The Accountant's Story (20 page)

We were soaked and very exhausted but we knew we had to keep moving. This was on the run like never before. Helicopters were in the sky looking for us. We kept going into the safety of the night. Finally we put up the tents and covered them with brush to make them invisible in the light. Just so things could be worse, it started to rain hard. It was so cold, so cold. We had to sleep next to each other to keep our bodies warm. I was still carrying the suitcase full of money and that night I used it as a hard pillow. The smell of the damp money under my head was terrible. It was then I thought that money made such little difference in life. I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in my hands but there was nowhere I could get the small things we needed most, dry blankets and warm food. I was ready to burn the money to keep us warm.

The days of Napoles and the great parties seemed very far behind us. Now it was just surviving.

Late in the night suddenly we heard a huge explosion. We all got up and were ready to move quickly. I said to Pablo, “Oh man, I think they’re bombing us!” Pablo and one of our people went to look for the damage. It wasn’t a bomb. A giant rock had been loosened in the rain and tumbled down the mountain. It bounded on a ledge and flew right over us, crashing into the trees and knocking them down all the way to the river. I said we should move our base, but Pablo decided that one rock had gone over us; chances of another rock following that path were small. But if we moved we might move right into the path of another rock. No one slept soundly that night.

In the morning we began walking. We were moving through thick jungle. A couple of times we saw poisonous snakes, frogs, and other wild animals that added to the danger. But they kept their distance. We walked for two days, taking water from the lakes but all we had to eat was some chocolate and peanuts, because we were running out of supplies, and some of the others guys were way behind. Our blankets and tents had been made useless. We were very uncomfortable. Eventually we walked right into territory controlled by the guerrilla group FARC 47. We didn’t encounter any of the guerrillas, but we did discover a small supply area with hammocks, food and water, and some guns. I believe that discovery saved our lives. We ate like crazy and took turns sleeping in the hammocks. While Otto was sleeping a tarantula walked on him and settled on his chest. Otto still slept. Pablo saw it and put a piece of wood in front of Otto’s face, and when the giant spider walked on it Pablo tossed it away.

We were new again, and we walked some more, reaching the very small town of Santa Isabelle. It was full of guerrillas and they welcomed us. We slept there, shaved, and ate bread, eggs, and pasta, especially lots of pasta. The guerrillas hid us in their houses. Because they didn’t want to risk anybody calling the police they took us to another small town, St. Carlos, where our employees José Fernando and Guayabita were waiting in a truck to take us to El Peñol, where Pablo owned a farm. Finally we settled there.

The thirty-day walk had made some of us badly sick with coughing and fevers. My own fever was very high and I didn’t know where I was. They took me to a hospital under a made-up name. For three days I was unconscious with the fever. They would give me cold showers to cool me down. Sometimes I would wake up screaming, demanding to see Pablo. Fortunately, no one knew the Pablo I was calling for was the most wanted man in the world.

Pablo also was sick but he stayed at the farm. For security there Pablo hired a gang from Medellín to protect the people while they recovered.

We had lost some of our men during our journey but again we had escaped the wave of police and soldiers searching for us. After we got better Pablo and I and a few of the top men like Otto moved back into the comforts of Medellín.

Not too long after the walk through the jungle Pablo decided to change his whole security situation from a big number to only a few. Rather than moving with as many as thirty people, he used only two, which made it much easier to travel around and kept us more discreet. Sometimes we stayed at the homes of regular people that we trusted, couples with no children in the house. When we moved around in the city we often wore different costumes. Some people said that Pablo dressed as a woman, but that was false. We wore fake mustaches, sometimes wigs, always different types of clothing. We would pretend to be a doctor or a laborer fixing roads; sometimes we drove our own cabs. Very few people knew where we were staying. When we had meetings with government representatives or our lawyers to try to work out a good arrangement, usually they were at farms and houses outside the city. The people who went there were always taken with their eyes covered.

