A King's ransom

by James Grippando

  Again I thanked the home-care nurse, then closed the door on my way out. As I cut across the front lawn to the pebble driveway, I tried to dismiss the outburst as irrational, knowing that the anger expressed by Alzheimer’s patients toward loved ones was often baseless and imaginary. But it made me realize how windows to the past could close forever, whether by the slow onset of a disease or a sudden abduction. There were so many questions that I might never have the chance to ask my father now, not just about family matters but about the separate life he’d built for himself in another part of the world-all those trips to Central and South America that had finally gotten him abducted. Or worse.

  I got in my Jeep and drove away, fearful that I’d forever feel the weight of conversations we’d never had.

  The drive up to Miami ended the same way the drive down had started, with a phone call to Duncan. His secretary said he was meeting with a new client and couldn’t be interrupted.

  “Do you know if he spoke to anyone at the FBI or State Department this morning?”

  “I’m sure he hasn’t,” she said. “This meeting has been going nonstop since you called.”

  A more encouraging end to the conversation would have been nice, but at Cool Cash, paying clients always came first. I was sure that Duncan would eventually make a few phone calls to try to break the deadlock that was keeping the FBI out of my father’s case, but time was slipping away. I decided to call the embassy myself, my contact person at American citizen services in the consular section, William Ebersoll.

  “Anything new?” I asked.

  “Nothing I’m aware of.”

  “I got an interesting call from the FBI last night. They tell me that the State Department invited them to work the case but they declined.”

  “I’m not in a position to confirm or deny that.”

  “I was told that the reason they declined was that the State Department had placed unreasonable conditions on their involvement.”

  I sensed he was fuming. Nettles had evidently related more details to me than the State Department had expected. “Whoever told you that is mistaken,” said Ebersoll.

  “Are you saying that there were no conditions?”

  “No. The conditions were not unreasonable.”

  “What were they?”

  “Very simple. The State Department welcomes the involvement of the FBI, so long as the FBI agrees to refrain from taking any actions that are inconsistent with the U.S. government’s long-standing policy on terrorism.”

  “What policy do you mean?”

  “The same policy we have espoused for many years. In cases of international terrorism, American law enforcement personnel cannot play any role in negotiations with kidnappers that lead to the payment of ransom or other concessions in exchange for the release of hostages.”

  “Are you saying that if the kidnappers promise to kill my father unless we pay them a nickel, the official position of the U.S. government is to tell my family to start making the funeral arrangements?”

  “That’s not a very realistic example. Nor is it productive for me to debate our policy with you. I can certainly understand how harsh this might seem to you or any other private citizen caught in this terrible situation. But the U.S. government does not give in to terrorists. That would only promote more terrorism.”

  “The FBI advised my mother and me that if we wanted to pay a ransom, the government would not stand in our way.”

  “That’s true. We won’t withhold basic administrative services, such as putting you in contact with local law enforcement agencies. But you will not have the support and approval of the U.S. government. More to the point, the State Department will not invite the bureau to assist in any case abroad if the FBI negotiators intend to actively develop strategies that will facilitate the payment of a ransom.”

  “I can’t believe that the State Department is keeping the FBI out.”

  “I assure you, we’re not.”

  “If the State Department hadn’t insisted on strict compliance with an outdated policy, the FBI would have accepted your invitation to work on the case.”

  “That may well be the explanation given to you by a particular FBI agent, but the bureau is fully aware of the U.S. policy against concessions to terrorists. If they’re declining to get involved in the case, it’s for their own reasons.”

  “Such as?”

  “Reasons other than a disagreement over policy.”

  “What possible justification could the FBI have for ducking a case involving a kidnapped American citizen?”

  “We can’t force the FBI to get involved. We can only invite them. Theoretically, any number of things could lessen the bureau’s interest in a case abroad. Conflicts with local law enforcement. Special dangers to FBI personnel. The identity of the victim.”

