A Tale of Two Cities (6 page)

By the time he was released in 1974 he had divorced Sally R and married his heroin addict prostitute, Norma Fleet. It is
hard not to conclude he saw her as a way into the heroin dealing world. If so, he was on the money. In just a few years, drugs had taken over from the traditional forms of crime. The old underworld hierarchy of thieves was irrelevant. Norma was to die the following year from an overdose of Mandrax. Clark went to work dealing Thai ‘buddha' sticks. Where other dealers flashed their money by buying big American cars, Clark stuck to a battered old English car, which blended in. He behaved himself – and he was no longer an informer.

Careful as he was, Clark bumped into some high-living drug dealers. One of them was Martin Johnstone.

Johnstone, younger than Clark, had been born in 1951 in a farming district near Auckland. He had a brother and a sister and their parents were a successful, hard-working business couple. After dropping out of a private school, he'd soon got into trouble for theft and burglary. Then he worked in an Auckland menswear shop – Collar'n'Cuffs – where he met an Englishman called Andrew Maher. By 1973 Johnstone was dealing in marijuana, but very small time. He was arrested that June in possession of two plants and told police he had developed an interest in horticulture because he was too poor to buy his own grass. The arresting detective described him as ‘a friendly, easy-to-approach person who would readily admit to offences.'

But Marty Johnstone had no intention of remaining small time. While he and Clark were almost opposites in character they shared one personality trait – ambition. First it was local leaf then he moved up to imported Thai sticks. He bought the sticks from a connection on the Royal Dutch Orient Line, which sailed from Asian ports and whose Chinese crewmen easily outwitted New Zealand's crude customs regime, mainly by tossing contraband overboard at pre-arranged spots to be picked up by small craft. The middle man on the Dutch boats was Choo Cheng Kui, known as ‘Chinese Jack'.

Johnstone and Clark did shady ‘business' together but there was always an underlying tension. Clark had done time and was street smart, but the younger Johnstone was tall, dark and handsome and had the insouciance of the well-dressed, private-school dandy he was. Charming and gregarious, he was also prone to melancholy – and not as ruthless and resilient as Clark. One thing they had in common, besides a taste for easy money, was a love for boats. Johnstone owned a speedboat he used to pick up contraband. Clark bought a 51-foot sloop, a symbol of success.

Johnstone loved playing the prosperous businessman. A confidential New Zealand police report said, ‘He was becoming noted for his flamboyant lifestyle and jetset image.' While Clark worked in the shadows, Johnstone sought the spotlight. It was another reason the two men were not destined to be long-term partners.

Johnstone set up a group of companies and used one of them to buy a 36-foot boat, the
Brigadoon
, captained by one Peter Miller, who had been a member of the Exclusive Brethren religious sect. Johnstone put together a syndicate of backers to finance a voyage to buy half a million buddha sticks from Thailand – a plan police and customs soon got to hear about on the grapevine. Clark didn't invest but became ‘wholesaler' for the operation, agreeing to pay $3.50 per stick.

The voyage of the
Brigadoon
was more Marx Brothers than mastermind. After a series of minor disasters, an Australian trawler skipper called John Chatterton agreed to tow the
Brigadoon
from Indonesia to near New Zealand, where police and customs had heard long before that a shipment of marijuana was on the way. But the
Brigadoon
was running so late that the surveillance had been eased. Even then, the syndicate speedboat had broken down and the cargo of 36 bags of Thai sticks had to be ferried ashore by rowing boat.

Clark took delivery of 458,000 sticks. Johnstone cleared about $1 million plus the yacht. Eventually, Clark cleared about $1 million, too, retailing the sticks at $7 each over the following year. Two other partners – a local solicitor and a Greek businessman – made a handsome profit. At a time when people worked for $10,000 a year, it was enough money to set up a legitimate business and go straight. Clark, however, was already moving into heroin. In late 1975 he persuaded a woman called Valerie Kairua to smuggle some back from a Fiji holiday. But the two fell out, police raided Clark and he was charged with trafficking offences that carried ten years jail. Clark had no intention of going back inside. Instead, in the new year of 1976, he jumped bail and headed to the bright lights of the big city most New Zealanders go first … Sydney.

