“Things are a lot more complicated than you think: I have the police on top of me, plus DAS, which is with Cali. The Mexican and I need the army, and beside military intelligence—the B-2, which is ours—the police and DAS are a bunch of nuns! Santo also has a lot of contacts in the security organizations and in the military’s high ranks; I know perfectly well that he provides services to both cartels—because politicians aren’t loyal to anyone—but I use him, just like the Rodríguezes do. Terrible things are going to happen here, Virginia, and there is nothing, nothing you can do to change the course of events.”
I try to make him see it from the perspective of those powerful and perverse minds that run the country; they must be rubbing their hands in glee. With DAS—which is theirs—and the money of the Rodríguezes, who are a bunch of social climbers as politically naive as him, they will just sit back and let him and Gonzalo get rid of any candidate who threatens their nepotism, their embassies, and the advertising budgets for their media.
“You two will merely be useful idiots for the presidential families and the financial groups. When they kill you, Gilberto will take your business and Alfonso López and Ernesto Samper will be in power forever. I can see what’s going to happen with you, too.”
He repeats that he doesn’t like to be talked to that way. I turn toward him and see that he looks tired and seems to have suddenly aged. We have been talking for four and a half hours, and I have spilled all the truths I never would have dared say to him before. I’ve mentioned his rival again and again, and I’m saying good-bye to him for good. I remark that the problem with all of them is precisely that they don’t have anyone who will tell them the truth, because behind every filthy rich man there’s only a great accomplice or a great slave. He turns to look at me, surprised, and asks me what that means. And since I know that my words will echo in his ears and be etched in his memory, I explain, “That your wife is a saint and your enemy Gilberto’s is a viper, and something tells me that they will both be your perdition. Don’t ask me why. I can only tell you that I will carry you in my heart for the rest of my life. Go with God, my love.”
We stop a few feet from the hotel door, and we say good-bye forever.
We both know it’s the last time I will see him alive.
He puts his hand behind my neck and kisses me on the forehead for the last time.
In complete silence, he and I caress each other’s face for the last time.
With eyes full only of infinite absences, he and I look at each other for the last time.
He contemplates me for a few seconds with those eyes that seem to contain every danger and announce every tragedy, his sad black eyes that seem to carry every tiredness, every condemnation. And so that he will forever remember me as I always was, before I get out of the car I make a superhuman effort to swallow my tears, and I give him my last, fleeting kiss, the last of my most radiant smiles, my last couple of affectionate pats, and a look that can only offer him all those simple things that Billie Holiday’s dreamy voice sang in “I’ll Be Seeing You.”
*
—
WHEN WE REACH THE AIRPORT, Pablo’s two men point to a young man with the look of someone important. When he sees me, he smiles and comes right toward us, and he and his two companions effusively greet mine. It’s been several years since I’ve seen that promising politician with the intelligent eyes and studious look, and I’m happy to be able to congratulate him on his recent election as senator. We talk for a few minutes, and when he says good-bye with an affectionate hug, he tells Pablo’s boys: “You two say hi to El Patrón for me!”
The man who sits next to me on the plane turns out to be one of Aníbal Turbay’s many acquaintances. These are the advantages of going back to traveling “collectively” and not in a private jet.
“I saw you with Pablo Escobar’s boys and talking to Álvaro Uribe Vélez. Without him, Pablo wouldn’t be a multimillionaire; and without Pablo, Alvarito wouldn’t be a senator! Uribe is a cousin of the Ochoas and a distant relative of Escobar, didn’t you know? But what world do you live in, Virginia? Here in Medellín this is all national history!”
And he starts to tell me the life and times of the whole guild: about Alberto Uribe Sierra, Alvarito’s father; when the war is going to start and who will win and who will lose; how many kilos one ships from Cali and how many the other from Medellín; how many of this one’s “fell” and how many of that one’s were “crowned.” And how it was that he’d escaped the Feds in a Manhattan court during a recess between two cases, before the gavel came down in the second, the judge shouted “Guilty!” and gave him life in prison. After a movie-like odyssey he reached Colombia one year later, kissed his native soil, and swore he would never leave again. Now he lives with his wife on a small farm—happy, even though he’s the only ex-narco in history and doesn’t have one cent to his name!
