"We'll get rid of it," he said.
Diana and Richard could not sleep after breakfast. Days earlier they had been told they would be changing houses. They had not paid much attention, since in the brief month they had been together they had been moved twice to nearby safe houses in anticipation of real or imaginary police raids. A little before eleven on the morning of January 25, they were in Diana's room discussing the guards' conversation in whispers, when they heard the sound of helicopters coming from Medellin.
In recent days police intelligence agencies had received numerous anonymous phone calls reporting the movement of armed people along the Sabaneta road--municipality of Copacabana--in particular around the farms of Alto de la Cruz, Villa del Rosario, and La Bola. Perhaps their captors planned to transfer Diana and Richard to Alto de la Cruz, the most secure of the properties because it was located at the top of a high, wooded hill and had a commanding view of the entire valley all the way to Medellin. As a result of the calls, and other leads of their own, the police were about to raid the house. It was a major military operation involving two captains, nine officers, seven noncommissioned officers, and ninety-nine agents, half of them traveling overland and half in four combat helicopters. The guards, however, no longer paid attention to helicopters because they flew over so often and nothing ever happened. Suddenly one of them was at the door and shouted at them in fright:
"The law's all over us!"
Diana and Richard took as long as they could because this was the right time for a police assault: The four guards on duty were not the toughest ones, and seemed too panicked to defend themselves. Diana brushed her teeth and put on a white shirt she had washed the day before; she put on her sneakers and the jeans she had been wearing the day she was kidnapped, too big for her now because she had lost weight. Richard changed his shirt and gathered up the camera equipment that had been returned to him in the past few days. The guards seemed crazed by the growing noise of the helicopters that flew over the house, went back toward the valley, and returned almost grazing the treetops. The guards shouted for them to hurry and pushed the hostages toward the outside door. They gave them white hats so they would look like campesinos from the air. They threw a black shawl over Diana, and Richard put on his leather jacket. The guards ordered them to run for the mountain, while they spread out and ran too, their weapons ready to fire when the helicopters were within range. Diana and Richard began to climb a narrow, rocky path. The slope was very steep, and the hot sun burned straight down from the middle of the sky. Diana was exhausted after only a few meters, when the helicopters were already in view. At the first burst of gunfire, Richard threw himself to the ground. "Don't move," Diana shouted. "Play dead." And then she fell facedown beside him.
"They killed me," she screamed. "I can't move my legs."
She could not, in fact, but she felt no pain either, and she asked Richard to look at her back because before she dropped she had felt something like an electric shock at her waist. Richard raised her shirt and just above the left hip bone saw a clean tiny hole, with no blood.
The shooting continued, coming closer and closer, and a desperate Diana insisted that Richard leave her there and get away, but he stayed, hoping for help that would save her too. While they waited, he placed in her hand a Virgin that he always carried in his pocket, and he prayed with her. The gunfire came to an abrupt end, and two members of the Elite Corps appeared on the trail, their weapons at the ready.
Richard, who was kneeling beside Diana, raised his arms and said, "Don't shoot!" One of the agents stared at him with a look of astonishment and asked:
"Where's Pablo?"
"I don't know," Richard said. "I'm Richard Becerra, I'm a journalist. This is Diana Turbay, and she's wounded."
"Prove it," said an agent.
Richard showed him his identity card. With the help of some campesinos who emerged from the underbrush, they made an improvised litter from a sheet and carried her to the helicopter. The pain had become unbearable, but she was calm and lucid, and knew she was going to die.
Half an hour later, former president Turbay received a call from a military source informing him that his daughter Diana and Francisco Santos had been rescued in Medellin in an operation carried out by the Elite Corps. He immediately called Hernando Santos, who let out a victory whoop and ordered the telephone operators at his newspaper to relay the news to the entire family. Then he called Alberto Villamizar's apartment and repeated the news word for word. "How wonderful," shouted Villamizar. His joy was sincere, but he realized right away that with Pacho and Diana free, the only killable hostages still in Escobar's hands were Maruja and Beatriz.