IN Auckland, Clark had befriended several fellow inmates of Wi Tako prison, which was probably the single worst decision any of them ever made. One was Greg Ollard, by this time also in Sydney. Another was Wayne Shrimpton. Another was Errol Hincksman. Then there was Douglas Wilson, who had ‘moved' $200,000 worth of buddha sticks for Clark. And, of course, the urbane Martin Johnstone. Ollard was already in Sydney when Clark got there, and the rest would follow.

The attraction towards Clark and ‘Sin City' was a dangerous one. No-one, even Clark in his darkest moments, could have guessed then that soon he would have arranged the murder of three of his old Auckland ‘mates' (plus two women associated with them), stolen the girlfriend of another, and caused Errol Hincksman to be charged with one of the murders.

Ollard was Clark's first contact in Sydney. He stayed with him in King's Cross when he got there. Unlike Clark, who despised addicts, Ollard used heroin as well as dealing in it. He had worked
for the EMI record company and hung around with rock groups, including Rose Tattoo and the New Zealand band Dragon, which by 1977 would be Australian
Rolling Stone
magazine's ‘Band of The Year'. Ollard was a groupie; he loaned the band members money and picked up bills in return for reflected glory. Dragon's drummer, Neil Storey, died of a heroin overdose in June 1976, most likely because of the free ‘smack' Ollard handed out at parties.

Meanwhile, Johnstone was living high on the $1 million he'd made selling the buddha sticks wholesale to Clark, whose ‘representatives' in New Zealand were steadily ‘retailing' them for him. Johnstone settled in Singapore and made his name as a profligate party-giver and ladies' man. He once boasted of spending US$11,000 on one long weekend party.

New Zealand police were still tracking him. ‘Johnstone lives in Singapore, again leading a lavish lifestyle, allegedly living in an expensive apartment, driving an XJ6 Jaguar car and creating the impression that he is a successful businessman. It is known he has spent vast amounts of money on purchasing ocean-going vessels in Singapore and has also spent a great deal of money in Auckland,' they wrote.

While the New Zealand police could see that Johnstone was moving onto the world drug stage, international authorities did not seem to grasp the size of the operation. They did not understand that the former shop assistant was positioning himself to wholesale the deadly white powder. On 23 December 1977 Johnstone was seen walking through Sydney airport with an Australian woman. Both were stopped and searched. The woman was found to have heroin valued at $1.5 million strapped to her body. She was arrested. He was released.

Meanwhile, Clark was busy. He now had a third wife, Maria Muahary. On a visit to Malaysia and Singapore later in 1976 he
renewed acquaintance with ‘Chinese Jack' and did some business: sending two couriers back to Australia with heroin strapped to their bodies. While Johnstone dreamed of setting up a big-time legitimate business, Clark was setting up a big-time illegitimate one, which they called The Organisation. While Johnstone postured outrageously in Singapore's expatriate social scene, Clark moved around quietly under a string of aliases: John Templar, Phil Scott and Phil Perkins were three of many he would use over the next three years. Not standing out from the crowd was now useful for the former nondescript kid from Gisborne: for the time being, Clark was a shadowy figure on the fringe, under the radar while others attracted attention. But he showed some nerve. There was a claim he had cheated someone, and a hit man was sent after him. Clark sat the gunman down, opened a bottle of wine, lit him a cigar and cleared up the misunderstanding. At the time, he was carrying a vintage Luger pistol and his associates had no doubt he would use it.

By the end of 1976 the man who had made his first million wholesaling buddha sticks in New Zealand had switched to being a heroin importer. The potent and fabulously expensive powder could be smuggled in relatively small amounts and sold on for instant profit, leaving the ‘dirty work' of selling it on the streets to others down the food chain. As usual, he separated himself from unnecessary risk – and from being close to the addicts that were the end result of his immoral trade. He prided himself on selling ‘Number One Chinese White', which was around 90 per cent pure. Much later he was to tell police: ‘I know it sounds funny, but people in the game think I'm honourable.' In a twisted way, the heroin dealer had a little of his father ‘good Old Leo' in him: he valued his reputation for square dealing because it was good for business. This would explain, later, why he was so angry when Johnstone hurt The Organisation's reputation by ‘cutting' a batch of heroin.

