Beyond Hercules: An Inside Story of the Moroccan Hash Trade

By Stephen Roffe

Beyond Hercules is a drug smuggling book with a difference: no big players, no multi-millionaires, no guns, no violence, no jail and no bother. And cannabis isn't a drug, it's a plant. This is one man’s account of the escalation of Moroccan hashish smuggling in the free and easy eighties, where few, if any, ever came close to being known about, far less pursued or incarcerated.
Back then Europe's ever increasing demand for hash was met by happy-go-lucky, fun loving, thrill seekers, who raced powerboats across the Straits of Gibraltar on moonless nights to fetch and deliver ton after ton. Down time was spent indulging in the benefits of a lucrative, tax-free income in a sun-kissed climate. Inevitably devising and implementing other ever more ingenious ways to smuggle hash without a hint of detection became a popular pastime.
Just when there was a risk of things turning ugly, the creative juices flowed towards the simplest of plans for one audacious final clandestine run: a walk-away pay-day. But would it all be 'plain sailing', and would everyone end up without any regrets?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Roffe
• Release date: Apr 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992745509

Stephen Roffe

After many years closely connected to the sea, Stephen retired to dry land in Portugal in the late nineties. He can still be found there today, a single parent with three very active children who keep his cooking skills honed with the daily feeding frenzy! Stephen fully endorses the growing global movement campaigning for the full legalisation of cannabis for recreational, health, medical and industrial use.

Book preview

Beyond Hercules

An inside story of the Moroccan hash trade

Stephen Roffe

First published in Scotland in 2014

by Indie Publishing Limited at Smashwords

Copyright © 2014 Stephen Roffe

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, whether

electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented,

in any form or by any means without the prior written permission

of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of

binding or cover other than that in which it is published

and without a similar condition including this condition

being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-0-9927455-0-9

A CIP catalogue record for this title is

available from the British Library.

Indie Publishing Limited

Scotland

http://www.indiepublishingltd.co

This book is dedicated with love and affection

to the memory of my father Terry and in honour

of my mother Joanna, who lives unawares due

to the cruel affliction that is Alzheimer’s; a

disease it is believed there is no known cure for.

I’m sure they would both have loved to read it.

With the very same love and affection

I also dedicate this book to Aysha, Lex and Bibi:

my children, who make life a joy.

Ik hou van je, e sempre sera.

Based on a true story.

As this story is largely based around actual events, extra special care has been taken to ensure that the names and identities of all individuals mentioned in relation to any illegal activity bear no resemblance to any actual people. The same goes for all the names of the vehicles and vessels described in the book. While the names of towns, villages, coves and beaches are all geographically correct, the details of any illegal activity referred to has been suitably amended and blended to ensure that no one could possibly recognize themselves, or anyone else.

Acknowledgements

Writing a book may be a solitary task, but getting it written involves way, way more than just one person. So there are many, many people that I owe a debt of gratitude to, for convincing me, encouraging me, supporting me, and loving me all the way.

Of course, I have to thank my three wonderful children, Aysha, Lex and Bibi, for all their assistance during the writing process. In particular, thanks to Aysha for typing up various sections of my handwritten notes. Thanks are also due to their mother, Alex, for my three little darlings, and for her faith in Beyond Hercules.

Then there are the many special friends who have been behind me ever since I pencilled the beginnings of this book a good few years back. Thanks to all of you. I am especially indebted to my close friends in Portugal, Nigel and Kenny, who have read and commented on everything that’s been written.

Without David, Toni and Indie Publishing my notes, few paragraphs and first couple of chapters may very well have been no further forward and still sitting in a cupboard drawer. David’s enthusiasm and belief in Beyond Hercules from the beginning has been relentless and unwavering, and his talents and skills have been invaluable in the writing of this book. Toni, too, is due enormous thanks for designing the front cover and preparing the manuscript for publication; great work with a gentle touch.

