News of a Kidnapping (28 page)

“I’ve come here with only your son’s life in mind,” said the lawyer. “If these articles are published tomorrow, by the day after tomorrow Francisco will be free.”

Hernando read the manuscript with a political eye. It listed
the incidents denounced so often by Escobar, but with bloodcurdling details that were impossible to prove. It was written with gravity and subtle malice. The author, according to the lawyer, was Escobar himself. In any case, the style seemed to be his.

The document from Amnesty International had already appeared in other newspapers, and Hernando Santos had no problem in publishing it again. The
editorial, however, was too serious to publish with no evidence. “If he sends me proof, we’ll print it right away even if they don’t let Pacho go,” said Hernando. There was nothing more to discuss. The lawyer, aware that his mission was over, took advantage of the opportunity to ask Hernando how much Guido Parra had charged for his mediation.

“Not a cent,” replied Hernando. “Money was never mentioned.”

“Tell me the truth,” said the lawyer, “because Escobar controls the accounts, he controls everything, and he needs that information.”

Hernando repeated his answer, and the meeting ended with formal goodbyes.

Perhaps the only person at this time who was convinced that matters were close to resolution was the Colombian astrologer Mauricio Puerta—an attentive observer of national life by means
of the stars—who had reached some surprising conclusions regarding Pablo Escobar’s astrological chart.

Escobar had been born in Medellín on December 1, 1949, at 11:50 a.m. He was, therefore, a Sagittarius with Pisces in the ascendant, with one of the worst conjunctions: Mars and Saturn in Virgo. His tendencies were cruel authoritarianism, despotism, insatiable ambition, rebelliousness, turbulence,
insubordination, anarchy, lack of discipline, attacks on authority. And an ineluctable outcome: sudden death.

Beginning on March 30, 1991, he had Saturn at five degrees for the next three years, and this meant that only three alternatives defined his future: the hospital, the cemetery, or prison. A fourth option—the monastery—did not seem applicable in his case. In any event, the period was more
favorable for settling the terms of a negotiation than for closing a definitive deal. In other words: His best option was the conditional surrender proposed by the government.

“Escobar must be very worried if he’s so interested in his chart,” said one reporter. For as soon as he heard about Mauricio Puerta’s reading, he wanted his analysis down to the smallest detail. But two messengers sent
by Escobar never reached their destination, and one disappeared forever. Then Puerta arranged a well-publicized seminar in Medellín to make himself available to Escobar, but a series of strange difficulties made the meeting impossible. Puerta interpreted these as a defensive strategy by the stars to prevent anything from interfering with a destiny that was now inexorable.

Pacho Santos’s wife
also received supernatural revelations from a clairvoyant who had predicted Diana’s death with amazing clarity, and had told her with equal certainty that Pacho was alive. In April they happened to meet again in a public place, and the clairvoyant murmured as she passed by:

“Congratulations. I can see his homecoming.”

These were the only encouraging signs when Father García Herreros sent his
cryptic message to Pablo Escobar. How he made that providential determination, and what the sea of Coveñas had to do with it, is something that still intrigues the nation. Yet how he happened to think of it is even more intriguing. On Friday, April 12, 1991, he visited Dr. Manuel Elkin Patarroyo—the inspired inventor of the malaria vaccine—to ask him to set up a clinic, in the area of the “God’s
Minute” charity, for the early detection of AIDS. In addition to a young priest from his community, he was accompanied by an old-style Antioquian, a great friend who advised him on earthly matters. By his own decision, this benefactor, who has asked that his name not be mentioned, not only had built and paid for Father García Herreros’s private chapel, but also had made voluntary contributions to
his social service projects. In the car that was taking them to Dr. Patarroyo’s Institute of Immunology, he felt a kind of urgent inspiration.

“Listen, Father,” he said. “Why don’t you do something to move this thing along and help Pablo Escobar turn himself in?”

