is you going to write your way out?' asked a young Washington, DC crack dealer.

'Listen. Most of us got more time than we deserved. Some of you shouldn't even have been convicted. The Government lied and cheated about how much dope you did so they could bang you up forever. Blacks get hit harder than Whites. A lot of people out there want to put a stop to this government racial hara.s.sment. A lot more people don't even know it's happening. Even some of the judges don't believe it's going on. It's only judges, a few honest politicians, and some powerful individuals can change things. I don't mean to be rude, but most of you can't even write a letter that these guys could understand. And they're the only ones who can get you out of this s.h.i.t. Don't tell me you're going to lie down that easy. I meant it when I said I was brought here in chains. The DEA came to my house in Europe, dragged me and my old lady over here, and left our three children without a mum or dad. I hate your f.u.c.king Government more than you ever could.'

'Okay, Teach. Chill out. You're not a bad dude. I know where you be coming from,' said Tee-Bone. 'Teach us some cracker rap, Teach.'

'Sure. Now why did you guys choose to speak English rather than Spanish, Portuguese, or French? These guys f.u.c.ked you around just as much as we did.'

'Give it to us straight, Teach.'

'Because you have good taste. You gave us the music. We gave you the lyrics. Now we'll start with punctuation marks. Do you know what they are? What's this?'

I wrote a full-stop on the board.

'That's a period, Teach.'

A Rastafarian Posse member objected.

'Wapen him, Teach. Him say "period". Me say "fullstop". Ah Jamaica me come from. In Jamaica a "period" mean a b.i.t.c.h bleeding.'

The head of the Department of Education summoned me to the next room.

'Marks, you're teaching GED, right.'

'That's right.'

'You don't appear to have one.'

'One what?'

'A GED, Marks. I have no record of you having a GED or a high-school diploma.'

'I don't have either. That's right.'

'Now the powers that be might consider it inappropriate for a prisoner without a GED to be teaching other prisoners how to get one. You see what I'm getting at?'

'But I've got a Master's degree.'

'There are plenty of people with Master's degrees who can't teach GED. The haircutting school in this prison gives Master's degrees to people who can't read.'

'But I got my Master's degree at Oxford.'

'Oxford, Wisconsin. Who was your inmate supervisor?'

'Not Oxford, Wisconsin prison. The University of Oxford in England.'

'Well, no disrespects, but the United States Government is a bit wary of foreign qualifications. Generally, it doesn't recognise them.'

'It recognises foreign convictions.'

'Maybe. I'm not a criminologist. I'm an education specialist, and I take the view that if the foreign qualification is meaningful, then the holder will have no objection to being re-tested by a more appropriate body. Shall I put your name down to sit the next GED examination?'

I pa.s.sed. Wearing a radiant blue gown and mortar board, I was presented with a certificate by a smiling, tongue-in-cheek Webster.

In conjunction with a local university the prison's Department of Education also funded and ran evening cla.s.ses. I wanted to attend, but they weren't available to non-American citizens. This really infuriated me. The US Government were tearing around the world extraditing people and then refusing them an education in prison because they were aliens. I went to see the head of the Department of Education to complain.

'Yes, Marks, what's the problem?'

'This is straightforward discrimination. Why aren't we aliens allowed to pursue further education?'

'You have to remember, Marks, that each course a prisoner takes costs the American taxpayers $2,000. Have you paid much in the way of American tax?'

'It costs the American taxpayer $25,000 a year to keep me here. Don't you think it would make economic sense to spend 10% more and enable me to emerge as a useful community member rather than a biker or crack dealer?'

'I don't know, Marks. I'm not an economist. I'm an education specialist.'

'It seems insane to me. And unconst.i.tutional. Don't you have something called the Fifteenth Amendment which prohibits discrimination on the basis of nationality?'

'I don't know, Marks. I'm not a lawyer. I'm an education specialist. Anyway, Marks, you should have thought of that before you came to America and broke our laws.'

'I didn't want to come here. I was brought against my will.'

'Well, you shouldn't have broken any laws after arriving here, whichever way you were brought.'

'I haven't.'

'Then take it up with your lawyer, Marks. I can't help you. I'm an ...'

'I know.'

