A King's ransom

by James Grippando

  “Could be.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Mom.

  “It’s a little strange. Usually FARC comes right out and claims responsibility. They’re not shy. This one reads like a FARC letter, but there’s no explicit claim of responsibility by anyone.”

  “For heaven’s sake, just read it to me,” said Mom.

  I looked over Alex’s shoulder as she read aloud, translating. “ ‘Dear Mrs. Rey-’ ”

  “Read the bottom first,” said Mom. “The part in Matthew’s handwriting.”

  “It looks like they allowed him to write a short postscript,” said Alex.

  “Yes. Read it to me, please.”

  “ ‘My dear family. I am well treated, so please don’t worry. Cathy, I love you. Nick, give my love to Lindsey when you talk to her, and take good care of your mother and grandmother. Love, Matthew.’ ”

  My mother was shaking. I hugged her as she sank into the chair across the table from Alex.

  “That’s it?” she said.

  “It’s a teaser,” said Alex. “Kidnappers sometimes release bits and pieces like that to push the family’s emotional buttons. Other times the family is kept totally in the dark. Either way, you’re being jerked around.”

  “Why did he write in Spanish?”

  “Because his kidnappers want to make sure they understand every word he writes. They’re paranoid about something slipping by in what to them is a foreign language. Someone could be speaking in code to reveal their position. If it’s in Spanish, they can control what’s said.”

  “What does their letter say?” I asked.

  Her eyes shifted back to the letter, and she read, “ ‘Dear Mrs. Rey. We are your friends.’ ”

  “Friends!” My mother nearly shrieked.

  “That’s a typical beginning,” said Alex. She read quickly through a paragraph that set forth various Marxist platitudes, guerrilla propaganda. The substance was in the last paragraph. “ ‘We do not intend to harm your husband if our demands are met, but we regret that we cannot continue to communicate with you in Miami. All arrangements for the release must be made in Colombia, through you or your representative.’ ”

  “They expect us to go to Colombia?” said Mom.

  “That’s not surprising,” said Alex. “They want to play on their turf.”

  “Finish the letter,” I said.

  Her translation continued, “ ‘At sunrise, twenty-two October, be in the park behind the church at the top of Monseratte.’ ”

  “What’s Monseratte?” I asked.

  “One of the mountain peaks just east of Bogota.” She continued reading: “ ‘Bring a two-meter-band radio. Instructions will follow. Do not involve the police or the army, or you will never hear from us again, and all chances for your husband’s release will be lost.’ ”

  “But. .” Mom could barely speak. “But we’ve already involved the police.”

  “They know that.”

  “Then why did they threaten to kill Matthew if we called them?”

  “They want you to stop talking to them. Mind you, they’re not afraid of being caught. Even when the police are involved, maybe two percent of the kidnapping cases in Colombia are solved. What they’re afraid of is that the police will try to dissuade you from paying a ransom. And their fears are justified. The police will do that.”

  “They must think like the State Department,” I said.

  “Everybody thinks that way, until their own son or daughter is kidnapped.”

  Mom asked, “Should we stop talking to the police?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Alex. “So long as you have a private negotiator who’s putting money on the table, the kidnappers won’t really care who you’re talking to behind the scenes.”

  “Does that mean you’ll be our family contact in Bogota?”

  “That’s part of your insurance coverage.”

  “Will the police be with you?”

  “No,” said Alex. “Don’t misunderstand me. When I said it’s not necessary to stop talking to the police, I wasn’t suggesting that we join ourselves at the hip with anyone in law enforcement, Colombian or American. Frankly, we don’t need them if our intention is to pay a ransom. This is why your father bought insurance.”

  “So you’re going alone?” said Mom.

  “Shouldn’t I be with you?” I asked before she could answer.

  “No,” said Mom, playing the same game.

  Alex paused, clearly reluctant to weigh in on either side. “That’s up to the family.”