As he made urgent phone calls, he turned on the radio and discovered that the news was not yet on the air. He was about to dial Rafael Pardo's number when the phone rang again. It was a disheartened Hernando Santos, calling to tell him that Turbay had amended his first information. It was not Francisco Santos who had been freed but the cameraman Richard Becerra, and Diana was seriously wounded. Hernando Santos, however, was not as disturbed by the error as he was by Turbay's consternation at having caused him a counterfeit happiness.
Martha Lupe Rojas was not home when someone from the news program called to tell her that her son Richard was free. She had gone to her brother's house, and was so anxious for news that she carried a portable radio with her wherever she went, but that day, for the first time since the abduction, the radio was not working.
Someone told her that her son was safe, and in the cab on the way to the television station, she heard the familiar voice of the radio journalist Juan Gossain bringing her back to reality: The reports from Medellin were still very confused. It had been confirmed that Diana Turbay was dead, but there was nothing definite about Richard Becerra. Martha Lupe began to pray in a quiet voice: "Dear God, send the bullets to the side, don't let them touch him." At that moment, Richard called his house from Medellin to tell her he was safe, and no one was home. But an emotional shout from Gossain returned Martha Lupe's soul to her body:
"Extra! Extra! The cameraman Richard Becerra is alive!"
Martha Lupe burst into tears and could not stop crying until late that night, when she welcomed her son in the editorial offices of the newscast "Cripton." Today she recalls: "He was nothing but skin and bone, pale and bearded, but he was alive."
Rafael Pardo had received the news in his office just a few minutes earlier, when a reporter who was a friend of his called to confirm a version of the rescue. He telephoned General Maza Marquez and then the head of the National Police, General Gomez Padilla, and neither one knew anything about any rescue operations. A little while later, Gomez Padilla called to inform him that it had been a chance encounter with the Elite Corps during a search for Escobar. The units involved, Gomez Padilla said, had no prior information regarding hostages in that location.
Since receiving the report from Medellin, Dr. Turbay had been trying to reach Nydia at the house in Tabio, but her telephone was out of order. He sent his chief bodyguard in a van to tell her that Diana was safe and in a Medellin hospital for a routine examination. Nydia heard the news at two in the afternoon, but instead of shouting with joy, as the rest of the family had, she looked stunned by grief, and exclaimed:
"They've killed Diana!"
On the drive back to Bogota, as they were listening to the news on the radio, her uncertainty intensified. "I was still crying," she would later say. "Not shrieking and moaning, as I had before, just shedding tears." She stopped at her house to change clothes before going on to the airport, where the presidential plane--a decrepit Fokker that flew only by the grace of God after almost thirty years of forced labor--was waiting for the family. The latest report said that Diana was in intensive care, but Nydia did not believe anyone or anything except her own instincts. She went straight to the telephone and asked to speak to the president.
"They killed Diana, Mr. President," she said. "And it's your doing, it's your fault, it's what comes of havi
ng a soul of stone."
The president was glad he could contradict her with a piece of good news.
"No, Senora," he said in his calmest voice. "It seems there was a raid, and nothing is confirmed yet. But Diana is alive."
"No," Nydia replied. "They killed her."
The president, who was in direct communication with Medellin, had no doubts.
"How do you know that?"
Nydia answered with absolute conviction:
"Because I'm her mother and my heart tells me so."
Her heart was correct. An hour later, Maria Emma Mejia, the presidential adviser for Medellin, came aboard the plane that was carrying the Turbay family and gave them the bad news. Diana had bled to death despite several hours of medical intervention, which would have been hopeless in any case. She had lost consciousness in the helicopter that transported her to Medellin, and had never regained it. Her spinal column had been shattered at the waist by a high-velocity, medium-caliber explosive bullet that splintered inside her body and caused a general paralysis from which she never would have recovered.
