33

WORD SPREADS

Two things kept me in power as San Pedro’s main tour guide. First, my bodyguards couldn’t cut me out of the business because they couldn’t speak English. Second, I wasn’t greedy, like the gangs who tried to promote their own tour guides. Whenever backpackers came into the prison, I did my best to show them a good time. I spent a lot of the money I earned from the tours buying the tourists food or beers or cocaine. I had learned my lesson from being too greedy with drug trafficking, and I also felt that the tourists were doing me a favour by visiting me in the first place. I also looked after all the guards very well, especially the officers and the governor. The other tour guides, like Fantasma, were greedy though; they wanted to increase the tour price and sometimes they tried to avoid paying the guards their fair share. The end result was that the tourists always asked for me and the police also preferred to work with me. I couldn’t ignore the threats from the gangs, so eventually we came to a compromise: we would share the tour business, week by week.

The only other thing I had to worry about was coming to the attention of the United States’ DEA, which had undercover agents in all the South American countries as part of its ‘war on drugs’. I was worried that it might try to bust me for dealing inside the prison.

I liked most of the Americans I met. Of all the nationalities, they were usually the nicest and therefore the easiest to shock. None of my American visitors could believe that a place like San Pedro actually existed and I got an extra kick out of telling them about what went on in there.

‘But this must be illegal!’ they would exclaim. ‘I can’t believe they don’t do something about it. This is worse than Midnight Express. Someone should complain.’

I liked shocking them when I could, but unfortunately I usually had to avoid taking Americans on the prison tours. Apart from my own fear of the DEA, the other inmates hated gringos and if I had welcomed too many American visitors, they might have suspected that I was working secretly with the US authorities.

For this reason, I wouldn’t have received Mark Johnson. He fitted the undercover stereotype perfectly: a serious American man of about twenty-seven, well built, blond hair gelled back, white T-shirt and blue jeans – except for the fact that he got in past the guards without calling me. He spoke almost perfect Spanish and I could tell by his hurried manner that he hadn’t come for a tour.

‘Are you Thomas McFadden?’ he asked, as soon as I opened my door.

I nodded. ‘Have a seat, man. Would you like some tea or coffee?’

‘No. That’s fine. I’ve just eaten,’ he replied. He had a strange way of talking and it was obvious he wanted to ask me something.

‘OK, then. Let’s chat, or do you want to do a tour?’

‘How long have you been doing the tours?’ he asked immediately.

‘Two years almost, off and on. Sometimes the tourists can’t get inside because the guards won’t let them. And sometimes I get tired of doing them.’

‘Why? Because you do drugs with them?’

‘No, because you know, it takes a lot of energy dealing with people. I like to show them a good time, and if I can’t put in all my energy, I prefer not do it at all. You understand?’

‘I’m informed that the tour price is fifty bolivianos. How much of that goes to the guards and how much to you?’

‘Hey man, slow down. A lot of questions.’ It wasn’t that I minded answering questions – all the tourists were always curious – but this boy had just charged straight in there.

‘Sorry, I should ask you how you are feeling. How are you today?’ He was certainly strange, this one.

‘Good, I’m fine. Thanks. A bit tired, man, a lot of tourists are coming through.’

‘How many do you think?’

‘Ufff – I don’t count. I think sometimes up to fifty, maybe even seventy a day.’

The American pulled out a pen and small notepad. ‘Between fifty and seventy, you say,’ and he noted it down on his pad.

‘You’re writing a travel diary?’

‘Actually, no. I’m a freelance journalist working with the Bolivian Times. Mark Johnson. Pleased to meet you,’ he stood up, extending his hand to greet me and at the same time asked, ‘How do you spell “McFadden”?’

I didn’t answer because I was thinking about what I should do. I had never met someone who did things in such a strange order. He had been in my room almost five minutes and only then had he decided to shake hands. And he hadn’t even warned me that he was a journalist, but there he was, still writing down everything I said without my permission.

‘Sorry. I guess we should start at the beginning. What did you do to get in here? Oh, by the way, I can pay you for the interview, if you want. How much do you need?’

‘No, it’s fine.’ This guy just didn’t get it. I still hadn’t even agreed to an interview.

‘OK, then,’ he continued, seeming pleased about not having to pay me. ‘Are you in here for drugs?’

Another direct question from Mark Johnson, freelance journalist from the Bolivian Times. I didn’t want to be rude and tell him to leave, but there was no way I was going to give him any information. How can you trust someone you have just met with information that they might publish about you the next day? Besides, I wasn’t going to admit something in a newspaper that might affect my Supreme Court appeal. So, I decided to lie. If this guy wanted a story out of me, he could have one, but it wouldn’t be the real one.

‘No, not drugs. And I think you’ve spelled that wrong. My name, I mean,’ I pointed to where he had written my name on his notepad. ‘It’s not Thomas, it’s Tomo – T-o-m-o. And my surname is spelled M-a-c-f-a-r-g-y-e-n, although you pronounce the “g” like a “d”. It’s Jamaican. I’m from Jamaica.’ He wrote that down, too.

