News of a Kidnapping (3 page)

Villamizar thought this was the case as soon
as he saw the bullet-riddled car. Later, in the crowd that invaded his house, he was struck by the absolute certainty that the lives of his wife and sister depended on what he could do to save them. Because this time, as never before, the war was being waged as an unavoidable personal challenge.

Villamizar, in fact, was already a survivor. When he was a representative in the Chamber, he had achieved
passage of the National Narcotics Statute in 1985, a time when there was no ordinary legislation against drug trafficking but only the scattershot decrees of a state of siege. Later, Luis Carlos Galán had told him to stop passage of a bill introduced in the Chamber by parliamentarians friendly to Escobar, which would have removed legislative support for the extradition treaty then in effect.
It was nearly his death sentence. On October 22, 1986, two assassins in sweatsuits who pretended to be working out across from his house
fired submachine guns at him as he was getting into his car. His escape was miraculous. One assailant was killed by the police, and his accomplices arrested, then released a few years later. No one took responsibility for the attempt, but no one had any doubt
as to who had ordered it.

Persuaded by Galán himself to leave Colombia for a while, Villamizar was named ambassador to Indonesia. After he had been there for a year, the U.S. security forces in Singapore captured a Colombian assassin traveling to Jakarta. It was never proved that he had been sent to kill Villamizar, but it was established that in the United States a fake death certificate had
declared him dead.

On the night that Maruja and Beatriz were abducted, Villamizar’s house was filled to overflowing. There were people in politics and the government, and the families of the two victims. Aseneth Velásquez, an art dealer and close friend of the Villamizars, who lived in the apartment above them, had assumed the duties of hostess, and all that was missing was music to make the
evening seem like any other Friday night. It can’t be helped: In Colombia, any gathering of more than six people, regardless of class or the hour, is doomed to turn into a dance.

By this time the entire family, scattered all over the world, had been informed. Alexandra, Maruja’s daughter by her first marriage, had just finished supper in a restaurant in Maicao, on the remote Guajira peninsula,
when Javier Ayala gave her the news. The director of “Enfoque,” a popular Wednesday television program, she had gone to Guajira the day before to do a series of interviews. She ran to the hotel to call her family, but all the telephones at home were busy. By a lucky coincidence, on the previous Wednesday she had interviewed a psychiatrist who specialized in treating cases of clinical depression
brought on by imprisonment in high-security institutions. When she heard the news in Maicao, she realized that the same therapy might be useful for kidnapping victims as well, and she returned to Bogotá to start to apply it, beginning with the next program.

Gloria Pachón, Maruja’s sister, who was then Colombia’s representative to UNESCO, was awakened at two in the morning by Villamizar’s words:
“I have something awful to tell you.” Maruja’s daughter Juana, who was vacationing in Paris, learned the news a moment later in the adjoining bedroom. Maruja’s son Nicolás, a twenty-seven-year-old musician and composer, was in New York when he was awakened by a phone call.

At two o’clock that morning, Dr. Guerrero and his son Gabriel went to see the parliamentarian Diego Montaña Cuéllar, president
of the Patriotic Union—a movement linked to the Communist Party—and a member of the Notables, a group formed in December 1989 to mediate between the government and the kidnappers of Alvaro Diego Montoya. They found him not only awake but very dejected. He had heard about the abduction on the news that night and thought it a demoralizing symptom. The only thing Guerrero wanted to ask was if he
would act as mediator with Pablo Escobar and persuade him to hold Guerrero hostage in exchange for Beatriz. Montaña Cuéllar’s answer was typical of his character.

“Don’t be an ass, Pedro,” he said. “In this country there’s nothing you can do.”

Dr. Guerrero returned home at dawn but did not even try to sleep. His nerves were on edge. A little before seven he received a call from Yami Amat, the
news director at Caracol, and in the worst state of mind responded with a rash challenge to the kidnappers.

At six-thirty, without any sleep, Villamizar showered and dressed for his appointment with Jaime Giraldo Angel, the justice minister, who brought him up-to-date on the war against narcoterrorism. Villamizar left the meeting convinced that his struggle would be long and difficult, but grateful
for the two hours he had spent finding out about recent developments, since for some time he had paid little attention to the issue of drug trafficking.

