News of a Kidnapping

  "Put it down over there," the Monkey said, pointing. "Don't turn off the engine."

  Villamizar did not realize until they were right over the house that at least thirty armed men were waiting all around the field. When the helicopter landed on the grass, some fifteen bodyguards moved away from the group and walked uneasily to the helicopter in a circle around a man who was in no way inconspicuous. He had hair down to his shoulders, a very thick, rough-looking black beard that reached to his chest, and skin browned and weathered by a desert sun. He was thick-set, wore tennis shoes and a light-blue cotton jacket, had an easy walk and a chilling calm. Villamizar knew who he was at first sight only because he was different from all the other men he had ever seen in his life.

  After saying goodbye to the nearest bodyguards with a series of powerful, rapid embraces, Escobar indicated to two of them that they should climb in the other side of the helicopter. They were Mugre and Otto, two of the men closest to him. Then he climbed in, paying no attention to the blades turning at half-speed. The first man he greeted before he sat down was Villamizar. He extended his warm, well-manicured hand and asked with no change in his voice:

  "How are you, Dr. Villamizar?'

  "How's it going, Pablo?" he replied.

  Then Escobar turned to Father Garcia Herreros with an amiable smile and thanked him for everything. He sat next to his two bodyguards, and only then did he seem to realize that the Monkey was there. Perhaps he had expected him only to give directions to Villamizar without getting into the helicopter.

  "And you," Escobar said, "in the middle of this right to the end."

  Nobody could tell if he was praising or berating him, but his tone was cordial. The Monkey, as confused as everyone else, shook his head and smiled.

  "Ah, Chief!"

  Then, in a kind of revelation, it occurred to Villamizar that Escobar was a much more dangerous man than anyone supposed, because there was something supernatural in his serenity and self-possession. The Monkey tried to close the door on his side but did not know how and the co-pilot had to do it. In the emotion of the moment, no one had thought to give any orders. The pilot, tense at the controls, asked a question:

  "Do we take off now?"

  Then Escobar let slip the only sign of his repressed anxiety.

  He gave a quick order: "What do you think? Move it! Move it!"

  When the helicopter lifted off from the grass, he asked Villamizar: "Everything's fine, isn't it, Doctor?" Villamizar, not turning around to look at him, answered with all his heart: "Everything's perfect." And that was all, because the flight was over. The helicopter flew the remaining distance almost grazing the trees, and came down on the prison soccer field--rock-strewn, its goalposts broken--next to the first helicopter, which had arrived a quarter of an hour earlier. The trip from the residence had taken less than fifteen minutes.

  The next two minutes, however, were the most dramatic of all. Escobar tried to get out first, as soon as the door was opened, and found himself surrounded by the prison guards: some fifty tense, fairly bewildered men in blue uniforms who were aiming their weapons at him. Escobar gave a start, lost his control for a moment, and in a voice heavy with fearsome authority he roared:

  "Lower your weapons, damn it!"

  By the time the head of the guards gave the same order, Escobar's command had already been obeyed. Escobar and his companions walked the two hundred meters to the house where the prison officials, the members of the official delegation, and the first group of Escobar's men, who had come overland to surrender with him, were all waiting. Also present were Escobar's wife and his mother, who was very pale and on the verge of tears. As he passed he gave her an affectionate little pat on the shoulder and said: "Take it easy, Ma." The director of the prison came out to meet him, his hand extended.

  "Senor Escobar," he introduced himself. "I'm Luis Jorge Pataquiva."

  Escobar shook his hand. Then he raised his left pant leg and took out the pistol he was carrying in an ankle holster. It was a magnificent weapon: a Sig Sauer 9mm with a gold monogram inlaid on the mother-of-pearl handle. Escobar did not remove the clip but took out the bullets one by one and tossed them to the ground.

