Kidnapped and a Daring Escape

by Gian Bordin

  What a strange man he is, she reflects, her eyes briefly lighting up. He places an almost chaste kiss on her forehead and gets up.

  "I’ll cook us a hot breakfast. Would corn mash be your preferred choice?"

  She chuckles. "Yes, corn mash would be my preferred choice." And the only one.

  She watches him collect dead branches, break them into small sticks and light a fire. He lightly blows into the first tentative flicker to get it to flare up. Then he disappears from view and soon returns with a pot full of water. His movements are fluid, economical and purposeful. When the mash is ready, she again feeds both of them with their single spoon.

  "Would you like to talk about feeling guilty?" he asks, when the pot is almost empty. "Did you and the professor promise each other to be faithful?"

  His use of ‘the professor’ irks her, but she swallows the sharp remark that is on the tip of her tongue. "No, we didn’t, but I never thought that we wouldn’t be. In fact, I feel quite strongly about it, and I’ve been true to Franco … until last night."

  "And he?"

  "Lots of his students fall for him. So, I couldn’t really blame him for taking advantage of that, but I think he hasn’t been with another girl for the last year, and once we’re married, I expect him to be faithful."

  "Bianca, I doubt that you will marry him."

  "Why not?" This time her face does not hide her annoyance. How dare he! "What is it with you, that every time I mention my fiancé you say something negative about him? Or is this another one of your premonitions?" The moment that word passes her lips, she remembers that the last time she mocked him about a premonition, he had been right. "Sorry," she murmurs, lowering her gaze.

  "It’s all right, Bianca." He pauses. "Have you ever given some thought as to who might be behind this kidnapping?"

  "Why? You said it was FARC most likely."

  "They might have done the actual kidnapping, but who set them up to it?"

  The expression in his face has become somber and hard, like when he begged her not to go across the river. Tightness grips her chest. "Do you know something you have not told me about? Something in that conversation you overheard?"

  He hesitates before answering. "No. I think I told you most of what I overheard and saw."

  "But …?"

  "I’ve not told you what conjectures I’ve drawn."

  She suddenly guesses what he is hinting at and it makes her livid. "Oh, now I see what you are trying to do. You want to claim that my own fiancé is behind it? Is that it? … This time you really have surpassed yourself. It is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard."

  "Is it?"

  "It is. He loves me. Why would he do a thing like this? It’s too stupid to even talk about it."

  "Did he ever say the three words ‘I love you’?"

  Who does he think he is? "That’s none of your business," she spits out.

  "Yes, I agree, it’s none of my business, but tell me, Bianca, who knows that you are the daughter of a wealthy man, and who knew the details of your trip to San Agustin?"

  His calm reasoned response fuels her outrage. "Ha, most of my class know that my father is a wealthy industrialist, and so do many other people."

  "And did they also know your exact schedule? Did you discuss it with any of them?"

  She sees where this is leading to and hesitates for a second. "Yes, I did discuss it with Paolo and Giuglio."

  "Anybody else?"

  "They might have talked about it to others."

  "You avoid giving me a straight answer. When did you talk to Paolo and Giuglio about it?"

  "Why are you interrogating me like this? Who gives you the right?" She feels self-righteous.

  "Nobody gives me the right, but do you want to know how I came to my conclusions or not?"

  She does not answer, all at once unsure. She doesn’t even know if she wants to hear it.

  "So when did you disclose your schedule to them."

  "At dinner two days before the trip."

  "Including the fact that you would take a Jeep to drive to San José de Isnos while they hired horses?"

  "Yes."

  "And who suggested that you take a Jeep, rather than join the others on horseback?"

  It was Franco, but she was not going to admit that and give André more ammunition. She averts her gaze. "I don’t know how to ride."

  "How convenient. And am I correct that the day before the flight, your group went to Tierradentro and that both Paolo and Giuglio came along?"

  "Yes."

  "Did either of the two disappear around or shortly before dinner?"

  "No, but they could have told someone else or your mystery man could have overheard them."