  It was subtle, but he seemed to place emphasis on the last point.

  “Are you suggesting that the FBI’s declination has something to do with my father?”

  He hesitated, as if he’d said too much. “I was simply talking in hypotheticals.”

  “Is there something I should know?”

  “Perhaps you should ask the FBI.”

  “Perhaps. But why do I have the sense that you know something you’re not telling me?”

  Again he paused. “Like I said, ask the FBI.”

  Pressing for more would only have antagonized him. “Thank you,” I said. “I definitely will ask them.”

  As we hung up, I finally noticed the streams of cars speeding past me on the interstate. I’d been driving like my grandmother, not sure what to make of things. Mom and I had taken a liking to Agent Nettles at our initial meeting, but it seemed impossible to reconcile the excuse he’d given me last night with the explanation offered by the consular agent this morning. The FBI was not taking the case, but why?

  One way or the other, my own government was lying to me. It was only a matter of which agency.

  My head was pounding as I cut across the expressway and took the fast lane back to Miami.

  6

  Mom and I cooked dinner ourselves, even though her friends had brought over enough casseroles and covered dishes for her to kiss the Cuisinart good-bye forever. Those closest to our family felt as compelled as we did to do something, even if it was as simple as keeping our cupboard stocked. For Mom and me, cooking was something to do besides worry, a way to pretend that we could weather the crisis together and maintain a semblance of normalcy.

  Dinner was a delicious shrimp creole made with-you guessed it-shrimp from Rey’s Seafood Company. They weren’t the gigantic ones from deep, cold waters off Venezuela that made such beautiful shrimp cocktails, but they were of good size for the Mosquito Coast. They tasted so fresh, and as the son of a fisherman I knew why. They were fresh-frozen, which sounds like an oxymoron, but Americans eat far more fresh-frozen seafood than they realize. Restaurant patrons in New York, Chicago, or Boston would never guess that when their snooty waiter assures them that today’s snapper is “fresh,” he really means “fresh-frozen”-as in fresh when it was caught, frozen in the boat on its way to the dock, thawed for processing at the plant, refrozen for shipment, thawed again when it was sold, and therefore “fresh” when it finally lands on a dinner plate. Unappetizing as all that sounds, if it weren’t frozen at various stages of the long journey from Nicaragua to your plate, that delicious grilled whitefish drizzled with mango butter would taste like whale dung and smell even worse.

  Of course, Mom just picked at her dinner, wondering if Dad had anything to eat. Honestly, I hadn’t seen her sit down and eat a real meal in almost a day and a half.

  “Any leads on Lindsey?” she asked.

  My sister was still missing, which by itself wasn’t alarming. She traveled with no itinerary in pursuit of her journalistic pipe dream. With one member of the family kidnapped, however, it would have been nice to be able to account for her.

  “This afternoon I spent an hour calling people I thought she might stay in touc
h with. Some of them seemed to think she was in Costa Rica, a couple others said in Guatemala. It’s all hearsay. I just can’t find anyone who’s talked to her recently.”

  Mom was about to say something, then slipped back into her thoughts, pushing her food around. The plate was still full. Mine was empty.

  “You should eat something,” I said.

  “I can’t.”

  “It won’t do any good to starve yourself.”

  “This tomato sauce is kind of nauseating.”

  “As co-chef, I take serious exception.”

  “Sorry. I’m just not hungry. I’ve been nibbling since five o’clock this morning.”

  I did seem to recall predawn noises in the kitchen. It was all part of the screwed-up pattern. A little reading at midnight. Letter writing till 2:00 A.M. Housecleaning at three, and organizing the closets at four. Neither of us was sleeping well, but Mom was especially affected. She was accustomed to nights alone while Dad traveled for work. This time was different, however, her lying awake in the lonely king-size bed wondering if that empty space beside her might be permanent.

  “Have you talked to Jenna?” she asked.