I think that this incredibly friendly man—who rolls with laughter and has teeth like Mack the Knife, and who used to sell “merchandise” to the Italian Mafia in New York—is, definitely, a much greater treasure than the ones Manolito de Arnaude used to look for. And over the next five and a half years, and almost until Escobar’s death, I would adopt that loquacious conversationalist as my own local version of Deep Throat—the mysterious real-life character from All the President’s Men.
The day I said good-bye forever to Pablo was also the second and last time I talked to the first two-term president of Colombia (2002–2006, 2006–2010). I would never see them again—neither Escobar nor “Doptor Varito”—and I would only talk with Pablo again over the phone. But, through the strange designs of divine providence and thanks to “Deep Throat,” for the next five years I would know absolutely everything that was happening in Pablo Escobar’s life and his world. That up-and-down world, terrifying and fascinating, of “the Band of Cousins.”
PART THREE
Days of Absence and Silence
I have no mockings or arguments—I witness and wait.
—WALT WHITMAN, Leaves of Grass
The Cuban Connection
I HAD ONCE TAUGHT PABLO that when making an important life decision, one should try to achieve at least three things to ensure that if one or two don’t work out there is always the consolation that something else might still be gained.
The good-bye trip he’s given me fulfills at least half a dozen purposes: the first is obviously to close our relationship with a grand finale that ensures I will be well disposed toward him, while still guaranteeing I’ll stay in Colombia. The second is to distance his ex-girlfriend from the eternal rival who, the day after getting out of prison, is already arm in arm with his president and his candidate. I will soon learn the other reasons, as well as his monstrous mind’s true capacity for machination.
Some weeks after his visit to my apartment with Santofimio, Gilberto Rodríguez calls me from Cali to ask me about the reply from my “gentleman friend” to his proposed armistice. Pablo had asked me the same question some fifteen days earlier, and I had replied that I still hadn’t talked with “the man from the Valley.” I added that if he did call, I certainly wasn’t going to tell him Pablo was planning to destroy him, much less turn the two of us into the next version of Bonnie and Clyde, this time on the morgue floor. When he remembered what Gloria Gaitán had said about us, Pablo asked me to say hi to her, and we agreed to talk on my return.
I think that Escobar is still wiretapping my phone, so I watch every word I say. I tell Gilberto that he, who has always had the reputation of being a gentleman, should extend his hand to “the man from the mountain,” who is very willing to fix the problem between them. I tell him that Pablo and I have said good-bye forever, and that he suggested I go for a long rest in Miami; I inform him I’m going to travel in a few days to put a definitive end to that chapter of my life.
There is silence at the other end of the line. Then Rodríguez exclaims incredulously, “If he was really willing to talk, we would be meeting in your hous
e and he wouldn’t be getting you out of the country! I don’t know what you said to him, my queen, because now he’s crazier than before! So crazy I’ve had to come to Cali, and I think I won’t even be able to go back to Bogotá. When you’re back, I want you to come here so we can talk about our project, and I’d like you to also invite your friend Gloria Gaitán, because I’m dying to meet her. Tell her I venerate her father: Jorge Eliécer Gaitán is what I most love in life after God and my mother!”
I tell him I’m almost sure she will accept, and that as soon as I’m back I’ll go to Cali to talk about the business, and he can explain to me once and for all what is happening with that grumpy gentleman, because when we said good-bye he’d only commented that he held him in high esteem and wished us success in our project. He tells me that if that’s the case, so I can really have a good time on my vacations, he wants to give me something for my expenses: when I get to the hotel one of his employees in Florida will bring me twenty grand.