Which brings me to Susanne, the editor, who did such an excellent job from the first word to the last. What a talent, and how fortunate I was to be able to benefit from her expertise.

And I must also say a big thank you to the internet, and all the people who post useful and interesting information and images on it. More than any website, I have to thank Wikipedia; a wonderful resource, invaluable to an old stoner, jogging memory banks and clarifying what I’d remembered learning, seeing and living thirty odd years ago.

Many thanks to one and all.

Contents

The Sweetest Feeling

Chapter 1: Sowing the Seed

Chapter 2: Hooked, Line and Sinker

Chapter 3: The Pillars of Hercules

Chapter 4: Brazilliant Blessings

Chapter 5: Up the Costa

Chapter 6: Playing the Straits

Chapter 7: Lateral Thinking

Chapter 8: Crew Are You?

Chapter 9: Raising the Stakes

Chapter 10: Work, Rest and Pray

Chapter 11: Knock it on the ‘Ed

Chapter 12: Calm Before the Storm

Chapter 13: Assault from Sea and Sky

Chapter 14: Beyond Hercules

Chapter 15: Pact Animals

Chapter 16: The Beat of the Night

Chapter 17: Greek Lightning

Chapter 18: Fastnet to a Fortune

Chapter 19: Mayday Payday

Chapter 20: Cloudy Silver Lining

Coup de Grass

The Sweetest Feeling

The smile on Joe’s face broadened. From deep within began the rumblings of a side-splitting belly laugh. Before he knew it he was almost having a fit. Anyone seeing a solitary man standing only with the aid of crutches close to a cliff edge in a state of hysteria would be forgiven for thinking he might be a jumper, laughing in the face of his imminent death. Nothing could be further from the truth in Joe’s case.

In reality the almost uncontrollable laughter was a form of release, built up after many months of patiently waiting for this very moment to manifest. Only now was the incapacitated participant as good as a hundred percent certain that all the time spent planning to precision was finally coming to fruition.

Gaining control of his exaltation the best he could, Joe raised and then re-focused his powerful binoculars onto the waters before him. Again scanning the flotilla of yachts tacking and reaching in the mildly choppy waters below his headland location, he quickly relocated the boat that mattered to him. With the Plymouth breakwater well within sight, the heavily laden 55-foot yacht was at long last on the final leg of her very meticulous and deliberate voyage. Staring with delight through the lenses Joe caught sight of a launch manoeuvring to come alongside and rescue the apparently stricken boat. A crew member holding a coil of rope was braced in the pulpit, ready to heave a towline to one of the three dejected-looking sailors on board. To all intents and purposes their yacht had faltered and failed just short of the finishing line of one of the world’s most prestigious yacht races.

I was one of those three. Inside we were all as elated as Joe. It had been a long time in coming for all of us. But we weren’t done. We knew Joe would be watching, that he’d be able to see us as clearly as if we were two feet rather than a mile and a half away. Deeply immersed as we were in the moment, oblivious to anything and everything outside our immediate focus, our injured compatriot was far from our minds.

There would be time aplenty to catch up and celebrate before long. For now, we were getting the tow we required for our water-filled yacht, and in no time would be exactly where we needed to be. We were as close as the beach is to the sea to being home and dry.

Chapter 1: Sowing the Seed

When I first got acquainted with the pleasures of smoking cannabis as a sixteen year old in the mid-sixties, I had no idea that I would end up earning a lucrative living smuggling it out of Morocco throughout most of the eighties. Back in the sixties, cannabis was far from commonplace or widely used. But its popularity was rising all the time. Whether Bob Dylan did or didn’t introduce the Beatles to the drug when he shared his joint with them in America in 1964, by 1967 George, Paul, John and Ringo had signed a petition to ‘Legalise Pot’ that coincided with a mass rally in Hyde Park in London. The campaign stated that ‘The law against marijuana is immoral in principle and unworkable in practice’. The move was a reaction to the Dangerous Drugs Act (1965), which classified cannabis as a condemned and forbidden substance. Not surprisingly the protestations fell on deaf ears.

