News of a Kidnapping

  In spite of their efforts, the hostages had no reliable clues as to where they were. The guards' fear that neighbors might hear them, and the sounds and voices coming from outside, led them to think they were in the city. A confirmation seemed to be the deranged rooster that crowed at any hour of the day or night, since roosters kept on high floors tend to lose their sense of time. Nearby they often heard different voices calling the same name: Rafael. Small, low-flying planes passed overhead, and when the helicopter arrived it sounded as if it were right on top of the house. Marina insisted on the unproven theory that a high-ranking army officer was supervising their imprisonment. For Maruja and Beatriz it was just another fantasy, but whenever they heard the helicopter, strict military rules were reimposed: the house as orderly as a barracks, the door latched on the inside and padlocked on the outside, conversation in whispers, weapons always at the ready, and a slight improvement in the vile food.

  The four guards who had been with them since the first day were replaced by another four early in December. One was distinctive and strange and looked like a character in a horror movie. They called him Gorilla, and in fact he resembled one: enormous and strong as a gladiator, with dark black skin covered in thick, curly hair. His voice was so loud he had difficulty whispering, and no one dared to ask him to lower his voice. The sense of inferiority felt by the other guards was obvious. Instead of the cutoffs worn by everyone else, he wore gymnast's shorts, a ski mask, and a tight undershirt that displayed his perfect torso. He had a Holy Infant medal around his neck, handsome arms, and a Brazilian wristband that he wore for good luck. His hands were enormous, and the fate lines seemed etched into his pale palms. He barely fit into the room, and every time he moved he left chaos in his wake. For the hostages, who had learned how to deal with the previous guards, this was a disturbing turn of events--above all for Beatriz, whom he hated on sight.

  The condition shared by both guards and hostages was absolute boredom. As a prelude to their celebration of Christmas, the owners of the house held a novena with a priest of their acquaintance, perhaps innocent, perhaps not. They prayed, sang carols, gave candy to the children, and toasted one another with the apple wine that was the family's official drink. At the end the house was exorcised with sprinklings of holy water. They needed so much that it was brought in gallon oil cans. When the priest left, Damaris came into the room and sprinkled the television, the mattresses, the walls. The three captives, taken by surprise, did not know what to do. "It's holy water," she said as she sprinkled everything with her hand. "It'll help to make sure nothing happens to us." The guards crossed themselves, fell to their knees, and received the purifying shower with angelic devotion.

  That love of parties and prayer, so typical of Antioquians, did not let up for a moment during the month of December. Maruja, in fact, had been careful not to let her captors know that December 9 was her fifty-third birthday. Beatriz agreed to keep the secret, but the guards found out while they were watching a special television program that Maruja's children dedicated to her on the evening of December 8.

  The guards could not hide their emotion at feeling themselves somehow involved in the intimacy of the program. "Dona Maruja," said one, "how young Dr. Villamizar looks, how nice he looks, how he loves you." They hoped Maruja would introduce them to her daughters so they could take them out. In any case, watching that program in captivity was like being dead and watching life from the next world without taking part, and without the living knowing you were there. At eleven the next morning, the majordomo and his wife burst into the room with a bottle of local champagne, enough glasses for everyone, and a cake that looked as if it were covered in toothpaste. They congratulated Maruja with great displays of affection, and they and the guards sang "Happy Birthday." They all ate and drank, and left Maruja struggling with contrary emotions.

  Juan Vitta woke on November 26 to learn that he was being released because of ill health. He froze in terror, for in recent days he had been feeling better than ever, and he thought the announcement was simply a subterfuge that would give the public its first corpse. As a consequence, when the guard told him a few hours later to get ready for his release, he had an attack of panic. "I would have preferred to die on my own," he has said, "but if this was my fate, I had to accept it." He was told to shave and put on clean clothes, and he did, certain he was dressing for his own funeral. He was given instructions on what he must do once he was free, and above all, on what he must say during press interviews to avoid giving clues the police might use in a rescue operation. A little after twelve, they drove him through some labyrinthine districts in Medellin and then, without ceremony, dropped him off on a street corner.

  After Vitta's release they moved Hero Buss again, this time to a good neighborhood, across the street from an aerobics school for women. The owner of the house was a free-spending, high-living mulatto. His wife, about thirty-five years old and in her seventh month of pregnancy, spent the day from breakfast on covering herself in expensive jewelry that was far too noticeable. They had a young son who was staying in another house with his grandmother, and it was his room, filled with every kind of mechanical toy, that was occupied by Hero Buss. And he, considering how they made him part of the family, prepared himself for a long captivity.

  The owners must have enjoyed this German like the ones in Marlene Dietrich's movies: more than six feet tall and a yard wide, a fifty-year-old adolescent with a sense of humor that protected him from creditors, and who spoke a Spanish spiced with the Caribbean slang of his wife, Carmen Santiago. He had faced real dangers as a correspondent for German newspapers and radio in Latin America, including the night he had spent, under the military regime in Chile, expecting to be shot at dawn. So he already had a tough hide, and could enjoy the folkloric aspects of his captivity.