One night I will never forget for my whole life was December 1, 1990, Pablo’s birthday. We were staying in a nice home and the bodyguards with us were Otto and El Gordo, the fat one. It was nice to be calm after everything we’d been through. There were few days when we were free to be happy. At breakfast everybody was saying “Happy Birthday” to Pablo. He was happy that day, feeling confident that the government would soon be ready to make a deal. He said to me, “I’m going to have a party tonight and I’m going to bring in an orchestra. I want live music.”

Naturally I believed he was kidding. It would be impossible to bring musicians to the house. Once they left the first thing would be to call the police, to collect the reward. The police were not interested in putting us in jail, they wanted us dead. I was concerned. “With all respect, Pablo,” I asked, “how are you going to bring this group?”

Pablo was smiling. “Don’t worry. Just trust me. It’ll be okay.”

Pablo and I never argued. But this made no sense to me. Sometimes Pablo thought he couldn’t be captured, but this was like giving the canary to the cat. We were watching television in the afternoon when Pablo called El Gordo and told him to get the group. “Cut it out, Pablo,” I told him. “It’s not funny anymore.” But he insisted, sending El Gordo.

The people of the house were really worried. I went upstairs to prepare my clothes to leave. I tried once again to talk Pablo out of this crazy idea. I told him, “You’re my baby brother and I love you, but I don’t understand this. I’m staying with you until the group shows up. I’m going to listen to a couple of songs and then I’m going to be out of here. I’m already packed. I have a suitcase with money and I have another place to go. But I’m not going to stay with you.”

We spoke for about an hour. It was a very sentimental talk, and Pablo told me, “I love you too, brother. You have been with me in all my problems, it’s not fair that you leave on my birthday.” And then he smiled mischievously. In my mind this was the time we were going to go apart. Pablo went downstairs and I could hear everyone laughing and having a good time. I took a shower and came downstairs with my suitcase and it was then I saw the six blind men playing their guitars.

All of them, blind. They could not know who they were playing for. I didn’t know whether to laugh or be sad or be angry. But that was so Pablo. Everybody was having a blast, and no one thought that Pablo could pull something like this. It was so astute. For the meal he had ordered all kinds of seafood, lobster and octopus and four bottles of the Portuguese wine, port. He invited the musicians to join us, and he was very happy to share his birthday with this group.

At the end of this party the musicians were ready to sing “Happy Birthday” but they asked to know the name of the man celebrating his birthday. Suddenly everyone was silent. But Pablo stood up and said, “All right, I don’t want you to be afraid, but you are singing to Pablo Escobar.” The musicians didn’t believe this, but nonetheless they sang to Pablo.

When they were finished singing, Pablo told me to give them each $20,000. I handed them the cash. Now they believed it was Pablo. I remember watching them feeling the bills, but they couldn’t figure out what they were because they were so used to the size of Colombian money. “That’s U.S. money,” Pablo explained, and then he gave them the same warning given to anyone he paid: Be careful, don’t bring the whole amount to one place. Go with somebody you trust, cash the money in small amounts, and don’t mention my name. Otherwise you’re going to get in real trouble.

There was no danger with these people. El Gordo and Otto returned them home. Even if they told that they had played for Pablo Escobar, they didn’t know where they were taken. Of course not, they were blind.

Amazingly, through all this time the business continued. Nothing stopped the business from growing. The biggest problem remained smuggling even more and more product into the United States. In 1989 Pablo and pilot Jimmy Ellard purchased an old DC-3, which could make the flight from Colombia all the way to Nova Scotia in Canada. The plan was that from Nova Scotia the product would be driven over the U.S. border to New York City. But on the airplane’s test flight an employee did not pay some dollars to a local radar guy and the plane became visible to Colombian air force radar. As the DC-3 landed, military jets raced out of the sky and shot it into pieces with tracer bullets. For a stupid $20,000. Through the years the organization had used every type of airplane, from the Piper plane on top of the gate at Napoles to multi-engine jets, to planes specially built by Domínguez out of parts of other airplanes for the drug flights. Pablo’s “air force” had more planes flying than most countries. But then Ellard began searching for a stealth airplane that could not be seen on any radar. The dream was a plane with only a little metal; they made a deal to buy a Rutan Defiant, a special plane constructed almost completely of plastic. They also were going to replace the metal propellers with plastic propellers and cover it with radar-absorbent paint. But during the first flight the top of the canopy popped open and material flew out hitting the back propeller and making such tremendous damage the plane was no longer usable.