Just as unsurprisingly, the punitive measures to prohibit the use of cannabis have done nothing to restrict its use. As recently as 2004 a United Nations report into the global consumption of cannabis suggested that ‘approximately’ 5 per cent of the world’s adult population (roughly 165 million people) use cannabis regularly, making it the most-used illicit drug in the world. Good on the United Nations for attempting to get a handle on the numbers, but the ‘approximate’ figure is likely to have been a conservative underestimation. Given that the research focused only on usage among adults, it’s more likely that at least 10 per cent of the world’s population are habitual cannabis users.

Not that hashish use is anything new. Earliest records suggest that humans have been well aware of cannabis since at least the fourth millennium BC. Certainly, since what are known as ‘ancient times’ cannabis was regarded as a miracle plant, a gift from the gods, with countless benefits. It is a matter of unavoidable fact that the history of cannabis is deeply linked to human history, for practical, medicinal and recreational purposes. The Moroccans themselves have cultivated the plant for centuries, often sanctioned by royalty, and certainly never discouraged by French and Spanish colonial rulers. But the Cannabis sativa plant, from which hash is derived, is today illegal to grow, use or consume in almost every country in the world. Cannabis indica, more commonly known as hemp, is itself still widely frowned upon and overlooked despite its countless obvious and well-documented human benefits and industrial merits.

This skewed state of affairs is a result of global legal restrictions that began to be enforced as recently as the 1930s. The state of worldwide prohibition stemmed from a fear-based propaganda campaign in America which demonised the smoking of cannabis, linking it to insanity, debauchery, crime, and a whole host of other fear-inducing conditions. The campaign was instigated by the powerful and influential media mogul William Randolph Hearst, the man on whom Orson Welles based his legendary Oscar-winning film Citizen Kane. Hearst was determined to prevent the imminent full-scale industrial development of hemp as it threatened his and other equally wealthy and influential American business moguls’ empires. Starting by adopting the Mexican word for cannabis, marihuana, in an attempt to associate it with a perceived lower class (and colour) of people, he then set about using his dozens of newspaper, magazine and book publications to portray all forms of cannabis and all of the plant’s uses as evil and dangerous. Hearst’s campaign was sanctioned and endorsed by his ‘friends in high places’ and was zealously enforced by America’s first drug tsar, the evangelical empire-building careerist Harry J. Anslinger.

It’s hardly startling to learn that it was the vested financial interests of empire-builders that instigated the illegal status of cannabis, but it’s still staggering to think just how successful these strategies were right across the planet. As a naturally occurring substance that can’t be patented, it’s obvious why little if anything has changed despite the vast volume of knowledge and understanding that exists today about the cannabis plant. Technically, Cannabis sativa is classified as a psychoactive drug. That is to say it affects the mind and mental processes. Much is made of the potentially negative effect cannabis has on cognitive function, but the enormous positive effects are all but ignored. But it’s an undisputed fact that there is very little documented evidence about the adverse clinical health effects from human use of cannabis, regardless of whether that use is mild, medium or chronic. What’s more, there are no recorded instances of humans dying from cannabis consumption. The truth is that the scientific community now have more than enough empirical evidence to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that our very early ancestors were right all along: cannabis is a miracle plant.

Of course I knew nothing of any of that when I started to get happily high, smoking spliffs in my teens. As I went through my twenties, making sure I had a bit of ‘puff’ was as essential as making sure I had milk, tea, bread and other basic necessities. The most I knew about where my hash came from depended on its name: Afghani Black or Nepalese Temple Ball, for instance. I had my clear preferences, but I was, by and large, as ignorant as the next person about how it was cultivated or ended up in my hands. Nor had I made the connection between hemp and hash. It wasn’t until I was in my early thirties that I learnt anything of consequence about what I smoked. And that happened because I ended up becoming a cannabis smuggler, purely by chance; a result of my skills and knowledge as a sailor. It opened my eyes to a world I hitherto knew nothing about and had never expected to enter.

