when i first heard the story the thing
that occurred to me was that wow
it has all the elements of a hollywood
thriller a villain
a good guy a plot that clips along
obviously someone's going to make a
movie out of this
[Music]
my name is meijong i am a special
correspondent at
vanity fair magazine and this is a story
of how
carlos gustin escaped from japan
it's the spring of 2019 carlos gussen
the ceo of nissan is under house arrest
in
tokyo japan he's awaiting trial for a
variety of financial crimes
including embezzlement using
company resources to fund a lavish
lifestyle
he has apartments in brazil
lebanon tokyo as well in japan the house
arrest is especially
difficult for gusen a man who's enjoyed
various privileges of which include
being able to move around freely
he is not doing very well since his
arrest
the japanese criminal justice system has
come under scrutiny
the conviction range is 99.4
which is meant to be a higher conviction
rate than the conviction rate in north
korea
he's realized that you know it's
entirely possible that i might be forced
to stay in tokyo for
possibly all of my natural life and then
out of the blue he receives a phone call
from an acquaintance
the man will call ali ali calls gusen
and explains that i actually know a guy
whose job is to get people out
of sticky situations would you be
interested
gusson of course says by all means go
ahead
he is kind of anxiously excited um this
is sort of the only shot he thinks he
has
for leaving japan
meanwhile in america a man named michael
taylor
a former member of the american special
forces is going about his day
when he receives a phone call from the
same ali
ali is an old acquaintance of taylor
they had met
many moons ago in iraq during the war
taylor had helped ali briefly and hadn't
heard from him in 10 years and was quite
surprised to hear from him ali goes
listen
we got a guy he's close to us he's in
trouble can you help him out
you know it depends i need more
information ali is
being cagey and keeps prodding
taylor for yes or no ali is
unwilling to provide any more
information
for st taylor to go up on his own to
conduct his own research
taylor has since left the military has
entered
the private contracting world which a
lot of military men do
you know he gets these phone calls all
the time all taylor knows is that
the man is lebanese very well off
and is in trouble and it turns out that
with those criteria it's actually not
too hard to find out
that the man in question might be carlos
custon
once taylor figures this out he calls
ali back taylor ends up meeting with
carol gussen
carlos gussen's wife in beirut in
lebanon
and this is where carol starts
explaining to taylor
her version of events which is that you
know her husband has been
unjustly persecuted in japan
and everything that's happened to him is
a kind of a corporate ploy
to get him out of a
traditional japanese company that has
always been very homogenous for a very
long time
carol is also the one who tells taylor
about the
japanese criminal justice system taylor
goes away and starts doing his own
research
and he is quite stunned by what he sees
he realizes that you know here's an
opportunity for me to
write a kind of wrong then he calls ali
back and says
yes i'll do it i'll take the job so the
first thing that taylor does is to start
to assemble a team he begins by calling
his old army buddies
and he recruits everyone from experts in
airport security
i.t and police she's recruiting as a for
heist movie he has his team now
he has a deputy they're working
to figure out what needs to be done
there's
only really two ways out of japan by c
or by air they decide against the c
option because
a would take too long and b because
taylor believes that gussen
is unfit for travel for that length of
time
so that leaves them with air travel they
are unable to fly commercial because
carlos gussen is in fact a household
name and will be recognized
which leaves them with the private jet
option so taylor and his men are calling
around
all the private companies in the world
to see if they might
be open to harboring a fugitive and
most of them currently you know politely
at times tell them
tell them no and then they chant upon a
company that
has a certain reputation a turkish
private jet company
that has been known to
work in venezuela working around the
american sanctions and tailor things you
know this might be
this might be our guy they give them a
call
and the jet company comes back saying
you know we've done
this before how can we be of service
the next piece of the puzzle is how do
you smuggle out
a grown man who weighs 165 pounds
and it turns out that eventually you get
to a box
what taylor does is he gets two concert
speaker boxes custom made
that would typically fit a concert
speaker and he ensures that both of them
are big enough
