The photos are seen by the entire world: Escobar and Rodríguez Gacha loading seven and a half tons of coke onto a plane on a landing strip owned by the “Nica” government. One of the pilots of the organization—now baptized the “Medellín Cartel” by the Americans—had fallen into the DEA’s hands. His name is Federico Vaughan. The DEA promised to help reduce his sentence to the minimum if he returned to Nicaragua as if nothing had happened, with cameras hidden in the plane’s fuselage. The U.S. government would have photographic evidence that Pablo Escobar and his associates really are drug traffickers, and they could present official requests to the Colombian government for their extradition. But for the Americans, there is something else much more important than chucking Escobar, Ochoa, Lehder, and Rodríguez Gacha into a cell and throwing away the key: the evidence that the Sandinista junta is involved in narcotics trafficking, something that could morally justify military interventions in an area of the world that is quickly becoming a hotbed of threats to them—a belt of dictatorial, communist, military, or corrupt governments that could spread and prompt massive migration to the United States. In Mexico’s case, the eternally dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is overtly sympathetic to Fidel Castro and some of the most leftist governments in the world. That nation with the strongest cultural identity in all Latin America—“so far from God and so close to the United States”—is also becoming an obligatory drug trafficking route that enriches not only the big Aztec bosses but also a police force and military famed to be among the most corrupt on earth.
With the photos of Pablo and Gonzalo in Nicaragua, the first chapter of the Iran-Contra affair has just been written, along with the beginning of the end of General Manuel Antonio Noriega’s era in Panama. When I see them in all the world’s newspapers, I thank God that Pablo didn’t take me with him to Nicaragua on his first trip, or after Minister Lara’s murder, and especially not now. He is starting to use ever more anti-American language against Reagan’s government, and I harbor a deep-seated fear that in time the man I love will become one of the most wanted men in the world, because while it’s true his best quality is his unique ability to anticipate everything that’s bearing down on him and to prepare a crushing counterattack, his worst defect is an utter lack of humility in recognizing and correcting his mistakes, and an even greater inability to measure the consequences of his actions.
One day, Gloria Gaitán announces she’s going to bring the journalist Valerio Riva, who’s visiting from Rome, to see me. They arrive at my house with cameramen in tow, set up some lights, and almost without my permission, the Italian starts to interview me for his country’s TV. Then, he tells me that the producers Mario and Vittorio Cecchi Gori—the most powerful in Italy, along with Dino De Laurentiis—are interested in making a movie about Pablo Escobar’s life. I say I’ll give them an answer as soon as Pablo is back from Australia, and after I meet with Riva and the producers in Rome, where I plan to travel soon. Yes, to Rome and to Madrid, because while the days of separation have been turning into another two months without hearing from Pablo, I’ve decided that this time I’ve had enough, and I’m not going to wait for him to get tired of “those ugly guys in uniform” or the beauty queen of the moment. And I’ve accepted an invitation to go to Europe from Gilberto Rodríguez, who does miss me a lot and can’t talk to me over the phone. Whom does he have in Madrid to talk to about “La Piña” Noriega and Daniel Ortega, about Joseph Conrad and Stefan Zweig, about the M-19 and the FARC, about Peter the Great and Toscanini, the Mexican and the PRI, about his favorite works of art—Sophia Loren and all the Renoirs—about the convict banker Jaime Michelsen and Alfonso López Michelsen, about Kid Pambelé and Pelé, about Belisario Betancur and the Beast, and the correct way to eat asparagus? And who else can I talk to about Carlos Lehder, the informant pilot Barry Seal, the CIA, and another ton of subjects I’ve been suppressing, without my interlocutor running for the hills?
A few days before I leave, I pass by Raad Automobiles, owned by my friend Teddy Raad, whose wedding Aníbal Turbay and I had been in. Like the painter Fernando Botero, the decorator Santiago Medina, and the helicopter salesman and art dealer Byron López, the Raads have gotten very rich providing the emerging classes with luxury goods—in his case, Mercedeses, BMWs, Porsches, Audis, Maseratis, and Ferraris. I stop in to admire a few cars on sale for a quarter million and up, and I ask Teddy how often he sells one.
