High life
Drug deals
Taki
turned on the television last Friday evening in order to watch the news and I got a bit of a shock. There was Anthony Haden-Guest giving a press conference of sorts, in my flat in Knightsbridge, a press conference to all three major American networks. As soon as I got over the shock I rang my flat in London. Needless to say, it was busy, and stayed busy until I went to bed cursing the day I had the bad luck to run into Haden-Guest 15 years ago — which, incidentally, is just about the time I began to become seriously poor. Worse was to come the next morning. That is when I read in the New York Post that the writer Haden-Guest had given a two-hour interview to the Post detailing his kidnap- ping and heroic escape from his Lebanese captors. Immediately I rang a friend who works on Rupert Murdoch's organ and asked him to make inquiries whether Anthony had rung the Post or vice versa.
To my horror my contact reported it was the former. That is when I went into a deep depression, one which has as yet to lift, cursing the day those murdering Lebanese gangsters decided to take it easy for once. When I finally got through to the uninvited guest a strange voice answered but im- mediately identified himself as a police- man. Like all cops he began by asking me questions, like who was I and what was my business etc. So I identified myself and told him I was asking the questions this time etc. 'Oh, well then,' he answered, 'there's this gentleman 'ere, who claims to live 'ere, but was sleeping outside on the pavement when we found 'im this morning. 'E also claims 'e asn't his keys on 'im. So we 'ad to 'elp 'im break in.'
Then Haden-Guest came on the line and told me not to worry, that he was all right, safe, and now on his way to New York to tell all for a large fee. 'Can we have dinner tonight?' was the last thing he asked me.
It is at times such as these that one has to show character, and I did. I even invited him to dinner and heard the most extra- ordinary tale since Clifford Irving inter- viewed Howard Hughes. Here it is in a nutshell: it was just about one year ago that a convicted drug dealer named Steven Donahue (this is one of many names) contacted Haden-Guest and asked him to become his Boswell. Donahue had been caught by the Drug Enforcement Agency and in turn had decided to work with them in Lebanon. Donahue had read Anthony's book about the murder of the lover of a beautiful model by her ex-lover, and found Haden-Guest to be just the right man to write well about bad things happening to bad people. Haden-Guest, who is the hungriest man born north of Khashoggi's birthplace, accepted with alacrity. While I whiled away my days in Pentonville, those two were prancing around Beirut, digging up information, but also having a hell of a time, according to the permanent Guest.
The Christian gunmen and drug-dealers who were their hosts liked Anthony. Every day he passed out, and while terrific gun fights would have everyone ducking for cover, Anthony would walk about undisturbed by the noise and danger look- ing for free drinks, which he was given non-stop by his 'captors', in order to show their young militiamen what courage is all about. In the meantime the group of drug dealers found out that Donahue was work- ing for the DEA and decided to make money out of it instead of adding another two corpses to Beirut's list. They played Donahue along and got the DEA to pay a large sum for some pretty bad pot. Then they told Anthony he could leave, but kept Donahue behind.
When, Anthony returned in order to gather more material, another group of Arab drug-runners decided they wanted part of the DEA money too, and abducted the two from their abductors. They, too, decided to let Anthony go after a couple of weeks as their supplies of food and drink quickly ran out, and none of them had the heart to let Anthony go hungry or. thirsty. Now Anthony is back here, has all the material he needs, the Arabs have screwed the DEA, Donahue is under house arrest in Beirut, and I'm out of pocket for at least 1,000 quid. Not to mention the damage to my flat by a large group of dirty electronic hacks. But I have learned one thing that few know as of now. The whole bloody business in Lebanon has to do with drugs and absolutely, positively nothing else. Least of all politics.
Previous page