A correspondence course was possible. I applied to the University of London to do an external law degree. I was accepted and began some preparatory study in the prison's law library. There was plenty of overlap between American and English law.

Forty dollars a month is not much, even if one is provided with free accommodation, food, clothes, and leisure activities. I had significantly greater expenses than the average American prisoner because of the costs of making international telephone calls, the only way I could talk to my family. Furthermore, prisoners who had unpaid fines (I had one of $50,000) would be forced to make substantial monthly contributions to the debt under the guise of 'The Inmate Financial Responsibility Program'. The only jobs that paid really well ($200 a month) were at the prison industry factory making army blankets for the US troops in Iraq. f.u.c.k that. Everyone not helping the war effort had to find a 'hustle', an illegal way of making money within the prison system from those lucky enough to have funds or getting paid for doing their bit for Desert Storm. Possible hustles included stealing food from the kitchen, stealing knives from the factory, stealing all manner of stuff from the stores, making and selling alcoholic beverages, taking sports bets, doing other prisoners' laundry, making customised greetings cards, painting portraits, giving blow-jobs, enforcing debt payment, and interior decorating of cells. Some prisoners became jailhouse lawyers, helping people attempting to obtain post-conviction relief from the courts. It was an ideal hustle for me, and I busied myself articulating other prisoners' presentations to judges, lawyers, and Congressmen. A couple of early successes were achieved a conviction overturned and a sentence reduced by ten years and these ensured that I was heavily in demand. I never actually charged for my work, but I was almost always given something: food stolen from the kitchen, a tennis racquet, a Walkman, a hand-st.i.tched Marco Polo jogging suit, a leather briefcase. Money Orders from New Jersey and Florida, all marked 'remittance to inmate from family', dribbled into my account. I made an average of $300 a month. It was more than enough.

Hunting Marco Polo, by Paul Eddy and Sara Walden, was published and sent to me in Terre Haute by the Mail on Sunday Mail on Sunday, who wanted me to review it. I did. The book was written rather like a police manual but was accurate enough in its coverage of material with which I was familiar. One feature irritated me: its presentation of my arrest as the culmination of a chess-type battle of wits between equally armed opponents (me and Lovato). Lovato had a colossal federal budget and had the co-operation of fourteen different governments' law enforcement agencies; I had a bunch of nice guys.

Much had taken place outside the prison walls between my departure from Miami MCC and my receiving of a GED diploma at the end of 1991. In a sickening display of bullying and cowardice, the DEA persuaded the Dutch authorities to re-arrest Old John after his arrival in Amsterdam. They extradited him to Miami. He appeared in front of Judge Paine, refused to say anything other than plead guilty, was sentenced to time served, and set free. Balendo Lo pleaded guilty to money laundering and was immediately set free. Philip Sparrowhawk was extradited from Bangkok to Miami. He told the DEA everything he knew and was set free. Of the ten people extradited at enormous expense from all over the world, nine of them were almost immediately released once they had appeared in front of Judge Paine and pleaded guilty. I was the only one the US Government wanted to keep locked up.

After his release, Malik went back to Pakistan. Then he went to Hong Kong, where he was arrested and extradited back to the United States. I have no idea why, or where he is now. But for sure, Lovato was involved.

McCann was arrested by the German police in Dusseldorf. They found some hashish and a false pa.s.sport in his car. For some reason the Germans did not charge him with the 1973 bombing of the British Army base in Monchengladbach for which they had been obsessively seeking his extradition for almost two decades. Instead, through courtesy of information supplied by Roger Reaves, they charged him with supplying a German boat and captain with a ton of Moroccan dope bound for England. Perhaps, like the Americans, they thought of it as a more serious offence. A German judge, McCann's prosecutor, and McCann's defence lawyer eventually came to question me in Terre Haute. I swore that I had nothing to do with any Moroccan hashish deal and that as far as I knew neither had McCann. McCann was acquitted, despite the German prosecution taking the extraordinary step of paying Lovato to make an eleventh-hour appearance at a German court to discredit my testimony. f.u.c.king McCann. He still hasn't got a dope conviction.

By placing a notice in The Times The Times, Lord Moynihan faked the death of his baby son to ensure that his even younger son would sit in the House of Lords. DEA Agent Craig Lovato was G.o.dfather to at least one of his sons. Then Moynihan actually died of a heart attack in the Philippines. Or so the world's press would have us believe. There's no corpse.

