News of a Kidnapping

by Gabriel García Márquez

  "A sui generis crime," he exclaimed in astonishment. "That's brilliant!"

  With that as a starting point, Guido Parra elaborated the concept in his own way, as a God-given right on the murky border between ordinary and political crimes, making possible the dream that the Extraditables, like the guerrillas, would be treated as political offenders. Each man spoke. Then, one of Escobar's lawyers asked the Notables to obtain a letter from Gaviria that would guarantee Escobar's life in an explicit, unequivocal way.

  "I'm very sorry," said Hernando Santos, shocked at the request, "but I won't get involved in that."

  "And I certainly won't," said Turbay.

  Lopez Michelsen's refusal was vehement. Then the lawyer asked them to arrange a meeting between him and the president so that Gaviria could give him an oral guarantee for Escobar. "We won't deal with that subject here," Lopez Michelsen replied.

  Before the Notables met to revise the draft of their statement, Pablo Escobar had already been informed of their most confidential intentions. This is the only way to explain his extraordinary instructions in an urgent letter to Guido Parra. "You are free to find some way to have the Notables invite you to their discussion," he wrote. And then he listed a series of decisions the Extraditables had already made in anticipation of any fresh initiative.

  The Notables' letter was ready in twenty-four hours, and contained an important departure with regard to their previous efforts: "Our good offices have acquired a new dimension, not limited to an occasional rescue but concerned with how to achieve peace for all Colombians." It was a new definition of their function that could only increase hope. President Gaviria approved but thought it prudent to establish a certain distance to avoid any misinterpretation of the official attitude, and he instructed the justice minister to issue a statement affirming that the capitulation policy was the government's sole position with respect to the surrender of the terrorists.

  Escobar did not like a word of the Notables' letter. As soon as he read it in the papers on October 11, he sent Guido Parra a furious response, which he wanted him to circulate in the salons of Bogota. "The letter from the Notables is almost cynical," it said. "We are supposed to release the hostages quickly because the government is dragging its feet as it studies our situation. Can they really believe we will let ourselves be deceived again?" The position of the Extraditables, it continued, was the same one indicated in their first letter. "There was no reason to change it, since we have not received positive replies to the requests made in our first communication. This is a negotiation, not a game to find out who is clever and who is stupid."

  The truth was that by this time Escobar had traveled light-years ahead of the Notables. His aim was for the government to give him his own secure territory--a prison camp, as he called it--like the one granted the M-19 while the terms of their surrender were being negotiated. More than a week earlier he had sent Guido Parra a detailed letter regarding the special prison he wanted for himself. The perfect location, he said, twelve kilometers outside Medellin, was a property he owned, though an agent of his was listed as owner, which the municipality of Envigado could lease and convert into a prison. "Since this requires money, the Extraditables would assume the costs," the letter continued. It ended with an astounding disclosure: "I'm telling you all this because I want you to talk to the mayor of Envigado and tell him you represent me and explain the idea to him. But the reason I want you to talk to him is to get him to write a public letter to the justice minister saying he thinks the Extraditables have not accepted Decree 2047 because they fear for their safety, and that the municipality of Envigado, as its contribution to peace for the Colombian people, is prepared to build a special prison that will offer protection and security to those who surrender. Talk to him in a direct, clear way so he'll talk to Gaviria and propose the camp." The stated goal was to force a public response from the justice minister. "I know that will have the impact of a bomb," said Escobar's letter. And it ended with stunning arrogance: "This way we'll have them where we want them."

  The minister, however, turned down the terms of the offer as presented to him, and Escobar found himself obliged to soften his tone with another letter in which, for the first time, he offered more than he demanded. In exchange for the prison camp, he promised to resolve the conflicts among the various cartels, crews, and gangs, to guarantee the surrender of more than a hundred repentant traffickers, and to at last open an avenue to peace. "We are not asking for amnesty, or dialogue, or any of the things they say they cannot give," he said. This was a simple offer to surrender, "while everybody in this country is calling for dialogue and for treating us as politicals." He even downplayed what he held most dear: "I have no problem with extradition, since I know that if they take me alive they'll kill me, like they've done with everybody else."