for carlos gustin to fit into and with
that
they're ready
so the day of the escape arrives taylor
and
his associate george zayek an old friend
who
is also a colleague flies from dubai
to japan specifically to osaka airport
the private terminal there does not have
a scanner that is big enough for
the cargo boxes to fit through and of
course this was part of
taylor's plan when they arrive in osaka
they take the two cargo boxes
and load them onto a van the van takes
taylor and zayek to a nearby hotel where
they
drop off the boxes change clothes and
head for a train heading for tokyo so on
the train to tokyo
taylor's phone begins an unexpected
software update and his first thought is
i wonder if the nsa knows i bet they're
on to me and this is obviously a huge
problem because
without his phone he has no way of
keeping in communication with the rest
of his team
so meanwhile carlos gussen leaves his
tokyo apartment wearing a surgical mask
and a toque
and heads for the grand hyatt hotel and
the police weren't suspicious because
the grand hyatt
is one of the few places where gussen
who remains under house arrest
is allowed to go once gusen arrives at
the hotel
he follows instructions that have been
given to him days prior which is to go
upstairs to a room
where taylor and zayak are waiting for
him gusen changes into
new clothes and the three men leave the
hyatt heading for
the train station to return to osaka
once they get to the hotel in osaka this
is where gusson climbs into one of the
two boxes
and the now two men returned to the
airport
taylor very deliberately arrives with
only 20 minutes to spare
and as a result they are risked through
security
and customs the boxes are not x-rayed
because as taylor presently
suspected they don't have scanners big
enough to fit those boxes through
so once they get onto the plane taylor
goes back to the luggage hold he cracks
open the box that gusson is in
he takes a towel that is lying nearby
and props it open and whispers to guston
that
i will be back for you once it's wheels
up at 11 30 the flight leaves it takes
off from osaka
and flies through chinese and russian
airspace which is
a specific ask that taylor submitted
knowing
that there is no extradition treaty
between
china and russia and japan so soon after
the flight takes off
taylor goes back to the luggage hold to
check on
gussen and he sees that gussen has
already
let himself out of the box and is
sitting cross-legged atop the box
gridding
year to year the rest of the flight is
uneventful taylor sits guard
while gusen sleeps and eats and drifts
back into sleep again
and eventually they land in istanbul
gustin makes a connecting flight to
beirut where his family awaits him
there are no thank yous and no goodbyes
taylor is more interested in getting the
job done
so the plan is a success gusen
is no longer in japan and safely at home
in lebanon
the news of gusen's escape breaks in
lebanon pretty immediately
michael taylor's name gets out quite
quickly as well
japan on the other hand does not hear
about this news until the following
tuesday
the reason is that the the cctv cameras
in front of his house is not a live feed
and it is only checked once a week
and of course this is part of taylor's
plan once japan learns that gustan has
escaped they issue a warrant for his
arrest
the interpol gets involved as well so
taylor leaves though for a while in
lebanon but eventually he does fly back
to
new england to rural massachusetts in
early spring months later in
mid-may taylor is sound asleep and is
shook and awake by his 27 year old son
peter
u.s marshals are at the front door to
arrest both of them
and so it transpires that peter taylor
had in fact been involved in
carlos gustin's escape it had been peter
who had
rented the hotel room at the grand hyatt
in tokyo unbeknownst to taylor the tokyo
prosecutor's office
had submitted a request for extradition
of both michael taylor and his son peter
taylor
and in the whole time that michael
taylor and peter taylor had been laying
low
this extradition request had been making
its way through all the various channels
taylor is unsuspecting he's shocked to
his corps
that he is being arrested on american
soil by
us authorities on a crime that may or
may not have been committed
in japan he quickly assembles him and
his lawyers a dream team of
defenders but the chances even to them
it doesn't look great for various
reasons
one being that the japanese legal system
does make it quite difficult for
people to post bail but also because of
the nature of michael
taylor's alleged crime in the end after
the great escape the mastermind
michael taylor it turns out didn't even
receive a dime
this obviously surprised me and i asked
him why did you do it
he told me depresso lieber which is a
special forces motto
meaning he was liberating the oppressed