“The thing that has saved you, Virginia, is the absolute terror that Pablo Escobar inspires,” she warns me. “Never, never talk badly about him, because what protects you is that everyone is convinced that you went off with the German but he made you come back. It’s better that they believe that than for you to end up in the hands of a bunch of animals who will tear you apart and then plant guns or drugs on you. If they do the same things they did to me to a beauty like you, the media will applaud for days, because around here the press is sicker than anyone else. They know you know the price they sell out for, and they can’t wait to see you carved up or kill yourself so you’ll carry their secrets to the grave. I don’t understand why you came back….The few people who care about you say behind your back that you could only have returned to this hell out of love for Pablo Escobar. Don’t even think about setting them straight! When they ask you about him, just tell them that you don’t allow people to bring the subject up.”
Along with Diana, Pablo abducts two journalists I’ve known my whole life: Azucena Liévano and Juan Vitta, plus two cameramen and a German journalist, who are all later freed. Diana’s death becomes Pablo’s most effective and convincing argument against the new government. But things don’t stop there: to force the highest spheres of galanismo to come out in favor of dialogue with him and acceptance of his conditions, Escobar now kidnaps Luis Carlos Galán’s sister-in-law and her assistant, and later Marina Montoya, sister of President Barco’s secretary and Gilberto Rodríguez’s partner in Chrysler. Later, Escobar murders Marina Montoya in cold blood in retaliation for an attempt to free the rest of the women. And in September, he kidnaps Francisco Santos, son of one of the owners of El Tiempo, to force the country’s main newspaper to come out in favor of a Constitutional Assembly that would amend the Constitution and prohibit extradition.
This is the climate when I leave the man from a distant land and return to my own country. Nidia’s daughter and Aníbal’s cousin dead at the hand of the man he introduced me to. My friend raped by enemies of Pablo and the M-19. My colleagues Raúl Echavarría and Jorge Enrique Pulido murdered by the man I’d loved so much. People dear to me, like Juan and Azucena, kidnapped by my paisa Robin Hood, along with schoolmates like Francisco Santos and my relative Andrés Pastrana. All of them, as media personalities, guaranteed Pablo a public outcry in a country that is emotionally overwhelmed and still convinced he is the seventh-richest man in the world. Only those who were once part of his intimate circle know that this whole wave of kidnapping responds precisely to his desperation at the depletion of his forces and the bleeding out of his liquid resources. Given the problems presented by the armies of the four wealthiest multimillionaires, Escobar descends now to the next level of great Colombian fortunes and kidnaps Rudy Kling, son-in-law of Fernando Mazuera, one of the richest men in the country and a great friend of my aunt and uncle. Almost all of Pablo’s latest victims have some relationship to me: a friend or child of friends of my family, a colleague or relative, a schoolmate or a lifelong acquaintance. When the editor of El Tiempo calls on behalf of Francisco Santos’s father to beg me to intercede for his son, I reply that I wouldn’t even know how or where to locate Pablo, but he implies he doesn’t believe me. Every time I enter a restaurant I read the contempt on the patrons’ faces. And since I have no other defense mechanism, I become more and more distant and take refuge in that elegance I had polished so much in recent months in order to be up to the demanding model set by my future mother-in-law, but it only exacerbates people’s hatred, because they attribute it to my wealth.
My ex-fiancé calls constantly to tell me he’s worried about that climate of hostility and lawlessness I live in, and I reply that, sadly, this is the only country I have. He promises that in a few weeks he will come to visit me, because he can’t stand to be away from me. I beg him not to come, because I’m not going to sign that prenuptial contract, allow him to be disowned, or live with him without being married, and I insist that for both of our good, he has to try to forget me.
I have sold my Wiedemann painting and my little car, and with that money I’ve managed to pay my expenses and save my apartment, but my resources are about to run out again.
I had worked with Caracol Radio years before, but now Yamid Amat, its director and one of Pablo Escobar’s most loyal journalists since the days of his public declaration of love for Margaret Thatcher, is scandalized when I ask him for work. The same thing happens with the managers of RCN Radio and Television, owned by Carlos Ardila, the soda tycoon. Finally, Caracol Television, owned by Julio Mario Santo Domingo, calls to tell me they have the perfect job for me. I imagine they want to offer me a job as an anchor, because the truth is there are a lot of requests from the public for me to return to television, and news of my return to the country has led to all kinds of rumors and speculations. My favorite is that Ivo Pitanguy had to use Pablo’s millions to put me back together head to toe, because my figure was terribly damaged after I’d given birth to a set of twins, whom I’d abandoned in a London orphanage! And since my ex-partner, Margot Ricci, has always said that people in Colombia don’t turn on the TV to see me or hear me, but to see what I’m wearing, I go happily off to the interview with the channel’s president wearing Valentino. Knowing that a professional TV personality with a wardrobe like mine is a benefit for any channel in a developing country, she asks me, “And who makes your clothes?”
I don’t hesitate to answer with my most radiant and confident smile: “Valentino in Rome and Chanel in Paris!”
