You’re making so much money in contraband. Why do you want to get messed up with this stuff?” That’s when he told me how everything had started.

But he promised me, “Don’t worry, brother, I’m not going to do this for long. It’s just to make some money. Then I’m going to stick to contraband, because if they catch me they just take the merchandise, they don’t put you in prison.”

I told him that he was hurting me too. I was a successful businessman, my stores were selling my bicycles and I was receiving my salary from the government for coaching. I wondered if the government would allow the brother of a drug dealer to coach the national team. He promised me that he was done with the cocaine deals. I don’t remember if I believed him.

Pablo went right back to the business. By this time he was known to the police. More than a month later the same two DAS agents who had arrested Pablo and Gustavo earlier stopped them once again. This time their plans were different. They took them to El Basurero, the desolate area where a mountain of garbage was being created, tied their hands together, and made them get down on their knees. They were very hard with them. Pablo believed he was about to be murdered, but he stayed cool. He never begged for his life, rather he negotiated. Eventually the DAS kidnappers agreed to accept one million pesos to let them live. They set Gustavo free to go get the money. While waiting for Gustavo to return they spoke, and Pablo offered more money to learn who had set him up. The purchased answer was surprising: El Cucaracho. The man who had put Pablo in this business was worried that Pablo was taking control. To protect his business he had bought their death. Unfortunately, that also was the way this business was done.

Eventually they were paid their ransom and allowed Pablo and Gustavo to go free. The legend makes it clear that this was an insult Pablo could never forgive. Kidnapping for ransom was an accepted part of our lives, but by making him go down on his knees they paid him no respect. The story is that Pablo promised, “I’m going to kill those motherfuckers myself.” Only a few days later these corrupt agents were planning to kidnap another worker of Pablo’s. At that time the name Pablo Escobar wasn’t known, so no one had reason to be afraid of him. For the agents he was just another drug dealer. But instead of being successful in this attempt, they were caught themselves. Pablo never told me this whole story. I have heard from others that Pablo had them brought to a house, made them get down on their knees, then put a gun to their head and killed them. Maybe. But I do know that the newspapers reported finding the bodies of these two DAS agents who had been shot many times.

From this time forward Pablo was in the business of distributing cocaine, at first only in Colombia but eventually to at least fifteen countries and through those countries much of the world. Toward the end of his life the cartel was even beginning to move into Eastern Europe, into the communist nations. At the height of its business the Medellín cartel was producing and delivering tons of cocaine weekly, tons, but for Pablo it began by producing a few kilos by hand in a small house.

I don’t remember the day Pablo told me the whole truth about his business. It was soon. As I was the man taking care of the money, of course I had to know. Transforming the alkaloid from the coca leaf requires a process of several steps. It is a chemical process but it does not require experts to do it, just people who can follow simple steps. It is no more difficult than baking a cake. The process is done in a laboratory, which is called the kitchen. It is a laboratory in word only, as the process can take place anywhere from a nice house to the jungle. Eventually Pablo built many very large labs, employing hundreds of people, deep in the Colombian jungle, far away from any normally traveled roads. But his first lab was inside a two-story house Pablo purchased in the town of Belén. This was a normal house set in a residential neighborhood. The workers, known as the cooks, lived on the