  "That kidnapping was set in motion days if not weeks earlier, including the transfer of the 200,000 euros to some bank in Antigua. Does either of these two strike you as capable of even thinking up something like this, let alone make contacts with FARC people or ex-para criminal elements?"

  "Don’t be ridiculous. Both are hopeless intellectuals."

  "That’s my assessment of them too. And am I also correct if I assume that the professor prepared the schedule for the sights you should visit and even made all arrangements for the flight, the taxi, the Jeep, and the horses?"

  Her anger at André for trying to prove Franco was behind it, stoked by his calm, logical interrogation, boils over when he refers to Franco again as ‘the professor’. She does not want to hear another word. "Stop it. You’re despicable. I hate you," she screams, jumps up and darts away, down toward the lake.

  She doesn’t know how she lands hard on the sand after only a few steps, with André almost on top of her. "Let me go," she screams again, hitting out at him. His hand on her mouth smothers her next scream. She bites hard and then hears his calming voice: "Quiet, Bianca, calm down, please. I hear horses."

  Instantly, fear replaces anger. Did she hear correctly? He removes his hand from her mouth, and she whispers: "What?"

  "There are horses on the other side of the lake."

  "What do we do?"

  "Stop fighting for a start, and then wait. I’ll try to get a peek."

  He lets go of her and crawls toward the edge of the boulder behind which he tackled her.

  "Eight horses, six riders, two pack horses," she hears him whisper. He brings the hand she bit to his mouth. She sees him suck. Did I bite him to the blood? Shame assails her. "They are watering them on the shore," he adds. "Oh, shit. They’ve a dog too."

  "You think they saw us?"

  "I don’t think so, and right now the dog doesn’t have our scent." Pausing between sentences, he continues: "They’re getting on their horses again … And now they ride off … up the track … they’ve disappeared in the forest. We can get back to our camp."

  She rises and sees him hold the soft flesh at the base of his left hand. I hurt him. Tears water her eyes. He prevented me from betraying us to the riders, and I bit him. He drapes an arm over her shoulder, and she buries her face on his chest, remorse tasting bitter. He embraces her.

  "It’s all right, Bianca. It’s all right."

  She would almost prefer it if he accused her of something, anything, rather than offering forgiveness. After a while, she disengages and says: "Show me your hand."

  She sees deep teeth marks. Blood is seeping from some. "Oh, André," she sobs, "I’m so sorry," hiding her face again on his chest, a new bout of guilt assailing her.

  He raises her face by the chin. Soft lips brush hers briefly.

  "Come, let’s pack and get ready to go."

  "Shouldn’t we bandage the bite?"

  "No, you’re not poisonous, but you may kiss it."

  A half-sob, half-chuckle escapes her lips, as her mouth once more approaches the base of his hand, but this time for a kiss.

  * * *

  André realizes that his revelations have deeply shaken Bianca. He suspects that her violent reaction to it is in part, at least, caused by her guilt about having
had sex with him. He has no regrets that they made love, and it was making love, not only on his part, but on hers too, rather than simply succumbing to a surge of lust, particularly the second time when she returned his caresses and kisses. He fully understands that her only choice is to fight his conjecture about her own fiancé being behind the kidnapping. It would be devastating, too shattering and humiliating to think otherwise. But he is also confident that ultimately the force of logic will win. He has planted the seed of suspicion. She will search her memory about whether she can account for the professor’s whereabouts in the crucial hours between seven and nine the night before the flight. In the meantime, he will leave it at that, unless she brings it up. He is, in fact, surprised and relieved by how well she has taken the whole ordeal so far. It points to a resilient nature.

  Right now, his focus is on escaping. He is certain the six riders he saw are the reinforcement el commandante has summoned. By now, the four he stopped at the ridge must surely be back at the camp, and that opens the possibility that the reinforcement has already heard of their failure. He doesn’t envy the four. They are in for a hiding.

  "Where do we go?" Bianca asks, as he shoulders the pack and rifle. "Continue on the path down the valley?"