In clouds of secrecy, Tom Sunde voluntarily surrendered to the DEA to be debriefed. He pleaded guilty to a dope charge and was sentenced to five years' probation. His mentor, Carl, continued to search for President Ferdinand Marcos's millions. In doing so, he stepped on the toes of the Swiss authorities, who sought his extradition from Germany. The Germans refused to give him up. Immediately afterwards Jacobi was arrested in Hong Kong pursuant to a United States extradition request based on DEA allegations that he had sold me information. Hong Kong declined to extradite.

Roger Reaves was re-arrested. After escaping from Lubeck prison, he had decided to become a fugitive in America. The authorities recognised him and put him in a county jail. A tunnel was discovered in his cell. He was transferred to USP Lompoc, California. Ron Allen, the Chicago dealer who was with me in Pakistan, was finally caught. He pleaded guilty in exchange for a short sentence. Only Gerry Wills remained unbusted.

Judge Robert Bonner, the head of the DEA, visited London. In response to questions asked about my 25-year sentence, the Daily Telegraph Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying: 'I don't know how we keep people like Marks out of drug trading unless you put people like him in the slammer. I'm not troubled by the length of the sentence. He should serve it.' quoted him as saying: 'I don't know how we keep people like Marks out of drug trading unless you put people like him in the slammer. I'm not troubled by the length of the sentence. He should serve it.'

The Daily Telegraph Daily Telegraph also made reference to a report that I had 50 million tucked away. I wrote to the editor: also made reference to a report that I had 50 million tucked away. I wrote to the editor: It was such a wonderful and much needed Christmas surprise to read in your columns that I am the owner of 50 million concealed in Caribbean and/or Eastern bloc bank accounts. I was totally unaware that I had this loot. All they say about the damaging effects of cannabis on the memory must be true.Federal Bureau of Prison rules preclude my sensibly and responsibly using this money. Providing, therefore, you undertake to pay my federally imposed fine, settle my wife's mortgage, keep my family from starving, and pay for my children's school fees, I would be delighted to transfer these funds to any purpose you choose.Please let me know whether or not you are interested. If so, I will send you a duly notarised power of attorney form granting you access to any and all funds of mine held in any bank account in any country.Incidentally, there were a couple of errors in your report. I am incarcerated in a federal penitentiary, which is in Indiana not Florida. Also I was fined $50,000 not 100,000. Still, that's all the more for you if you take advantage of my offer. Trusting and hoping these were the only inaccuracies. Howard Marks.

My letter was published, but no one took up my offer. Things looked up for a while when Bill Clinton announced he was standing for office. An Oxford-educated, dope-taking, philandering, draft-dodging leader was just what this ridiculous country needed. Then he said he stuck joints in his mouth but didn't inhale them and that he definitely wouldn't legalise any dope. The Mail on Sunday Mail on Sunday came to interview me. They said they had proof I lived with Clinton in Oxford. (Maybe he was just a pa.s.sive stoner.) I didn't remember living with Clinton anywhere, but I didn't deny it. Perhaps one day I could use this strange rumour to my advantage. I declined to answer any questions about my old mate Bill. It wouldn't be fair to him. Clinton had been at University College, Oxford, failing his B.Phil. when I was doing postgraduate work at Balliol and living at Garsington. I never met anyone who smoked joints without inhaling. came to interview me. They said they had proof I lived with Clinton in Oxford. (Maybe he was just a pa.s.sive stoner.) I didn't remember living with Clinton anywhere, but I didn't deny it. Perhaps one day I could use this strange rumour to my advantage. I declined to answer any questions about my old mate Bill. It wouldn't be fair to him. Clinton had been at University College, Oxford, failing his B.Phil. when I was doing postgraduate work at Balliol and living at Garsington. I never met anyone who smoked joints without inhaling.

