X changed his clothes. Stepping out into the casino, he looked like just another rube wearing the uniform of British tourists — an England football shirt. He soon made contact with the man who had waited at the airport arrivals lounge with Nobakht. They met at the casino bar. Surveillance revealed that Nobakht was also at the casino that night, and even went up to X and asked if they knew each other. No, said X.
His goose cooked by police, his skin itching with wires, X’s first night in New Zealand just kept getting worse. He was told two prostitutes would be sent to his hotel room. The women failed to keep the appointment — they had either knocked on the wrong door, or X was asleep. The latter was unlikely. Earlier, he’d walked to a downtown café with Nobakht’s friend. From his evidence as chief witness for the prosecution:
Having used the downstairs toilet, did you go back to the table?
At the point I went downstairs, he [his contact] felt my back and felt the battery pack of my wire.
What did he do?
Basically put his hand over it and felt the wire. And back at Sky casino, he embraced me in a hug and also felt the wire there, in the first meet.
At the café, you say he put his hand on your back?
Yes. I knew he felt the wire, so I take the wire off in the toilet, come back, and he’s disappeared.
At which point you might expect that the drug deal was off. But greed is a powerful narcotic: despite X’s contact feeling the wire, the deal continued. X met another contact the next day. They drove to Rotorua in the man’s car. Police followed, noting the Audi made brief stops at a Papakura gas station and the Te Poi pub. The two men arrived in Rotorua just after 9pm, and booked into Room 24 of the Ascot Motel. X’s second night in New Zealand just kept getting worse, too. In the motel room, the driver of the Audi asked to test the P. By mistake, the hapless X gave him some of the rock salt. The man smoked it in a glass pipe, and pronounced that in his opinion the drugs weren’t especially strong. He decided it might be better if he smoked it out of tinfoil, so he went to a Countdown supermarket and bought a roll of foil for $1.50. When he returned, X was able to give him some of the five precious grams of real meth. Crisis averted. From X’s evidence:
What happened when he tried it?
It burnt properly.
Did he say anything to you?
‘This is good.’
It turned into a long night of the alphabet: X also smoked some P, and the two men experienced Rotorua nightlife — a meal at Frodos, drinks at The Grumpy Mole, flesh at Alexandra’s Strip Club until 4am. They returned to the Ascot with a six-pack of Steinlager and stayed up drinking. Two women knocked on the door at 7am. It was Rye, and a prostitute called Nicky, who wore a nose piercing and a tattoo on her ankle. Nicky brought a bag containing lingerie and sex toys. She spent the rest of the day with X in his bedroom. From his cross-examination by Rye’s lawyer:
You had a lot on your mind at the time?
Sure.
You were pretty tense?
Yes.
What was on your mind?
That detection bringing in fake drugs could cause problems for my safety.
You weren’t all that interested in Nicky’s services, were you?
No.
If Gina told the police that her client didn’t even get it up with Nicky, would that be right?
Exactly. Yeah.
X was taken into custody later that day. Rye and X’s driver had already left Rotorua, with the rock salt, and booked in at the Chalet Motel in Mt Maunganui. Another gorgeous summer’s day: the motelier hived off at midday to play golf all afternoon, while Rye and the driver lazed by the pool. The police entered their room early that evening. They found the useless salt, and something else, inside Rye’s bag — $259,940, plus $35,200 in American dollars, wrapped in clingfilm.
The travelogue was over. All that crystal meth, 79 per cent pure, valued at three-quarters of a million dollars — but it spilled out of a courier’s boxer shorts on a slow train in Tokyo, was later nabbed and magically turned into rock salt in Auckland, where it travelled to Room 374 at the Skycity Hotel, up and over the Bombay Hills and through the green and pleasant pastures of the Waikato to Room 24 at the Ascot Motel in Rotorua, then beside the seaside at Mt Maunganui to make its final rest in Unit 9 at the Chalet motel. So much for the foreign intrigue, the international connections; once the P came to New Zealand, the cheap furniture of New Zealand life took over — Park Royal tobacco, $1.50 on tinfoil at Countdown. It was an assignation at The Grumpy Mole, a toilet stop at Te Poi. It was a hooker with a pierced nose, a motelier playing golf in the sun. And it was this, from X’s evidence:
Did anyone visit your motel room in Rotorua?
Yeah, some Maori guy, a big, thick-set Maori guy with a shaved head.
Why did he come to your room?
Nicky had phoned him to bring us some McDonald’s.
Operation Precious had caught two people red-handed. As well as X, there was the man at the Chalet Motel in Mt Maunganui — he said the drugs were his, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. X, who had intended to stay in New Zealand for eight days, was sentenced to six years’ jail.
But the evidence against Nobakht and Rye was