He did not eat breakfast or lunch. By late afternoon, after various
frustrating errands, he too visited Diego Montaña Cuéllar, who surprised him once again with his frankness. “Don’t forget that this is for the long haul,” he said, “at least
until next June, after the Constituent Assembly, because Maruja and Beatriz will be Escobar’s defense against extradition.” Many of his friends were annoyed with Montaña Cuéllar for not disguising his pessimism in the press, even though he belonged to the Notables.

“Anyway, I’m resigning from this bullshit,” he told Villamizar in his florid language. “We don’t do anything but stand around like
assholes.”

Villamizar felt drained and alone when he returned home after a fruitless day. The two neat whiskeys he drank one after the other left him exhausted. At six in the evening his son, Andrés, who from then on would be his only companion, persuaded him to have breakfast. They were eating when the president telephoned.

“All right, Alberto,” he said in his best manner. “Come over and we’ll
talk.”

President Gaviria received him at seven in the library of the private wing in the presidential palace, where he had lived for the past three months with his wife, Ana Milena Muñoz, and his two children, eleven-year-old Simón, and María Paz, who was eight. A small but comfortable refuge next to a greenhouse filled with brilliant flowers, it had wooden bookshelves crowded with official publications
and family photos, a compact sound system, and his favorite records: the Beatles, Jethro Tull, Juan Luis Guerra, Beethoven, Bach. After long days of official duties, this was where the president held informal meetings or relaxed with friends at nightfall with a glass of whiskey.

Gaviria greeted Villamizar with affection and spoke with solidarity and understanding, and with his rather abrupt frankness
as well. But Villamizar was calmer now that he had recovered from the initial shock, and he had enough information to know there was very little the president could do for him. Both men were sure the abduction of Maruja and Beatriz had political motivations, and
they did not need to be fortune-tellers to realize that Pablo Escobar was behind it. But the essential thing, Gaviria said, was not knowing
it but getting Escobar to acknowledge it as a first important step in guaranteeing the safety of the two women.

It was clear to Villamizar from the start that the president would not go beyond the Constitution or the law to help him, nor stop the military units that were searching for the kidnappers, but it was also clear he would not attempt any rescue operations without the authorization of
the families.

“That,” said the president, “is our policy.”

There was nothing else to say. When Villamizar left the presidential palace, twenty-four hours had passed since the kidnapping, and he felt like a blind man facing the future, but he knew he could count on the government’s cooperation to undertake private negotiations to help his wife and sister, and he had Rafael Pardo, the president’s
security adviser, ready to assist him. But what seemed to deserve his deepest belief was Diego Montaña Cuéllar’s crude realism.

The first in that unprecedented series of abductions—on August 30, 1990, a bare three weeks after President César Gaviria took office—was the kidnapping of Diana Turbay, the director of the television news program “Criptón” and of the Bogotá magazine
Hoy x Hoy,
and the
daughter of the former president and leader of the Liberal Party, Julio César Turbay. Four members of her news team were kidnapped along with her—the editor Azucena Liévano, the writer Juan Vitta, the cameramen Richard Becerra and Orlando Acevedo—as well as the German journalist Hero Buss, who was stationed in Colombia. Six in all.

The trick used by the kidnappers was a supposed interview with
Manuel Pérez, the priest who was supreme commander of the guerrilla group called the Army of National Liberation (ELN). Few people knew about the invitation, and none thought Diana
should accept it. Among them were the defense minister, General Oscar Botero, and Rafael Pardo, who had been informed of the danger by the president so that he could communicate his concerns to the Turbay family. But
anyone who thought Diana would cancel the trip did not know her. In fact, the press interview with Father Manuel Pérez probably did not interest her as much as the possibility of a dialogue on peace. Years earlier, in absolute secret, she had traveled on muleback to talk to armed self-defense groups in their own territory, in a solitary attempt to understand the guerrilla movements from a political
and journalistic point of view. The news had no relevance at the time, and the results were not made public. Later, despite her long-standing opposition to the M-19, she became friends with Commander Carlos Pizarro, whom she visited in his camp to search for peaceful solutions. It is clear that the person who planned the deception in order to abduct her must have known her history. At that time,
no matter what the reason, no matter what the obstacle, nothing in this world could have stopped Diana from talking to Father Pérez, who held another of the keys to peace.