Much was made plain to me during the same year (1991), all thoroughly depressing. My a.s.sumption that I would be released on parole as soon as I was eligible (November 1996) provided I behaved myself was totally wrong. Whether or not one is granted release on parole in the United States is not determined by one's inst.i.tutional conduct, as it is in the British parole system, but by the current political perception of the offence committed. I didn't know this. I had not met anyone who had been granted parole. Drug smuggling was considered to be responsible for all of America's worst problems. Large-scale smugglers of any drug didn't get parole. The news. .h.i.t me hard. Instead of release in 1996, I had to get used to the idea of getting released a few years into the next century. I checked the law books on parole cases. Parole had been refused to marijuana smugglers on the basis of the excessive quant.i.ties involved, the unusual sophistication of the scam committed, the seniority of the particular parole applicant within the scam, the number of people to whom he gave orders, its international character, and the case's notoriety. I wasn't optimistic. In the law library, I also discovered a Parole Commission policy statement taking an official stance of discouraging prisoners from pursuing careers in law. Such plans for release would be unfavourably reviewed. I dropped out of the University of London's external law degree course.

Also incorrect was my a.s.sumption that I would be smoothly transferred to a British prison. At first my application was lost for several months, then resubmitted, then rejected on the basis that my offence was too serious. This didn't make much sense. Murderers and heroin smugglers had already been transferred to or from the United States. I was sure Lovato was behind these refusals, but I had no proof, yet.

The governing body of USP Terre Haute could see I was not US penitentiary material. They recommended to their national superiors that I be transferred to a less stringent facility with greater opportunity for education. The Federal Bureau of Prisons' bosses said no. Again I suspected Lovato's s.a.d.i.s.tic hand. Again I had no proof, yet.

Lovato formally requested the British authorities that Judy's flat in Chelsea be confiscated. British law prevented further proceedings. Lovato then requested the Spanish authorities that our home in La Vileta be confiscated. The DEA's justification was not that the house had been purchased with the proceeds of dope money. It hadn't been, and that was easily proven. It was because I had used the home telephone, thereby rendering the house as an instrument of my racketeering enterprise and as such forfeitable to the United States and/or Spain. An embargo was placed on the property and remained there for four years, after which time even the routinely accommodating Spanish authorities couldn't bring themselves to throw Judy and the children on to the streets because her husband had used the phone.

But the worst thing that happened to me that year was the news that my four-year-old son, Patrick, had jumped off the roof of a tall building. The impact of his little body hitting the concrete floor shattered both his legs. No one knew why he did it. Did he think he was Superman? Was he trying to fly? Did he throw himself into the jaws of death to resolve some indescribable inner torment? Was he trying to do himself in because he had no dad? The hard reality of being a prisoner hit me like never before. I couldn't be there to help absorb Patrick's pain. By the time I got out, he wouldn't need a dad. How many more accidents and tragedies to my dear family would I be unable to prevent? Please G.o.d, no more.

To make matters even more depressing, the next year, 1992, got off to a very bad start. My father was rushed to hospital with severe bronchial pneumonia. G.o.d, I'd been dreading this: one of my parents getting seriously ill. G.o.d, please don't let any of them die before I get out. The first and last verses of Dylan Thomas's poem swam through my brain: Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dad survived.

Outside my window, construction work had begun on the one and only federal Death Row. Although most individual states regularly electrocute, gas, and otherwise murder those convicted of particularly heinous crimes, the Federal Government has not executed anyone for a federal offence for decades. They just locked you up. That had changed with the Reagan/Bush federal death penalty for drug offences. Now eight people, all Black, had been sentenced to death by federal courts. There was nowhere specific to house them, and they were scattered all over the country. The US Government decided to build their very own execution chamber (lethal injection) and waiting rooms (Death Row). The location was Terre Haute. I could see it through my window. It brought me down.

It was a most heartbreaking day when I was informed that my dear friend Old John, within months of freeing himself from the clutches of the DEA, had been diagnosed as suffering from cancer. Before he became the scourge of the DEA and the world's most honest dope smuggler, he had been an electrician. The asbestos that got to him then was slowly but surely killing him now. I felt so sad.