  That seemed out of the blue. Mom and I hadn’t talked about her since I’d gotten back my engagement ring and washed a dollop of seagull droppings out of my hair. “No, I haven’t.”

  “I noticed her name wasn’t on your list of people to call.”

  “That’s because she’s my ex-fiancee.”

  “Don’t be like that. She and your father were very fond of one another.”

  “I know. But I’d rather just not deal with her right now.”

  “Your father could use all the prayers he can get.”

  Mom certainly had a way of backing me into a corner. “You’re right. I’ll drop her a line or something.”

  The phone rang as we were clearing the table. Mom answered, and her eyes lit up. It was Dad’s Nicaraguan business partner, Guillermo, calling from Cartagena. He’d gone down to make funeral arrangements for the dead crewmen, arrange for transportation back to Nicaragua for the two they’d found alive so far, and generally to check on the company’s newly acquired boats that were now riddled with bullet holes.

  I picked up the phone in the family room. Mom remained on the line in the kitchen.

  “Any news?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said with excitement. “Police have found one of the missing.”

  “Could it be Matthew?” Mom shrieked.

  My heart was pounding right along with hers.

  “No, no. It’s Carlos, one of the welders who was missing. The third crewman.”

  I watched through the open doorway as Mom nearly collapsed in disappointment. I asked, “Is he okay?”

  “Tired, but okay. These Miskitos are unbelievable. He swam for hours and finally hid in some mangroves along the coast. He was there for almost two days, afraid to come out. Finally he walked into town and found the police station.”

  “Does he have any information about Matthew?” Mom asked.

  “Yes. It’s good news, I think.”

  “You think?” I asked tentatively.

  “He saw the guerrillas pull Matthew from the water.”

  “Alive?”

  “Yes, alive.”

  I glanced across the room toward Mom. She was sitting down, her elbow on the kitchen table as she dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “That’s good,” I said. “At least he’s alive.”

  “Yes. That part is good,” he said.

  I sensed there was bad news to go with it, and I worried whether Mom should hear it. Guillermo forged ahead without my encouragement.

  “He says the guerrillas took Matthew away by boat. They were shouting, vowing to avenge the death of their friend with la mina.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, the guerrilla who got shot and killed in the exchange of gunfire on the shrimp boat.”

  “I understood that part. I meant ‘la mina,’ what’s that?”

  “Your father. The gold mine.”

  My heart sank. Apart from Dad’s safety, that was my biggest fear: the kidnappers’ inflated expectations.

  “Have you talked to the Colombian police yet?” I asked.

  “Yes, that’s where I am now. They’re writing down Carlos’s statement as we speak.”

  “Maybe I should fly down and speak to them myself.”

  “Probably not a good idea. From what the officer tells me, you will likely receive a communication from the kidnappers in the very near future. It wouldn’t seem right to leave Cathy alone to handle that.”

  I took another glance toward the kitchen. Mom had the phone to her ear. I knew she was listening. But she was now too overcome to respond.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’ll stay put. But let me talk with one of the officers on the case. I just want to introduce myself.”

  “How’s your Spanish?”

  “Pretty good. Not perfect.”

  “Hold on. Let me try to find someone who can speak to you in English.”

  I heard muted conversations on the line, the sounds of a busy office in the background, followed by a click. I saw that my mother had hung up. She was walking briskly toward the bedroom, another so-called allergy attack from which she’d emerge with red and puffy eyes. I felt a few pangs of pity for her, but they were mostly crowded out by my anger toward those murderers who’d dubbed my father a gold mine.

  A man came on the line, speaking English with a heavy Spanish accent. “Hello, this is Officer Trujillo speaking.”

  “Thank you for taking the time to speak with me, officer. As you can imagine, my family is very concerned-”

  “Claro,” he said, then caught himself and continued in English. It was about as good as my Spanish. “I understand complete. Please know that we do everything possibly to bring your father safe. Judicial Police has twell hundred officers working kidnap cases.”

  “That sounds very good.”

