By November of 1993, Gustavo de Greiff was becoming a problem.
He was the Fiscal General, Colombia's top federal prosecutor, and he was now working in open defiance of President Cesar Gaviria on the matter of Pablo Escobar. De Greiff had told Gaviria that he disagreed with effectively holding the Escobar family hostage. As an elected official - an 'independent entity,' he called himself - he had decided to help the family leave Colombia in order to complete his deal for the fugitive's surrender.
When word spread that the family was looking for a haven in Canada, Colombian Defense Minister Raphael Pardo contacted the Canadian ambassador, only to learn that de Greiff already had called to request that the Canadian government allow the family to enter. The Colombian government was now split on the matter, so U.S. Ambassador Morris Busby threw his support behind Gaviria, contacting the various governments himself and winning assurances that the Escobars would be turned away.
During these negotiations, de Greiff suddenly informed the U.S. Embassy that Escobar had escaped to Haiti. He said his office had learned from a reliable informant that the drug boss had landed safely in Haiti on Nov. 25. According to the source, Escobar was now under the protection of a Haitian death squad called 'Night Services,' which was unofficially attached to the Haitian police.
The hunt for Escobar appeared to be coming apart. The embassy traced de Greiff's sources to Miami - an imprisoned cocaine dealer connected with the Cali cartel named Luis 'Lucho' Sanatacruz and two men with the nicknames 'Navigante' and 'Hector.' DEA agents were dispatched to debrief the men personally. The Haitian death squad leader supposedly protecting Escobar was a man named Joel Deeb.
'We are analyzing the developing situation for clues to the potential motivation of someone like Joel Deeb in providing Pablo Escobar with sanctuary,' read a secret State Department cable written that weekend.
While the embassy tried to verify Escobar's presence in Haiti, the cable concluded, the Search Bloc was continuing to operate in Medellin under the assumption that Escobar remained in the area.
In light of what happened over the next two days, the Haiti tip appears to have been an effort to distract the authorities and create enough confusion to help slip the Escobar family out of Colombia. The day after 'Hector' 'confirmed' to de Greiff that Escobar was in Haiti, Centra Spike picked up Escobar using a phone in Medellin. If Escobar had been planning to lie low in order for the Haiti ploy to work, events soon conspired to flush him back out on the airwaves.
DEA Special Agent Kenny Magee was friendly with the security chief for American Airlines at the El Dorado Airport in Bogota, so he was selected to follow the Escobar family as they left the country. A blue-eyed former Michigan cop who had come to Bogota four years earlier, Magee had flunked Spanish in his senior year of high school. (He told his teacher, 'I'm never going to need Spanish.' She said, 'You never know.')
Magee showed up at the airport on Saturday, Nov. 27, with two plainclothes Colombian National Police colonels, and with DEA agents Steve Murphy and Javier Pena. Magee had purchased tickets on two early evening flights booked by the Escobars, one to London and the other to Frankfurt. The planes were leaving within 10 minutes of each other, so Magee and the two Colombians pocketed their boarding passes and waited for the family to show up.
It wasn't hard spotting them. The family's plans had evidently been leaked to more than just the National Police and the U.S. Embassy. The departure of their plane from Medellin had been captured by TV camera crews there, and three dozen reporters were waiting for them inside the terminal in Bogota.
The small plane stayed out on the tarmac, and all of its passengers except the Escobars were let off. Bodyguards carried the Escobars' luggage to a waiting Avianca Airlines bus, followed by more than 20 heavily armed men escorting Escobar's wife Maria Victoria, daughter Manuela, son Juan Pablo and Juan Pablo's plump 21 -year-old Mexican girlfriend, Doria Ochoa. The family members held jackets over their heads to avoid being photographed. They boarded the bus and were driven to a remote entrance where they could wait out in private the six hours until their overseas flight.
Five minutes before the Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt was scheduled to depart, the family emerged surrounded by bodyguards and were hustled through the main terminal. All but Juan Pablo held jackets over their heads. The teenager shouted threats at the mob of reporters pushing around them, then disappeared down the jetway.
Magee and the Colombian policemen followed, taking seats in business class. It was the first time Magee had seen the family. Maria Victoria was a short woman with glasses, conservatively and stylishly dressed. The tiny Manuela, 9, clung to her mother. Juan Pablo stood 6 feet tall at age 16, a round-shouldered, portly boy. He and his girlfriend sat apart from his mother and sister.
Magee carried a shoulder bag with a camera built into the bottom. He began snapping pictures of the family surreptitiously. An enterprising journalist had a seat next to Juan Pablo, trying to interview the youth with what appeared to be little success.
When the plane landed in Caracas, there was so much security out on the runway that it looked to Magee like a head of state was arriving. It was the same in Frankfurt, hours later.
Unknown to the family, just an hour after their flight had left Bogota, a spokesman for the German Interior Minister had released a statement announcing that the Escobars would not be allowed to enter Germany. Soon afterwards, an angry Pablo Escobar was on the phone, blowing his Haiti cover story. He called the Presidential Palace in Bogota.
'This is Pablo Escobar. I need to talk to the president,' he told the operator at the palace.
'OK, hold on, let me locate him,' the operator said, and immediately patched the call to the National Police. After a delay, a police officer posing as a palace operator came on the line and said, 'We can't get in touch with the president right now. Please call back at another time.'
The police officer had sized it up as a joke, and hung up. The phone rang again.
'This is Pablo Escobar. It is necessary that I talk to the president. My family is flying to Germany at this time. I need to talk to him right now.'
'We get a lot of crank calls here,' the officer said. 'We need to somehow verify that it is really you. It's going to take me a few minutes to track down the president, so please wait a few more minutes and then call back.'
With that, the officer informed his superiors that Pablo Escobar was making calls to the palace. President Gaviria was notified; he refused to speak with Escobar. When the fugitive called back a third time, the Search Bloc was waiting, and the call surfaced on its electronic web.
'I'm sorry, Mr. Escobar, we have been unable to locate the president.'
