The Accountant's Story

by David Fisher

  Then Pablo specially called the principal people from both of those operations to come to the prison. Most of them were brought up the mountain secretly in the tunnel. “I am declaring an emergency,” Pablo told them, reminding them all that even in prison he was still the leader, the patrón, of the Medellín cartel. While the cartel of the old days was gone, Pablo meant all of the drug traffickers of Medellín. He told them that if they stayed calm nothing would happen to them—as long as they continued to pay their monthly quota, their tax.

  Pablo believed he had to take these steps to protect his own interests, which were being stolen from him. This was business, the people he was dealing with were equally guilty to him, so I don’t believe he thought the government would be protective of them. But it turned out they made a good excuse for the government to take the actions suggested by the United States.

  Pablo did not want to escape from the Cathedral. Inside we were all safe, outside there were many enemies waiting for all of us. It is clear to us why President Gavíria decided suddenly to take actions against us, and that was because the Cali cartel was pressuring the government through their political ties. We know letters were written from the Cali cartel to the minister of defense telling about the way all of us were living inside the prison: guests of all sorts coming at all times, good sports facilities, the fact that we had money and weapons and that Pablo had continued in the business. But it’s hard to believe the government did not already know about the way we lived inside the Cathedral. When stories about the deaths of Moncada and Galeano became known to the public there were complaints that the government was too weak to act, so perhaps Gavíria was embarrassed and felt he needed to show how tough he was. There were also comments made later that the government was forced to act when it learned Pablo was planning an escape. Pablo was not planning any escape. And then there was the pressure from the United States. The drug trafficking from our country to America had not decreased even slightly when Pablo surrendered, and when the news that he was living easy was made public the American government objected and offered even more assistance. Whatever the reasons, in July 1992, President Gavíria decided that Pablo had to be moved to a more difficult prison.

  Pablo had always been nervous about this possibility. He believed that the American DEA wanted to kidnap him and bring him to the United States. He even thought some of the planes that flew over the prison had been sent by the DEA to take pictures. I remember he read a book by the Charles Manson prosecutor that said the U.S. should send commandos to Colombia to kill the drug traffickers.

  I felt that this was coming two days before when the small priest came to warn me. For the first time I told Pablo the whole story, when the priest had visited me before and what had happened. Pablo believed me. I asked him, “Is it true that they are going to come for us?” I know he went to his informants in the government and army and they told him that indeed it was true. Someone at a very high level of the army told him he needed to move. Others told him that there was an order from the U.S. that either the Colombian government had to bring him to America or they would come to our country.

  The next few days there was a lot of preparation in case we had to leave quickly. There was a lot of nervousness those days, as if we were waiting for a tornado.

  It came as a breeze. We had set up a communication system that made it possible to find Pablo or myself wherever we were; we even had speakers above our beds. One morning at 10:15 we received a warning that four truckloads of military were coming up. Soon after we were officially informed that representatives of the government were coming to speak with us.

  Pablo and I started to get ready to leave in case we had to go. We knew it would be difficult in the daylight but there was nothing else we could do. One thing for sure, Pablo was not going to let them take him anywhere without a fight. At noon the assistant minister of justice, Eduardo Mendoza, and the director of prisons, Colonel Hernando Navas, got to the gate and explained that President Gavíria had ordered the army to search our bedrooms.

  Pablo remained polite, inviting these two men to come inside to discuss this situation. “I’m sorry,” he said to them. “But I have made a deal with the government of Gavíria. The police and the army are not permitted inside this prison. If you want, you can bring the regular prison officials to do this search, but I will not allow the army and even less the police. Please remember, gentlemen, I fought a war with the police and this policy is the result.”

  The assistant minister looked very upset. To make the situation more comfortable, Pablo offered to allow soldiers inside, but only without weapons. The two officials accepted this, but when contacted, the president refused. Breaking his pact with Pablo, he insisted the army enter with their weapons, that there could be no compromise. I think he was concerned he would look weak if he accepted Pablo’s offer.

  But Pablo was just as strong. “They can’t come inside with weapons,” he insisted. “No one’s coming in here armed to kill us.” The government men tried to calm the situation, but Pablo insisted: “We don’t know what their intentions are. I do not trust my life with them.” There was no solution to this standoff and we all waited to see what would happen. What happened was that the government sent many more soldiers, as well as helicopters and airplanes. We learned from sources that two loaded Hercules airplanes had left from Bogotá to Medellín, and already truckloads of soldiers from Bogotá were coming up the mountain to replace the troops from Medellín that were patrolling the prison’s perimeter.

  After dark the government officials decided to leave. “Let’s go to sleep tonight,” Mendoza said. “We’ll come back tomorrow to figure out how to solve this.” But just at that moment Pablo got a phone call from an army general we trusted. He informed Pablo that the government planned to capture or kill him, or even extradite him. Pablo took me aside and explained the situation knowing that we were the only two who knew what was going on. Our options were narrow. The first thing he decided was to keep the government officials as hostages. He explained to them: “I’m sorry, but you can’t leave here right now. We need you to ensure our own security while we figure out what to do.”

