Robert Sabbag: Smokescreen

By MICHAEL LARSEN

Allen Long had ambitions to be a documentary maker. But a small-time bust for a token amount of marijuana, and some serendipitous meetings with like-minded renegades and all of a sudden, he had become one of the biggest smugglers of dope America had ever seen. And will ever see.

America in the 70s couldn't smoke itself stupid enough, and the source of the high times was Colombia.

The best marijuana was Santa Marta Gold, from the Guajira region, and Long went all out to get as much as he could.

Assembling a cast of characters that are so unbelievable they could only come from real life, and cobbling together a DC3, Long and his boys flew a number of sorties to the golden coast.

Leaking fuel, swiping treetops and generally scraping through with a blend of good luck, good management and a lot of Heineken, they then landed the hauls at night on remote airfields back in the States.

And very quickly, Allen Long was a very, very rich man.

If this sounds all too easy - it was. But that, as they say, was then. And it couldn't last.

Sabbag charts the transition of the drug trade where nice guys like Long, who seldom carried a weapon and whose word really was his bond, gave way to the CIA-backed Cubans, such as Jimmy heart-as-cold-as-a-New-York-lobby Alvarez, who were in it for the money and little else.

This cultural shift was matched by a change in the product.

By the early 80s the US was growing its own marijuana, and the Cubans shifted to the higher return, easier to transport and, of course, much more invidious cash crop of Colombia: cocaine.

Sabbag is brilliant, no question. This is hilarious, informative and as thrilling as any fictional buccaneering adventure. Long is naive, clever, and driven by a strange morality that was no doubt fuelled by the huge amounts of dope he smoked.

But his consumption shifted as seismically as the background in which he played and coke stole the show, turning him paranoid and less than lucid. After a brush with Mr Alvarez where he comes off very much second best, Long decides that he is nothing more than a businessmen and has one last crack at returning to, in his bloodshot eyes, the more honourable profession of smuggling.

The game has changed though, and Long is too high on his own supply to keep up.

The book's tension is sustained by the fact that with the amounts of money involved and the drug consumption of the participants spiralling in equal measure, it is only a matter of time until disaster - or the law - strikes. The amazing thing about this saga is that it didn't happen sooner.

Sabbag was around when the action occurred, so accuracy is ensured, even if there is at times a fictional feel to the proceedings. His view seems to be that the only real crime was their innocence - it was not honour so much as enthusiasm that gave the enterprise its special quality, he remarks.

To Long, his continual consumption becomes justification for his involvement. The fact that he has a great chance to go straight at the very top of the music business, and blows it, so to speak, shows his addiction to the chemicals and the lifestyle was greater than any lure a legal occupation could offer.

He might have done his time and is now an honest family man, complete with white picket fence, but at the time, he revelled in his role as self-styled pirate.

There are no moral judgments here and the smoky atmosphere is suffused a little heavily sometimes with nostalgia. But in the end, this is just a great tale that should intrigue anyone interested in 70s America and its culture.

Anyone contemplating a life of illicit enterprise would be advised to read closely, too. Although ultimately, Sabbag seems to say, with a sigh of nostalgia, crime can pay.

* Michael Larsen is an Auckland freelance writer.

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