But the profits remained so large even losses like these were easily accepted.

No matter what we did or where we went during these years, we lived constantly with the possibility of death coming around the next corner. That was true for all the leaders from Medellín. Pablo was forced to feel that in December of 1989. Pablo and the Mexican, Gacha, had remained in good contact with each other, maybe because there was nobody else with the equal of their power. The government had made the two men, Escobar and Gacha, the biggest targets of its war on the drug traffickers. Everyone agreed that they couldn’t stop the river of cocaine flooding into America, but they could make people think they were having success by getting these two leaders. The United States had given the Colombian government more than $60 million and helped build up the army to catch them, mostly leaving the Cali cartel and other groups from Bogotá and the northern regions of the country alone. Our president, Virgilio Barco, was also criticized a lot by the U.S. for not doing more to stop the drug smuggling. Colombia was taking houses and bank accounts and cars, but the leaders were not being caught. So the U.S. applied more pressure on Colombia to give them big names to put in their headlines.

The Mexican and Pablo had each built their security armies for protection and fighting back against their enemies. So everyone who came near them was watched closely, everywhere they moved was searched. But the one weak spot that Pablo had, that Gacha had also, was for their families. They would do anything for their families. This was the place that the government knew they could be touched. In the end this was the lesson that Pablo never learned.

The story told by the police was that Gacha’s seventeen-year-old son, Fredy, had been captured in a raid in September. The biggest charge against him was being the son of a man they wanted desperately. But the legal charge they made against him was for possessing illegal weapons. After two months they secretly released him, but from then on they followed him until he went to his father at a small ranch in Tolu, about an hour south of Cartagena. And then they sent an army against Gacha. The way the Mexican died is still a question. Was he killed by gunfire from the army or by his own hand? Did he die fighting or escaping? Also killed was his son and fifteen soldiers of his security force.

After Gacha was killed by the police, 15,000 ordinary people crowded the streets of Gacha’s town of Pacho to pay tribute to him as he was buried. They surrounded the cemetery to keep out the curious, and allowed the family to have its privacy from the media. Pablo was hurt by Gacha’s death. He had warned him that there was a snitch in the organization, but Gacha did not believe him. Pablo felt sure the informant was a friend and partner. There are stories that this was the real way the Mexican was found.

By this time Pablo had seen a lot of killing and so he accepted it without much emotion. Did he see in it his own fate? Pablo had always understood the penalties for his actions, and nothing he ever said or did made me believe he was afraid of his own death. I think if this battle did anything it made him positive that he had to continue inflicting such terrible damage on the government that they would agree to find a means to stop the violence. The government would have to change the constitution to prevent extradition, and Pablo would serve time in prison, pay a huge fine—and then be free. We had several lawyers and priests negotiating with the government for us. In this way the negotiations went on and on for several months.

The war was expanded on January 13, 1987. Pablo had built for himself and his family the most beautiful home in the richest and most secure area of Medellín. It was the five-story building that he had named Monaco. One floor was a dining room, one floor was the master bedroom, one floor was the penthouse. Inside were sculptures and paintings from Picasso, Botero, the Ecuadoran painter Guayasamín and other well-known artists worth many millions of dollars. The floors were of imported marble. Everything was made from the best materials.

Monaco was very secure. It was built from reinforced steel. It had the first security camera system in Colombia and there were monitors all over the building. We had told the architects and engineers to include some safe rooms for members of the family to hide in case killers got into the building. Pablo used to call Monaco his castle.