second floor and the kitchen was most of the first floor. Pablo had turned several old refrigerators into simple ovens that were used to cook the powder. What made this house different was that all the windows were covered all the time, making it impossible for anyone to see inside. In the beginning there was no need to pay anything to the police, who had no knowledge of what was going on.

The only problem was the very strong smell of the chemicals. Pablo was afraid the neighbors would complain to the police, so that’s when he decided to build his laboratory in the jungle. This was when the business really began to grow. At that time there was no way of imagining what it would become, what incredible riches he would earn. There was nothing to which it could be compared. The president of Colombia, Virgilio Barco, would later call it “a great and powerful organization the likes of which has never existed in the world.”

Within only a few months Pablo and Gustavo had earned considerable money. I was putting Pablo’s money in different banks, spreading it around as best I could. But there was no way for me to prepare to handle this amount of money. For anyone. Pablo had started purchasing nice things for himself; he bought a Nissan Patrol, which is a large jeep-type vehicle, and a beautiful house for himself in the wealthy neighborhood El Poblado, living among the wealthiest citizens of Medellín. I still tried to convince him not to continue in this business. Pablo and I were both very strong soccer fans, although we supported different teams from Medellín. Our whole lives we would go to the stadium whenever possible. Once, I remember, early in Pablo’s story, we went together and were sitting side by side in the sun. There was just the two of us, two brothers, no bodyguards, no wives or children. This was one of the last times we were ever able to do this. I made one last plea: “You have enough money now,” I said. “You can buy what you need. Why don’t you just focus on the real estate business?”

He smiled to himself. As we were to learn, there are different ways to be addicted to drugs. Once Pablo was in the middle of the business, once he had tasted the power and the money and the renown, there was no way he could ever get out of it.

It was as he established his name that Pablo’s life changed in another, very different way. In 1974 he had fallen in love with the most beautiful young girl of the neighborhood, María Victoria Henao. The difficulty was that Pablo was already twenty-five and she was only fourteen, and because of that age difference María Victoria’s mother was very much against this relationship. She refused to speak with Pablo and tried to make it difficult for María to be with him. But Pablo was very much in love and pursued her very strongly. I remember one night he and a guitar player got very drunk and like a scene in a cheap movie serenaded her. In 1976 María Victoria became pregnant. One day, just like that, they decided they would be married. At that time I was outside Colombia, traveling with the national cycling team, so I missed the ceremony. It was a simple event. There was no planning, nothing special was organized. Three months later their son, Juan Pablo, was born. It took a couple of years before his mother-in-law would finally agree to join their new family, but eventually she accepted that Pablo truly loved her daughter.

It would be wrong to say that Pablo was always the most faithful husband to María Victoria, the world knows that, but there was not one day that he stopped loving his wife, his children, and his family. In fact, years later it was this love for his family and his fear for their safety that caused him to change his usual behavior and allow himself to be found and killed.

For the entire family, our lives changed forever the day my brother decided to send his drugs to America. By that time there had been a long-established marijuana business between Colombia and the United States, but there was not much of a market for cocaine. That began to change when Americans began growing much of their own marijuana, so the profit from the large loads was greatly reduced. Pablo had gone into