  "It may be wiser not to." The bite marks on his left hand have started to throb. He prevents his right to reach for them. He does not want to draw her attention to it and make her feel even more guilty. "If the reinforcement already heard that we got away from the first group, and they could well have, their dog may be able to pick up our scent at the campsite. Put yourself into their position. They’ll reckon that two fugitives who don’t know the area are most likely to stick to the track. So that’s where they’ll search first and they’ll soon be tearing down that track again. With horses they are much faster than we can ever be and would easily catch up with us. So I think we shouldn’t even go back to the track but directly strike out west and try to reach the road from Santa Rosa to San Sebastian. There should be several small villages along that road from where we might be able to get transport to a bigger town and ultimately back to Popayàn."

  When she starts walking back the way they came in, he points along the shore in the other direction. "This way, Bianca."

  He heads straight into the trees. The ground rises sharply from the edge of the lake, with boulders and other obstacles slowing their progress. But once beyond the lake, the terrain flattens out. The forest becomes more open. They can sometimes walk side by side.

  "Do you still think our kidnappers are from FARC?" Bianca questions.

  "I’m more and more inclined to think not … more likely ex-paras."

  "I think they are FARC, because el commandante offered me Karl Marx’s Das Kapital when I begged him for reading material. That’s the kind of book FARC people would have."

  "That’s a good point, but el commandante was going to rape you and sexual abuse of woman hostages is usually against the known FARC honor code. So I think they belong to a criminal ex-paras splinter group. There’s another thing that point to that. ‘La bête’ and ‘le trapu’ are the same man —"

  "Who are ‘la bête’ and ‘le trapu’?"

  "Sorry. I have this bad habit of giving people nicknames. ‘La bête’ is the leader of the group that seized us below San José de Isnos, and ‘le trapu’ is the man I overheard talking in the bar in Popayàn. ‘Le trapu’ means ‘the squat one’. And I’m 100 percent certain that they are one and the same. They have the same stature and their voices sounded identical. The way he was talking in the bar, it looks to me more like he is ex-paras."

  "I thought you didn’t see either of the two men."

  "I saw ‘le trapu’ quite clearly. I only saw the mystery man from the back." He knows he is treading on dangerous grounds by simply mentioning the other man.

  She remains quiet for a while and again walks behind him. Suddenly she catches up again and begs: "André, will you forgive me, please?"

  "For biting me? Yes, I probably would have done the same."

  "Also for calling you ridiculous," she adds in a soft voice.

  "Look, Bianca. I fully understand that my conjecture about your fiancé must be deeply distressing. It wouldn’t be natural otherwise."

  She avoids looking at him. He wants to say more. He wants to tell her that, although he would like to conquer her heart, his accusations were not motivated by envy or jealousy of a rival, but the result of logic and elimination. However, he stops himself. It is wiser to let her come to that conclusion herself.

  Where forest changes to open grassland with the occasional cops of trees, they take a break. It is midmorning and André guesses that they have not covered more than about six miles as the crow flies since they left the lake behind.

  "What nickname did you give me?" Bianca asks after they sit.

  "I didn’t give you a nickname. I had this strange feeling that your real name would be just perfect, and I was right."

  "I like my name, but I don’t see how it fits me."

  "The white of your eyes is flawless. Not a single blemish. It makes your dark pupils that much more vivid, not to speak of the perfect white of your breasts."

  "You’re teasing me. Anyway you didn’t know about my breasts then," she replies, a weak smile lighting up her eyes.

  "No, I could only guess."

  "And what nickname did you —"

  "Don’t ask! I don’t want to make you mad again."

  "Yes, I want to know."

  "Monsieur maladroit."

  "Because of his dancing?"

  "Yes, I saw him step on your toes."

  "Did he?"

  "Yes."

  "What other nicknames did you give people we encountered?"

  "La souris for the driver of the Jeep —"

  She chuckles. "Yes, he looked like a mouse."

  "Le vilain for el commandante, la bonne for the young cook."

  "Have you done this for long?"

  "Yes, my father does it. He usually names people after animals and already as a small child I found this fun, so I copied him."

  "Did he have a nickname for you?"

  "More than one. As a small child, I was monsieur pourquoi, later I became monsieur sait-tout and more recently he called me monsieur le coucou."

  "Why?"