In my infinite lack of knowledge about recent local events, I have forgotten that Canal Caracol is not Televisa of Mexico or O Globo of Brazil. Because for that woman, the person there asking her for work is none other than the ex-girlfriend or still-girlfriend of the biggest criminal of all time. Yes, sir, none other than the pyromaniac who burned down the country house of the man to whom she owed her job: Augusto López, president of the Santo Domingo Group!
She offers me a leading role in a telenovela, and surprised, I tell her I’m not an actress. With a shrug, she replies that with my twenty years of experience in front of a camera, who the hell cares? Didn’t I turn down offers to act in Hollywood?
“Telenovelas reach all socioeconomic strata. Even children watch them. They are an export product that goes to dozens of countries. Now you really will be famous all over the continent!”
I sign the contract, and a few days later the phone calls start from the entertainment media asking for interviews. In total, I give thirty-two for radio and TV. Aló, the main magazine of the newspaper El Tiempo, insists I give them a print media exclusive, and when I decline over and over because my statements to the written press have always been distorted, with words I never said put in my mouth, the director promises she’ll respect my right to approve every word of my answers before publication. When I accept, the first thing she asks is whether I’m going to see Pablo again, and then she asks for the name and address of my ex-fiancé. I’m not going to allow the man I love to be mixed up with a criminal who has caused me so much harm, and I keep his information to myself. About Escobar, I say: “It’s been years since I’ve seen him. But…why don’t you ask him about me instead, when you interview him? If he gives you one, because as I understand it, he hasn’t exactly been giving interviews.”
Two days after the interview is published, my phone rings. Now all the media have my number, and I answer the phone myself.
“Why are you saying such ugly things about me?”
“I’m not going to ask how you got my number, but I’ll tell you: because I’ve had it up to here with people asking me about you.”
Pablo tells me he’s using a brand-new phone—especially for me—and so we can talk without interruption. He already had mine checked for bugs before calling, and he found both are clean!
“I wanted to welcome you back. It seems you’ve been missed by a few million people…not just by me. How do you find the country after being gone all t
his time?”
“I think it was on page twenty-eight of El Tiempo that I read, in a single five-line column, that there were forty-two thousand homicides in Colombia last year. I am coming from a country where three dead bodies are reported on the front page as a massacre, and to answer you, well, I would have to first ask: How many of those thousands do we owe you, honorable father of the nation?”
With a deep sigh, he replies that now that the Constitutional Assembly will be held, the country will return to normal, because everyone is tired of so much war. I comment that many journalists seem to agree that “those gentlemen from the Valley” have already bought off 60 percent of Congress, and I ask him whether he has the same proportion of the Constitutional Assembly.
“Weeeeell, my love…you and I both know that those guys just spread a little dough around here and there. I, on the other hand, use real silver. I have my guys, the tough ones from Magdalena Medio, and their plomo, the ones of ‘lead,’ that guarantee me absolute victory. I can’t tell you about it on the phone. We are going to change the Constitution so no Colombian can be extradited!”
I congratulate him on his friend Santofimio’s proverbial efficiency. Terribly annoyed, Escobar exclaims that he’s not his friend but his errand boy, and that as soon as the assembly is over he won’t need him for anything again. He says that he would rather forgive Luis Carlos Galán—wherever he may be—than Santofimio. Surprised, I ask if he means he regrets doing “that,” and he replies, “I regret nothing! You’re very smart and know perfectly well what that means. I’m changing phones.”
After a few minutes, the other one rings. Now in a very different tone, he asks, “Let’s talk about you. I know all about your German boyfriend. Why didn’t you marry him?”
I tell him it’s none of his business. He swears that he cares for me a lot, says he can imagine how sad I must be, and insists that I’ve always been able to tell him everything. Just so he’ll know the price I’m still paying for my old relationship with him, I decide to tell him about the letter to my fiancé’s mother with the photos of him and me, and about the prenup I refused to sign. Again and again he begs me to tell him how much the percentage was, and worn down, I tell him.
“They offered you that vice president’s salary for managing several houses?! You’re right when you say behind every multimillionaire there is always a great accomplice or a great slave: the old lady is her husband’s accomplice, and she wanted you to be her son’s slave. What a witch! Anyway, how do you manage to get these filthy rich men to get stuck on you all the time, huh? Why don’t you give me the secret, my love?”
“You know it very well. And it must be that the older I get, the more elegant I become. I think eighty magazine covers help, too. You have just as many…but for different reasons, of course.”
“Yes, yes…but on that cover of Aló you look horrible! I didn’t want to tell you, but you look…old. Changing phones.”
I sit thinking about what I’m going to say when he calls back, which he does a few minutes later. After talking in general about my return to work after years of being blacklisted, I comment that on-screen I look better than ever—and definitively better than him—because at forty-one I weigh 117 pounds and I look thirty. And I explain why they published that photo taken at the wrong moment, the only ugly and really vulgar one of my life.
“How were they not going to publish it, when you had the magazine’s owner kidnapped? I had to ask for work from the people whose houses you burned, and they’ve only offered to use me as the star of a trashy soap with third-rate leading men before throwing me into the street to die of hunger, supposedly on the orders of Santo Domingo, whose planes you blow up with the sons-in-law of my friends inside.”
