News of a Kidnapping (22 page)

“As long as this war lasts, you are all in danger, even behind these fortified walls,” Villamizar insisted. “But if it ends now, you’ll have your father and mother, your entire family intact. And that
won’t happen until Escobar surrenders to the authorities
and Maruja and Francisco return home safe and sound. But you can be sure that if they’re killed, you’ll pay too, your families, everyone will pay.”

During the three long hours of their interview in the prison, each man demonstrated his courage at the very edge of the abyss. Villamizar appreciated the Medellinese realism in Ochoa. The Ochoas were impressed by the direct, frank manner in which
their visitor analyzed all aspects of the subject. They had lived in Cúcuta—Villamizar’s home region—knew many people there, and got along well with them. At last, the other two Ochoas spoke, and Martha Nieves lightened the atmosphere with her native grace. The men had seemed firm in their refusal to intervene in a war from which they now felt safe, but little by little they became more thoughtful.

“All right, then,” Jorge Luis concluded. “We’ll send the message to Pablo and tell him you were here. But my advice to you is to speak to my father. He’s at La Loma, and he’ll enjoy talking to you.”

And so Villamizar went to the hacienda with the entire family, and with only the two bodyguards he had brought from Bogotá, since the full security team seemed too conspicuous to the Ochoas. They
drove to the entrance and then continued on foot, walking about a kilometer to the house along a path lined with leafy, well-tended trees. Several men without visible weapons blocked the way of the bodyguards and asked them to take a different direction. It was an anxious moment, but the men from the house reassured the strangers with good manners and even better words.

“Walk around, have something
to eat,” they said. “The doctor has to talk with don Fabio.”

The path ended in a small square, and on the other side stood the large, well-kept house. On the terrace overlooking fields that stretched to the horizon, the old patriarch was waiting for his visitor. With him was the rest of the family, all women, and almost
all of them wearing mourning for their dead, casualties of the war. Although
it was the siesta hour, they had prepared an assortment of food and drink.

They exchanged greetings, and Villamizar knew that don Fabio already had a complete report on the conversation held in the prison. That made the preliminaries shorter. Villamizar limited himself to repeating what he had said before: A flare-up in the war could cause much more harm to his large, prosperous family, who were
not accused of either murder or terrorism. For the moment three of his sons were safe, but the future was unpredictable, which meant that no one ought to be more interested than they in achieving peace, and peace would not be possible until Escobar followed the example of don Fabio’s sons.

Don Fabio listened with placid attention, approving with gentle nods when something seemed correct. Then,
in sentences as brief and definitive as epitaphs, he said what he thought in five minutes. No matter what was done, he said, in the end they would find that the most important element was missing: talking to Escobar in person. “So the best thing is to start there,” he said. He thought Villamizar was the right man to try it, because Escobar only trusted men whose word was as good as gold.

“And
you are one of those men,” don Fabio concluded. “The problem is proving it to him.”

The visit had begun in the prison at ten in the morning and ended at six at La Loma. Its great achievement was breaking the ice between Villamizar and the Ochoas for the common goal—already agreed to by the government—of having Escobar turn himself in to the authorities. That certainty made Villamizar want to
convey his impressions to the president. But when he reached Bogotá he was met with bad news: The president too had been wounded in his own flesh by an abduction.

This is what happened: Fortunato Gaviria Botero, his first cousin and dearest friend since childhood, had been taken at his country house in Pereira by four hooded men armed with rifles.
The president did not change his plans to attend
a regional conference of governors on the island of San Andrés, and he left on Friday afternoon still not knowing if his cousin had been abducted by the Extraditables. On Saturday he woke at dawn to go diving, and when he came out of the water he was told that Fortunato’s captors—who were not drug traffickers—had killed him and buried his body, without a coffin, in an open field. The autopsy showed
earth in his lungs, and this was interpreted to mean that he had been buried alive.