I am surprised and pleased, and I think it is the best kind of omen. This time, I decide to leave the money Pablo has sent me in the safe with the Beretta, to deposit half of Gilberto’s gift into my account in small amounts, and to spend only the other half. And I fly happily to Miami, to forget about Pablo Escobar and to buy myself some tailored business suits.
Never before had I met with people abroad who were tied to drug trafficking, and I had only occasionally exchanged a couple of polite words with Pablo’s employees. Carlos Aguilar is a young, good-looking man who doesn’t look like a criminal, even though he bears the nickname “The Dirt”; since I would never be able to call a human being by that name, I call him “Águila” (eagle). The other is a tall, thin, ungainly boy who never smiles and has a surly expression, a unibrow, and light eyes that scream Danger! Mafia hit man! I haven’t been able to remember his name, but I saw his face years later in a newspaper among pictures of the hundreds killed in Pablo’s dozen wars.
I ask him how they manage to enter and leave the United States without being arrested. With a condescending smile, they reply that that’s what their passports (plural) are for. They tell me that this time the boss has sent them to move eight hundred kilos from one warehouse to another, because the place is “hot” and the DEA could be on it any minute, or the “Federicos” (the FBI).
“Eight hundred kilos? Wow!” I exclaim, amazed at the value of the merchandise and the bravery of the men. “And how do you move it: a hundred at a time?”
“Don’t be so naive, Virginia! What world have you been living in all this time?” says Aguilar, staring at me with deep pity. “For Pablo Escobar, eight hundred kilos are nothing! We move several tons a week, and I’m in charge of sending the money to Colombia: tens of millions of dollars in cash. Here and there a million gets lost, but it almost always makes it.”
I know perfectly well that without authorization from El Patrón, the cartel’s employees would never talk about the extent of the business with journalists or “civilians,” but especially not with a woman. My ex-lover knows my heart like no one else, and he knows exactly what I’m going to feel when I hear what his subordinates are confiding.
I think it was that day when I finally stopped loving Pablo and began hating Escobar. For being the seventh-richest man on the planet and tasking his financial chief with making me feel like the poorest and most punished woman on earth. For forcing me to beg for charity from his enemy, whom he planned to run out of the country before he could give me anything. For using me as a punching bag to take out all his hatred of the Cali Cartel, and for trying to make me feel guilty for a war that would only leave hundreds of people dead.
Once, I had told Pablo about Quirky Daisy Gamble, a character in the Broadway show On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Daisy knew things that no one else in the world knew, and she could do things that would be simply impossible for normal people. After I’d told him the story and we laughed for a while, we had concluded that—on days that weren’t too cloudy—only I could correctly guess everything that only he was able to conceive of, plan, and execute.
Several days after I arrive in Miami, Carlos Aguilar announces, “The boss asked us to take you up in a plane so you could see the Florida Keys. He told us to say that from the air, on a clear day you can make out the Cuban coast, which will always be there. We’ll go on a sunny day next week, and we’ll let you know….”
El Mugre and his companion—who has shown me that he keeps two revolvers on him, one in each sock—pick me up at the hotel and drive me to an aviation school about an hour away. There, they introduce me to three boys who are training to enter Escobar’s service. They are very young—twenty-three to twenty-five years old—and short, thin, and dark-skinned. I notice they have exceptionally hard eyes for people their age and that they don’t make the slightest effort to hide their surprise at my arrival and their discomfort with my presence. I’ve met a dozen pilots from the organization, and immediately I realize that these young men could never fit the profile of the cartel’s aviators, who are civilians, rich men with the look of successful upper-middle-class professionals, absolutely sure of themselves and always smiling. These, on the other hand, look like little men of steel from humble origins, and I think that they can’t be training to carry cocaine to Cuba, although maybe to bring it from there. But to fly in his tons of drugs from the Caribbean to Florida, Pablo has always had the most experienced American or Colombian pilots, which means that he doesn’t need novices…nor is the merchandise moved to other markets by plane; in any case, as far as I know, distribution to all American territory is a matter for the Medellín Cartel’s clients, not Escobar or his main partners….