“But why are you talking to me like that, my love, when you mean so much to me? A dream of a woman like you wasn’t born to work like a slave for those bottler tyrants. You deserve to be very happy…and you’ll see that that man you left will come back for you very soon! You can be veeeerrrry addictive…I should know!”
I reply that, in fact, he’s going to come in a few days, but I have decided I am not going to subject myself to his mother’s magnifying glass for the rest of my life. After a silence, Pablo tells me that, at my age, I should be thinking about becoming a businesswoman instead. He says good-bye and tells me that after the Constitutional Assembly, we’ll surely talk again.
My boyfriend comes to Bogotá four days later. Again, he places the engagement ring on my finger and repeats that if we get married and I make him very happy, his mother will surely soon change her mind and annul that contract. I explain that I can’t break my commitment with Caracol, under threat of paying triple what I’m going to receive in payment. I add that once I have a video reel with recent material, I will leave Colombia forever, and I’ll almost certainly get excellent offers in the United States. He begs me not to do that, and I tell him he’s putting me in a terrible bind. Since in a few hours I have to go to Honda, where the first episodes of the soap opera will be filmed, we say good-bye and agree to meet the next month somewhere in the Caribbean.
Around three hundred people have been invited to the cocktail party for the premiere in Bogotá. Amparo Pérez, the head of public relations for Caracol, picks me up in her car, and on the way she asks me, “Nothing more was heard of your German boyfriend! Right?”
“Yes, more was heard. He was here two weeks ago and left me this.” And I show her my diamond, four times bigger than Gustavo’s and D-flawless.
“Oh, take that ostentatious thing off, before Mábel thinks Pablo gave it to you and fires you for going back to keeping bad company!”
“Pablo could never give me an engagement ring, Amparo, because he’s already married. And I’ll turn the ring around, because clearly, people in this country think Pablo Escobar is the only man in the world who has enough money to buy a diamond.”
The next morning my fiancé calls to ask how things went in Honda and about the premiere. I describe the evening filming amid clouds of mosquitoes that devour us and the infernal heat that, under all the lights, is around 110 degrees Fahrenheit. After a brief silence, and with sadness in his voice that he doesn’t try to hide, he tells me in German: “I don’t understand why you signed a contract like that. And there’s something I need to tell you: I was followed from your house to the airport….I know it was him. I think he’s still in love with you, kiddo.”
And the whole world falls in on me. How could I have been so stupid? Why, at this point in life, do I still not know Pablo Escobar? I should have known that after the robbery in 1988 and three and a half years apart, he wouldn’t be calling to reiterate his affections. He wanted to find out whether what he’d heard was true, whether I resented the man I had just left or his family, and whether I could be useful to him!
Before hanging up, terrified, I only manage to tell him, in German: “No, no, no. He hasn’t been in love with me for a long time. It’s something much worse than that. Don’t ever call me again. I’ll call you tomorrow from another phone and you’ll understand everything.”
A couple of days later, at midnight, Pablo calls.
“We both know that you stop loving your husbands or boyfriends the day after you leave them, right, my dear? I don’t know how you do it, but you always manage to replace us in a matter of days! What Caracol is doing to you is public knowledge, and all I want is to ensure your future. I’m worried about you…because you’re not getting any younger, are you? That’s why I’m going to send you a written proposal that is very serious. Don’t ever forget that I can make the media say whatever I want about you: I just bombard them with calls for a week…and you’ll never work again. Adiós, my love.”
The note says that he already has all the basic information but he needs my cooperation. The proposal consists of 25 percent of the “profits,” and it is accompanied by a simple list: some residential addresses, a few private phone numbers, some financial information, bank accounts, names of chi
ldren—if there are any—and the date of my ex-boyfriend’s next visit to Colombia, or my next trip to Europe. On another page with names and newspaper clippings glued to a piece of yellow paper, is this addendum:
Ultima Hora Caracol, Yamid Amat!
Mr. X has been killed in an attempted kidnapping. Son of Mrs. X, wife of Mr. X, CEO of the company Such-and-such, established in the City of X. The former TV anchor Virginia Vallejo, accused of possible participation in the crime, is currently being detained in the DAS jail, where she is undergoing interrogation.
For hours and hours I rack my brain thinking about how he could have gotten those names. I remember his voice eight years earlier: “If you plan carefully, any, absolutely any mischief can be accomplished,” and I conclude that maybe someone in his organization traveled on the same plane as my boyfriend, and after days of tracking him down, once they were in Germany, he found out who he was. Another possibility is that he had me followed on one of my trips….I wonder if he knows about Interpol, if he could have sent the man in the zoo, if the photographs and letter to my future mother-in-law could just be another form of revenge….Every possibility passes through my mind, and then I realize that at the place where my fiancé works it would be relatively easy to find out who he is. All I know is that when it comes to getting fast money in large amounts, for Pablo “Paris is well worth a mass.” When he calls again, this time at dawn, he says that sooner or later, with or without my help, he will achieve his goal.
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar Page 38