He said it with no preliminaries and no conscious motive. “It was a message from above,” he would say later in the way he always refers
to God, with the respect of a servant and the familiarity of a
compadre.
The father reacted as if an arrow had pierced his heart. He turned ashen. Dr. Patarroyo, who did not know him, was later struck by the energy shining from his eyes, and by his business sense, but to his Antioquian companion he seemed changed. “It was like Father was floating,” he has said. “During the interview the only thing
on his mind was what I had said, and when we left I thought he looked so excited that I began to worry.” This is why he took the father away for the weekend to rest at a vacation house in Coveñas, a popular Caribbean resort that swarms with thousands of tourists and is the terminus of a pipeline bringing in 250,000 barrels of crude oil every day.

The father did not have a moment’s peace. He hardly
slept; he would leave the table in the middle of meals and take long walks along the beach at all hours of the day or night. “Oh sea of Coveñas,” he shouted into the roar of the surf. “Can I do it? Should I do it? You who know everything: Will we not die in the attempt?” At the end of his tormented walks he would come into the house with absolute confidence, as if he had in reality received
answers from the sea, and discuss every detail of the project with his host.

On Tuesday, when they returned to Bogotá, he could see the entire plan, and this gave him back his serenity. On Wednesday he returned to his routine: He got up at six, showered, put on his black cassock with the clerical collar, and over that his invariable white poncho, and brought his affairs up-to-date with the assistance
of Paulina Garzón de Bermúdez, who had been his indispensable secretary for half her lifetime. The subject of his program that night had nothing to do with the obsession that drove him. On Thursday morning, just as he had promised, Dr. Patarroyo sent an affirmative reply to his request. The priest had no lunch. At ten to seven he reached the studios of Inravisión, where he broadcast his program,
and in front of the cameras he improvised his direct message to Escobar. These were sixty seconds that changed the little life that still remained to him. When he came home he was greeted by a basket full of telephone messages from all over the country, and an avalanche of reporters who from that night on would not let him out of their sight until he had accomplished his goal of leading Pablo
Escobar by the hand into prison.

The final process had begun but the outcome was uncertain because public opinion was divided between the masses of people who believed the good father was a saint, and the unbelievers who were convinced he was half-mad. The truth is that his life revealed him to be many things, but not that. He had turned eighty-two in January, would complete fifty-two years as
a priest in August, and seemed to be the only well-known Colombian who had never dreamed of being president. His snowy head and the white poncho
over his cassock complemented one of the most respected images in the country. He had written verses that he published in a book at the age of nineteen, and others, also composed in his youth, under the pen name Senescens. He was awarded a forgotten prize
for a volume of stories, and forty-six decorations for his charitable projects. In good times and bad he always had his feet planted firmly on the ground, led the social life of a layman, told and listened to jokes of any color, and at the moment of truth revealed what he always had been under his cattleman’s poncho: a dyed-in-the-wool Santanderean.

He lived in monastic austerity in the vicarage
of San Juan Eudes Church, in a room riddled with leaks that he refused to repair. He slept on wooden planks without a mattress or pillow, and with a coverlet made of colored scraps of cloth cut in the shape of little houses that some charitable nuns had sewn for him. He refused a down pillow that someone once offered him because it seemed contrary to the will of God. He wore the same shoes until
someone gave him a new pair, and did not replace his clothing and his eternal white poncho until someone provided him with new ones. He ate little, though he liked good food and appreciated fine wines, but would not accept invitations to expensive restaurants for fear people would think he was paying. In one restaurant he saw an elegant woman with a diamond the size of an almond on her finger.

“With a ring like that,” he walked up to her and said, “I could build 120 houses for the poor.”

She was too stunned to answer, but the next day she sent him the ring with a cordial note. It did not pay for 120 houses, of course, but the father built them anyway.