“I sell a Mercedes a day, Virgie, though it’s another thing for them to pay me! But who’s going to tell these guys they can’t get a car on credit, when every time they ‘crown’ a delivery, they come the next day to buy half a dozen? Look, here comes one of our best clients, Hugo Valencia, from Cali.”
Hugo is the archetype and embodiment of the mafioso, the kind held in contempt by all the upper classes and honest people of Colombia: he’s around twenty-five years old and has an insolent gaze, his skin is very dark, and he’s utterly sure of himself. He’s about five foot three, and he sports seven gold chains around his neck, four on his wrists, and enormous diamonds on both pinkie fingers. He looks happy as can be, he’s ostentatious and very friendly, and I like him right from the first moment. And even better the second, when he says, “Aren’t you classy, Virginia! And you’re going to Rome? Well, it just so happens…I desperately need someone with perfect taste, someone who can convince the owner of Brioni to send a tailor to Cali with a million samples to take my measurements, because I want to order about two hundred suits and three hundred shirts. Would you be offended if I gave you an advance of $10,000 for putting you out like that? And, incidentally: Where do you get those jewels you wear on the covers of all those magazines? Because I want to buy them by the ton for all my girlfriends, who are divine! Though not like you, of course…”
With pleasure, I agree to do him the favor, and I promise to bring him back several pairs of Gucci shoes as gifts. And since today I want to see everyone happy, I forget about the theft of Pablo’s suitcase, and I send Hugo to Clara and Beatriz so they can help him cover his girlfriends with diamonds and rubies, and in the process earn a small fortune for themselves. We are all enchanted with him and his enormous ego, and we baptize him “the Kid.” Another person who is fascinated with Hugo and his liquid millions is that young president of the Banco de Occidente, the one who considered the Valle del Cauca’s royal family of drug trafficking to be “a bunch of filthy mafiosos.” When the brilliant banker makes friends with the Kid, he decides that in the eyes of his Panamanian branch, Hugo Valencia is indeed a successful businessman, not “a disgusting narco” with competing banks in Colombia and Panama, like Gilberto Rodríguez.
Before going to Madrid, I stop in Rome for the meeting with Valerio Riva and the Cecchi Gori producers. The latter don’t show up, but the aspiring scriptwriter for the film about Il Robin Hood Colombiano invites me to a Sunday lunch in the country house of Marina Lante della Rovere, who tells me she is a very good friend of the ex-president Turbay, Aníbal’s uncle, and now the Colombian ambassador to the Holy See.
The next day, a horrified Alfonso Giraldo shows me one of the major newspapers with commentary on my TV interview: Valerio Riva has described me as the “lover of Latin American tycoons.” While we go shopping along Via Condotti, Via Borgognona, and Via Frattina, my dear friend, a conversant and fervent Catholic, begs me to confess all my sins to him.
“Darling, tell me who they are right now. Because if the four boyfriends I know about are tycoons, I am the cardinal of Brunei! Don’t tell me that the boy with the hundreds of ponies and the thousand grooms turned out to be the man with the pack of giraffes, the herd of elephants, and the private army. I think you’re on the road to perdition, and we urgently need to go to lunch with a prince, like my friend Giuseppe, the legendary Luchino Visconti. They filmed Il Gattopardo in his Palermo palazzo, and Queen Isabel stays there when she visits la Sicilia.”
Laughing, I explain that I have the Midas touch when it comes to the products I recommend,
the magazines that put me on their covers, and the men I love, and so my ex-boyfriends have become the five richest men in Colombia. It isn’t any fault of mine, but rather of their own ambition. And to reassure him, I tell him that I already left that barbarian with the ponies and the zoo, and that the owner of two banks is waiting for me in Madrid with his partner, another multimillionaire who breeds Thoroughbred horses and whose family is, according to Forbes and Fortune, the sixth richest in the world.
“Can’t ask for anything more chic than that, Poncho!”
He asks if the Brioni suits are for the banker, because elegant men have always worn Savile Row.