  And it was just as well in a house where a courier made regular visits bringing bags full of money for expenses, and still there was never enough. The owners would spend it as soon as they could on parties and trinkets, and in a few days they had nothing left for food. On weekends they gave parties and huge dinners for their brothers and sisters, cousins and close friends. Children took over the house. On the first day they were overwhelmed with emotion when they recognized the German giant, whom they treated as if he were a soap opera star because they had seen him so often on television. No fewer than thirty people who had nothing to do with the abduction asked to take his picture, requested autographs, ate with him, and even danced with him, all without masks in that madhouse where he lived until his captivity ended.

  Their accumulated debts drove the owners to distraction, and they had to pawn the television, the VCR, the stereo, whatever, to feed the hostage. The wife's jewelry began to disappear from her throat, wrists, and ears, until there was nothing left. Once, in the middle of the night, the owner woke Hero Buss to ask for a loan because his wife had gone into labor and he did not have a penny to pay the hospital. Hero Buss lent him his last fifty thousand pesos.

  They freed him on December 11, two weeks after Juan Vitta. For the occasion they bought him a pair of shoes that he could not use because he wore size 46 and the largest they could find, after much searching, was a 44. They bought him a shirt and trousers two sizes smaller because he had lost thirty-five pounds. They returned his camera equipment and the bag with his notebooks hidden in the lining, and they paid him back the fifty thousand pesos for the birth and another fifteen thousand he had lent them earlier to replace money that had been stolen from them at the market. They offered him a great deal more, but the only thing he asked them for was an interview with Pablo Escobar. They never replied.

  The crew that had been with him in recent days drove him away in a private car. After taking a circuitous route through the best neighborhoods in Medellin, they dropped him half a block from the newspaper El Colombiano, with his bags on his back and a message from the Extraditables; it recognized his struggle in defense of human rights in Colombia and other Latin American countries, and
reiterated the determination of the Extraditables to accept the capitulation policy with no conditions other than judicial guarantees of safety for themselves and their families. A journalist to the end, Hero Buss handed his camera to the first passerby and asked him to take a picture of his release.

  Diana and Azucena heard the news on the radio, and their guards said they would be next. But they had been told the same thing so often, they did not believe it. In the event only one was freed, each woman wrote a letter for the other to give to her family. And then nothing happened, nothing else was said, until two days later--at dawn on December 13--when Diana was awakened by whispers and unusual movements in the house. The feeling that they would be released made her jump out of bed. She alerted Azucena, and before anyone announced anything to them they began to pack.

  Both Diana and Azucena recounted that dramatic moment in their journals. Diana was in the shower when one of the guards, without any ceremony, told Azucena to get ready to go. Only Azucena. In the book she would publish a short while later, she narrated this with admirable simplicity:

  I went to the room and put on the clothes I had laid out on the chair while dona Diana was still in the bathroom. When she came out and saw me she stopped, looked at me, and said:

  "Are we going, Azu?"

  Her eyes shone, waiting for the answer she longed to hear. And I could not tell her anything. I lowered my head, took a deep breath, and said:

  "No. I'm going alone."

  "I'm so happy for you," Diana said. "I knew it would be this way."

  In her diary, Diana wrote: "I felt as if I had been stabbed in the heart, but I said I was happy for her, and not to worry." She gave Azucena the letter to Nydia she had written earlier, in the event she was not released. In the letter she asked Nydia to celebrate Christmas with Diana's children. Azucena was crying, and Diana put her arms around her to comfort her. Then she walked with Azucena to the car, and they embraced again. Azucena turned to watch her through the car window, and Diana waved goodbye.

  An hour later, in the car that was taking her to the Medellin airport where she would catch a plane to Bogota, Azucena heard a reporter on the radio asking her husband what he had been doing when he heard the news of her release. He replied with the truth:

  "I was writing a poem for Azucena."

  And so their wish was granted, and they were together on December 16 to celebrate their fourth wedding anniversary.

  Ricardo and Orlando, tired of sleeping on the floor of their foul-smelling cell, persuaded the guards to put them in another room. They moved the hostages to the bedroom where they had seen the handcuffed mulatto, whom they never saw again. To their horror, they discovered that the mattress on the bed had large, recent bloodstains that might have come either from slow tortures or sudden slashes with a knife.

  They had learned of the release of other hostages on television and radio. Their guards had said they would be next. Very early on December 17 a boss they knew as the Old Man--and who in fact was the same don Pacho in charge of Diana--walked into Orlando's room without knocking.

  "Put on some clothes because you're leaving now," he said.

  He barely had time to shave and dress, and no time to tell Richard, who was in the same house. They gave him a communique for the press, put a pair of strong glasses over his eyes, and the Old Man, on his own, drove him with the ritual twists and turns through various neighborhoods in Medellin, gave him five thousand pesos for a cab, and left him at a traffic circle he could not identify because he does not know the city. It was nine in the morning on a cool, clear Monday. Orlando could not believe it: Until that moment, while he signaled in vain for cabs that were all occupied, he had been sure it would be cheaper for his captors to kill him than run the risk of freeing him while he was alive. He called his wife from the first telephone he saw.