  “Si. Is very good. We all have much experience.”

  “Can you tell me anything about my father? Do you know if he is safe?”

  “Not for sure. But is muy importante to know most kidnaps in Colombia end with victims home safe to families. Ones who are shot are usually ones who try escape. Others are killed if trouble goes wrong when the kidnappers take the victim. Es muy bueno que we see no sign of fight at the kidnap of your father, and since he has eighty-six years of age, is very not likely that he would try escape.”

  “What are you talking about? My father is fifty-one. He did try to escape, and three people were killed during the botched abduction.”

  There was silence on the line. “You are Mr. Alvarez, no?”

  “No. Nick Rey, from Miami.”

  “My apologies, senor. Please understand, I have so many files.”

  The statistics from Agent Nettles suddenly flashed in my mind. More than twenty-five hundred abductions a year. Roughly eight a day. One every three hours. No wonder this guy couldn’t keep his cases straight. “Forget it,” I said.

  “I am so sorry. Do not have fear of my words,” he said, backpedaling. “Not everyone who tries escape is shot.”

  “It’s all right, really. But please keep my phone number in your file and call me with any news in the case.”

  I gave him all my phone numbers, and as best I could tell, he was writing them down.

  “I promise you will hear from me,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said, wondering if he would be calling me or the mysterious Mr. Alvarez.

  I hung up, with mixed emotions. Dad was alive, or at least he’d been taken alive. But Officer Trujillo wasn’t the first person to tell me that the stronger personalities, the people bold enough to try to escape, were the ones singled out for abuse, the ones kidnappers eventually discarded as more trouble than they were worth.

  That made me very afraid. My dad didn’t have a submissive personality. I knew he’d try to escape at every turn.

  Mom knew
it, too. That was why she cried so often.

  I drew a deep breath, then walked to the bedroom to check on my mother.

  7

  The dawn of the third day was actually at sunset. Almost exactly forty-eight hours after the abduction, his blindfold finally came off. Matthew Rey shielded his eyes from the sudden burst of light, then staggered out of the back of the van, prodded from behind by the muzzle of an AK-47 assault rifle.

  “Adelante!” one of the guerrillas shouted. Move it.

  Matthew said nothing, simply obeyed and kept walking.

  For two days he’d bounced and rolled on the cold metal floor of a speeding truck. Frequent sharp turns had slammed his head against the metal sides at least a dozen times, once nearly knocking him unconscious. Even by South American standards, the driving was breakneck, the roads were merely adequate-and both were deteriorating as the journey wore on. At first he’d tried to keep track of turns in hopes of discerning the direction of their travels, but after a dozen left turns, a half dozen right turns, and two or three trips around traffic circles, that proved impossible. The disorienting effect of the blindfold wasn’t helping his sense of direction any. With his ear to the wheel well, he let the tires tell him this much: they’d moved from pavement to gravel to dirt to no roads at all.

  The normal sounds of city life had long since vanished. It had been at least two bathroom breaks since he’d heard another vehicle rumble past in either direction. That was quite a while ago. The driver obviously didn’t have the bladder of a fifty-year-old man. Matthew had traveled a good part of the trip with his legs crossed, and twice he’d barely made it to the side of the road to relieve himself without soiling his pants. With little to eat and drink, however, nature’s callings turned less urgent. So far his captors had allowed him one hard-boiled egg, one arepa, a soft drink, and a few sips of water. He would have been hungry if he weren’t so concerned about more immediate causes of death.

  He wasn’t gagged, and his feet weren’t bound. He’d thought about yelling or kicking the sides of the truck to draw attention, especially during the early part of the journey while they were still in the city. But he’d read the U.S. State Department’s travel advisories before leaving Nicaragua, and he’d followed the consular’s official advice on how to behave when abducted in a foreign country. Kick and scream when in public, but once you’re in the vehicle, quiet down and concentrate on surviving. You could end up beaten or drugged. Or worse.