There was no single ‘Mr Big' running drugs into Australia, but by 1977 Clark's organisation was certainly one of the bigger syndicates operating. He had five main competitors, the most significant of which was run by a bent businessman, William Garfield Sinclair, who used drunken footballers on sex tours of Thailand to act as ‘mules'. Sinclair would be arrested in Bangkok along with Warren Fellows and rugby player Paul Hayward. But there were always others. And, in Australia and New Zealand, there were wholesalers who stood to make millions. Not all of these shadowy figures belonged to the traditional underworld, although they were as amoral as any bank robber. Clark's biggest wholesaler, for instance, was a supposed property dealer from Brighton, Melbourne's premier bayside suburb, and he dominated the Victorian market. He sent his sister to Sydney to sell heroin into the expanding market of addicts in the western suburbs, and regularly flew north to keep an eye on things. In Sydney, he stayed at the Crest Hotel in King's Cross, and Clark would meet him there to share fine wine and cigars. The slaughterman's son from Gisborne had come a long way in a short time.

It was inevitable that Clark's drug running brought him into contact with the vice empire run by Abe Saffron, Sydney's ‘Mr Sin'.

Saffron, nephew of a judge, had expanded from sly grog in pubs and clubs to pornography, extortion, prostitution and drugs. Many of the prostitutes who worked from his premises were addicts, and there was no way the greedy Saffron and his parasites were going to let anyone else profit from supplying them. It was an evil vertical monopoly – paying prostitutes at inflated street prices in heroin bought wholesale from Clark and others. The supremely corrupt Saffron kept clear of handling drugs himself. Not that it mattered – he had a network of corrupted or compromised senior police, judges, politicians and public servants who would protect him all his life. Those he didn't bribe he could
blackmail with photographs of them indulging their favourite sexual vices in Saffron's premises, which were fitted with one-way mirrors and a camera.

In the 1970s, most of Saffron's dirty work in Sydney was done by James McCartney Anderson, who would later turn against him. According to Saffron's son Alan, Anderson had arranged the murder of wealthy Sydney heiress Juanita Nielsen, who had opposed Saffron-backed development of King's Cross. It was Anderson – who later gave evidence against Saffron – that handled the heroin for Saffron's organisation, allowing the hookers to stash their personal supplies in his nightclub safe.

But the canny and clannish Clark decided to hedge his bets. In 1977 he asked another New Zealander, ‘Diamond' Jim Shepherd, to come from Auckland to act as a heroin wholesaler exclusively for The Organisation. Shepherd, a gregarious man who loved the racetrack, bought heroin wholesale and sold it down the line to middlemen and street-level dealers.

The authorities could not keep up with this runaway drug culture. An early and ultimately unsuccessful attempt was the formation of the Federal Narcotics Bureau in 1969. Because it was difficult to prove drug-trafficking conspiracies, the bureau (like its state police equivalents) tended to gather much intelligence. This created a de facto market for information. The danger, of course, was that markets attract buyers as well as sellers. Clark became an early buyer. The onetime informer had reversed roles completely – and he had deep pockets.

Starting in 1976, the bureau had been gathering intelligence about New Zealanders under the code name Operation Tuna. Exchanges with the New Zealand authorities led to clandestine raids on Sydney addresses, and agents started to put together a list of names. One was Martin Johnstone. Another was Greg Ollard, the man who supplied rock bands with heroin. And the
agents found out that another Kiwi had arrived: he used the name Wayne Shrimpton, and his girlfriend was Allison Dine.

Clark, meanwhile, was still known only by aliases that meant nothing to the bureau. And he knew it, because his sources were impeccable.

What vaulted Clark to become Australia's biggest heroin importer was one massive shipment brought in by trawler, the
Konpira
. With nearly 100 kilos of heroin in more than twenty old square kerosene tins on board, the trawler skipper John Chatterton made his way down the east coast in June 1977.

Chatterton was quick to spot the surveillance plane that appeared on the horizon every day so at night he would speed up, giving him time to stop if he needed.

During a storm he took the trawler to the safe side of an island off the coast where the heroin was unloaded. But during the cargo drop in rough seas two of the drums were lost.