I’m an inner/outer London boy by birth; Bexleyheath, twelve miles southeast of Charing Cross, was my first home when I was born in September 1950. At the age of four, I got my first taste of the ocean when my father joined the Canadian Air Force and my mother, younger brother and I set sail from Liverpool to Montreal to join him. I’m told that from the moment we arrived at the Port of Liverpool I was captivated by the many boats and ships of differing shapes and sizes. The docks already had two hundred years of existence, carrying goods and people into and out of Liverpool, from and to all the continents. Once on passage I never tired of just staring out at the sea, mesmerised by the vast expanses and eager to catch sight of marine life. It’s probably my first clear memory as a child. Before I was five years old, sailing and the sea were firmly in my heart. I didn’t know then that it was also in my genes. I was to learn that my father’s ancestors had fished the English Channel in search of herring in the distant past. Nor did I know then that sailing, fishing and the oceans, would become a large part of my adult life.

We spent five years living in various relatively remote Air Force bases throughout Canada, before my dad was posted to Germany and we returned to Europe. There was plenty of good outdoor life in both places, including vast expanses of water. I was to get my first experiences of sailing yachts on Lake Ontario not long after arriving. I also got a taste for ice hockey in Canada. I excelled at it, and was able to continue playing in Germany to the point where I was giving serious consideration to the prospect of trying for a professional contract when I turned sixteen. I never got the chance. My dad suddenly decided to take early retirement and return us all to his home town of Hastings on the south-east coast of England.

I was fifteen years old and entering a world I had only briefly heard about and only barely glimpsed from newspaper and television snippets. Aside from ending my dream of one day becoming a pro ice-hockey player, losing all of my mates again was the last thing I wanted to do. On the surface I was as angry as hell and seething with resentment. Underneath I was hurting. To add insult to injury, I was forced into the alien environment of an all-boys school. The rebel in me responded, leading me to abandon the academic studies that, up till then, I’d shown an aptitude for, although I’d also excelled at sport, art and woodwork.

At least Hastings was right on the coast, and a port town with a long and interesting history. Many long walks and hours spent on the beach and around the boats in the harbour helped to soothe my teenage angst. After a period of mal-adjustments of various sorts I began to appreciate that England wasn’t so bad after all. By the time my sixteenth birthday came around I’d worked out that, while perhaps I couldn’t do what I wanted, I could still have a lot of fun. I was, according to the fairer sex, handsome, charming and daring. I found myself in a sunny seaside town that also doubled as a popular music venue. The ‘Swinging Sixties’ were in overdrive. I was introduced to sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll as The Rolling Stones, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Genesis, Ten Years After, and Pink Floyd, among others, all performed in and around various Sussex towns.

It really was a great time to be young, free and single. I dived in head first to every hedonistic experience I could find or muster. This led to an extravagant and often hazy lifestyle, which in turn led to an extravagant wedding to a wealthy man’s daughter. I had only just turned twenty. It couldn’t, and didn’t, last. Despite the sincerity of my vows I was committing adultery before the wedding cake had been parcelled and posted. My infidelity didn’t stop there and it quickly became apparent to all and sundry that I was far from ready to settle down. I’d had a full-on, fun-filled hectic few years putting my ice-hockey disappointment behind me while embracing much of what ‘The Sixties’ had to offer. It wasn’t my intention to cause any upset or heartache, and I didn’t want any grief coming my way either. To escape the daily accruing flak I decided to do a runner to Palma, Majorca.