  It was a somewhat theatrical gesture that seemed rehearsed, and it had its intended effect as a show of confidence in the warden whose appointment had caused so much concern. The following day it was reported that when he turned in his pistol Escobar had said to Pataquiva: "For peace in Colombia." No witness remembers this, least of all Villamizar, who was still dazzled by the beauty of the weapon.

  Escobar greeted everyone. The special prosecutor held on to his hand as he said: "I am here, Senor Escobar, to make certain your rights are respected." Escobar thanked him with special deference. Then he took Villamizar's arm.

  "Let's go, Doctor," he said. "You and I have a lot to talk about."

  He led him to the end of the outside gallery, and they chatted there for about ten minutes, leaning against the railing, their backs to everyone. Escobar began by thanking him in formal terms. Then, with his awesome calm, he expressed regret for the suffering he had caused Villamizar and his family, but asked him to understand that the war had been very hard on both sides. Villamizar did not miss this opportunity to solve three great mysteries in his life: why they had killed Luis Carlos Galan, why Escobar had tried to kill him, and why he had abducted Maruja and Beatriz.

  Escobar denied all responsibility for the first crime. "The fact is that everybody wanted to kill Dr. Galan," he said. He admitted being present at the discussions when the attack was decided, but denied taking part or having anything to do with what happened. "A lot of people were involved in that," he said. "I didn't even like the idea because I knew what would happen if they killed him, but once the decision was made I couldn't oppose it. Please tell dona Gloria that for me."

  As for the second, he was very explicit: A group of friends in congress had convinced him that Villamizar was uncontrollable and stubborn and had to be stopped somehow before he succeeded in having extradition approved. "Besides," he said, "in that war we were fighting, just a rumor could get you killed. But now that I know you, Dr. Villamizar, thank God nothing happened to you."

  As for Maruja's abduction, his explanation was simplistic. "I was kidnapping people to get something and I didn't get it, nobody was talking to me, nobody was paying attention, so I went after dona Maruja to see if that would work." He had no other reasons, but did drift into a long commentary about how he had gotten to know Villamizar over the course of the negotiations until he became convinced he was a serious, brave man whose word was as good as gold, and for that he pledged his eternal gratitude. "I know you and I can't be friends," he said. But Villamizar could be sure that nothing would happen to him or anybody in his family again.

  "Who knows how long I'll be here," he said, "but I still have a lot of friends, so if any of you feels unsafe, if anybody tries to give you a hard time, you let me know and that'll be the end of it. You met your obligations to me, and I thank you and will do the same for you. You have my word of honor."

  Before they said goodbye, Escobar asked Villamizar, as a final favor, to try to calm his mother and wife, who were both on the verge of hysteria. Villamizar did, without much hope of success, since both were convinced that the entire ceremony was nothing but a sinister trick on the part of the government to murder Escobar in prison. Finally Villamizar went into the director's office and dialed 284 33 00, the number of the presidential palace, which he knew by heart, and asked them to find Rafael Pardo no matter where he might be.

  He was in the office of Mauricio Vargas, the press adviser, who answered the phone and passed Pardo the receiver without saying a word. Pardo recognized the grave, quiet voice, but this time it had a glowing aura.

  "Dr. Pardo," said Villamizar, "I'm here with Escobar in prison."

  Pardo--perhaps for the first time in his life--heard the news without passing it through the filter of doubt.

  "How wonderful!" he said. r />
  He made a rapid remark that Mauricio Vargas did not even try to interpret, hung up the phone, and walked into the president's office without knocking. Vargas, who is a born reporter twenty-four hours a day, suspected that Pardo's hurry, and the amount of time he spent in the office, meant that something important had happened. His nervous excitement could not tolerate a wait of more than five minutes. He went into the president's office without being announced, and found him laughing out loud at something Pardo had just said. Then he heard the news. Mauricio thought with pleasure about the army of journalists who would burst into his office any minute now, and he looked at his watch. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. Two months later, Rafael Pardo would be the first civilian named defense minister after fifty years of military ministers.

  Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria had turned forty-one in December. According to the medical examination required when he entered prison, his state of health was that of "a young man in normal physical and mental condition." The only unusual observation was congestion in the nasal mucous membranes and something that looked like a plastic surgery scar on his nose, but he said he had been injured as a boy during a soccer game.

  The document of voluntary surrender was signed by the national and regional directors of Criminal Investigation, and the special prosecutor for human rights. Escobar endorsed his signature with his thumbprint and the number of his lost identification card: 8.345.766, Envigado. The secretary, Carlos Alberto Bravo, added at the bottom of the document: "Having affixed his signature to this document, Senor Pablo Emilio Escobar requested that Dr. Alberto Villamizar Cardenes also affix his signature to same, said signature appearing below." Villamizar signed, though he was never told in what capacity.

  When this process had been completed, Pablo Escobar took his leave of everyone and walked into the cell where he would live as involved as ever in his business affairs, and also have the power of the state protecting his domestic tranquillity and security. Starting the next day, however, the very prisonlike prison described by Villamizar began to be transformed into a five-star hacienda with all kinds of luxuries, sports installations, and facilities for parties and pleasures, built with first-class materials brought in gradually in the false bottom of a supply van. When the government learned about the scandal 299 days later, it decided to transfer Escobar to another prison with no prior announcement. Just as incredible as the government's needing a year to find out what was going on was the fact that Escobar bribed a sergeant and two terrified soldiers with a plate of food and escaped on foot with his bodyguards through the nearby woods, under the noses of the functionaries and troops responsible for the transfer.

  It was his death sentence. According to his subsequent statement, the government's action had been so strange and precipitous that he did not think they were really going to transfer him but kill him or turn him over to the United States. When he realized the enormity of his error, he undertook two parallel campaigns to have the government repeat the favor of imprisoning him: the greatest terrorist bombing offensive in the history of the country, and his offer to surrender without conditions of any kind. The government never acknowledged his proposals, the country did not succumb to the terror of the car bombs, and the police offensive reached unsustainable proportions.

  The world had changed for Escobar. Those who could have helped him save his life again had no desire or reason to. Father Garcia Herreros died of kidney failure on November 24, 1992, and Paulina--with no job and no savings--retired so far into a peaceful autumn with her children and good memories that today no one at "God's Word" even mentions her. Alberto Villamizar, named ambassador to Holland, received several messages from Escobar, but it was too late now for everything. His immense fortune, estimated at 3 billion dollars, was for the most part drained by the cost of the war or spent disbanding the cartel. His family found no place in the world where they could sleep without nightmares. Having become the biggest prey in our history, Escobar could not stay more than six hours in one spot, and in his crazed flight he left behind him a trail of dead innocents, and his own bodyguards murdered, captured, or gone over to the forces of his enemies. His security services, and even his own almost animal instinct for survival, lost the sharp edge of former days.

  On December 2, 1993--one day after his forty-fourth birthday--he could not resist the temptation of talking on the phone with his son Juan Pablo who, with his mother and younger sister, had just returned to Bogota following Germany's refusal to admit them. Juan Pablo, who was now more alert than his father, warned him after two minutes not to talk anymore because the police would trace the call. Escobar--whose devotion to his family was proverbial--ignored him. By this time the trace had established the exact phone in the Los Olivos district in Medellin that he was using. At 3:15 in the afternoon, an inconspicuous group of twenty-three special plainclothes police cordoned off the area, took over the house, and began to force the door to the second floor. Escobar heard them. "I'm hanging up," he said to his son on the telephone, "because something fanny's going on here." Those were his last words.

  Villamizar spent the night of the surrender in the noisiest, most dangerous clubs in the city, drinking man-size glasses of aguardiente with Escobar's bodyguards. The Monkey, drunk as a lord, told anyone who would listen that Dr. Villamizar was the only person the Chief had ever apologized to. At two in the morning he stood up and with no preliminaries said goodbye with a wave of his hand.