  I said, “When you talk by radio to the kidnappers, they’re bound to make threats or set deadlines. I don’t want to have to rely solely on someone else’s opinion as to whether they’re for real or not. I want to hear with my own ears.”

  “But it could be dangerous,” Mom said.

  “I won’t be going alone.”

  “That’s exactly what your father said!” Her voice was sharp but quaking.

  I looked away, saying nothing. Mom looked at Alex and asked, “Is this something we have to decide now?”

  “No. Soon, though. We need to make plans.”

  “Tomorrow morning soon enough?”

  “Sure,” said Alex.

  Mom looked me in the eye, then glanced out the window. I wasn’t sure who she was talking to-me, Alex, or no one in particular. “I know my son,” she said softly. “He’s going to South America. I guess by morning we’ll know if he’s going with or without my blessing.”

  I watched from my chair as she rose and quietly left the room.

  17

  That night was more difficult than I’d expected. Seeing the letter with Dad’s handwriting had been both a boost and a downer. The good news: He was alive and kidnapped. The bad news: He was alive and kidnapped.

  Mom and I went to bed after the eleven o’clock news, but I lay awake in the darkness, listening to the palm trees rustling in the breeze outside my bedroom window. Those three royal palms had been two feet tall when Dad and I planted them, he with a shovel, I with my trusty plastic sandbox rake. Now the fronds were literally tapping on my second-story window. A quarter century, gone in a blink of the eye. Yet the last two weeks seemed like a lifetime. I tried not to be negative. Today’s note from Dad had at least confirmed his survival of the shoot-out in Cartagena that had killed three of his crew. But I wondered how long ago he’d written those words, knowing that so many things could have happened since then, so many of them tragic.

  Around 1:00 A.M. I heard a noise downstairs in the kitchen. Mom and I were obviously on the same train of thought. I got out of bed, put on my robe, and walked downstairs. The kitchen light was on, but I didn’t see Mom. I noticed a pad of paper on the table. I walked over and checked it out.

  My dearest Matthew, it began. I didn’t snoop, but the sheer length struck me. It went on for pages and pages, all written in Mom’s longhand. Practically the entire notebook was already full.

  “Don’t read that.”

  I turned and saw my mother standing in the doorway. “I wasn’t.”

  She took the notebook and held it to her bosom. “It’s for your father. I’m writing down everything for him.”

  “You don’t have to explain. It’s a nice idea.”

  She sat at the table, apparently wanting to talk. I sat across from her.

  “Your father was so excited about this baby. He wanted to be a part of the whole pregnancy, the birth. Fathers didn’t do that so much when you and Lindsey were born. This was going to be a new experience for both of us.”

  I smiled sadly. One more thing the guerrillas had stolen from the Rey family. “I’m sure he’ll be back in time to enjoy some of it.”

  “Next week is my first ultrasound. We’d planned on going together. Since he can’t be there, I’m at least going to share it with him through my writing.”

  “It’ll make good reading when he gets home.”

  “It’s not for then. I’m going to send it to him.”

  “How do you inten
d to do that?”

  “I called the Red Cross. They told me that under the Geneva Protocol, all prisoners have the right to receive mail.”

  “Mom, Colombian guerrilla groups don’t honor the Geneva Protocol.”

  She had a wan look in her eye. I’d seen it before in clients who suddenly had to face the difference between what the law prescribes and what the law can deliver. “Why not?”

  “They just don’t. There’s no one to hold them accountable.”

  “I suppose I knew that,” she said quietly. “Of course, that only confirms my suspicions about that little postscript on the kidnappers’ letter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If they won’t let your father receive mail, I hardly think they would have let him write a letter to his family. I’m sure they wrote it.”

  “It was clearly Dad’s handwriting.”

  “I don’t mean so much the physical act of putting pen to paper. He may have written it, but they composed it.”

  “I disagree. Those were his own words. I’d bet my Jeep on it.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Because of the way he expressed himself toward me.”