Spain had already become the place of choice for Brits looking for some fun in the sun. I’d heard that the Balearic island of Majorca was beautiful so that’s where I headed. When I got there I discovered, to my delight, that it was also the destination of choice for people from a lot of other countries. The place was pumping with holiday-makers from all over Western Europe. French, German, Scandinavian, Dutch, you name the country and Majorca had some fine examples of young ladies from those nations, tanning their bodies by day and looking to show off their tans at night. It was still a month or two short of the summer season when I arrived but the island was already doing a good job of being full on. I could not believe my good fortune, or wipe the grin from my face. Whatever residue of guilt I felt about my behaviour back in Blightly dissolved as quickly as the light and heat as I enjoyed my first Spanish sunset. When I landed it never crossed my mind how long I’d stay, and the first few months passed in what felt like days. The first season was over before I’d fully unpacked my suitcase.

The very first day I arrived I landed a job at a well-known and popular nightclub. In addition to the club, the owners also possessed two large and double-hulled catamarans. During the day, carefully selected bikini-clad girls of various European nationalities trawled the beaches selling tickets to a private beach barbecue, with live music, water sports and all the sangria and cerveza (beer) you could drink. The ticket price included the boat trip followed by pick-up and delivery straight to the nightclub, with free entrance and first drink on the house. The likes of Santana and Jose Feliciano were among the many groups who played regularly in Majorca, introducing a new kind of sound to the island that added to the slower pace and more relaxed atmosphere. In total, we’d take around 150 revellers, many abroad in the sun for the very first time, on each boat three times a week. The girls’ commission was the 10 per cent deposit they collected on the sale of the ticket. My job was to collect the remainder as the clubbers stepped aboard the catamarans.

I settled into my new lifestyle with ease and was soon introduced to speed (amphetamine), the drug of choice that allowed you to keep up with the many waking hours that life on the island encouraged. Before long I discovered a legally available Spanish slimming pill called Bustade that was sold over the counter in farmacias (chemists). They came in plastic tubes of forty tablets with twenty-five tubes to a box. Each tablet had about the same strength as a double Dexedrine (a common amphetamine at the time); taking three ensured you would be up all night and beyond. The other advantage was the mild comedown they gave you compared to other amphetamines. They were also very cheap and easy to get a hold of. While the girls were roaming around the island’s resorts selling tickets, on another commission they casually purchased boxes of Bustade for me from various farmacias. No one raised so much as an eyebrow. Why would they? Young girls buying slimming pills sold legally over the counter are not likely to cause concern. My sideline business was quickly booming as I offered my catamaran clientele the optional extra of a little pick-me-up when I took their barbecue money.

As well as selling the pills to party people, I started to stockpile them in large numbers in the rented villa where I lived. By then I’d decided to work the following season in Majorca, so my intention was to collect as much Bustade as I could then load them onto a friend’s yacht and sail back to England at the end of the following season in the autumn of 1972. I was absolutely certain that there would be just as much of a market for them back home, and that I could sell them for more than a favourable profit.

At the end of the 1971 summer season I secured a long-term lease on my villa before changing the locks without the landlord’s permission to ensure my stockpiled Bustade remained as secret and secure as possible. Then I headed home, spending a couple of weeks back in Hastings making my peace with everyone who’d felt the fallout from my disappearing act. While my wife of all of three months had been the proverbial woman scorned, and had filed for divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour, she was remarkably happy to see me and bore me no ill will. Relieved to have left no residue of bad feeling I then took myself off to Sweden to stay with Ingrid, a beautiful woman I’d met and become quite fond of in Majorca. Given the volume of women I’d worked my way through that summer, the law of averages meant that I’d fall for at least one of them. However, while Ingrid’s classic Scandinavian face and figure stood out a mile in Spain, in Malmö I found myself surrounded by stunning Swedish woman everywhere I went. Ingrid’s patience waned eventually, leaving me to head back to Majorca earlier than expected in the March of 1972. The hordes of European holiday-makers were already starting to return. I was glad to be back and all set for another few months of combining work and pleasure in the sun, not to mention continuing to build up my stock of Bustade.