“No, no, no. Leave those British tailors to Sunny Marlborough, Westminster, and Julio Mario! This is just a favor I promised to do for a ‘baby’ in Cali, who’s very newly rich and has his hands full with fifteen-year-old girlfriends. He’s the exact opposite of that untamed stud who couldn’t care less about luxury clothes, gold watches, and all those things he thought were for ‘maricas.’ ”
I tell the manager of Brioni about the Kid’s generosity—and that of his hundreds of colleagues. I also regale him with tales of Cali women’s legendary beauty, the weakness the models have for Italians who work in the world of high fashion, the elegant sugar tycoons in the Cauca Valley, the salsa clubs in Cali, and the climate in neighboring Pance. His eyes bulge: he says he’s seen a vision of the Virgin Mary, gives me a ton of gifts, and reserves his first-class ticket on Alitalia for the following Sunday.
I have lunch with Alfonso and Prince San Vincenzo on the terrace of the Hassler; here, at midday, a golden gauze floats above the old eternal rose that is Rome. Near the entrance to the restaurant, all the Fendi sisters are happily celebrating one of their birthdays. Asking a Sicilian prince about the Cosa Nostra is like asking a German about Hitler or a Colombian about Pablo Escobar, and I decide to talk to Alfonso and Giuseppe about Luchino Visconti and the filming of The Leopard. As we’re saying good-bye, the enchanting prince invites me to tour the Emilia-Romagna region over the weekend. I tell him that, unfortunately, I have to be in Madrid on Friday, because the following week I must go back to work.
And on Friday, I’m dining with Gilberto and Jorge Ochoa at Zalacaín, considered at this time to be the best restaurant in Madrid. They are both happy to see me so radiant, to listen to my stories and to learn that I declined a prince’s invitation so I could see them. And I am happy to hear they have retired from the business and are thinking of investing their endless capital in chic things, like construction in Marbella or breeding fighting bulls, and not in hippopotamuses and armies of a thousand hit men armed with R-15 rifles. The name of Gilberto’s rival and Jorge’s partner is not mentioned for anything, as if he simply didn’t exist. But, for some reason I couldn’t care to explain, his presence floats above those tablecloths and over that whole sybaritic room, creating a disturbance as if we had been put into a particle accelerator that produces nuclear fission.
Over the weekend we go to lunch on suckling pig next to the Alcázar of Segovia. Gilberto points to a tiny window hundreds of feet up in the tower of the castle wall and tells me that centuries ago, a Moorish slave girl had dropped a little prince from there; a few seconds later, she threw herself after the baby. I’m left sad all afternoon, thinking about the terrors that crossed that poor creature’s heart before she hurled herself into the void. On Sunday, several of Gilberto’s executives take me to Toledo to see The Burial of the Count of Orgaz by El Greco, one of my favorite artworks in this country of the world’s greatest painters. I feel sad again, and again I don’t really know why. That night Gilberto and I dine alone, and he asks me about my career. I tell him that in Colombia, fame and beauty only engender monstrous doses of envy, which are nearly always expressed through the media, and in phone threats made by other people sick with malice. He tells me that he’s missed me a lot, and he’s been feeling a deep need for the woman he can talk to about everything, and in “Colombian.” He takes my hand and says that he’d like to have me close by, not in Madrid but in Paris, because he adores the City of Light more than any other, and he never thought that someone like him, of such humble origins, would be able to see it.
“I can’t offer you passion by the ton, but since we get along so well, over time you and I could fall in love and maybe have something more serious. You could start your own business, and we’d spend the weekends together. What do you think?”
The truth is that the proposal takes me by surprise, but it’s also true that he and I understand each other very well. And not only is the center of Paris a thousand times more beautiful than all of Bogotá’s most elegant neighborhoods put together, but, in so many ways, the City of Light is light-years away from the City of Eternal Spring: Medellín. Slowly I start to reply; that is, to list my conditions for becoming the Parisian lover of one of Latin America’s richest men—without sacrificing my freedom—and the reasons for each of them: I wouldn’t live in a little apartment with a little car, because for that, I could marry any boring Colombian minister with a penthouse, Mercedes, and bodyguards, or any middle-class Frenchman. He would have to spoil me, like exceptionally wealthy men all over the world do with the emblematic women who make them feel proud in public and even prouder in private, because my refinement could fill his life with happiness without much effort, and my elegant friends could be incredibly useful to him in opening many doors. If we did come to fall in love, I would make him feel like a king every day we spent together, and he wouldn’t be bored with his life for a minute. But if one day he decided to leave me, I would take only my jewels, and if I decided to leave him to marry another man, I would only take my haute couture wardrobe—requirement sine qua non in Paris for the wife of a man who wants to be taken seriously.