  His strategy at this time was to demand huge favors in exchange for mail from the hostages. "Tell Senor Santos," he said in another letter, "that if he wants proof that Francisco is alive, he should first publish the report from Americas Watch, an interview with Juan Mendez, its director, and a report on the massacres, tortures, and disappearances in Medellin." But by this time Hernando Santos had learned how to cope with the situation. He knew that the constant flow back and forth of proposals and counterproposals was a strain not only on him but on his adversaries as well. Guido Parra, for one, was in a state of nervous exhaustion by the end of October. Santos's reply to Escobar was that he would not publish a line of anything or see his emissary again until he had conclusive proof that his son was alive. Alfonso Lopez Michelsen backed him up by threatening to withdraw from the Notables.

  It worked. In two weeks Guido Parra called Hernando Santos from a truck stop. "I'm in the car with my wife, and I'll be at your house by eleven," he said. "I'm bringing you the most delicious dessert, and you can't imagine how much I've enjoyed it, and how much you're going to enjoy it." Hernando was elated, thinking he was bringing Francisco home. But it was only his voice recorded on a minicassette. They could not listen to it for over two hours because they did not have the right equipment, and then someone discovered they could play it on the answering machine.

  Pacho Santos could have been successful in many professions, but not as a diction teacher. He tries to speak at the speed of his thoughts, and his ideas come in a simultaneous rush. The surprise that night was his slow speech, modulated voice, and perfectly constructed sentences. In reality there were two messages--one for his family and the other for the president--which he had recorded the week before.

  The guards' idea that Pacho should read the day's headlines to prove the date of the recording was a mistake that Escobar probably never forgave them for. It did, however, give Luis Canon, the legal editor of El Tiempo, the opportunity to display a piece of brilliant journalism.

  "They're holding him in Bogota," he said.

  The paper Pacho had read from had a late headline that appeared only in the local edition, whose circulation is limited to the northern part of the city. This fact was worth its weight in gold and would have been decisive if Hernando Santos had not been opposed to an armed rescue attempt.

  The moment restored him, above all because the content of the message convinced him that his captive son approved of how he was handling matters. Besides, the family had always thought of Pacho as the most vulnerable of the children because of his impulsive temperament and volatile spirit, and no one could have imagined that he would be so rational and self-possessed after sixty days of captivity.

  Hernando called the entire family to his house, and they listened to the message till dawn. Only Guido Parra gave in to his emotions. He wept. Hernando came over to comfort him, and in the perspiration that soaked his shirt he recognized the smell of panic.

  "Remember, I won't be killed by the police," Guido Parra said through his tears. "I'll be killed by Pablo Escobar because I know too much."

  Maria Victoria was not moved. She thought Parra was toying with Hernando's feelings, exploiting his weakn
ess, giving a little so he could get back more. At some point during the evening, Guido Parra must have sensed this because he said to Hernando: "That woman's an iceberg."

  Matters had reached this stage on November 7, when Maruja and Beatriz were abducted. The Notables had no firm ground to stand on. On November 22--following his prior announcement--Diego Montana Cuellar made the formal proposal to his fellow members that the group disband, and they, in a solemn meeting, presented the president with their conclusions regarding the Extraditables' principal demands.

  If President Gaviria was hoping that the capitulation decree would elicit an immediate mass surrender by the drug traffickers, he must have been disappointed. It did not. Reactions in the press, in political circles, among distinguished jurists, and even some of the valid objections raised by the Extraditables' lawyers, made it clear that Decree 2047 had to be revised. To begin with, it left the possibility wide open for any judge to interpret the extradition process in his own way. Another weakness was that although conclusive evidence against the drug dealers lay outside the country, the entire question of cooperation with the United States had reached a critical stage, and the time limits for obtaining evidence were too short. The solution--not contained in the decree--was to extend the time limits and transfer to the presidency the responsibility for negotiating the return of evidence to Colombia.