A variety of last-minute problems had postponed the appointment the year before, but on August 30, at five-thirty in the afternoon, and without informing anyone, Diana and her team set out in a battered van with two young men
and a girl who passed themselves off as representatives of the ELN leadership. The drive from Bogotá was a faithful parody of the kind of trip real guerrillas would have organized. Their traveling companions must have been members of an armed group, or had been once, or had learned their lessons very well, because they did not make a single mistake, in speech or behavior, that would have betrayed
the subterfuge.

On the first day they had reached Honda, 146 kilometers to the west of Bogotá, where other men were waiting for them in two vehicles that were more comfortable. They had supper in a roadside tavern, then continued along a dark, hazardous road under a
heavy downpour, and dawn found them waiting for a landslide to be cleared. At last, weary from lack of sleep, at eleven in the morning
they reached a spot where a patrol was waiting for them with five horses. Diana and Azucena rode for four hours, while their companions traveled by foot, first through dense mountain forest and then through an idyllic valley with peaceful houses among the coffee groves. People came out to watch them go by, some recognized Diana and called out greetings from their terraces. Juan Vitta estimated
that no fewer than five hundred people had seen them along the route. In the evening they dismounted at a deserted ranch where a young man who looked like a student identified himself as being from the ELN but said nothing about their destination. They were all confused. No more than half a kilometer away was a stretch of highway, and beyond that a city that had to be Medellín. In other words:
This was not ELN territory. Unless—it occurred to Hero Buss—this was a masterful move by Father Pérez to meet them in an area where no one expected to find him.

About two hours later they came to Copacabana, a municipality that had been devoured by the urban sprawl of Medellín. They dismounted at a little house with white walls and moss-covered roof tiles that seemed imbedded in a steep, overgrown
slope. It had a living room, with a small room on either side. In one of them there were three double beds, which were taken by the guides. The other, with a double bed and a bunk bed, was for the men on the crew. Diana and Azucena had the best room, which was in the rear and showed signs of having been occupied before by women. The light was on in the middle of the day because all the windows
were boarded over.

After waiting for about three hours, a man in a mask came in, welcomed them on behalf of the high command, and announced that Father Pérez was expecting them but for reasons of security the women should go first. This was the first time that Diana showed signs of uneasiness. Hero Buss took her aside and said that
under no circumstances should she agree to break up their group.
Because she could not prevent that from happening, Diana slipped him her identity card. She did not have time to explain why, but he understood it to be a piece of evidence in the event she disappeared.

Before daybreak they took away the women and Juan Vitta. Hero Buss, Richard Becerra, and Orlando Acevedo stayed in the room with the double bed and the bunk bed, and five guards. The suspicion
that they had fallen into a trap grew as the hours passed. That night, while they were playing cards, Hero Buss noticed that one of the guards was wearing an expensive watch. “So now the ELN can afford Rolexes,” he joked. But the man ignored him. Another thing that perplexed Hero Buss was that their guns were not typical guerrilla weapons but the kind used for urban operations. Orlando, who spoke
little and thought of himself as the poor relation on this expedition, did not need as many clues to discover the truth, for he had an unbearable feeling that something very serious was going on.

The first change of house occurred in the middle of the night on September 10, when the guards burst in shouting: “It’s the cops!” After two hours of a forced march through the underbrush, in a terrible
storm, they reached the house where Diana, Azucena, and Juan Vitta were being held. It was roomy and well furnished, with a large-screen television set and nothing that could arouse any suspicions. What none of them imagined was how close they all were to being rescued that night through sheer coincidence. The stop there of a few hours allowed them to exchange ideas, experiences, plans for the
future. Diana unburdened herself to Hero Buss. She spoke of how depressed she was because she had led them into the trap, and confessed that she was trying to push away the thought of her family—husband, children, parents—which did not give her a moment’s peace, but her efforts always had the opposite result.