Paulina Garzón was a native of Chipatá, Santander del Sur, and had come to Bogotá with her mother in 1961, at the age of fifteen, with
a letter of recommendation stating she was an expert typist. She was, in fact, though she did not know how to speak on the phone, and her shopping lists were indecipherable because of
her calamitous spelling, but she learned both things well so that the priest would hire her. At twenty-five she married and had a son—Alfonso—and a daughter—María Constanza—who today are both systems engineers. Paulina
arranged her life so that she could continue to work for Father García Herreros, who gave her more and more duties and responsibilities until she became so indispensable that she traveled with him in Colombia and abroad, but always accompanied by another priest. “To avoid gossip,” Paulina explains. In the end she accompanied him everywhere, if only to put in and take out his contact lenses,
something he never could do by himself.

In his final years the priest lost his hearing in his right ear, became irritable, and lost patience with the gaps in his memory. Little by little he had discarded classical prayers and improvised his own, which he said aloud and with a visionary’s inspiration. His reputation as a lunatic grew along with the popular belief that he had a supernatural ability
to talk with the waters and control their direction and movement. The understanding he showed toward Pablo Escobar recalled something he had said about the return of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, in August 1957, to be tried by Congress: “When a man turns himself over to the law, even if he is guilty, he deserves profound respect.” Almost at the end of his life, at a Banquet for a Million that
had been very difficult to organize, a friend asked what he would do now and he gave the answer of a nineteen-year-old: “I want to lie down in a meadow and look at the stars.”

The day following his television message, Father García Herreros came to the Itagüí prison—unannounced and with no prior arrangements—to ask the Ochoa brothers how he could be useful in arranging Escobar’s surrender. The
Ochoas thought he was a saint, with only one problem that had to be taken into account: For more than forty years he had communicated with his audience through his daily sermon, and he could not conceive of any action
that did not begin by telling the public about it. The decisive factor for the Ochoas, however, was that don Fabio thought he was a providential mediator—first, because with him
Escobar would not feel the reluctance that kept him from seeing Villamizar, and second, because his image as a holy man could convince the entire Escobar crew to turn themselves in.

Two days later, at a press conference, Father García Herreros revealed that he was in contact with those responsible for the abduction of the journalists, and expressed his optimism that they would soon be free. Villamizar
did not hesitate for a moment, and went to see him at “God’s Minute.” He accompanied him on his second visit to the Itagüí prison, and on the same day the costly, confidential process began that would culminate in the surrender. It began with a letter dictated by the priest in the Ochoas’ cell and copied by María Lía on the typewriter. He improvised it as he stood in front of her, using
the same manner, the same apostolic tone, the same Santanderean accent as in his one-minute homilies. He invited Escobar to join him in a search for the road that would bring peace to Colombia. He announced his hope that the government would name him as guarantor “that your rights, and those of your family and friends, will be respected.” But he warned him not to ask for things the government could
not grant. Before concluding with “affectionate greetings,” he stated what was in reality the practical purpose of the letter: “If you believe we can meet in a place that is safe for both of us, let me know.”

Escobar answered three days later, in his own hand. He agreed to surrender as a sacrifice for peace. He made it clear that he did not expect a pardon, was not asking for criminal prosecution
but disciplinary action against the police wreaking havoc in the slums, and did not renounce his determination to respond with drastic reprisals. He was prepared to confess to any crime, though he knew with certainty that no judge, Colombian or foreign, had enough evidence to convict him, and he trusted that his adversaries
would be subjected to the same strict procedures. However, despite the
father’s most fervent hope, he made no reference to his proposal to meet with him.

Father García Herreros had promised Villamizar that he would control his informative impulses, and at first he kept his word, but his almost boyish spirit of adventure was greater than his power to control them. The expectations created were so great, and there was so much coverage in the press, that from then
on he could not make a move without a train of reporters and mobile television and radio crews following him right up to his front door.

After five months of working in absolute secret, under the almost sacramental silence imposed by Rafael Pardo, Villamizar thought that the easy talk of Father García Herreros put the entire operation at perpetual risk. This was when he requested and received
help from the people closest to the father—beginning with Paulin—and was able to go forward with preparations for certain actions without having to inform the priest ahead of time.