Kidnapped and a Daring Escape

by Gian Bordin

  He inspects all the seams and joints of the inside lining. "I can’t find any obvious signs that is was tampered with." His eyes light up as if some revelation has occurred to him. "Bianca, have a careful look at this bag. Is it really yours?"

  "I think so. It looks like mine."

  "Can you remember whether yours had any blemishes, a scratch or any other distinctive marks in the leather?"

  She thinks about it for a moment. "Yes, I once spilled part of a bottle of cologne in it and it left a slight ring where it dried."

  "Can you find it?"

  She takes the bag to the light and searches in all four corners. "It isn’t there. I clearly remember seeing it when I emptied the bag after our return from the Ciudad Perdida … You think somebody substituted a different bag for mine?"

  "Yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is another of Franco’s nasty deeds." He pauses for a moment. "There is one more thing about that encounter in the Alcazar Bar that I now remember and never told you about. When I saw ‘le trapu’ enter, he was carrying a dark-colored lady’s handbag like this one. When he left, he was empty-handed. Sometime toward the end of the conversation between him and ‘le richard’ I heard the latter ask: ‘Is it a genuine Gucci?’ and later he said: ‘Here is the agreed sum.’ When I saw him, walk out, he was carrying the bag. So it is fair to assume they exchanged the bag as part of a drug deal … Meade, if it is what I think it is, namely cocaine, we would have been in serious trouble if we had shown up with this at the airport. It would have guaranteed us free meals and lodging for the next ten to twenty years in a Colombian jail."

  "You mean Franco substituted bags and planned that I carry a bag full of drugs across borders?" A sudden shiver of hot and cold goes down her spine. She slumps back onto the bed, pressing both hands to her chest, taking deep breaths.

  "Yes, on substituting bags, but no on you taking it across borders. I guess he thought that after the kidnapping your things would simply be shipped back as freight to Rome where he planned to intercept your bag and retrieve the stuff. He never expected that you would take it across a border in person. I doubt that he would have been that mean or that stupid."

  "This proves again that he expected me to be killed. Oh, André, what are we going to do?"

  "We are going to flush that stuff down the toilet and dump the bag in the rubbish. I don’t want to run the risk of being stopped, body searched, interrogated, and detained for several days at every customs check."

  "Would we?"

  "Yes, there always remain residual traces of the stuff that any sniffer dog will detect."

  He sits next to her and takes her hands. She puts her head on his shoulder. Her mind is in renewed turmoil. Franco really expected that she would disappear without a trace. Why did she fail to see behind his mask? Why had she been so blind and not noticed that his vague assertion of devotion to her were false, that all he was after was her money? She loathes herself for having fallen for him. Then another thought occurs to her. Did he organize this South American study tour just to have her kidnapped? All his previous archaeology tours had always been to Greece, Turkey, Jordan or Egypt. This was his first to South America. Did he start planning this shortly after they got engaged, almost a year ago? She suddenly sits upright and takes a deep breath. I will pay him back. "No, we’re not going to flush that stuff down the toilet. We’re going to mail the bag to Franco, as a gift."

  André’s face lights up. "What I brilliant idea, Bianca. It’s perfect. It will land him in serious trouble. You know how they work these things? When they discover that a parcel contains drugs, they send it on to the recipient and then swoop on him after he accepts it."

  Yes, that is what she is banking on will happen.

  "I’ll check if they have a suitable box or wrapping material at the reception."

  He rushes out to go down to the desk, while she revels in the thought of paying Franco back in kind. A few minutes later, André returns with a fairly large box and a roll of sealing tape. He cuts the box to size. Then he wipes all surfaces of the bag both inside and outside with a humid cloth to remove any fingerprints, packs it in the box and seals it with tape. Bianca helps. It is all done in silence. She dictates Franco’s address in Rome, and they use the Cipriano Hotel in Popayàn as the sender. André writes with his left hand. They will airmail it from the airport, with a customs declaration stating ‘handbag left behind by guest’. Finished, he also wipes the sealing tape to remove any fingerprints. No fingerprints will stick to the rough cardboard surface.

