by Mark Bowden
Colonel Martinez took steps of his own to make sure they were making the most of this moment. Unsure of his own colleagues in Bogotá, the colonel had someone he trusted assigned to the hotel-complex switchboard. The officer had been a friend of his son's in the intelligence branch and had lived for a time at Tequendama. They devised a system to tip off Hugo immediately every time Escobar phoned. All calls to the hotel came through the switchboard, so if a call sounded like Pablo, they would delay making the connection to the family's apartment upstairs or divert the call to the wrong apartment—anything to hold off until Hugo had been alerted. That way, the monitors in the air and on the ground could start tracing the call before the conversation even started.
Pablo gave them plenty of chances. Over the next four days he would call six times. Even though the first few conversations were very short, Pablo checking to see how the family was holding up and urging his son to continue doing everything possible to get out of Colombia, Centra Spike was able to get a precise fix on his location, a middle-class neighborhood in Medellín called Los Olivos near that city's football stadium, a sector that included blocks of two-story row houses and some office buildings. For his part, Pablo tried to confuse his pursuers, who he knew were listening, by speaking from the backseat of a moving taxi, using a high-powered radiophone that was linked to a larger transmitter that his men constantly moved from place to place.
Pablo himself had moved into a row house on Street 79A, building number 45D-94, in the third week of November, more than a month after his rapid flight from the finca at Aguas Frías. It was a simple two-story brick row house with a squat palm tree planted in front. It was one of many houses he owned in the city. Pablo carried dozens of real estate ads with his notebooks and was always buying and selling hideouts. He had the places furnished and renovated (with a new bathroom) in advance of his arrival. That way he was always home, even though he had no home. He moved with his collection of wireless phones. It didn't trouble him to know that the authorities listened whenever he spoke on the phone, both the Colombian government and the gringos, with their spy planes and fancy listening devices. It had been that way for years. He used the knowledge to feed disinformation, to keep the fools running in every direction but the right one. The game wasn't to avoid being overheard—that was impossible—but to avoid being targeted. The taxi he used as a mobile phone booth was driven by his sole bodyguard and companion, "Limón," Alvero de Jesús. He had the yellow taxi parked downstairs.
It was evident from Pablo's phone conversations and the letters he had written over the last few months how infuriated he was with his reduced circumstances, but clearly he also felt some pride. The same man who had posed dressed up as Pancho Villa and Al Capone had been the most wanted fugitive in the world for nearly sixteen months—for more than three years if you counted the first war. After so much carnage, so many millions spent to hunt him down, he was still alive, and still at large. Many people wanted him dead: the Americans, his rivals in the Cali cocaine cartel and their government lackies, the Search Bloc and its alter ego Los Pepes. As he moved from place to place in Medellín he took comfort in all the simple people of his home city who still believed in him, who still called him El Doctor and El Patrón, who remembered the housing projects he had bankrolled, the soccer fields, the donations to church and charity, and had little affection for the government forces closing in on him. And even though his organization had been taken apart, so many of his friends killed or in jail, he believed he could still right things. There would s many, many scores to settle once he did that. As Juan Pablo had sneered to a representative from the attorney general a few months before, "My dad is also searching for everyone who is after him and destiny will say who finds who first." The enemies of Pablo Escobar would rue the day they set themselves against him, and he would return, with his family, to live the life he so relentlessly and ruthlessly sought, nothing less or more than to be a wealthy respected Medellín don, patron of the poor, defender of the faith, and scourge of the streets.
But Maria Victoria and the children had to be gotten out of the way. How was it that when he, Pablo Escobar, kidnapped and killed his enemies it was called a crime, but when the government kidnapped and killed his friends and family it was called justice? They were in terrible danger, and they were his responsibility. Any harm that came to them would cause him great pain, but would also be the greatest insult. If he could not protect his own family, his enemies and friends would know he was finished. He hadn't seen his wife and children in more than a year and a half.
Pablo clearly admired the way Juan Pablo had stepped forward in this crisis, and he was relying on him more and more to protect Maria Victoria and Manuela. The fugitive drug boss had to get his family out of Colombia, not just for their protection but in order to free his hands.
With Maria Victoria and the children safe, he could turn on his enemies full force, unleash a bombing and assassination campaign that would bring the government to its knees and send his would-be rivals in the Cali cartel scurrying for cover. He had done it before. He knew how to hurt the elite in Bogotá, how to give them a war they would have no stomach for. He had done it three years earlier, when he'd had them begging him to stop, offering him anything he wanted if he would only stop. That was the road back.
Hugo got an incorrect fix on the first call Pablo made to Hotel Tequendama on Monday, but by Tuesday Centra Spike and the Search Bloc's own fixed-surveillance teams in the hills over Medellín had placed Pablo in Los Olivos. Colonel Martinez knew they were very close. At first he asked permission to cordon off the entire fifteen-block neighborhood and begin going door-to-door, but that was rejected—in part because Santos and others at the embassy advised against it. Pablo was expert at escaping dragnets like that. Closing down the neighborhood would just let him know they were on to him. Instead, the colonel began quietly infiltrating hundreds of his men into Los Olivos.