The president’s first reaction was to cancel the regional conference and return immediately to Bogotá, but he was stopped by physicians who told him he should not fly for twenty-four hours since he had spent more than an hour at a depth of sixty feet. Gaviria followed their recommendations, and the nation saw
him on television presiding over the conference with his most mournful face. But at four that afternoon he ignored medical advice and returned to Bogotá to arrange the funeral. Some time later, recalling the day as one of the most difficult in his life, he said with acid humor:

“I was the only Colombian who didn’t have a president to complain to.”

As soon as his prison lunch with Villamizar
had ended, Jorge Luis Ochoa sent Escobar a letter encouraging him to change his mind about surrender. He depicted Villamizar as a serious Santanderean who could be believed and trusted. Escobar’s reply was immediate: “Tell that son of a bitch not to talk to me.” Villamizar learned about it in a phone call from Martha Nieves and María Lía, who asked him to come back to Medellín anyway to continue to
look for a solution. This time he went without an escort. He took a cab from the airport to the Hotel Intercontinental, and some fifteen minutes later he was picked up by an Ochoa driver. He was an amiable, bantering twenty-year-old from Medellín who observed him for some time in the rearview mirror. At last he asked:

“Are you scared?”

Villamizar smiled at him in the mirror.

“Don’t worry, Doctor,”
the boy continued. And added, with a good deal of irony: “Nothing will happen to you while you’re with us. How could you even think such a thing?”

The joke gave Villamizar a confidence and sense of security that remained with him during all of his subsequent trips. He never knew if he was followed, not even at a much more advanced stage, but he always felt sheltered by a supernatural power.

Escobar did not seem to feel he owed Villamizar anything for the decree that made his escape from extradition a certainty. As a hard-core gambler who kept track of every penny, he probably thought the favor had been paid for with the release of Beatriz, but that the old debt was still intact. The Ochoas, however, believed that Villamizar had to persevere.

And so he ignored the insults and decided
to move ahead. The Ochoas supported him. He returned two or three times and together they devised a plan of action. Jorge Luis wrote Escobar another letter in which he stated that the guarantees for his surrender were in place, that his life would be protected, and that under no circumstances would he be extradited. But Escobar did not reply. Then they decided that Villamizar himself should write
to Escobar explaining his situation and his offer.

The letter was written on March 4, in the Ochoas’ cell, with the help of Jorge Luis, who told him what should be said and what might be out of place. Villamizar began by acknowledging that respect for human rights was fundamental to achieving peace. “There is a fact, however, that cannot be ignored: Those who violate human rights have no better
excuse for continuing to do so than citing the same violations committed by others.” This was an obstacle to action on both sides, and to whatever he had achieved in that regard during the months he had worked for his wife’s release. The Villamizar family had been the target of a persistent violence for which it bore no responsibility: the attempt on his life,
the murder of his sister-in-law’s
husband, Luis Carlos Galán, and the abduction of his wife and sister. “My sister-in-law, Gloria Pachón de Galán, and I,” he added, “do not understand and cannot accept so many unjustified and inexplicable attacks.” On the contrary: The release of Maruja and the other journalists was indispensable to finding the road to true peace in Colombia.

Escobar’s reply two weeks later began with a bitter
blow: “My dear Doctor, I regret that I cannot oblige you.” He proceeded to call his attention to reports that certain members of the Constituent Assembly in the official sector, with the consent of the hostages’ families, were proposing not to consider the subject of extradition if the captives were not freed. Escobar considered this inappropriate, for the abductions could not be thought of as a
means of exerting pressure on members of the Constituent Assembly since the abductions predated the election. In any event, he allowed himself to issue a terrible warning: “Remember, Dr. Villamizar, extradition has taken many victims, and adding two more will not change the process or the continuing struggle very much.”

The warning was a complete surprise, because Escobar had not referred again
to extradition as a reason for war after the decree undermined that argument for anyone who surrendered, and had focused instead on human rights violations by the special forces that were fighting him. It was his grand strategy: to gain ground with partial victories, continue the war for other reasons that could go on multiplying forever, and not have to surrender.