  "Another thing accomplished," he comments.

  Yes, another thing accomplished. She smiles at him, amused by his casual understatement of what they just have done. She notices that André’s thoughts have already moved on. He says: "I suggest you forget about the jewelry and the perfume."

  She nods. Yes, he’s right, she reflects. I don’t want him to go back to that hotel and complain or involve the police.

  "We can buy you a new perfume in Bogotà."

  "It cost over eighty euros."

  "That’s only about six of those," he replies, pointing to the stack of twenty-dollar bills. "We might as well put that money to good use."

  "And buying me perfume is a good use for it?" she chuckles.

  "Yes, I like you smelling nice, although I like the natural perfume of your delicious breasts best."

  Sudden warmth radiates from her solar plexus. She stops looking through her thing and searches his eyes. She sees his smile, sees love in them. She wants him.

  "Later, love; we’ll make love later. Let’s first finish packing."

  He has seen right through me, she muses, pleased that he is so much in tune with her.

  "Do you have photocopies of your papers and credit card?" he asks.

  "Yes." She pulls them from an inside pocket in the cover of her suitcase. "Franco insisted that we all do that."

  "That should speed up getting new travel documents."

  "You have copies too?"

  "Yes, I’m a seasoned traveler. There is even a copy with my parents."

  It is getting on to midnight. "Shall we call now?" he questions again.

  She nods.

  "Do you want to talk?"

  "Yes."

  He dials the number and passes her the iPhone. It rings six times before she hears rustling noises for several seconds. Finally, a grumpy voice replies: "Claudia Farnese. Who calls at this ungodly hour … or is it you, Franco?"

  Bianca gasps, drops the gadget and clasps both hands to her face. André catches it in midair. She hears him say: "Awfully sorry, wrong number."

  "Who was it that upset you so?" he questions.

  "Claudia Farnese, the woman Franco lived with for several years before our engagement. He called her the morning after we were taken, even before he called my parents." The last comes out like a wail.

  André says nothing, simply hugs her. He was right, screams her mind, he was right, as he always is. There is another woman. Franco never broke with her. For more than a year, he pretended to love me and all he was after was my money. It feels like a blow to the stomach. She is nauseated.

  "Come love, I’m with you," André murmurs softly, stroking her hair, "and I love you."

  She clings to him, wiping her tears on his shirt. And then anger takes over. She disengages: "The miserable bastard. I’ll make him pay for that."

  "No, you will not. We have no solid evidence against him that will hold up in a court of law. Nor is it worth to waste your energy into making him pay. Forget about him. He’s not worth it. Love me instead all the more."

  "Yes, André," she replies, half sobs, half chuckles. "I have you. I love you."

  She raises her face and seeks his kiss.

  "Come, let’s now go to bed. The Swiss number can wait."

  11

  The first thing they do at the airport is to airmail the package to Franco. André is careful not to touch any sealing tape. The noisy turboprop takes off toward the west and rapidly gain
s height, before turning northeast. Bianca has a window seat on the right-hand side. She is holding André’s hand. There is not much cloud cover over the mountains. The two volcanoes show off their splendor. In the distance to the southeast, she can guess the area where they crossed over the mountain range five days earlier. Only five days? It already seems ages ago. She squeezes André’s hand and feels a rush of love fill her heart, overwhelmed by its intensity. He is my man. He is taking me back home, safe and sound, and then we will get married. She remembers him saying at that little lake "I doubt you will ever marry Franco" or something to that effect. It made me so angry then, she reflects, but he was right. He saved me from a serious mistake. Franco isn’t worth it. She even finds it hard to understand what attracted her to ‘the professor’. Now she can even laugh at that. Compared to André, he is bland, dull, pompous in his archaeology expertise, already an old, staid man. She only hopes that she will never have to face him again, at least not alone.

  The flight to Bogotà is just over an hour. A taxi takes them to the small, nondescript Hotel Léon near the University, where André stayed on his arrival in Colombia. The owner recognizes him and does not even ask for passports.