  Liliana was bathing the baby, and ran to answer the phone with soapy hands. She heard a stranger's calm voice:

  "Slim, it's me."

  She thought it was a joke and was about to hang up when she recognized his voice. "Oh my God," she cried. Orlando was in such a hurry he only managed to tell her he was still in Medellin and would be in Bogota that afternoon. Liliana was tormented the rest of the day because she had not recognized her husband's voice. Juan Vitta had told her when he was released that Orlando had changed so much in captivity that it was hard to recognize him, but she never thought the change would affect even his voice. That afternoon at the airport it was even worse when she made her way through the crowd of reporters and did not recognize the man who kissed her. But it was Orlando after four months of captivity, fat and pale, with a dark, rough mustache. Each of them had decided on their own to have a second child as soon as they were together again. "But there were so many people around we couldn't that night," Liliana has said, weak with laughter. "Or the next day either, because of the shock." But at last they made up for lost time: Nine months after the third day they had another boy, and twins the following year.

  The series of releases--a breath of hope for the other captives and their families--were a convincing sign to Pacho Santos that no reasonable progress had been made in his favor. He thought Pablo Escobar had simply gotten rid of the low cards to increase the pressure for amnesty and non-extradition in the Constituent Assembly, and was holding on to his three aces: the daughter of a former president, the son of the publisher of the most important paper in the country, and the sister-in-law of Luis Carlos Galan. Beatriz and Marina, on the other hand, felt renewed hope, though Maruja preferred not to deceive herself with overly optimistic interpretations. Her spirits were low, and the approach of Christmas was devastating. She despised obligatory holidays. She never put up creches or Christmas trees, did not send cards or give gifts, and found nothing more depressing than dreary Christmas Eve celebrations when people sing because they're sad or cry because they're happy. The majordomo and his wife prepared a ghastly dinner. Beatriz and Marina made an effort to join in, but Maruja took two strong sleeping pills and woke with no regrets.

  On the following Wednesday, Alexandra's weekly program was devoted to Christmas night at Nydia's house with the entire Turbay family around the former president, along with the families of Beatriz, and of Maruja and Alberto Villamizar. The children were in the foreground: Diana's two boys, and Maruja's grandson--Alexandra's son. Maruja wept with emotion: The last time she had seen him he barely babbled a few words, and now he could talk. At the end, Villamizar spoke, slowly and in great detail, about the progress of his efforts. Maruja summed up the program with absolute precision: "It was very nice, and really awful."

  Villamizar's message raised Marina Montoya's spirits. She became human again and revealed the greatness of her heart. With a political acumen they had not known she possessed, she began to show interest in listening to the news and interpreting its significance. Her analysis of the decrees led her to conclude that their chances for freedom were greater than ever. Her health improved so much that she ignored the rules and spoke in her natural voice, which was beautiful and well modulated.

  December 31 was their big night. When Damaris brought breakfast she said they would celebrate with a real party, complete with champagne and a pork roast. Maruja thought it would be the saddest night of her life, the first New Year's Eve away from her family, and she sank into depression. Beatriz was in a state of total collapse. The last thing they wanted was a party. Marina, however, was overjoyed by the news and used all her persuasive powers to cheer them up, even the guards.

  "We have to be fair," she told Maruja and Beatriz. "They're away from their families too, and our job is to make their New Year's Eve as pleasant as it can be."

  She had been given three nightgowns on the night of her abduction, but she had used only one and kept the other two in her bag. Later, when Maruja and Beatriz were captured, the three women used sweatsuits as their prison uniform, washing them every two weeks.

  No one thought about the nightgowns again until the afternoon of Decemb
er 31, when Marina carried her enthusiasm one step further. "I have an idea," she said. "I have three nightgowns here, and we'll wear them for good luck in the new year." And she asked Maruja:

  "All right, darling, which color do you want?"

  Maruja said it was all the same to her. Marina decided that green suited her best. She gave the pink gown to Beatriz, and kept the white one for herself. Then she took a cosmetics case out of her bag, and suggested they make each other up. "So we'll look pretty tonight," she said. Maruja, who'd had all she could bear with the idea of dressing up in nightgowns, turned her down with sour humor.

  "I'll go so far as to put on the nightgown," she said. "But paint myself up like a madwoman, under these circumstances? No, Marina, that's something I won't do."

  Marina shrugged.

  "Well, I will."

  Because they had no mirror, she handed the case to Beatriz and sat down on the bed to be made up. Beatriz did a complete and tasteful job in the light of the bedside candle, some blush to hide the deathly pallor of her skin, bright lipstick, eye shadow. They were both surprised at how attractive this woman, who had been famous for her grace and beauty, could still look. Beatriz settled for her ponytail and schoolgirl appearance.