Pablo Escobar's Story 1: The Rise by Shaun Attwood

Author:Shaun Attwood [Attwood, Shaun]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Gadfly Press
Published: 2018-10-25T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Political Enemies

At a meeting, Virginia overheard Pablo and Santo discussing getting Galán out of the way of their rise to power. They viewed Galán as a traitor willing to hand over Colombians to imperialist America. Still aggrieved by Galán, Pablo sought to undermine the charismatic founder of New Liberalism and his ally, Senator Lara Bonilla. With Galán gone, Santo could be the president in 1986 and Pablo in 1990.

One of Pablo’s associates, Evaristo Porras – who had been incarcerated for trafficking – led Lara into believing that he was a legitimate businessman who supported Galán. Armed with a recording device, he met Lara in a room at the Bogotá Hilton, where he wrote a cheque. Although the conversation hadn’t been recorded properly, Lara had taken drug money. Anticipating that Lara and Galán would obstruct his rise, Pablo kept the incident a secret for future use.

At Pablo’s house, Virginia met Evaristo Porras, who was so high on cocaine that his rapidly moving jaw had taken on a life of its own. In private, Porras handed Pablo a tape recording. The boss reprimanded him for being too high and instructed him to return to his hotel room.

“We need to watch this video together,” Pablo told Virginia. “I’m going to need an urgent favour from you.” They went to his study. “Evaristo Porras is protecting our interests in Leticia by the Amazon River, which has become increasingly important as a transshipment point for paste coming from Peru and Bolivia. Evaristo has won the lottery three times and is known as the world’s luckiest man. At least, that’s where he tells the taxman his wealth came from.”

The dark blurred video showed Porras with a young man talking incoherently about agriculture. “That’s Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, Luis Carlos Galán’s right-hand man. Bonilla is taking a cheque for a million pesos as a bribe. This is a carefully arranged trap I coordinated with Porras and the cameraman.” After the tape had finished, he said, “I need you to denounce Lara Bonilla on TV.”

“I absolutely and categorically cannot do that!” She said that Santo had received even more money from him, so she would have to denounce Santo and the rest of his cronies in Congress, including Jairo Ortega. Having received so much slander over the years, she would never use her platform to hurt anybody. She couldn’t tell from the video that Lara had been bribed because it didn’t show whether he had a legitimate business relationship with Porras. She had no problem promoting his social projects, but he needed to find somebody else to do his dirty work. If everybody obsessed about eliminating their enemies, there would be nobody left in the world. His quest for vengeance would destroy his soul.

Pablo had been gazing down in silence for a long time, a trait that was starting to perplex and disturb Virginia, who often worried that she may have crossed a line. Snapping out of his trance, he jumped up, grabbed Virginia, kissed her forehead and rubbed her back.

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