The accountant's story: inside the violent world of the medellín cartel by Roberto Escobar & David Fisher

Author:Roberto Escobar & David Fisher [Roberto Escobar & David Fisher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biographie
ISBN: 9780446178921
Published: 2009-02-25T08:00:00+00:00

Six

FOR MANY YEARS WE WERE CONTINUALLY ON THE MOVE, always watching the movements around us. It began with just the Colombian police and military searching for us, but eventually we were at war with the Cali cartel, with very specialized units of Colombian police created just to scour the earth for Pablo, with representatives of America’s Delta Force, and even with the Colombian paramilitaries. And yet Pablo was able to fight them all and survive.

For much of this time we stayed on farms Pablo owned, some of them on mountains with views of the city he loved, but other times we lived deep in the safety of the jungle. Only the closest friends knew where we were. When Pablo needed to see someone, a lawyer or a politician or a friend, that person was brought to him blindfolded, often by an unusual route. Even our mother did not know where we were; when Pablo wanted to see her she would be brought to a named point. I would meet her there and make her wear a pair of blackened glasses and then take her in another car to the meeting point. Once, I remember, I handed her these glasses and told her to put them on. When she did she began making faces. “What’s wrong with these glasses,” she asked. “They’re very expensive, but I can’t see anything.”

I explained, “Mommy, these aren’t for fashion. They’re for security.”

Security was always first. Pablo always bought farms on the roads miles away from our location and put his people living there. If necessary he would build houses for them. When an enemy force went by that place day or night we would be notified immediately to get ready to leave. Only once, I can remember, did the police come upon us completely unannounced—and these people never knew who they had found.

Pablo and I were staying at a farm on a road near Amagá, which is about forty miles outside Medellín. This was toward the end of our time on the run, after Pablo had decided we should be without bodyguards. The price on us was $10 million each. As Pablo said, we paid the bodyguards very well but not $10 million. For that kind of money we knew the only people we could trust were each other. Our agreement was that we would watch out for each other; we slept at different times so one of was always alert.

It was a beautiful house surrounded by orange and apple trees and flowers; it had a swimming pool, a place of great calm. We often had barbecues outside, where we would sit and play dominoes. I became a master of that game while we stayed there for about eight months. When Pablo was buying this farm a dog bit him, so Pablo insisted the dog stay with the farm. He named it Hussein, and eventually the animal calmed down.

We were living in the house with an older married couple we had known for many years, Albertino and Ilda.

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