Doing time began to get hard. The absence of my family was tearing my heart out. I'd been down for four years, twice as long as last time. I had more than another twelve to do if, as seemed certain, I would be denied parole. Judy couldn't wait for me that long; no one could. At the age of sixty, I would re-enter the world, skint, full of hate and completely unemployable and useless. No one would want to listen to my boring tales of woe, gore, violence, and depression. I'd be old and ugly. No one would want to s.h.a.g me. And my dreams weren't about s.e.x; they were about prison. That's when you know you are locked up: when you know you can't escape by nodding off. When I get out my kids will all have left home and been replaced by my grandchildren. We'll visit my parents' graves. I'll smile benignly at the children of Judy and her new husband when I pay them a social call after collecting my dole or my pension. I'll walk past discos and try to remember when I last danced. Was it worth waiting for? I became ill. I caught shingles and had several bouts of 'flu. Smoke and phlegm filled my lungs. I couldn't p.i.s.s properly. I couldn't bend my left leg. I had pains everywhere. Abscesses filled my gums. Eleven teeth were extracted. Any other dental treatment would have been deemed cosmetic rather than curative. An ill-fitting plastic denture plate dangled from my mouth. I needed gla.s.ses to read.

Whenever I get really down, I start getting religious. The American Christian Right had thrown me off Christianity. If G.o.d was a Republican, forget it. But for weeks I read the Bible and many works of other religions. I realised what I was doing wrong: I was taking myself too seriously. I should just help people as much as possible, keep fit and well, and take what comes. I can't control what happens to me anyway. I can only control my att.i.tude to it. So I spend the next decade in prison. Big deal. So what? What next?

I had my own cell now. Next to me on one side was Big Jim Nolan's cell, on the other side lived Bear, another Outlaw. I gave up smoking after thirty-five years. Being constantly summoned for urine tests had frightened me off taking any kind of dope. A dirty urine meant more prison time. Marijuana stayed detectable in urine for thirty days, heroin for one day. There was no marijuana. There was lots of heroin. I looked forward to a big fat joint in twelve years' time.

I got up every morning at five, did a series of dynamic yoga exercises followed by a callisthenics routine taught me by Daoud, drank fresh orange juice, read some religious writings, taught inner-city Blacks how to write for three hours, missed lunch, played tennis with Charlot for two hours, taught for another three hours, ate a healthy meal, played tennis again, walked for a few miles round the track, worked in the law library, did an hour of yoga and meditation, and read cla.s.sical novels before going to sleep. I did that every day for over a thousand days. Charlot also worked at the Department of Education teaching mathematics to Hispanics. We persuaded the Head of Education to let us teach voluntary evening cla.s.ses in French and philosophy. The Black Muslims appreciated hearing about how the Islamic philosophers Avicenna and Averroes had preserved the Ancient Greek wisdom while the Europeans were busily being barbaric. The Italian gangsters loved hearing about how many of the Ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians, such as Pythagoras and Archimedes, would in fact have been modern Italian and that the Renaissance was definitely an Italian affair. Not only did they have the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, and the Mafia, they also had culture by the b.a.l.l.s.

I was slim, fit, healthy, mellow, and seemed to be happy and enjoying life. I was like everyone else there. The minutes dragged, but the months and the years flew by. I was becoming inst.i.tutionalised.

I realised this after I had been visited separately and successively by my parents, my daughter Myfanwy, and my two daughters Amber and Francesca during 1993. It was brought home to me what I had been missing. My father had resolved after his last illness to make the effort to cross the Atlantic come h.e.l.l or high water. I had seven wonderful visits with him and my mother. Myfanwy wanted to share her 21st birthday with me. She did so in the Spartan confines of USP Terre Haute visitors' room. When I finally saw Francesca, she looked like my memory of Myfanwy. I thought Amber was Judy. I had five days of heavenly visits. I loved them so much. Amber wrote this: It was like reopening a wound, As I sat there.

Waiting.

Knowing that any minute I would see him again.

Him I hadn't seen for so many years.Him who meant the world to me.

I should have been happy, But I could feel the tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g.

It had been so long.

I was beginning to feel the pains again.No one could understand why I was crying.

I was about to see him.

I should be smiling.

The sorrow felt by his absence Was creeping out from deep inside In long-kept tears.And then he came.

Like I'd seen him only yesterday.

That hug said nothing Of the years I'd longed to hold him.

We sat down.

They chatted and laughed.

I was oblivious to the conversation.

I kept looking at that hand That I hadn't felt for so long.

And marvelling at the fact that it was in mine.I remember leaving him, Having to go, to say goodbye.

It was too much.

I'd turned my back, Ashamed of the tears, Trying, trying to control my pain, Like I'd managed all those years.But I couldn't.