Suddenly, the true reason for my trip falls on me like an asteroid and flattens me like a steamroller: what Pablo wants to tell me is that he just laughs at all my advice and warnings. He’s saying that any ex-boyfriend of mine is the king of something, and any Gilberto could be the King of Coke. He, on the other hand, plans to become a legend before he dies. Yes, he is preparing to go down in history not as just any old king, but as the King of Terror. He wants me to know it, and before I leave his life forever he’s going to show me what his monstrous mind is capable of: he’s going to display before his future biographer everything he hid from his lover, she who tried to rein him in, she who would have lectured him, she who processes information in a way that only he knows and who possesses a brain that he learned to manipulate to perfection.
El Mugre informs me that these boys are Nicaraguan, and they’ve just arrived in the United States. They entered through “the Hole,” which means they crossed illegally over the Mexican border. I know what that means: they are Sandinistas, very possibly soldiers, and almost certainly fanatical communists willing to do anything for the Revolution. What Pablo wants to show me is that when money is pouring in and one plans things carefully, any, absolutely any mischief is possible. He wants me to see with my own eyes that these young aviation students with furrowed brow and humble aspect are preparing for something that an American or Colombian pilot wouldn’t be willing to consider for all the gold in the world.
Pablo is also telling me that to do business with Cuba he doesn’t need Castro’s approval, and that when a dictator refuses his proposals out of fear of the Americans or the Contras, the generals below him have a price that someone all-powerful in terms of liquid resources, like him, is in a position to pay a million times over.
My instinct tells me not to accept the invitation to get into one of those planes, to view from the air something only the two of us could see forever on a clear day. And when we reach the mall where I want to buy some things and we sit down to lunch, I’m glad I made that decision: suddenly, two camera flashes blind us momentarily. We try to locate where they came from but can’t. For the first time since I met Escobar, I see his men get scared about something. They both want to leave immediately, and I decide that I’ve had enough of Miami in these two weeks, and I’ll return to Colombia the following d
ay.
It’s October 11, 1987. When I arrive at the airport, two FBI agents approach me and tell me they need to ask me some questions. I think that this time they’re going to want to interrogate me about the boys or the pilots from yesterday, but again, they only want to know if I’m carrying cash. Relieved, I reply that that kind of money travels to Colombia in the same containers as the drugs and not in the purses of TV journalists with master’s and doctorate degrees in narco-trafficking. I say it with the absolute calm of knowing for sure now that DAS is reporting me to foreign authorities every time I travel outside the country. Also with the absolute certainty that it was these special agents who took my photo the day before so they could find out from their Colombian counterparts who my companions were.
When I reach the airline counter, I find out that Bogotá International Airport is closed: the lawyer Jaime Pardo Leal, the former Patriotic Union candidate for the Colombian presidency, has been assassinated after being stopped at a military checkpoint as he was driving his modest car down a highway.
In a country that supplies bulletproof vehicles and bodyguards to any third-rank civil servant, that little car and DAS’s utter abandonment of the left’s presidential candidate are a warning of what awaits anyone who is not with the ex-presidents of the two traditional parties, Liberal and Conservative, and the people anointed to replace them in power. Colombia’s presidential families—who divide among themselves the embassies and high public positions, while they milk the state advertising budget through their media companies—are leaving the dirty work in the hands of General Miguel Maza Márquez, director of DAS and the man in charge of protecting the candidates. Maza, in turn, is leaving the dirty work in the hands of the army’s military intelligence. And the B-2 is leaving the dirty work in the hands of “the Mexican” Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, the same man who has already exterminated hundreds of activists from the Patriotic Union. For the small group of lifelong, hereditary monarchies that control both public opinion and the nation’s resources, the big bosses of the drug cartels are turning out to be the perfect instrument to eliminate their challengers without getting blood on their hands, and to eternalize the power that would give sustenance to several generations of their descendants.
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar Page 34