Hugo stayed with a group of thirty-five in a parking lot enclosed by high walls, where the men and vehicles could not be seen from the street. Similar squads of men were sequestered at other lots in the neighborhood. They stayed through Tuesday night, until Wednesday. Food was brought in. There was only one portable toilet for all the men. Hugo spent virtually all this time in his car, waiting for Pablo's voice to come up. He ate and slept in the car. On Wednesday, December 1, Pablo spoke for longer on the phone with his son, wife, and daughter as they wished him a happy birthday. He was forty-four years old that day. He celebrated with marijuana, a birthday cake, and some wine.
Hugo raced out of the lot in pursuit of this signal and traced it to a spot in the middle of the street near a traffic circle. There was no one there. The conversation had just ended. Hugo was convinced that his scanner was right. Pablo had evidently been speaking from a car. He returned to the parking lot discouraged, and the men camped out there were again disappointed. Hugo waited until about eight on Thursday morning before his father gave the men permission to come back to base, clean up, and rest Hugo drove back to his apartment in Medellín, took a shower, and then lay down and fell asleep.
On this day, Thursday, December 2,1993, Pablo awoke shortly before noon, as was his habit, and ate a plate of spaghetti before easing his widening bulk back into bed with his wireless phone. Always a heavy man, he had put on about twenty pounds living on the run, most of it in his belly.
On the run didn't accurately describe it. He spent most of his time lying low, eating, sleeping, talking on the radio. He hired prostitutes, mostly teenage girls, to help him while away the hours. It wasn't the same as the lavish orgies he had arranged in years past, but his money and notoriety still allowed some indulgences. He had trouble finding jeans that would fit him. To get a waist size to accommodate his girth he had to wear pants that were a good six inches too long in the leg. The light blue pair he wore today were turned up twice in a wide cuff. He wore flip-flop sandals and had pulled on a loose blue polo shirt.
Prone to stomach disorders, he mi
ght have been feeling the effects of his birthday revelry the night before. On this afternoon the only other person in the house was Limón. The two others staying with them, his courier, Jaime Rua, and his aunt and cook, Luz Mila, had gone out after fixing breakfast. At one o'clock Pablo tried several times to phone his family, posing as a radio journalist, but the switchboard operator at the Tequendama, per his instructions from Colonel Martinez, told him they had been instructed to block all calls from journalists. He was put on hold, then asked to call back, but finally he got through on the third attempt, speaking briefly to Manuela and then to Maria Victoria and his son.
Maria Victoria sobbed on the phone. She was depressed and fatalistic.
"Honey, what a hangover," said Pablo sympathetically. She continued crying. "These things are a drug. So, what are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
"What does your mother say?"
"It was as if my mother fainted," she said, explaining that they had last seen her as they left the airport Friday in Medellín. "I did not call her. She told me bye, and then—"
"And you have not spoken to her?"
"No. My mother is so nervous," said Maria Victoria, explaining how all the deaths in the previous year had just about killed her mother with sorrow.
Hugo was awakened by a phone call from his father.
"Pablo's talking!" the colonel said. The weary lieutenant dressed quickly and hurried back out to the parking lot, where the other men were assembling.
* * *
"So, what are you going to do?" Pablo asked his wife gently.
"I don't know, I mean, wait and see where they take us and I believe that will be the end of us."
"No!"
"So?" Maria Victoria asked flatly.
"Don't you give me this coldness! Holy Mary!"
"And you?"
"Ahhh."
"And you?"
"What about me?"
"What are you going to do?"
"Nothing…. What do you need?" Pablo asked. He did not want to talk about himself.
"Nothing," said his wife.
"What do you want?"
"What would I want?" she said glumly.
"If you need something, call me, okay?"
"Okay."
"You call me now, quickly. There is nothing more I can tell you. What else can I say? I have remained right on track, right?"
"But how are you? Oh, my God, I don't know!"
"We must go on. Think about it. Now that I am so close, right?" Pablo said, in what appeared to be a suggestion that he was about to surrender.
"Yes," said his wife, with no enthusiasm.
"Think about your boy, too, and everything else, and don't make any decisions too quickly. Okay?"
"Yes."
"Call your mother again and ask her if she wants you to go there or what."
"Okay."
"Remember that you can reach me by beeper."
"Okay."
"Okay."
"Chao," said Maria Victoria.
"So long," said her husband.
Then Juan Pablo got back on the line. He had been given a list of questions from a journalist. Often, when Pablo was in trouble, he used the Colombian media to broadcast his messages and demands, and to try to whip up public sentiment in his favor. Other times, when he was displeased with the media, he would have reporters and editors killed. Juan Pablo wanted his father's advice on how to answer the questions.
"Look, this is very important in Bogotá," said Pablo.
"Yes, yes."