All went according to plan until an English girl I’d been sleeping with went crazy when she found out that I wasn’t being the faithful dog she thought I was. Through her tears she informed the owner of the villa that my spare bedroom was full of drugs. He, the bastard, who up until then had had no problem with me and didn’t even know I’d changed the door locks, called the Guardia Civil. They raided the villa, confiscated the Bustade, arrested me and carted me off to Palma jail. I denied any knowledge of Spanish, and, after a few days of being left to stew, I was told by a man from the Consulate that they didn’t know what to do with me as the pills had been purchased legally. I also got a visit from the woman I’d wronged, tearfully apologising for landing me in the slammer. Not being one to bear a grudge, I assured her she had no reason to feel bad and apologised in return for denting her expectations. No point crying over spilt milk.

In their wisdom the Guardia decided to keep my entire stockpile of Bustade, and all the cash they’d found in a box under my bed, and deport me. After all, this was in the days of dear old General Franco. The next morning I was escorted in handcuffs, first on a ferry from Palma to Barcelona, and from there by rail to the French border where I was released in Le Perthus. All I had was the clothes I stood up in, a small bag of my belongings, and about thirty pounds in pesetas. I also got my passport back: stamped ‘DEPORTADA ESPANHA’.

Determined not to let the authorities have their little victory, I made my way to the local railway station and, as luck would have it, discovered there was a British Consulate in the nearby city of Perpignan. I destroyed my passport on the train journey, disposed of it in several public bins and then took myself straight to the Consulate. There I explained I’d lost my passport and wanted to apply for a new one. Backed up by my full birth certificate, I requested a temporary visitor’s passport, valid for one year. After answering a few standard questions with as much charm as possible, the pleasant young lady at the desk, with the okay from her superior, told me to get some photographs taken and that I’d be issued with the necessary documents the following day.

The next morning, with my new passport in hand, I purchased a train ticket – destination Barcelona. Passport control was carried out on the train. The official on board only gave my documents a fleeting glance. He might have been impressed enough by the colour of my sun-enriched skin and use of his native language to decide I was harmless enough. Or he might simply not have suspected anything untoward. Such thoughts passed through my mind before, during and after my passport was checked. At the same time, I recalled the scenes from The Great Escape when the SS were checking documents on board trains. It was a reminder of the importance of not appearing suspicious. Easier said than done, and not everyone’s forte, but, while I faced routine passport control and not the SS, I silently applauded my own nonchalant handling of what was a potential banana skin.

From Barcelona it was a short hop to the burgeoning resorts of Lloret de Mar and Sitges, with the equally popular resorts of Benidorm and Alicante a little further down the coast. I chose Lloret de Mar on account of the beautiful sea-swept bay and beach. The day after I arrived I landed a job in one of the resort’s busiest nightspots, just as I spent the last of my cash on a cerveza at the bar before asking if they needed any staff. The modus operandi of the place was much the same as in Palma, as it was, no doubt, in every holiday resort along the rest of the coast. Pretty, scantily clad girls sold tickets on the streets and beaches for a multitude of activities, from horse, boat and fishing treks, with food and booze thrown in, through to all-you-could-eat-and-drink open-air barbecues in the style of medieval banquets, plus various nightclub incentives and group deals.

The farmacias all sold exactly the same stock as in Palma, so it was back to business as usual for me. This time, however, it was on a slightly smaller scale, and with the existence of my operation and stash known only to me. For the last three months of the 1972 holiday season I visited as many different outlets that sold Bustade as I could, as often as I could get away with it. I was once again happily stockpiling the drug, and seeing out my second holiday season as a working Brit in Spain, when I got wind that the law on the sale of slimming pills over the counter was about to change. It was time to cash in and head back to Blighty with my stock. With no friend with a yacht to hand, I toyed with the idea of smuggling it back to England by road. But, having a bad feeling about the idea, I dismissed it. Even at that young an age I sensed and trusted my instincts.

