As a trial grinds on, as the days and weeks pass, the family can only sit and watch, and wait for judgment. They can’t do anything, they can’t intervene — they can’t make it stop. They are surplus to the court’s requirements. They are reduced to bystanders. They have nothing to hold on to, and they float away, like kites, always in sight, but always hovering just out of reach. Anxious and exhausted, worn down, their skin takes on a courtroom pallor — pale, bloodless.
Meanwhile, the accused sits on display in the defendants’ crate. In front are the rows for lawyers, and then the judge’s bench; the jury sits on the left. There is nothing to look at except each other. The room contracts, tightens its grip as the days and weeks pass. All trials are a purgatory, the outcome suspended between verdicts of guilty or not guilty, jail or freedom. Life is put on hold. Something resembling life takes its place. The lawyers swish their gowns, chant their obedience to the judge: ‘As Your Honour pleases’, ‘Yes, sir’, ‘Yes, ma’am’. Clerks deliver fresh pages of transcript. Slowly, quietly, agonisingly, the court goes about its business, does the paperwork, measures out the exposures as the days and weeks pass . . .
Outside the High Court of Auckland, the paved entrance is dominated by an enormous magnolia tree, its flowers as luscious and ripe as a succulent fruit. There is wisteria, too, prettily spreading itself about. The lawns are neatly manicured. It’s a very nice part of town, ordered and posh, probably the most Wellington that Auckland gets, with its rare concentration of a lot of men wearing suits and expensive overcoats — the High Court attracts numerous nearby law firms. It’s also probably the most English that boisterous, yahooing Auckland gets — Parliament Street, Princes Street, Waterloo Quad. Opposite the court is ye olde Old Government House, and the luxuriousness of the university gardens. The High Court building itself has been superbly restored to its original nineteenth-century design, when architect Edward Ramsey modelled it on the English image of Warwick Castle.
A grand façade. Inside, the 15 courtrooms with their bare walls and their venetian blinds are the usual modern nightmare of office work. Hermetically sealed against the outside world, they are kept in very clean nick, unlike the grubby, graffitied district courts. Decorum is maintained, in keeping with the serious consequences that await within. Signs which instruct NO TALKING add to the repressive atmosphere.
Late on a Tuesday night, after the jury had returned their verdicts on Nobakht and Rye, I heard quiet sobs outside Courtroom 7. It was Nobakht’s wife.
I went home to write something exciting about misery.
3
And so, ‘An Iranian living in Japan walks into a bar in Bangkok with another country on his mind: New Zealand.’ That was how the drug deal began. The unnamed Iranian drug boss living in Japan travelled to Thailand to find a courier willing to smuggle crystal meth to New Zealand. He found a man whose name remains suppressed. This ‘Mr X’ agreed on a fee of US$10,000. X was flown to Japan, then put up in a hotel, all expenses paid, for three weeks. He enjoyed himself tremendously — nightclubs, restaurants, a Russian prostitute. A date was set to travel to New Zealand: 6 February, Waitangi Day.
Nobakht also happened to be in Japan that week. He said he was there on business — buying cars at an auction, and importing them to New Zealand. He booked the same flight home as X. But the courier was such a hapless individual that he took the slow train instead of the fast train to the airport, and missed the flight. He also bungled the way he fastened the drugs to his body: a bag burst open, and the precious P began to seep out. X refastened the stash, and booked another flight. Nobakht, meanwhile, cancelled his flight, and rescheduled. Once again, he booked the same flight back to New Zealand as X.
Already, Nobakht was under suspicion. Police figured it was his job to shadow the courier into New Zealand, keep watch, and set up meetings. X and Nobakht arrived in Auckland on Air New Zealand Flight 90 on 8 February. Customs officials were waiting. X was pulled aside — traces of cocaine were found on his luggage. A body search revealed the P. Facing a maximum penalty of life imprisonment for importing a Class A drug, he agreed to act undercover for the police. Those negotiations took nearly two hours, while Nobakht sat in McDonald’s, watching the exit signs, unwittingly starring as a lead performer in one of New Zealand’s most boring films. Operation Precious was in motion.
So, too, was X. For three days he led a double life, and both of those lives must have felt like hell. Welcome to New Zealand: it was a lovely week in summer, warm and relaxing, but before X left the airport he had been busted, turned, forced to wear a body wire, and sent out to get hold of drug contacts he’d never met in a country he’d never visited. Instead of carrying powerful narcotics, he was now a condiments salesman: police replaced the meth with rock salt. They allowed him to keep 5 grams of the real stuff.
