KINGPIN'S SON
I HAD two fathers. The one I called Dad – and loved dearly – was the man who adopted me, Yorkshireman Patrick Witcomb.
He was an MI6 agent working undercover for British intelligence and had saved my life when my teenage mother was killed in a shootout in Colombia.
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My biological father was Pablo Escobar, the most notorious gangster in the history of the world and he was prepared to kill to win me back.
Although I was born Roberto Sendoya Escobar, Patrick and his wife Joan named me Phillip.
They were careful to keep from me the truth of the death of my real mother and what Pat had discovered about my biological father.
So I was blissfully unaware of the murky circumstances around my birth and the first few months of my life.
I was also unaware that Dad, who worked for British banknote printers De La Rue, was also a secret service operative with orders to infiltrate Colombia’s drug gangs.
Back then, Pablo Escobar was a young criminal with an already fearsome reputation who could give British intelligence what they desperately needed — access to the front line of drug trafficking.
Ever since he’d set eyes on the baby in that bullet-riddled house, Pat had felt an overwhelming urge to protect me but he still had to weigh up the risks of introducing me to my biological father.
There was no denying the reward from getting close to Escobar was huge but the downside was equally clear — he could be putting me in mortal danger.
THREATS TO 'TAKE BACK WHAT IS MINE'
Also, he could not deny me my past. One day I would have to learn the truth.
So, on New Year’s Eve 1969, when I was four years old, Joan and Pat took me to a hotel in Medellin, Colombia.
With Dad watching from a few feet away and my armed bodyguard, Senor Barandiga, standing by his side, I edged closer to a man with a thin moustache who, when he smiled, revealed a row of yellow teeth.
I still remember his smell — cheap cologne mixed with a strange aroma that I now know is marijuana.
Speaking in Spanish, his tone was deep, gruff and semi-formal: “Don Roberto." I must have looked confused. “Ah, don Felipe!”
I caught a glint of steel at his waistband. The other men he was with made me nervous but I felt like this man wanted me to like him. I didn’t feel threatened by him.
He spoke so quietly I wasn’t sure if he was trying to make sure the men beside him couldn’t hear. I struggled to hear what he was saying and just shrugged.
Finally, he said: “Adiós, mi hijo”’ — “Goodbye, my son’ — at a volume I could understand.
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"I will see you again. And always remember, little man — you are an Escobar.”
I had no idea what he was talking about but I saw Dad offer a thin smile as he led me back to our table.
When I asked: “Who was that man?” Dad replied: “Just someone we’re going to be doing business with.”
At a meeting earlier in the year, Patrick had agreed that Pablo Escobar could meet his son — but the gangster had made veiled threats to “take back what is mine”.
Pat stepped up security and moved me and my adopted younger sister Monique to a house in the Colombian capital of Bogota, with armed guards on patrol.
I will see you again. And always remember, little man — you are an Escobar.
Pablo Escobar
Just six months after the meeting in Medellin, Escobar carried out his threat.
I was alone in the house with our maid Otilia when a loud bang on the door made us both jump.
It was a sound we weren’t used to as there was normally a security guard out front.
With Otilia, I scrambled up the stairs and hid in my bedroom when a man with a bandage wrapped around his head burst in. I screamed.
Otilia turned. Her hand went to her mouth and she instinctively put her body between the intruder and me.
The man shouted, “Get up! Both of you. You’re coming with me.”
His voice was muffled through the gauze. I could just make out two dark, wildly staring eyes.
Otilia scooped me up and the gunman ushered us out of the room towards the stairs.
We reached the bottom rungs and he pushed Otilia so violently she staggered forward. BANG! The blast was so loud I thought my eardrums had shattered.
Otilia gasped and pulled me down to the floor, pulling me tight to her chest.
My bodyguard, Barandiga, was standing over us, gun drawn.
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Behind us on the floor lay the prone body of the gunman, his legs twitching, a pool of blood seeping on the floor under his chest.
Pat was furious someone had breached our security.
His gut told him Pablo Escobar was behind the raid — proof in his eyes that the young gangster could not be trusted.
But without solid evidence it was unwise to start attributing blame when both sides were trying to build trust.
Amid the chaos, Pat had to admit he no option but to carry on.
By the time I next spoke to Pablo Escobar, on another New Year’s Eve in Medellin, I was on holiday from boarding school in England.
The men around Don Pablo parted to let us through. As I shook his hand he said: “I hear you are at a new school, a long way away.
"England, I want to go there one day. Maybe I will come and visit you at your new school.”
A serious look flashed across Dad’s face and when we were back at our table, I asked: “Is he going to come and visit me?”
