He said that the seals that were needed to secure the lab pipe-works were not made well enough in Asia, and thus were dangerously unreliable. They would not be able to handle the engineering tasks that Michael was designing. The Mad Professor suggested a smaller, slower version that produced an ounce of hash oil a day, instead of a gallon an hour. The Cadillac offered to share the blueprints.
Seriously pondering their suggestions, I went back to Lahore to get Rebecca and return to Kabul. I was very glad to be rockin’ in my sweet baby’s arms again. Unfortunately the rockin’ didn’t last long because I was called back to Karachi, Pakistan, by an excited Dutch Bob.
Chapter Ten
“If you have a job without aggravation, you don’t have a job.”
MALCOLM FORBES
Dutch Bob made “arrangements” through some Dutch Embassy fringe employees to pay off Karachi customs officials. Every three or four months I would put the overland-out-of-Kabul-to-Karachi trip together. Dutch Bob took it airport-to-airport into Europe after that. Then I would break away from our idyllic life in Jangalak, put on the white linen suit and go to Amsterdam to collect. The demand for Tibetan carpets and primitive Nepali Tribe jewelry was taking off in Europe as well. Buddha statues were in demand.
Between meetings with Dutch Bob I found time to fly back to the States to visit my friend Bill Wassman. Bill had purchased the top floor of an old warehouse in New York City’s SoHo district. It was a 4400 sq. ft., well-lit skeleton. He had a double bed, a coffee pot and a refrigerator. I brought in a futon, blanket and pillow as a house warming present. An actor named Robert DeNiro bought the floor below to fix up for his mother, Bill said.
Bill and I went out to Max’s Kansas City club to hear Lou Reed with his new band, but we couldn’t get into the place. Outside in the crowd, also unsuccessful in gaining entrance, was a tall, good looking blond man about our age who was wearing a baseball cap from the same university we had attended. It was The Sizzler. We all ended up back at Bill’s l’artiste primitivo loft and got to know each other over some Durbin poison weed. The Sizzler knew a sailor. The sailor knew somebody who knew somebody on the docks in Brooklyn. Every few months Sizzler visited the sailor in New York City. The Sizzler then drove South African herb 1200 miles to Chicago.
I enlisted Sizz in the Afghan to Amsterdam operation, offering him the position of “cold-hard-cash courier.” All the money had to be brought into Afghanistan via money belt and money belt only.
While the money bazaar in Kabul was wide open and you could exchange currencies of any nation in the world for any other, checks of any sort were prohibited.
Anyone associated with an organization that does business based on finding loopholes in various nations’ laws generally takes the historical view of it all and the romantic characters involved with the herbe dangereuse, as the French call it, must be chivalrous and honorable and streetwise. The Sizzler was just such a guy. The $30,000 to $40,000 cash that would come back to Afghanistan from Amsterdam had to be carried securely on his person. Once he retraced the overland bus route through Iran. Iran was ruled by the ruthless Shah who employed vicious SAVAK underground torture squads. Other times the Sizzler would come directly into Kabul by plane. The Sizz could have, at any time, said that he lost the money by theft, corrupt customs or even legally confiscated. Every penny made it every time.
Also, on the U.S. transit, I reconnected with a couple of old friends from Haight-Ashbury – William VIII and Aggie. William VIII was an accomplished musician who played the bass. He had been the driving force behind organizing us into our failed attempt at a way-too-psychedelic rock and roll band. William VIII and Aggie were inspired to come to Afghanistan and showed up within a month.
Chapter Eleven
“I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name It felt good to be out of the rain In the desert you can remember your name ‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.”
“HORSE WITH NO NAME,” AMERICA
When I returned to Afghanistan, German Ted, his wife Tory and their child, Guava, had come back there as well. Remembering his dog in Kathmandu, I immediately enlisted him into helping me search for a mastiff pup and so “Kachook” came into our lives. Kachook was just eight weeks old when I found him after Ted took me up to Bamiyan to locate one of the breed. Where Kachook was actually born is unknown. He was stolen, and had spent the previous two weeks tied to a caravan cart in a walk-for-your-life-or-death situation. The nomads that stole him had sold him to a local Wali the night before German Ted and I arrived. The local Wali had bought him to become a fighting dog, what the Afghans called sak-jungee. There were some histrionic Afghanstyle negotiations involved. German Ted, invoking local custom, insisted by making the point that it was very, very good luck for the Wali to make a profit so quickly.
When I brought Kachook back to our house, the staff was none too happy about his arrival, even as a charming, playful puppy. These mastiffs were seen as mindless, fierce, attacking beasts.
I saw Kachook’s incredible intelligence immediately and he eventually amazed all of our Afghan staff when he quickly learned to obey simple commands. He had four acres to run around in and was a delight from day one. His appearance at my whistle and his obedience to commands had the same effect on our Afghan household as if a circus tiger had walked in and leaped through a ring of fire. Rebecca and I worked very hard to gentle his nature at every training opportunity.
As spring arrived, I was putting plans together for my dream ride up the old Silk Trail. The Sizzler, who took me at my word and eventually showed up in Afghanistan, and Montreal Michael began gearing up for the ride. I knew we needed a gun for protection so I completed an application to hunt Pamir sheep in the foothills of the Hindu Kush. It cost $2,500 for a license to shoot one of these beasts, which I had no intention of doing, but it allowed me to import a gun for the purpose of hunting and, in our case, protection.
Alejandro, of Goa, also turned up in Afghanistan and was healthy and effervescent. Tory let him borrow her horse and German Ted and I had a ride with him that broke out into a dead run race. Later that night we heard he was arrested during the first known drug squad sweep in Kabul. Tory and Rebecca made immediate contact with the Spanish Embassy and discovered it was true that Alejandro had been caught with 29 grams of golden pollen. There was nothing immediate I could contribute to the situation.
On one of my trips to see Dutch Bob in Amsterdam I purchased an over-and-under rifle – 30-30 on the bottom and a 20-gauge shotgun on the top.
The planning and preparations for the ride were complete. I had also, on a previous visit to the States, arranged shipment to Afghanistan of some much better saddles that were designed for the U.S. Mounted Park Rangers. These are fine saddles, very light and practical. The wooden, carpet-covered saddles of Afghanistan were yet another illustration of how far back in the centuries we were actually living. The horses were fit and freshly shod as we rode out – me, Sizz, and Michael with Kachook dogtrotting along.