  Alberto Villamizar had also not found in the decree the decisive support he was hoping for. Until now his exchanges with Santos and Turbay, and his initial meetings with Pablo Escobar's lawyers, had allowed him to form a broad view of the situation. His first impression was that the capitulation decree, a flawed move in the right direction, left him very little maneuvering room to obtain the release of his wife and sister. In the meanwhile, time was passing without any news of them, without the slightest proof they were still alive. His only opportunity to communicate with them had been a letter sent through Guido Parra, in which he gave them his optimistic assurance that he would do nothing else but work for their release. "I know your situation is terrible but stay calm," he wrote to Maruja.

  The truth was that Villamizar had no idea what to do. He had exhausted every avenue, and the only thing he could hold on to during that long November was Rafael Pardo's assurance that the president was considering another decree to complement and clarify 2047. "It's just about ready," he said. Rafael Pardo stopped by his house almost every evening and kept him up-to-date on his efforts, but not even he was very certain how to proceed. Villamizar concluded from his long, slow conversations with Santos and Turbay that negotiations had reached an impasse. He had no faith in Guido Parra. He had known him since the days when he stalked the halls of congress, and he thought him an opportunist and a crook. But for better or worse, Parra was the only card, and Villamizar decided to gamble everything on him. He had no other choice, and time was pressing.

  At his request, former president Turbay and Hernando Santos made an appointment to see Guido Parra, on the condition that Dr. Santiago Uribe, another of Escobar's attorneys, with a good reputation as a serious man, also be present. Guido Parra began the conversation with his usual high-flown rhetoric, but Villamizar brought him back down to earth with the brutal directness of a man from Santander.

  "Don't fuck with me," he said. "Let's get to the point. You've stalled everything because your demands are moronic, and there's only one damn thing at issue here: Your boys have to turn themselves in and confess to some crime that they can serve a twelve-year sentence for. That's what the law says, period. And in exchange for that, they'll get a reduced sentence and a guarantee of protection. All the rest is bullshit."

  Guido Parra had no choice but to change his tone.

  "Look, Doctor," he said, "the thing is that the government says they won't be extradited, everybody says so, but where does the decree say it specifically?"

  Villamizar agreed. If the government was saying there would be no extraditions, since that was the sense of the law, then their job was to persuade the government to eliminate the ambiguities. All the rest--clever interpretations of a sui generis crime, or refusing to confess, or the immorality of implicating others--amounted to nothing more than Guido Parra's rhetorical distractions. It was obvious that for the Extraditables--as their very name indicated--the only real and urgent requirement was not to be extradited. And it did not seem impossible to have this spelled out in the decree. But first Villamizar demanded from Guido Parra the same frankness and determination demanded by the Extraditables. First, he wanted to know how far Parra was authorized to negotiate, and second, how soon after the decree was amended would the hostages be released. Guido Parra was solemn.

  "They'll be free in twenty-four hours," he said.

  "All of them, of course," said Villamizar.

  "All of them."

  5

  A month after the abduction of Maruja and Beatriz, the absurd rules of their captivity had been relaxed. They no longer had to ask permission to stand, and they could pour their own coffee or change television channels. Inside the room they still spoke in whispers, but their movements had become more spontaneous. Maruja did not have to bury her face in the pillow when she coughed, though she did take minimal precautions not to be heard outside the room. Lunch and dinner were still the same, the same beans, the same lentils, the same bits of dry meat and ordinary packaged soup.

  The guards talked a good deal among themselves, taking no precaution except to speak in whispers. They exchanged blood-soaked news about how much they had earned hunting down the police at night in Medellin, about their sexual prowess and their melodramatic love affairs. Maruja had succeeded in convincing them that in the case of an armed rescue attempt, it would be more realistic to protect the captives so that they at least would be sure of receiving decent treatment and a compassionate trial. At first they seemed indifferent, for they were absolute fatalists, but her strategy of mollification meant they no longer pointed their guns at the prisoners while they slept, and their weapons, wrapped in cloths, were kept out of sight behind the television. Little by little, their mutual dependence and shared suffering brought a thin veneer of humanity to their relations.