Dad sat me down. With both hands on my shoulders, his eyes locked on mine, he said: “No. That is not going to happen.”
But when I returned to our new home in Bogota for the summer holidays, faithful bodyguard Barandiga saved my life once again.
I had been at home for a week when I woke with a shock to the ear-piercing sound of an alarm. I could hear Otilia shouting.
A BODY FELL PAST MY WINDOW
My room was in darkness. I leaped from the bed, frightened out of my wits, and ran for the door that led to the hallway and Dad’s room. I didn’t make it.
The rough hand of a man gripped me firmly round my neck.
I panicked, but instead of fighting my way clear, I froze before being pulled backwards and a thick arm pinned me against a broad chest.
I tried to scream but all that came was a pathetic yelp. A large hand went over my mouth and, for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
The attacker shoved me against the wall next to the door, knocking the wind from me.
I prayed that someone would hear above the din of the alarm.
Does this code tell where the money is?
TO keep Escobar on-side, Dad offered to help him skim money from his drug gang.
It was to be a private arrangement between them to give Escobar a secret stash of funds. The drug lord was making so much money he could not spend it all.
Some was hidden in walls of houses, some was buried, some he lost track of.
A large amount he had siphoned off for Dad to hide for him in 1976 was secretly moved from De La Rue’s vaults to an underground store in Madrid.
In 1989, I went with Dad to the basement lock-up and saw millions of US dollars stuffed into 15 or so heavy black holdalls, each the size of a large PE bag.
I had seen bags like this before, when I was a child watching cash being shipped around Colombia.
The money was in wrapped bundles of $100 bills about an inch thick, each with a numbered band around them.
What I saw in that basement was all that was left of a much larger hoard – possibly hundreds of millions.
Dad and I never mentioned the money again, until 1993 when he was in Walton-on-Thames Cottage Hospital dying of motor neurone disease.
It was so sad to see a man who had done such great things reduced to this pitiful wreck. I felt utterly powerless and, as he gazed into my eyes, I will always remember his haunting, glazed stare.
Somehow, I knew he wanted something from his jacket hanging on the door.
He always carried a slimline diary in the top inside pocket. I handed it to him. His grasp was failing and it fell open on the bed. A piece of paper slipped out on to the blanket.
On one side it had the letterhead of the Home Office. The typed letter, dated August 23, 1967, confirmed my British nationality had been accepted.
As I read it, Dad signalled with a finger to turn it over. On the back were symbols and numbers:
M25 . . . TWO/5s. = 10.˚
M14 . . . TWO/4s.6d = 9.˚
M10 . . . one/.6s. = 6.˚
I could just make out his whispered words. “The cash . . . remember.”
With another gargantuan effort he added: “Madrid.”
I looked again at the symbols and numbers. It was like some kind of addition or quick sum one would write in a rush.
I asked: “Is this where the money is?” His brief smile was all I needed as confirmation.
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I stood, petrified, as the intruder kept me up against the wall while he turned and scanned the room with his flashlight.
As the beam locked on the open doorway, it illuminated two green eyes. It was the guard dog, its teeth bared.
I felt my attacker’s hold loosen as he weighed up his options. The dog remained stock-still. The man moved towards the doorway, pushing me in front.
I seized the chance to break free from his grasp and scrambled over the bed.
Somehow the intruder managed to kick his way past the dog and out into the garden.
Jumping up on a fence next to the house, he climbed up to the low, sloping roof above my bedroom.
Frozen with fear in the darkness, I listened to the fearsome barking of the dog and the muffled thudding of the intruder’s feet above my head, dislodging tiles that came smashing to the ground.
Fright turned to relief when I saw Barandiga, torchlight in one hand, revolver in the other, focused on the man on the roof.
Barandiga took aim. He shouted something and then fired.
Two more shots rang out. A body fell past my window and landed with a dull thud on the ground.
The dog leapt forward and sank its teeth into an arm for good measure. The intruder was beyond struggling.
Those images would join the other violent episodes stored in my memory bank to be replayed when I least wanted them.
Pablo Escobar had known the kidnapper killed by Barandiga for years. This death would be avenged and quickly.
By the time Pat found out that Escobar was about to break their uneasy truce, it was too late to stop the devastating repercussions.
With me safely back at school in England, Pat switched my trusted ex-Colombian special forces bodyguard to protecting cash shipments.
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It was a bloody reminder to Pat Witcomb of who really held the power in this unusual relationship.
- Adapted by Mike Ridley from Son Of Escobar: First Born, by Roberto Sendoya Escobar, published by Ad Lib on August 6, priced £14.99. © Roberto Sendoya Escobar.
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Inside the life of Pablo Escobar's 1st-born son who was brought up by M16 spy
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