  "Because I had affairs with married women; so to speak, laying my eggs in someone else’s nest. You see, Bianca, this is my sad lot. I fall for women who are already hitched up."

  She breaks eye contact.

  "Are you close to your father?" she asks after a moment of silence.

  "Yes, very much so. I admire his carpentry skills. He makes the most wonderful pieces of furniture. I’m though closer to my mother. She was the one who pushed me into going to university. She has a frighteningly logical mind and spots every flaw in an argument, but also has a wonderful sense of humor. And you?"

  "I’m my father’s spoiled girl, I guess, although he didn’t see much sense in me studying art. I think he didn’t see much sense in me or my sister going to university in the first place. In his view, women are supposed to get married, have children and be good wives. I got into archaeology only after I met Franco."

  "How old is your sister?"

  "She’s two years younger than me."

  "And you are …"

  "Twenty-three soon."

  "Is your sister as much fun as you? If she is, I may want to try my chances with her."

  "Oh, she’s the rebel of the family. I’ve a picture of her in … Oh, no, they took it. It was in my purse," she wails. "They took everything, my passport, my credit card. How can I get home without the passport?"

  "Don’t worry, the Italian Embassy will provide you with new travel documents. Any grandparents still alive?"

  "Yes, on both sides. I’m particularly close to the grandparents on my mother’s side. They had a house near us when we still lived in Rome itself and as a child I went to see them after school almost every day. Both loved playing games an
d making puzzles."

  "Interesting, so we have one thing in common. My mother also loves doing puzzles, and my father has several old-fashioned ones cut from real plywood, handed down from his parents."

  "Since highschool I’ve only seen them two or three times a year. They moved to Elba. I though try to visit them there each year for two or three weeks during the off-season. The island is overrun with tourists from June to September."

  * * *

  They resume walking, striking out straight west over hilly pasture land, here and there broken up by small gullies and streams. Surprisingly, they see no grazing animals. It is a constant up and down, from one low ridge or rise to the next. On each ridge, André scans the terrain ahead of them for the best passage, as well as the area behind to check whether they are being pursued. It is getting hot. The air over the dry grass in the distance seems to quiver as it rises. Bianca wishes she had a hat. Maybe eight or ten miles away is a low mountain range, with a few taller mountains sticking out behind. André shows her that according to the map the road they are hoping to reach should lie between these two ranges.

  Although she tried to be cheerful earlier on their midmorning break, as they walk her thoughts circle round and round on what happened this morning at the lake. André’s insinuations against Franco and her reaction of lashing out at him have shaken her confidence. Her whole being revolts at the idea that Franco could have betrayed her. At times she feels nauseated. There can be no truth to it. She doesn’t even want to contemplate that there could be. Her simmering anger against André for making them boils up again, and she makes sure to stay mostly behind him. At other times the calm, reasoned arguments he presented render her uncertain. She thinks that by now she knows him well enough. He is not the type to make such accusations without good cause, without having evaluated all factors, the way he seems to weigh up everything he does.

  But why would Franco want to have her kidnapped? She will inherit half her parents wealth, and he will benefit from it, and from what she heard, her share would be several times the amount of the ransom, even if the ransom is set at four million euros. He wouldn’t even get all of that. It just doesn’t make sense. "He loves me," she mouths silently. André’s question on that comes back. Franco said these three words. Yes, once, the first time you made love, more than a year ago, another voice inside reminds her, never since then. He is an aristocrat, she tries to convince herself, dignified, undemonstrative. Men like that do not bandy words around willy-nilly. But what about that other question you stopped André from asking, her alter ego insinuates? You went looking for him at dinnertime. You knocked twice at his room door. And nobody had seen him. He came more than half-an-hour late, apologizing that he had fallen asleep. "Stop it, stop it," she tries to silence that voice. However, there is no escaping. She recalls that her second knocking at his door was so loud that Angela, a friend and fellow student who shared the room next to his with Anna, opened the door thinking that the knocking was on their door. And Franco always boasted that he was a light sleeper. But there must be another explanation, she tries to convince herself. Franco will be able to clear it all up, and everything will be fine. She desperately wants to cling to that.