  It was in Maruja's nature not to keep bitter feelings to herself. She gave vent to her emotions with the guards, who were always ready for violence, and faced them down with a chilling determination: "Go on, kill me." Sometimes she turned on Marina, whose eagerness to please the guards infuriated her, and whose apocalyptic fantasies drove her to distraction. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, Marina would look up and make a disheartening remark or sinister prophecy.

  "On the other side of that courtyard is a repair shop for the killers' cars," she once said. "They're all there, day and night, armed with rifles, ready to come and shoot us."

  Their most serious quarrel, however, occurred one afternoon when Marina began her habitual cursing of journalists because her name had not been mentioned on a television program about the hostages.

  "They're all sons of bitches," she said.

  Maruja confronted her.

  "You're out of line," she replied in a rage. "You can show a little respect."

  Marina did not answer and later, in a calmer moment, apologized. In reality, she lived in a world apart. She was sixty-four years old and had been a famous beauty, with wonderful large black eyes and silver hair that still gleamed even in misfortune. She had become nothing but skin and bones. When Beatriz and Maruja arrived, she had spent almost two months with no one to talk to but her guards, and time and effort were needed for her to assimilate their presence. Fear had wreaked havoc on her: She had lost forty-five pounds, and her morale was very low. She was a phantom.

  When she was very young, she had married a chiropractor who was well respected in the athletic world, a stout, good-hearted man who loved her without reservation and with whom she had four daughters and three sons. She managed everything, in her own house and in several others, for she felt obliged to solve the problems of her large family in Antioquia. Marin
a was like a second mother to them all, as much for her authority as her solicitude, but she also concerned herself with any outsider who touched her heart.

  Because of her indomitable independence rather than any financial need, she sold cars and life insurance, and seemed able to sell anything simply because she wanted to spend her own money. But those closest to her lamented the fact that a woman with so many natural talents was also hounded by misfortune. For almost twenty years her husband had been incapacitated by mental illness, two brothers had been killed in a terrible car accident, one died of a heart attack, another was crushed by a traffic light in a freak mishap, and still another, who loved to wander, had disappeared forever.

  Her situation as a hostage had no solution. Even she accepted the widespread idea that she had been abducted only because her captors wanted a significant hostage whom they could kill without thwarting the negotiations for their surrender. But the fact that she had spent sixty days in prison may have allowed her to think that they saw a chance to obtain some advantage in exchange for her life.

  It was noteworthy that even at her worst moments she spent long hours absorbed in the meticulous care of her fingernails and toenails. She filed and buffed them, and brightened them with natural polish, so that they looked like the nails of a younger woman. She devoted the same attention to tweezing her eyebrows and shaving her legs. Once they were past their initial problems, Maruja and Beatriz helped her. They learned to deal with her. She held interminable conversations with Beatriz about people she loved and people she hated, speaking in an endless whisper that irritated even the guards. Maruja tried to comfort her. Both felt distress at being the only people, apart from her jailers, who knew she was alive, yet could not let anyone else know.

  One of the few diversions during this time was the unexpected return of the masked boss who had visited them on the first day. Cheerful and optimistic, he brought the news that they might be released before December 9, the date of the election for the Constituent Assembly. This had special significance for Maruja because December 9 was her birthday, and the thought of spending it with her family filled her with anticipatory joy. But it was an ephemeral hope: A week later, the same boss said that not only would they not be released on December 9, but their captivity would be a long one and they would not be free by Christmas or the New Year. It was a harsh blow. Maruja suffered the onset of phlebitis that caused severe pains in her legs. Beatriz had an attack of asphyxia, and her gastric ulcer began to bleed. One night, maddened by pain, she pleaded with Spots to make an exception to the prison rules and let her have an unscheduled visit to the bathroom. He agreed, after thinking it over for a long time, and told her he was taking a great risk. But it did not help. Beatriz continued to whimper in pain like a wounded dog, and thought she was dying until Spots took pity on her and got some Buscapina from the majordomo.