  The situation could be solved only by the president, but Gavíria refused to get on the telephone. Pablo’s lawyers tried many times to contact the president, but it was clear that the president had his own plan. Pablo did not want to leave the Cathedral, but he had no choice. We all believed the army wanted to come in and kill us. It was time to leave. All of us except me got armed with the weapons that had been hidden a long time, including a machine gun and rifles. Pablo had an Uzi on his right shoulder and his Sig Sauer stuck in his waistband. Without saying anything I left the prison building and slipped into the cool night. I was going to prepare our escape route. The fog was drifting in, which gave me some cover. Pablo and I had walked the perimeter of the prison many times, searching for the ideal place to get through the wire fence. We were convinced this was the only place in the entire perimeter we could leave unseen. Months earlier I had buried wire cutters near the place we had selected. The nearest soldiers were about eighty meters away. Pablo and I had carefully selected this place to go through the fence because it led directly to a gulley, a trench cut in the ground by a stream that served as a natural tunnel. The wire fence was thicker than I thought it would be, and much more difficult to cut. I had to be very quiet because sounds flow easily in the night. One of the most difficult challenges we faced was getting through the high-voltage fence. Everybody was worried they would be electrocuted, and truthfully they would have preferred to be shot dead instead of fried. My engineering knowledge allowed me to bypass this system. Eventually I cut a hole just barely large enough for our men to slip through one by one, and then I went back to the prison building.

  Inside the prison our hostages were terrified. They had been captured by Pablo Escobar so probably they abandoned hope. They were scared quiet and lost all skin color. Colonel Navas took a glass of whiskey and said, “This could
be the last whiskey I will drink in my life.” Then he went to a Bible and read Psalm 91. Finally he asked for a telephone and called his family to tell them goodbye. He told us he didn’t even know what his mission was when he was ordered to fly to Medellín.

  Later in the night Pablo ordered the prisoners taken to his bedroom. He had tried many times to contact the president, even through Father García, but Gavíria would not accept the phone calls. There was no longer a question of leaving for us. Pablo said clearly, “Either we flee or we all die.” Pablo and I went to the hidden room and packed ourselves with cash. We heard airplanes circling above and I flipped a switch that operated the lighting system I had installed, and the Cathedral went into darkness. The dark prison was lost in the fog. But inside the lights going off scared everyone, especially the hostages. It was explained to them this was necessary for security but I don’t know how much they accepted that.

  Outside it was very quiet. We could hear the birds and insects and occasionally a soldier yelling. Inside radio stations were broadcasting the story. They all got it wrong: One said the army had taken control of the Cathedral and there had been casualties. Another said Pablo had been captured and was already on an airplane to Florida. But all of them spoke of this military assault. They gave us some good information. Pablo used the mobile phone to speak with his family. The reports terrified them. “Don’t worry,” he told them. “Don’t listen to the news. The situation is being resolved directly with the president.” I called my children to tell them the same thing. And then Pablo and I both called our mother.

  We had thought about this night many times. Pablo always walked around with the laces of his sneakers open and we all used to say, the day Pablo ties his sneakers is the day we’re in real difficulty. There were already as many as two thousand soldiers surrounding the Cathedral. An air controller we paid informed us helicopters from Bogotá had landed in Medellín. Things were now happening fast. Pablo gathered all of us and told us who would be leaving and who would be staying. He picked the most fit knowing we would have to move fast. Then he bent over and tied the laces of his sneakers.

  He said to me, “Roberto, let’s put our radios on the same frequency.” We visited the hostages, told them to remain calm, that this situation would be solved without bloodshed. Then he told them he was going to sleep for a while and would see them again in the morning. There have been stories written that the guards were bribed and we just walked out the door, that Pablo and others were dressed as women, that we paid more than $1 million to leave. With all the soldiers around, many of them from Bogotá, bribing all of them would have been impossible. Instead, Pablo decided we would slip out of the prison one by one at five-minute intervals. It had started raining, so the dark of night, the thick fog, and the rain gave us good cover. Pablo went first and took a good position to see everything that was going on around him. I waited with the hostages a few minutes and told them that I was going to lie down. Then I went back to my room to make my final preparations.

  I put on boots, put new batteries in the radiophone, and took my transistor radio so I could hear the news. I finally put on my raincoat and my old bicycling hat with the message Bicicletas El Ositto, Bear Bicycles. It was time to leave. There were only a few things we left behind that mattered, for Pablo it was his collection of records by Elvis and Sinatra. I left the bicycles I loved and my mini-lab for cancer and AIDS research. I walked slowly through the dark, empty building. It was a strange feeling. I looked for the lights of the city below the mountain, but Medellín was hidden in the fog.

  I walked toward the fence where I thought Pablo and the others were waiting, but something happened. In the dark I got confused, I got lost. And for the first time that night, I felt panic. I felt completely alone. There wasn’t much I could do, I couldn’t make a sound because the soldiers were too close. Like in a race, I took deep breaths to find a place of calm inside me. I knew Pablo would never leave without me. He had often told me that he would not leave. I walked slowly—and finally saw movement. It was one of our people.