  They settle into their small room. She watches André fiddle with his iPhone.

  "What are you doing?" she queries.

  "I’m checking what calls ‘le trapu’ charged to my account." He holds the screen for her to see. "Do you recognize any of these numbers?"

  She scans through them. "No."

  "These here," he points to three numbers listed, "are all to the Cipriano. These two only in the last three days, after we escaped, probably to check whether we have turned up yet. This one was made the morning after we were kidnapped. And look at the time."

  "Why?"

  "It was made before Franco called Rome. So that leads to two conclusions. First, that it was a call to Franco, and second —"

  "— to tell him we had been kidnapped?"

  "Not we, only you. My kidnapping was opportunistic."

  "That was their big mistake, wasn’t it," she says, smiling.

  "Oh, I would have gone after you even if they had let me go, which was unlikely. It was more likely that they would have killed me on the spot. They don’t want witnesses."

  "Oh," Bianca utters, her heart taking a leap, and then she hugs him.

  * * *

  The third taxi ride of the day is to the Italian Embassy. Bianca identifies herself to the young woman at the information desk, telling her that her passport got stolen, and presents her photocopies.

  "Bianca Pacelli, you said?" the young woman queries, frowning. "The daughter of Signor Giorgio Pacelli of Rome?"

  Bianca feels uncomfortable under her critical scrutiny. She nods, replying "yes" in a low voice. So they must know of the kidnapping, she figures.

  "Please, take a seat, while I call the chargé d’affaires of the Embassy, and keep these." She hands back the photocopies.

  Bianca and André sit on the vinyl-covered bench along the wall, while the clerk talks excitedly in a low voice into the phone.

  "He will receive you shortly," she says after hanging up. She goes back to work, but periodically glances at them.

  On a low table is the morning edition of the main Bogota newspaper. Absentmindedly, Bianca looks at the headline on the front page. ‘Ex-Paras drug dealers slain in Popayàn shoot-out’. It feels like a cold hand is gripping her heart. She tries to calm herself by breathing deeply. André killed them, screams her mind.

  André picks up the paper and holds it such that she can read too. It reports that Monday evening there was a shoot-out outside a hotel in Popayàn between two criminals the police have tried to apprehend for several years already. It names them as Max Bequilà and José Nantos. The police speculate that the killing was due to an internal feud over the leadership of the group. Both men suffered a single shot. Bequilà was dead when the police arrived; Nantos succumbed to internal bleeding on the way to the hospital. The hotel staff claims not to have witnessed what happened. Since the bullets found matched the weapons the two men were carrying, the police is not looking for anyone else.

  Their eyes meet, his calm, as usual. She knows that hers show fear. He puts the paper down and takes her hand, whispering: "So it goes. No danger from that quarter anymore."

  "Did you know?" she asks in a whisper.

  "I suspected it."

  The phone buzzes and the young woman answers. She invites them to follow her and ushers them down the corridor into a sizable office. A man in his late thirties rises from his desk and shakes hands. He introduces himself as Marcello Baldetti, chargé d’affaires of the Embassy. Looking expectantly at André, he asks: "And you are …?"

  "André Villier. I’m only here accompanying Miss Pacelli."

  Baldetti now turns to her: "I’m surprised to see you. We were informed only last week that you were taken hostage at San Agustin and that a ransom demand was posted. And now I see you here."

  "Yes, both André Villier and I were kidnapped on Friday, ten days ago near San Agustin. They took our passports and drugged us, that is, they drugged me, but André was able to deceive them, and then we were marched two days into the mountains. André managed to escape and two days later came to rescue me. We were able to elude our pursuers in the Caqueta Valley and flee back to Popayàn."

  "How remarkable. We will give you a detailed debriefing later. How did you manage to get here? Presumably all your money and credit cards were taken from you."

  "I stole some money from our captors, enough to survive for a few days and pay the airfares," André replies.

  Baldetti raises his eyebrows. "Just like that … I assume you contacted the police?"

