Howard Marks was an acclaimed travel and sports writer, TV personality and DJ. He had a series of successful one man shows and campaigned for the legalisation of marijuana. He died in 2006.
'Marks weaves a fascinating story spiced with
brilliant detail, far stronger than fiction'
FHM Magazine 'A racy yarn with plenty of globe-trotting colour' Independent 'A man who makes Peter Pan look like a geriatric with sleeping sickness' Loaded
To my son, Patrick Marks
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
One British
Two Master Marks
Three Mr Marks
Four Mr McCarthy
Five Mr Hughes
Six Albi
Seven Mr Nice
Eight Howard Marco
Nine Marks
Ten Mr Dennis
Eleven D. H. Marks
Twelve Mr Tetley, Not
Thirteen Dennis Hooward Marks
Fourteen Señor Marco
Fifteen Marco Polo
Sixteen 41526–004
Seventeen Daddy
Plates
Copyright
I would like to thank the following for their assistance, support, and editing: Ann Blain, David Godwin, Bee Grice, Judy Marks, Amber Marks, Francesca Marks, Geoffrey Mulligan, Mick Tyson, and Helen Wild.
I was running out of passports, ones I could use. In a few weeks I intended to visit San Francisco to pick up several hundred thousand dollars from someone keen to exploit his connections, both with me and with a bent US Customs Officer working in the imports section of San Francisco International Airport.
A few years earlier, I had been declared the most wanted man in Great Britain, a hashish smuggler with documented links to the Italian Mafia, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the IRA, and the British Secret Service. A new identity was vital. I’d already gone through about twenty different identities, most of which had been backed up by a passport, driving licence, or other indicators of documented existence, but they’d all either been discovered by friends/enemies or compromised by featuring in some suspicious trail meandering through a recent scam.
We drove to Norwich. After a couple of awkward meetings with go-betweens, I was introduced to a gentle guy named Donald. I couldn’t tell if he was a drinker, a stoner, or a straight. His kitchen gave no clues. He looked normal, except that his eyes danced like those of a villain.
‘We can talk privately out here,’ he said and took me to a garden shed.
‘I need a passport, Don, one that’ll stand up to all checks.’
‘You can have mine. I won’t be needing one. But there’s one problem.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’ve just done twelve years of a life sentence for murder.’
Convicted murderers, although clearly people with a criminal record, would rarely be declared unwelcome at a country’s borders. They were regarded as mere menaces to individuals rather than threats to the fabric of society. The latter attribute tended to be restricted to dope dealers and terrorists.
‘I’ll give you a grand for it,’ I said, ‘and a few hundred quid from time to time when I need more back-up.’
I was thinking of a driving licence, medical card, local library card. Just a passport with no supporting identification is suspicious. A membership card to the local billiards club, obtainable cheaply and without proof of identity, is enough to give the required credibility.
‘That’s the best deal I’ve ever been offered for anything.’
‘What’s your last name, Don?’ I asked. I’d been lumbered with some terrible ones in the past.
‘Neece.’
‘How do you spell it?’
‘N-I-C-E, just like the place on the Riviera.’
It was up to Don how he pronounced his name. But I knew I would pronounce it differently. I was about to become Mr Nice.
‘Marks!’ yelled the guard. ‘What’s your number?’
‘41526–004,’ I mumbled, still in a really deep sleep. My number was used more often than my name, and I knew it just as well.
‘Get all your shit together,’ he ordered. ‘You’re leaving.’
Slowly I woke up. ‘Yeah, I’m leaving.’ I was leaving El Reno.
El Reno, Oklahoma, houses the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ transit facilities and is host to between one and two thousand federal prisoners, who are cajoled, bossed, and bullied by a few hundred guards. Every prisoner who is required to be moved from one US federal prison to another passes through El Reno. Even if the prisoner is being transported from North Dakota to South Dakota, he still has to go via El Reno. I had been through there five times. Some had been through more than fifty times. Expensive illogicalities and inefficiencies do not worry the monsters of American bureaucracy, and the taxpayers are enthusiastic and eager to spend fortunes in the name of fighting crime. Prison places cost the US taxpayer more than university places. The American belief that prisons are the best way to combat crime has led to an incarceration rate that is at least five times that of almost any other industrialised nation. Overcrowding is endemic. Conditions are appalling, varying from windowless, sensory-deprived isolation to barren and futile brutality.
Mostly, prisoners are taken to El Reno in aeroplanes confiscated by the US Government from the Colombian cocaine cartels, who have made billions of dollars out of America’s War on Drugs. There are at least two large airliners, each seating well over one hundred prisoners, and numerous smaller planes carrying up to thirty passengers. Every day, between three and six hundred prisoners arrive and leave. Arrivals take place in the late afternoon and evening; departures take place in the early morning. Flying courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons is a gruelling business. The only consolation was that