Pablo suggested that they might also be able to sell his answers to publications overseas, an opportunity to lobby publicly for his family to be given refuge. For now he just wanted to hear what the questions were. He would call back later to help his son answer them.
"This is also publicity," Pablo said. "Explaining the reasons and other matters to them. Do you understand? Well done and well organized."
"Yes, yes," said Juan Pablo. Then he read the first question: "‘Whatever the country, refuge is conditioned on the immediate surrender of your father. Would your father be willing to turn himself in if you are settled somewhere?'"
"…Go on."
"The next one is, ‘Would he be willing to turn himself in before you take refuge abroad?'"
"Go on."
"I spoke with the man, and he told me that if there were some questions I did not want to answer, there was no problem, and if I wanted to add some questions, he would include them."
"Okay. The next one?"
"‘Why do you think that several countries have refused to receive your family?' Okay?"
"Yes."
"‘From which embassies have you requested help for them to take you in…?'"
"Okay."
"‘Don't you think your father's situation, accused of X number of crimes, assassination of public figures, considered one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world…?'"Juan Pablo stopped reading.
"Go on."
"But there are many. Around forty questions."
Pablo told his son he would call back later in the day. "I may find a way to communicate by fax," he said.
"No," said Juan Pablo, apparently concerned that use of a fax would somehow be too dangerous.
"No, huh? Okay. Okay. So, good luck."
Pablo hung up.
Hugo and the rest of the men had not been able to assemble in time to chase this signal, but Centra Spike and the Search Bloc's own fixed listening posts had triangulated it to the same Los Olivos neighborhood where the calls had originated earlier. They hunkered down and waited for the promised next call. If Pablo was going to try to answer forty questions, he was going to be on the phone a long time.
"How many are there?" Pablo asked, evidently concerned now about the duration of his call. He had called back precisely at three o'clock.
"A lot," said Juan Pablo. "There's about forty questions."
Juan Pablo began relaying the journalist's questions. The first asked the son to explain what it would take for his father to surrender.
Pablo instructed, "Tell him, my father cannot turn himself in unless he has guarantees for his security."
"Okay," said Juan Pablo.
"And we totally support him in that."
"Okay."
"Above any considerations."
"Yep."
"My father is not gonna turn himself in before we are placed in a foreign country, and while the police in Antioquia—"
"The police and DAS is better," interjected Juan Pablo. "Because the DAS are also searching."
"It's only the police."
"Oh, okay."
Pablo, resuming: "While the police in Antioquia—"
"Yeah."
"Okay, let's change it to ‘While the security organizations in Antioquia—'"
"Yeah."
"—continue to kidnap—"
"Yeah."
"—torture—"
"Yeah."
"—and commit massacres in Medellín."
"Yes, all right."
"Okay," Pablo said. "The next one."
Hugo had driven out of the parking lot in pursuit as soon as his friend on the switchboard at the Hotel Tequendama had alerted him that Pablo was on the line. They had recognized his voice right away when he'd called, even though he was still pretending to be a journalist. Per instructions, they had delayed, then finally put the call through.
All of the men at Hugo's parking lot followed him out. The rest of the Search Bloc were converging from their positions. Hugo felt terribly excited and nervous. He could feel all of his father's men, hardened veteran assaulters, close on his heels. Ever since they had nailed Zapata, his stock with the men in the Search Bloc had risen some, but they remained very skeptical. He knew that if he failed now, again, with all of these men awaiting his direction, he would never live it down.
The tone in his earphones and the line on his scanner directed Hugo to an office building just a few blocks from the parkin
g lot. He was certain that was where Pablo was speaking. No sooner had he named it than the assault force descended, crashing through the front doors and moving loudly through the building.
Pablo continued to speak calmly, as though nothing was happening.
Hugo was amazed. How could his equipment be wrong? Clearly he was not in the office building where the men had just launched the raid. Hugo felt panicked. He took two long, deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. So long as Pablo was talking, he could still be found. In the passenger seat of the white Mercedes van, he closed his eyes for a moment and then looked again more carefully at the screen. This time he noticed a slight wiggle in the white line that stretched from side to side. The line spanned the entire screen, which meant the signal was being transmitted close by, but the wiggle suggested something else. From his experience he knew that this vibration meant he was picking up a reflection. It was very slight, which was why he hadn't noticed it before. When the reflection was off water, the line usually had a slight squiggle in it, but this line had no squiggle.
"This is not it! This is not it!" he shouted into his radio. "Let's go!"
To his left was a drainage ditch with a gently moving stream in a deep concrete gully. To cross over to the other side, where Hugo was now convinced the signal originated, his driver had to go up a block or two and turn left over a bridge. When the van had crossed the bridge and arrived on the other side of the ditch, Hugo realized that only one car had followed him. Either the others hadn't heard or were ignoring him.
Pablo's conversation with his son continued.
Juan Pablo repeated the journalist's question about why so many other countries had refused to allow him and his mother and sister entry.