  "No, we did not. I did not consider that a safe course of action, nor did we want to be detained, and possibly exposed to a renewed kidnapping."

  "Hmm, the kidnapping has been reported to the security police and they will have to be informed of your release. I am certain they will want to debrief both of you."

  "It was not a release. We escaped," Bianca interjects. "I hope no ransom has been paid yet."

  "Not as far as I know, signorina."

  "How much did they ask for?"

  "Five million euros."

  "Oh … that much?" She raises her hand to her mouth.

  "Yes, it is at the top end of the scale. The kidnappers must have been well informed about your father’s financial situation."

  André intervenes again: "Signor Baldetti, I am sure you understand that Miss Pacelli wishes to return home as quickly as possible, but she will need travel documents for that. She has photocopies of the stolen ones. Furthermore, it is also essential that she contacts her parents right away, and so that they can be assured her call is not a cruel hoax, it would be desirable that you also spoke to them in your official capacity."

  Baldetti eyes him with a slight frown. He doesn’t like to be told what to do, flashes through Bianca’s mind, but she is grateful for André’s intervention, although he asked her to do the talking. But he speaks with such authority, she reflects.

  "I assume, Signor Villier, that you are not an Italian citizen. Am I correct?"

  "Yes, sir, I’m Swiss."

  "So far, we have received no communication from the Swiss Embassy that one of their citizens was also kidnapped."

  "I doubt that any ransom demand has been made yet, nor was I long enough out of contact with my people who knew my movements for them to be worried yet. The documents the kidnappers took from me did not give any contact addresses. Furthermore, I escaped on the second day of our captivity."

  "Hmm …"

  "Sir, would you be willing to arrange the call to Miss Pacelli’s father now?"

  "Yes, I guess we should do this promptly." He reluctantly turns to Bianca. "Your father deserves to know that you are safe. Maybe we should also schedule a medical examination for you."

  "That isn’t necessary," Bianca exclaims. "I wasn’t hurt or mistreated and feel perf
ectly healthy. In fact, I’m in better shape than before, with all the walking we did for several days."

  "Hmm … if you say so." He asks for her father’s phone number and then requests his secretary to set up the call via Foreign Affairs in Rome.

  "Signor Villier, maybe you now wish to look after your own affairs, such as contacting the Swiss Embassy. Their offices are only two blocks from here."

  "Oh, no," cries Bianca, suddenly feeling panicky. "I want André to stay with me."

  Again Baldetti raises his eyebrows. "Have you already contacted your fiancé, Professor Visconti?"

  "No, I don’t know where he is currently."

  "We were informed that the tour party he is leading is currently in Cusco, Peru. He surely must have a cell phone."

  "Does that imply that Professor Visconti did not cancel the rest of the tour?" André interjects. His tone of voice tells her that he is feigning outrage. "I mean, his own fiancée had been kidnapped."

  "That is correct. He explained to us that he has to put personal feelings aside and fulfill his obligations to the other participants and the university."

  "Really?" André’s tone has turned sarcastic.

  "Yes, he said that he was certain his fiancée would not want him to do otherwise."

  The bastard. Bianca fights tears. "Then he doesn’t know me well." It slips out rather more vehemently than she would have liked.

  "Hmm …" utters Baldetti, clearly disconcerted by her outburst.

  His pompous officialdom begins to irk her. To bridge the awkward silence, she asks: "Signore, by when will you be able to get me new travel documents?"

  "If no hitch occurs, by tomorrow afternoon."

  "What hitch could occur?"

  "That the debriefing has to be delayed or reveals aspects that require your continued presence here."

  She does not like his tone and looks to André for help. He does not disappoint her. "Signor Baldetti, we both want to be safely out of this country as quickly as possible. As you surely must be aware, there is no need to have a debriefing here at your Embassy. That can be done directly in Rome by the appropriate authorities. They will then hear everything first-hand. Any action you would want to take will have to be approved by Rome anyway. So I suggest, you dispense with the debriefing and get Miss Pacelli’s new travel documents ready by tomorrow, so that we can be on a night flight to Europe."