  "So long, Dr. Villamizar," he said. "I have to disappear now, and we may never see each other again. It was a pleasure knowing you."

  Villamizar, besotted with drink, was dropped off at La Loma at dawn. In the afternoon, the only topic of conversation on the plane to Bogota was Pablo Escobar's surrender. Villamizar was one of the best-known men in the country that day, but no one recognized him in the crowded airports. The newspapers had indicated his presence at the prison but had published no photographs, and the real extent of his decisive participation in the entire capitulation process seemed destined for the shadows of secret glories.

  Back home that afternoon, he realized that daily life was returning to normal. Andres was studying in his room. Maruja was waging a difficult, silent war against her phantoms in order to become herself again. The Tang Dynasty horse was back in its usual place, between her prized mementos of Indonesia and her antiquities from half the world, rearing its front legs on the sacred table where she wanted it to be, in the corner where she dreamed of seeing it during the interminable nights of her captivity. She had returned to her offices at FOCINE in the same car--the bullet scars on the windows erased--from which she had been abducted, with a new, grateful driver in the dead chauffeur's seat. In less than two years she would be named education minister.

  Villamizar, with no job and no desire to have one, with the bad taste of politics in his mouth, chose to rest for a time in his own way, making small household repairs, taking his leisure sip by sip with old drinking companions, doing the shopping himself so that he and his friends could enjoy the pleasures of the local cuisine. It was the perfect frame of mind for reading in the afternoon and growing a beard. One Sunday at lunch, when the mists of memory had already begun to rarefy the past, someone knocked at the door. They thought Andres had forgotten his keys again. The servants had the day off, and Villamizar opened the door. A young man in a sports jacket handed him a small package wrapped in gift paper and tied with a gold ribbon, and then disappeared down the stairs without saying a word or giving him time to ask any questions. Villamizar thought it might be a bomb. In an instant he was shuddering with the nausea of the abduction, but he untied the bow and unwrapped the package with his fingertips, away from the dining room where Maruja was waiting for him. It was a case made of imitation leather, and inside the case, nestled in satin, was the ring they had taken from Maruja on the night she was abducted. One diamond chip was missing, but it was the same ring.

  Maruja was stunned. She put it on, and realized she was recovering her health faster than she had
imagined because now it fit her finger.

  "How incredible!" she said with a hopeful sigh. "Somebody ought to write a book."

  Acknowledgments

  In October 1993, Maruja Pachon and her husband, Alberto Villamizar, suggested I write a book about her abduction and six-month captivity, and his persistent efforts to obtain her release. I was already well into the first draft when we realized it was impossible to separate her kidnapping from nine other abductions that occurred at the same time in Colombia. They were not, in fact, ten distinct abductions--as it had seemed at first--but a single collective abduction of ten carefully chosen individuals, which had been carried out by the same group and for only one purpose.

  This belated realization obliged us to begin again with a different structure and spirit so that all the protagonists would have their well-defined identities, their own realities. It was a technical solution to a labyrinthine narrative that in its original form would have been confused and interminable. But this meant that what had been foreseen as a year's work extended into almost three, even with the constant, meticulous assistance and collaboration of Maruja and Alberto, whose personal stories are the central axis, the unifying thread, of this book.

  I interviewed all the protagonists I could, and in each of them I found the same generous willingness to root through their memories and reopen wounds they perhaps preferred to forget. Their pain, their patience, and their rage gave me the courage to persist in this autumnal task, the saddest and most difficult of my life. My only frustration is knowing that none of them will find on paper more than a faded reflection of the horror they endured in their real lives--above all, the families of Marina Montoya and Diana Turbay, the two hostages who were killed, and in particular Diana Turbay's mother, dona Nydia Quintero de Balcazar, whose interviews were a heartrending, unforgettable human experience for me.