Nydia suffered a major shock when she saw her in the hospital, lying naked on the operating table under a blood-soaked sheet, her face without expression and her skin without color because of the loss of blood. There was an enormous incision in her chest where the doctors had inserted their hands to massage her heart.
As soon as she left the operating room, when she was beyond grief and despair, Nydia held a ferocious press conference right in the hospital. "This is the story of a death foretold," she began. Convinced that Diana had been the victim of an assault ordered from Bogota--according to information she had received since her arrival in Medellin--she gave a detailed account of the appeals she and the family had made to the president that the police not attempt a rescue. She said that the stupidity and criminality of the Extraditables were responsible for her daughter's death, but the guilt was shared equally by the government and the president, above all by the president, "who with lack of feeling, almost with coldness and indifference, turned a deaf ear to the appeals that there be no rescues and that the lives of the hostages not be placed in danger."
This categorical statement, quoted verbatim in all the media, generated solidarity in public opinion, and indignation in the government. The president held a meeting with Fabio Villegas, his secretary general; Miguel Silva, his private secretary; Rafael Pardo, his security adviser; and Mauricio Vargas, his press adviser. The purpose was to devise a resounding denial of Nydia's statement. But more careful reflection led them to the conclusion that one cannot argue with a mother's grief. Gaviria understood this, rescinded the purpose of the meeting, and gave an order:
"We'll go to the funeral."
Not only he but the entire government.
Nydia's rancor gave her no peace. With someone whose name she could not remember, she had sent Gaviria Diana's letter--after she knew she was dead--perhaps so that he would always carry with him the burden of its premonition. "Obviously I didn't expect him to answer," she said.
At the end of the funeral mass in the cathedral--it had rarely been more crowded--the president rose from his seat and walked the empty central nave alone, followed by everyone's eyes, and photographers' flashbulbs and television cameras, and held out his hand to Nydia, certain she would leave him with his hand outstretched. Nydia took it with icy distaste. In reality, she felt relieved, for what she feared was that the president would embrace her. However, she appreciated the condolence kiss from his wife, Ana Milena.
It was not over yet. As soon as the obligations of mourning had eased somewhat, Nydia requested another meeting with the president to give him important information that he ought to know before delivering his speech that day on Diana's death. Silva conveyed the precise message he had received, and then the president gave the smile that Nydia would never see.
"She's coming to cut out my heart," he said. "But have her come, of course."
He greeted her as he always did. Nydia, however, dressed in black, walked into the office with a different air: simple, and grieving. She came straight to the point, which she revealed to the president with her opening words:
"I've come to do you a favor."
The surprise was that she began by begging his pardon for believing that he had ordered the raid in which Diana died. She knew now that he had not been aware of it. And she also wanted to tell him that at present he was being deceived again, because it was not true that the purpose of the mission had been to find Pablo Escobar, but to free the hostages, whose whereabouts had been revealed under torture by a gang member who had been captured by the police. And who, Nydia explained, had later shown up as one of those killed in the shooting.
She spoke with energy and precision, and with the hope of arousing the interest of the president, but she could not detect even the slightest sign of compassion. "He was like a block of ice," she would say later when recalling that day. Not knowing why, or at what point it happened, and unable to stop herself, she began to cry. Then the temperament she had kept under control rebelled, and her manner and the subject underwent a complete transformation. She berated the president for his indifference and coldness in not fulfilling his constitutional obligation to save the lives of the hostages.
"Just think about it," she concluded. "What if your daughter had been in this situation. What would you have done then?"
She looked straight into his eyes but was so agitated by this time that the president could not interrupt her. Later he would say: "She asked me questions but gave me no chance to answer them." Nydia, in fact, stopped him cold with another question: "Don't you think, Mr. President, that you were mistaken in your handling of this problem?" For the first time the president revealed a shred of doubt. "I've never suffered so much," he would say years later. But he only blinked and said in his natural voice:
"It's possible."