‘Oh, thanks,’ he said, crossing out the correct spelling and replacing it with the bogus one I’d given him. ‘May I ask you for what crime you are in here?’

‘Yes, you may. Terrorism,’ I informed him, sitting back in my chair and folding my arms. I was trying not to laugh, but he caught me about to smile so I tried to make it look like I was very proud of being a terrorist.

‘Terrorism?’ he looked surprised.

‘Yes. Terrorism.’ He wrote the word down in his notepad, with a question mark after it.

‘What exactly did you do?’

‘Well, I didn’t really do anything. I mean, I hadn’t done anything yet when they caught me. It was more about what we were going to do.’

‘Can I ask what?’

‘Sure man, but be careful what you write. I’m trusting you with this information.’

‘Of course. There’s no need to worry about that at all. I always protect my sources.’

I was beginning to enjoy this interview. He was solemnly writing down almost everything I said as though it were gospel. It would have been the scoop of his short career, except that none of it was true.

‘OK. They got us with some explosives. We were in the street –’

‘OK, slow down there please, Mr …’ He looked down at his notepad. ‘Macfargyen. Who is “we” and what sort of explosives?’

‘With some friends. We had dynamite. The cops got us with sticks of dynamite. Although I didn’t have any on me.’

‘How much was there?’

‘Oh, a lot, man. Enough.’

‘Where did you get the dynamite from?’

‘Hey man, I’m not going to tell you that. I have to protect my sources, too. I’m not going to put my cause in trouble. What kind of journalist are you? Do you want this interview or what?’

Someone should have been filming me. I was playing the part to perfection.

‘Sorry. You’re right. Would it be all right if I asked you what you were going to do with the dynamite?’

‘Hey man. That’s a stupid question. What else can you do with dynamite? Are you stupid, or what?’

‘Sorry, you’re right. What I meant to ask was what was your target, your mission objective, if you like?’

This guy was also really getting into the interview; he had even started using terrorist terminology.

‘Our mission objective, if you like, although that is more a term that Hollywood invented rather than one we freedom fighters use, was the destruction of a few central locations in La Paz.’

‘Can I ask which ones?’

‘No, you can’t.’

‘I’m sorry. So sorry. We’ll move on … How long have you been in San Pedro?’ He was lapping it up now, apologising frequently so that he could get more information out of me.

‘I’ve been here ten years. Long time.’

‘You must have been young when you first arrived?’

‘Too young. And they tortured me … with spoons.’

‘With spoons? How?’

‘Yes, with spoons. What do you mean how? They hit me with spoons, all over my body.’

My story became more and more ridiculous as the interview progressed, but to stop myself from laughing I only had to look at Mark Johnson’s sober expression as he conscientiously transcribed every word I said.

I followed the newspapers for two weeks and finally his article appeared. It was an exposé on San Pedro, but unfortunately not all the details I had given him were included, and most unfortunately, there was nothing about the previously unheard-of Bolivian form of spoon torture. Nevertheless, it did say something about one inmate called Jamaican Tomo being an ‘unscrupulous terrorist’, and when I showed it to Ricardo, neither of us could stop laughing.

Apart from pushy journalists, I received a lot of other weird visitors from all over the world. There was the Dutch backpacker with blond dreadlocks who would set up his tent in parks and main plazas and wash in public fountains until the police told him to move on. It wasn’t that he didn’t have money, he just didn’t like hotels.

‘Why pay money to stay on a mattress with fleas when I have a very good air mattress?’ he asked me.

There was the couple that was travelling the entire South American continent on bicycles because they said cars and buses were unnatural and caused pollution. They were nice, but they were also against deodorant and smelled a bit. There was a Japanese guy who not only couldn’t speak Spanish but couldn’t speak any English either. I wondered how he got around Bolivia at all, because with me, he just kept bowing and smiling all the time. He drank about fifteen cups of tea. When I came back from buying him more tea bags, he had left without saying goodbye.

There was also the former corporate high-flyer who now liked to climb really high peaks, where he would spend the night on his own, without telling anyone. For altitudes above five thousand metres, he had two high-tech thermal sleeping bags which fastened up so tightly that he only had a tiny mouth hole to breathe through. ‘Once, it was so cold that I had to close it right up and breathe through a straw to avoid getting frostbite on my lips,’ he told me.

Why do people do these things to themselves? I wondered. Don’t they have families? Doesn’t anyone care about them?

The strangest thing about all these strange people was that they thought I was strange too, and that we had some sort of connection, like I was one of them. I didn’t know whether I should have been flattered or upset by that. Things could be tough in the prison and I had probably suffered as much as they had, but I certainly hadn’t done so by choice.

The most unexpected visitor was Fat Joe, although when I first met him I didn’t know how bizarre the purpose of his visit would turn out to be.