  “But it was so short.”

  “It was long enough for me to know.”

  She gave me a curious look. “What are you trying to tell me, Nick?”

  “Look at it this way. Let’s say that a kidnapper is writing a letter that he hopes will pass for a letter written by a father to his son. If he’s going to do it right, the ghostwriter has to step into the shoes of the father. For all the father knows, this letter could possibly be the last words he ever conveys to his son. As a ghostwriter, you’d probably throw in three little words: ‘I love you.’ You’d do that because that would be normal, right?”

  Mom blinked. “Depends on what you mean by normal.”

  “Exactly. Because normal in this house doesn’t mean a father telling his son ‘I love you.’ Normal is what Dad wrote: ‘Nick, give my love to Lindsey when you see her, and take good care of your mother and grandmother.’ ”

  She looked at me with soulful eyes. That I’d committed his impersonal message to memory told her that I’d given it much thought, that it had affected me. “You know your father loves you.”

  “I suppose I do, yes. But it would be nice to hear it.”

  “That’s a two-way street.”

  “You’re right. We’ve never been great communicators. That’s what makes me sadder than anything. In the last few days I’ve come to realize that in my entire life I’ve never had an honest conversation with my father.”

  “Your father doesn’t lie to you.”

  “I don’t mean honest in the George Washington sense. I mean honest as in intimate. Two people baring their souls.”

  “Your father doesn’t have many of those conversations with anyone.”

  I thought for a second. The kitchen was suddenly so quiet I could hear the hum of the refrigerator. I hadn’t intended to raise the issue of the FBI tonight, but this seemed like an opportunity. “Mom, how much do you know about the Nicaraguan end of the fishing business?”

  “Some.”

  “How well do you know Guillermo?”

  “Actually, I’ve met Guillermo only once. We hardly said two words to each other.”

  She said it with conviction, almost as if she didn’t want to know Guillermo. Or maybe I was reading too much into it. “Do you trust him?”

  “He’s been your father’s partner for over a decade. And I don’t see anyone else volunteering to run to Colombia to deal with the local police on behalf of the family.”

  “No doubt he’s been a help.”

  “Did something happen that makes you not want to trust him?”

  I was thinking of Agent Huitt and his accusations, of course, but Mom seemed stressed enough without taking her down that path. “It’s just that you don’t know him, I don’t know him. You get right down to it, we don’t know Alex either. Someone from the family should be on the front line.”

  “You still want to go to Bogota, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head, almost groaning. “Why?”

  “I just told you.”

  “I don’t think you did.” She seemed to sense there was something I hadn’t told her.

  “It’s hard to explain,” I said.

  “Try.”

  “This kidnapping has made me stop and realize that something’s missing between me and Dad, always has been missing. I have respect for him. He’s courageous, strong, all that. Growing up, I’d always thought I wanted to be like him. Not necessarily a fisherman, but like him nonetheless. The last few nights I’ve stayed awake wondering if we really are at all alike, and it’s occurred to me: I don’t know him that well. And he doesn’t know me either. Maybe that’s why it’s so important that I go on this trip. Find him. Maybe we can introduce ourselves.”

  From her pained expression it was clear that she still didn’t want me to go. But she finally seemed to understand. “I don’t know what I would do if I lost both of you. Please, be very careful.”

  I reached across the table and held her hand. “I will. I promise.”

  18

  It was their third camp in seven days. Or maybe it was eight days. Matthew wasn’t sure. The guerrillas had stolen his wristwatch, his only calendar.

  At least a week had passed since they’d reached the mountains, almost two since the shoot-out in Cartagena. They’d traveled by foot and by mule, mostly climbing, but at times descending at angles as steep as forty degrees. More than once he was certain that they’d doubled back and covered the same ground. The exercise seemed designed to disorient the prisoners and discourage escape. Surely it had nothing to do with casting confusion to possible rescue teams. With guerrillas in control of almost half the country, a Rambo mission was out of the question. Even if these particular kidnappers weren’t formally aligned with any Marxist group, the army would still have to beat back more organized leftist forces like FARC and the National Liberation Army, and then literally climb a mountain to free Matthew and the others. Fat chance.