Nydia stood, extended her hand in silence, and left the office before he could open the door for her. Then Miguel Silva came into the office and found the president very affected by the story of the dead gunman. Gaviria lost no time in writing a personal letter to the prosecutor general telling him to investigate the case and bring it to trial.
Most people agreed that the purpose of the raid had been to capture Escobar or one of the important capos, but that even with this rationale it was stupid and doomed to failure. According to the immediate police version, Diana had died in the course of a search mission carried out with the support of helicopters and ground personnel. Without intending to, they had encountered the armed unit guarding Diana Turbay and the cameraman Richard Becerra. As they were fleeing, one of the kidnappers shot Diana in the back and shattered her spine. The cameraman was not hurt. Diana was taken to the Medellin General Hospital in a police helicopter, and died there at 4:35 in the afternoon.
Pablo Escobar's version was quite different and agreed in its essential points with the story Nydia told to the president. According to him, the police had carried out the raid knowing that the hostages were in that location. They had obtained the information under torture from two of his men whom he identified with their real names and the numbers on their identity cards. His communique claimed they had been arrested and tortured by the police, and that one of them had guided the officers there from a helicopter. He said that Diana was killed by the police when she was running away from the fighting and had already been released by her captors. He concluded by stating that three innocent campesinos had also been killed in the skirmish, but the police described them to the press as criminals who had been shot during the fighting. This report must have given Escobar the satisfaction he had hoped for when he denounced police violations of human rights.
On the night of the tragedy, Richard Becerra, the only available witness, was besieged by reporters in a room at General Police Headquarters in Bogota. He was still wearing the black leather jacket he had on when he had been kidnapped, and the straw hat his captors had given him so he would be mistak
en for a campesino. He was not in any state of mind to provide illuminating details.
The impression he made on his more understanding colleagues was that the confusion of events had not allowed him to form an opinion about the incident. His statement that the bullet that killed Diana was fired intentionally by one of the kidnappers was not supported by any evidence. The widespread belief, over and above all the conjectures, was that Diana died by accident in the cross fire. But the definitive investigation would be handled by the prosecutor general, in accordance with the letter sent to him by President Gaviria following the revelations of Nydia Quintero.
The drama had not ended. In response to public uncertainty regarding the fate of Marina Montoya, the Extraditables issued another communique on January 30, acknowledging that they had given the order to execute her on January 23. But, "because we are in hiding and communications are poor, we have no information--at present--as to whether she was executed or released. If she was executed, we do not understand why the police have not yet reported finding her body. If she was released, it is now up to her family." Only then, seven days after the order to kill her was given, did the search for her body begin.
Pedro Morales, one of the pathologists who had performed the autopsy, read the bulletin in the paper and believed the corpse of the lady with the fine clothes and impeccable nails was in fact Marina Montoya. He was correct. As soon as her identity was established, however, someone claiming to be from the Justice Ministry called the Institute of Forensic Medicine, urging them not to reveal that the body was in a mass grave.
Luis Guillermo Perez Montoya, Marina's son, was leaving for lunch when he heard the preliminary report on the radio. At the Institute, they showed him the photograph of the woman disfigured by bullets, and he had difficulty recognizing her. A special deployment of police was required at the Southern Cemetery, because the news had already been announced and they had to clear a path to the grave site for Luis Guillermo Perez through a mass of curious onlookers.
According to regulations at the Institute, an anonymous corpse has to be buried with a serial number stamped on the torso, arms, and legs so that it can be identified even in case of dismemberment. It has to be enclosed in black plastic, the kind used for trash bags, and tied at the ankles and wrists with strong cord. The body of Marina Montoya--according to her son--was naked and covered in mud, and had been tossed into the common grave without the identifying tattoos required by law. Beside her was the body of the boy who had been buried at the same time, wrapped in the pink sweatsuit.