In his letter, in fact, he
claimed to understand that Villamizar’s struggle was the same as his in the sense that both wanted to protect their families, but once again he insisted that the Elite Corps had killed some four hundred boys from the slums of Medellín and no one had been punished for it. Such actions, he said, justified the abduction of the journalists as a means of pressing for sanctions on the police who were guilty.
He also expressed surprise that no public official had attempted to make direct contact with him concerning
the hostages. In any event, he went on, calls and pleas for their freedom would be useless, since what was at stake were the lives of the Extraditables’ families and associates. And he concluded: “If the government does not intervene and does not listen to our proposals, we will proceed
to execute Maruja and Francisco, about that there can be no doubt.”

The letter showed that Escobar was seeking contacts with public officials. Surrender had not been discarded, but it would come at a higher price than anyone had expected, and he was prepared to demand payment with no sentimental discounts. Villamizar understood this, and that same week he visited the president and brought him
up-to-date. The president did no more than take careful notes.

At this time Villamizar also met with the prosecutor general, trying to find a different way to proceed in a new situation. The meeting was very productive. The prosecutor general told him that at the end of the week he would issue a report on the death of Diana Turbay holding the police responsible for acting without prudence or
orders, and that he was filing charges against three officers of the Elite Corps. He also disclosed that he had investigated eleven agents whom Escobar had accused by name, and had filed charges against them as well.

He kept his word. On April 3 the president received an investigative study from the Prosecutor General’s Office regarding the circumstances surrounding Diana Turbay’s death. The
operation—the study says—began to take shape on January 23, when the intelligence services of the Medellín police received a series of anonymous calls of a generic nature regarding the presence of armed men in the hilly areas of the municipality of Copacabana. Activity was centered—according to the phone calls—in the region of Sabaneta, in particular on the farm properties of Villa del Rosario, La
Bola, and Alto de la Cruz. At least one of the calls suggested that this was where the journalists were being held hostage, and that the Doctor—that is, Pablo Escobar—might even be there
as well. This piece of information was mentioned in the analysis that served as the basis for the next day’s operations, but there was no mention of the probable presence of the abducted journalists. General Miguel
Gómez Padilla, head of the National Police, stated that he had been informed on the afternoon of January 24 that on the following day a search-and-seizure verification operation would be carried out, “and the possible capture of Pablo Escobar and a group of drug traffickers.” But, it seems, there was no mention at this time either of a possible encounter with the two hostages, Diana Turbay and
Richard Becerra.

The operation began at eleven o’clock on the morning of January 25, when Captain Jairo Salcedo García left the Carlos Holguín Academy in Medellín with seven officers, five noncommissioned officers, and forty agents. An hour later, Captain Eduardo Martínez Solanilla was accompanied by two officers, two noncommissioned officers, and seventy-one agents. The report pointed out that
in the relevant memorandum no record had been made of the departure of Captain Helmer Ezequiel Torres Vela, who was in charge of the raid on La Bola farm, where Diana and Richard were in fact being held. But in his subsequent statement to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the same captain confirmed that he had set out at eleven in the morning with six officers, five noncommissioned officers, and
forty agents. Four combat helicopters were assigned to the entire operation.

The raids on Villa del Rosario and Alto de la Cruz were carried out with no difficulty. At about one o’clock, the raid on La Bola began. Second Lieutenant Iván Díaz Alvarez stated that he was coming down from the mesa where the helicopter had left him when he heard shooting on the side of the mountain. Racing in that
direction, he caught a glimpse of nine or ten men armed with rifles and submachine guns and running for their lives. “We stayed there a few minutes to see where the attack was coming from,” the second lieutenant declared, “when much further down the slope we heard someone calling for help.” The second lieutenant said he
had hurried down and found a man who shouted: “Please help me.” The second
lieutenant shouted back: “Halt! Who are you?” The man replied that he was Richard, the journalist, and needed help because Diana Turbay had been wounded. The second lieutenant said that then, without knowing why, he asked the question: “Where’s Pablo?” Richard answered: “I don’t know, but help me, please.” Then the soldier approached, taking all precautions, and then other men from his unit appeared.
The second lieutenant concluded: “For us it was a surprise to find the journalists there because that wasn’t our objective.”