I’d flown home once or twice over the past year and had been surprised by the casual way returning Spanish holiday-makers were patrolled. I was also amazed by the lack of any real customs controls at Gatwick Airport. The authorities seemed glad to get the place cleared as fast as possible of loud and drunk, giant sombrero-wearing, lobster-red lager louts and their equally pissed, burnt to a cinder, mini-skirted partners. It was the obvious way to get back home with goods undetected.

In those days it was possible to buy return flight tickets from the many people who came across to Spain for a week or a fortnight but decided to prolong their stay. At the airport there was never any serious check of a ticket-holder’s name against his or her passport. In almost every bar on the Costa there hung a pinboard with notices of flights for sale. One day in early October I bought a return ticket to Gatwick for ten pounds, along with two of the largest and cheapest suitcases I could find. At the airport I checked in amongst a horde of the usual revellers, minus the hat. The nerves were in attendance, but the gut instinct was telling me to go for it. In the departure lounge I made myself busy chatting to all and sundry, eventually settling on a couple of mod girls with Mary Quant-style haircuts. They came from Brighton of all places. On the plane I managed to swap seats with someone so I could end up sitting between the two young ladies I’d picked to be my friends. Two and a half hours and a few mini-bottles of vodka later we landed at Gatwick. After collecting our luggage we strolled arm in arm with one trolley through ‘Nothing to Declare’ without a care in the world. Forty-five minutes later I was on my way to Sussex. Back home.

Within a fortnight I’d sold my entire haul for £100 a box. Each box contained twenty-five phials and each phial contained forty tablets. It might have taken me two weeks to track down the guy known as ‘Phil the Pill’ but it took about two minutes to agree a price and do a deal for the 150 boxes I had with me. The next day I headed straight back to Spain to gather the remaining 150 boxes that Phil had also agreed to buy, repeating the actions of the first trip without a hitch.

I ended up with the best part of £30,000, minus some expenses, in late 1972 when I had just turned 22. The then prime minister, Edward Heath, had an official salary of just £20,000 at the time; although I’m sure his many perks bumped his earnings up royally. All I’d had to do was buy, transport, and sell on a slimming pill sold legally over the counter in Spain. Not bad for a first-time, solo smuggler. The process taught me that, despite being an absolute doddle, it had required a degree of nerve on my part, along with the belief to pull it off. I was more than a little pleased with myself, and although I had no immediate plans to smuggle again the seed was sown.

Chapter 2: Hooked, Line and Sinker

By most standards I found myself a wealthy young man in the early 1970s. Party-loving and gung-ho as I was, I had enough sense to put the majority of my easily gotten gains well out of harm’s reach. It still left me more than enough to get booted, suited and re-acquainted with the good life in England while I pondered my next move. That turned out to be Cornwall, since, before my Balearic tan had fully faded, I fell for the most gorgeous girl who happened to come from there. In January 1973, Senara was due for an operation on both of her big toes in order to correct a bone defect. She was going to need to convalesce as the procedure involved having both legs cast in plaster up to the knees.

Come mid-February we’d headed to her home county and rented ourselves a fisherman’s cottage perched high on a cliff in Port Issac on the north Cornish coast. There was a near sixty-mile stretch as the crow flies of rugged and raw coastline, all the way to Zennor, where my new love’s namesake, the early Christian St Senara, was patron. By now I’d come to learn that the sea had always been in my blood, handed down by a long line of fishermen and sailors. It had been in my heart since early childhood, a love that only grew in Hastings and along the Spanish Riviera. So it came as no surprise to me that I ended up in Cornwall. What was a surprise was my falling in love with the Cornish coastline. I couldn’t believe my luck at having the playground of my dreams right on my doorstep. While Cornwall couldn’t match Spain for

Reviews for Beyond Hercules

[babateetdad · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Purely a novel unrealistic and boring imo
It might be based on a real history but very bad put together

[Stephen Howe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mickey!!!....nooooooooooo!
??‍♂️??‍♂️??‍♂️??‍♂️??‍♂️??‍♂️??‍♂️??
Great read thoroughly enjoyed it. ??
Would recommend.