  The captives numbered six now, counting Matthew and the Colombian daddy and mommy that Joaquin had bargained away from FARC to help prevent his escape. Two nights ago Joaquin and his team had joined camp with another band of rebels who had three other prisoners in custody. Those guerrillas were apparently part of Joaquin’s group, as they all obeyed his orders. Initially, Matthew hadn’t known what to make of it. During a bathroom break it was again Emilio, the Colombian daddy, who’d explained.

  “It’s their division of labor,” he said. “One team specializes in the abductions. The other focuses on housing and guarding the prisoners.”

  The three new prisoners, Matthew learned, weren’t new at all. A Swede and a Canadian were in their second month of captivity, having been abducted together from a mining project near the Ecuadorian border. The Canadian was from Saskatchewan, a strapping, confident cowboy at heart who acted more like a Texan. The Swede was more reserved, more bitter about the whole experience. So far the only thing he’d told Matthew about himself was his name, Jan Lunden. The body language, however, seemed to place blame on the Canadian for the mess they’d gotten into.

  The third new prisoner was another Colombian, a banker who’d simply driven down the wrong road on his way to work one day-sixteen months ago. Time in captivity had taken its toll on him. Pants that had once fit him now gathered around his waist. A thick beard covered his face, hiding the sunken cheeks. His skin was dry and flaky, the worry lines on his forehead seemingly carved in wax. His long hair was tangled in knots, and a strange shade of orange. Hair wasn’t naturally that color on any human being. It had to have been malnutrition.

  Most shocking of all, he was just thirty-eight years old.

  His appearance had left Matthew speechless, which was just as well, since the prisoners were rarely allowed to speak to one another. That wasn’t Joaquin�
��s rule. The edict had come from Aida, a thirteen-year-old girl who seemed overeager to use her M-1.30-caliber carbine. Aida was the low-level guerrilla designated to deliver meals to the prisoners, usually potatoes and a few beans. Routinely, she’d drop most of it on the ground while serving, feigning clumsiness. It was always intentional. She clearly relished her power over the captives, and she asserted it by spilling their small rations of food and giggling about it or by enforcing stupid rules, like no talking during meals. Matthew surmised that females, especially young girls, were low in the pecking order in Joaquin’s group. Aida took it out on the prisoners, the only ones lower than she was.

  For the third consecutive evening, the six ate in silence under Aida’s watch. A total of six guards were on duty, but everyone except Aida was busy trying to see who, with a flick of the wrist, could stick a hunting knife into a tree stump from four meters away. One of their buddies was on the other side of the stump sleeping off a hangover. It was typical behavior from these fools. Knives, guns, and grenades were all sources of amusement, all handled like toys without regard for anyone’s safety.

  “?Idiotas!” shouted Sleeping Beauty, adding a stream of choice words. An errant throw had landed the knife in his lap. Luckily it was the blunt end and not the blade. The others laughed as he stormed off to the hut.

  The hut was where the guerrillas slept, men and women together. It was possible that the guerrillas had built it themselves, but Matthew thought it more likely that it had been taken by force from mountain peasants. With mud walls and a crude thatched roof, it looked like something a primitive Indian tribe might have constructed ten thousand years ago. It didn’t even have a chimney. A fire burned constantly to combat the cold mountain air, and smoke escaped through an open window. It reminded Matthew of the little shacks the Miskito Indians built along the Nicaraguan coast to smoke fish, only the Miskitos were smart enough not to smoke themselves.

  The guards were still laughing, passing around a bottle. It was practically a nightly ritual, parties at sunset. A few swigs of rum, followed by basuco, a cheap and plentiful by-product of cocaine processing that would make them crazy out of their minds.