  They were all outside. I slipped through the fence and joined them. It was almost 2 A.M. As we left I heard some panicky shouts and thought it was the priest warning me that we had to get moving. Slowly, but gradually, we went down the mountain, careful to keep our footing on the wet ground. One slip could mean death.

  It was a difficult descent. There was a large straight rock face we had to climb down. The biggest and strongest went first, and allowed other men to stand on their shoulders to make a human ladder. That part completed, we found a steep slope covered with thick, thorny brush. We pushed on as silently as possible through the bushes, holding hands to make a chain. We kept moving forward toward the morning, not knowing where we were going. Finally, after more than two hours we came into a clearing near a stable. The fog had thinned. We paused and looked around, and were stunned and dismayed to discover that we were only a few hundred meters from the prison. We had almost been going around in a circle. If anyone had been looking in this direction from the prison they easily could have seen us. If they were shooting, we were an easy target.

  The one advantage we had was that seven of us were wearing army camouflage uniforms and if people in the distance saw them they probably would have mistaken them for the army. Pablo figured we had less than two hours to find safe cover, so we began moving faster. Looking back over our shoulders, the Cathedral looked so big, so strong, like from some movie. We managed to snake down the hill into the neighborhood of El Salado by daylight. The city was coming alive, people were leaving their homes to go to work, and children were on their way to school. For them it was a normal day, for us it was the end of our old lives as we walked into the unknown. Once again we were fugitives of justice.

  We were filthy, covered with mud and sweating, our clothes torn. The people who saw us thought we were ordinary street people. No photographs of Pablo had been seen by the public in more than a year and he had gotten heavier, so no one recognized him. The rest of us were not known. Pablo decided to go to the farm of Memo Pérez, an old friend who had worked for him in many different important positions.

  Memo’s groundskeeper answered the door. After a second of shock he recognized us and quickly had us come in. It was the first time we could relax since the government came to the Cathedral. We were wet and exhausted. But within the hour there was a heavy banging on the door. We grabbed our weapons and got ready for the fight as the butler, Raúl, opened the door. It was some neighbors who had seen us move in, coming with hot food for our breakfast. It was an amazing gesture. Several of these people formed a neighborhood watch for us, standing on the nearby streets to warn us if the army arrived. Someone else took our filthy clothes and washed them as we cleaned ourselves and shaved. By the time we put on our fresh clothes we felt refreshed and ready for whatever happened next.

  We learned from the radio what had happened on the top of the mountain. At about 7 A.M. Gavíria had ordered General Gustavo Pardo Ariza, commander of the Fourth Brigade, to attack. The radio said that as they burst through the main door they screamed that everyone should get on the ground, but when the commander of the prison guards tried to fight back he was shot and killed. Months later we would learn the truth that he had turned to open the door and was shot. The army then stormed through the prison, shooting and setting off explosives looking for us. They discovered the hostages safe in Pablo’s bedroom, but still they continued shooting and tearing up the place. They captured the five of us who had stayed behind, and arrested twenty-seven guards on suspicion of cooperating with us. The radio reported that the purpose of the raid was to move Pablo out of the Cathedral to a more secure prison.

  While this was going on we were enjoying fresh coffee. We could hear the helicopters circling above the city. We knew we couldn’t move again until dark. We felt no joy or excitement about our escape. We believed we were forced to flee, that the government had broken its agreement and there was no way of knowing what would be d
one to us. There was nothing else we could do if we wanted to live.

  I called my son Nicholas from the radiophone. I gave him number hints so he would know which frequency to switch to so we could talk safely. When we had contact I told him to call the national network Radio Caracol and tell them Pablo and I were hiding in a secret tunnel beneath the prison and that we were well armed and had enough food to hold out for a month. Nicholas also told the reporter Dario Arizmendi that Pablo was willing to surrender if we were guaranteed that we would be returned safely to the Cathedral and the original terms of surrender respected.

  Inside the prison the government forces heard this interview and began searching for this secret tunnel. They started digging with heavy construction equipment and using explosives in the fields to find it. Pablo stood at windows of the farm looking at the mountain. “The only thing they’re going to find is the money in the barrels,” he said, meaning the $10 million we’d buried. Pablo wasn’t concerned about that, his thoughts were about what our next steps should be. He wanted to surrender again, but only with the same guarantees as before.

  We waited throughout the day, listening as the reports on the radio became more frantic. Someone told the radio station that Pablo had ordered the killing of the attorney general, defense minister, and other officials if the government continued to pursue us. Other people phoned in bomb threats supposedly from us. It was ridiculous. In the afternoon I called the station and told them that Pablo had made no threats to anyone, that all we wanted was to return to the former situation—with protection. It didn’t matter; the whole city was in a panic. Schools in Bogotá held bomb evacuation drills, people went to the stores to buy groceries afraid that stores would be forced to close. At night the president went on TV and told people to be calm, promising if we surrendered he would protect our lives and defending his policy of giving leniency to drug traffickers who gave up. But he did not promise to restore the situation.