With a smile full of gratitude—because a man with over a billion dollars couldn’t ask for more ample or generous conditions—he replies that as soon as he’s finished getting settled in Spain and he makes all his investment decisions, we should meet again in person. The most complicated thing for him and Jorge Ochoa is the transfer of their capital, and he can’t call me because of the problems with my phone. When we say good-bye, eager to meet again very soon, he recommends that I immediately withdraw my savings from the First Interamericas in Panama, because the Americans are pressuring General Noriega and at any moment they’re going to close the bank and freeze all the assets in it.
I follow his advice before this does in fact happen, and two weeks later I travel to Zurich, to consult the Oracle of Delphi about Gilberto’s offer; it’s surprised me a great deal, and I want to hear the opinion of someone who knows all the rules of the game of international high society. When I see David Metcalfe arrive in our Baur au Lac suite loaded down with Wellington boots, rifles, and ammunition, I ask him how “a terrorist from the White’s club” like him can manage to travel the world disguised as a pheasant murderer. He laughs delightedly at the characterization, and he tells me he’s going hunting with the king of Spain, who is an absolute dear and not nearly as stuck-up as all those English royals. When I explain my reasons for accepting his invitation this time, he exclaims in horror, “But have you gone mad? You’re going to become a don’s kept woman? Do you think that all of Paris isn’t going to know the very next day how that guy made his fortune? What you have to do, darling, is go right now to Miami or New York and find work at one of those Spanish TV channels!”
I ask him how he would feel if a woman with whom he spoke the same language, who keeps him laughing nonstop, and who has a billion dollars gave him such an offer: to set him up in Paris in a hôtel particulier decorated like the Duchess of Windsor’s house, with a budget to cover art acquisitions from Sotheby’s and Christie’s, a chauffeured Bentley, the most demanding chef and the most beautiful flowers, the best tables in luxury restaurants, the perfect tickets to all the concerts and the opera, dream vacations to the most exotic locales…
“Weeeeellll…I’m human, too! Who wouldn’t kill for
all that?” he answers, with the little laugh of someone who knows he’s been cornered.
“You see? You’re like Princess Margaret admiring Elizabeth Taylor’s diamond on her own finger: ‘It doesn’t look so vulgar now, does it, Your Royal Highness?’ ”
While we are dining in the restaurant that’s across from the little Baur au Lac bridge, I tell him that Gilberto owns several labs, and I’ve always dreamed of a cosmetics business in South America. I add that with my determination and credibility in matters of beauty, I could almost certainly build something successful. With a serious and somewhat sad expression, he comments that I obviously know what someone with a billion dollars is good for, but that some don like Gilberto would never know what to do with a woman like me.
The next morning at breakfast he hands me the Zeitung, because he only reads his Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist.
“I think those are your friends. You don’t even know how lucky you are, darling!”
And there they are—in all the Swiss newspapers, and the American and British ones: photos of Jorge Ochoa and Gilberto Rodríguez. They’ve been arrested with their wives in Madrid, and they might be extradited to the United States.
I say good-bye to David, take a plane to Madrid, and go straight to the Carabanchel Prison. At the entrance they ask me about the nature of my relationship with the two inmates, and I say I’m a Colombian journalist. They don’t let me in, and back at the hotel, Gilberto’s executives tell me I need to return immediately to Colombia, before the Spanish authorities can detain me and ask me all sorts of uncomfortable questions.
Half a dozen police and agents follow my every step in the airport, and I only relax once I am on the plane. The truth is that rosé champagne is a palliative for almost any tragedy, and crying in first class is better than crying in economy. And any wailing woman would be consoled by the man who sits down next to me: a carbon copy of Agent 007 in the first James Bond movies. A few minutes later he offers me a handkerchief and shyly asks, “Why are you crying like that, lovely?”
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar Page 19