News of a Kidnapping (27 page)

“I’ve spent worse nights in places a thousand times worse than this,” he answered in an angry tone. “Who
do you people think you are?”

His visits were preludes to great events, good or bad, but always decisive. This time, however, encouraged by Escobar’s letter, Maruja had the heart to confront him.

Their communication was immediate and surprisingly untroubled. She began by asking, with no resentment, what Escobar wanted, how the negotiations were going, what the chances were
of his surrendering
soon. He told her in a frank manner that nothing would be easy unless there were sufficient guarantees of safety for Pablo Escobar, his family, and his people. Maruja asked about Guido Parra, whose efforts had brought her hope and whose sudden disappearance intrigued her.

“Well, he didn’t behave very well,” he said in an unemotional way. “He’s out of it now.”

That could be interpreted in three
ways: either he had lost his power, or he had really left the country—which was the public story—or he had been killed. The “Doctor” evaded the issue, saying that in fact he did not know.

In part to satisfy her irresistible curiosity, and in part to gain his confidence, Maruja also asked who had written a recent letter from the Extraditables to the ambassador of the United States regarding extradition
and the drug trade. She had found it striking not only because of the strength of its arguments but because it was so well written. The “Doctor” was not certain, but he assured her that Escobar wrote his letters himself, rethinking and revising drafts until he said what he wanted to say without equivocations or contradictions. At the end of their conversation, which lasted almost two hours,
the “Doctor” again raised the subject of surrender. Maruja realized he was more interested than he had first appeared to be, thinking not only about Escobar’s future but about his own. She had a well-reasoned opinion about the controversies surrounding the decrees, knew the details of the capitulation policy, and was familiar with the tendencies of the Constituent Assembly regarding extradition
and amnesty.

“If Escobar isn’t willing to spend at least fourteen years in jail,” she said, “I don’t believe the government will accept his surrender.”

He thought so much of her opinion that he had a startling idea: “Why don’t you write a letter to the Chief?” And he repeated it when he saw how disconcerted Maruja became.

“I mean it, write to him,” he said. “It could be very helpful.”

And
she did. He brought her paper and pencil, and waited without impatience, walking from one end of the room to the other. Maruja smoked half a pack of cigarettes from the start of the letter to the finish, sitting on the bed and writing on a board she held on her lap. In simple terms she thanked Escobar for the sense of security his words had given her. She said she had no desire for revenge against
him or the people managing her captivity, and she thanked all of them for the respect with which she had been treated. She hoped Escobar could accept the government’s decrees and provide a good future for himself and his children in their own country. She concluded with the formula that Villamizar had suggested in his letter, offering up her sacrifice for peace in Colombia.

The “Doctor” was hoping
for something more concrete regarding the terms of the surrender, but Maruja convinced him that the effect would be the same without going into details that might seem impertinent or be misinterpreted. She was right: The letter was given to the press by Pablo Escobar, who had their ear just then because of the interest in his surrender.

Maruja also gave the “Doctor” a letter for Villamizar, one
very different from the letter she had written under the effects of her rage, and as a result he appeared on television again after many weeks of silence. That night she took the powerful sedative and dreamed, in a futuristic version of a western movie, that Escobar was getting out of a helicopter and using her as a shield against a barrage of bullets.

At the end of his visit, the “Doctor” had
instructed the people in the house to take greater pains in their treatment of Maruja. The majordomo and Damaris were so pleased with the new orders that they sometimes went overboard in complying with them. Before leaving, the “Doctor” had wanted to change the guards. Maruja asked him not to. The young high-school graduates on duty in April had been a relief after the excesses of March, and they
continued to maintain peaceful relations with her. Maruja had
gained their confidence. They told her what they heard from the majordomo and his wife, and kept her informed about the internal conflicts that had once been state secrets. They even promised—and Maruja believed them—that if anyone tried to do anything to her, they would be the first to stop him. They showed their affection with treats
they stole from the kitchen, and they gave her a can of olive oil to help disguise the abominable taste of the lentils.

The only difficulty was the religious anxiety that troubled them and which she could not resolve because of her innate lack of belief and her ignorance in matters of faith. She often risked shattering the harmony in the room. “Let’s see what this is all about,” she would ask
them. “If killing is a sin, why do you kill?” She would challenge them: “All those six o’clock rosaries, all those candles, all that business with the Holy Infant, and if I tried to escape you wouldn’t think twice about shooting me.” The debates became so virulent that one of them shouted in horror:

“You’re an atheist!”

She shouted back that she was. She never thought it would cause such stupefaction.
Knowing she might have to pay dearly for her idle iconoclasm, she invented a cosmic theory of life and the world that allowed them to talk without quarreling. And so the idea of replacing them with guards she did not know was not something she favored. But the “Doctor” explained:

“It’ll take care of the machine guns.”

Maruja understood what he meant when the new crew arrived. They were unarmed
housekeepers who cleaned and mopped all day until they became more of a nuisance than the trash and dirt had been before. But Maruja’s cough began to disappear, and the new order allowed her to watch television with a serenity and concentration that were beneficial to her health and stability.

Maruja the unbeliever did not pay the slightest attention to “God’s Minute,” a strange sixty-second
program in which the eighty-two-year-old Eudist priest, Rafael García Herreros, would offer a reflection that was more social than religious, and often
tended to be cryptic. Pacho Santos, however, who is a devout practicing Catholic, was very interested in his messages, so unlike those of professional politicians. Father García Herreros had been one of the best-known faces in the country since
January 1955, when he began to air his program on Televisora Nacional’s channel 7. Before that he had been a familiar voice on a Cartagena radio station since 1950, on a Cali station since January of 1952, in Medellín since September of 1954, and in Bogotá since December of the same year. He started on television at almost the same time that the system began operating. He was distinguished by his
direct, sometimes brutal style, and as he spoke he fixed his falcon eyes on the viewer. Every year since 1961 he had organized the Banquet for a Million, attended by famous people—and those who aspired to fame—who paid a million pesos for a cup of consommé and a roll served by a beauty queen. The proceeds were used for the charity that had the same name as the program. The most controversial invitation
was the one he sent in 1968 in a personal letter to Brigitte Bardot. Her immediate acceptance scandalized the local prudes, who threatened to sabotage the banquet. The priest stood firm. An opportune fire at the Boulogne studios in Paris, and the fantastic explanation that no seats were available on the planes, were the two excuses that saved the nation from utter embarrassment.

Pancho Santos’s
guards were faithful viewers of “God’s Minute,” but they were more interested in its religious content than in its social message. Like most families from the shantytowns of Antioquia, they had blind faith in the priest’s saintliness. His tone was always abrupt, the content sometimes incomprehensible. But the April 18 program—directed beyond a doubt to Pablo Escobar, though his name was not mentioned—was
indecipherable.

Looking straight into the camera, Father García Herreros said:

They have told me you want to surrender. They have told me you would like to talk to me. Oh sea! Oh sea of Coveñas
at five in the evening when the sun is setting! What should I do? They tell me he is weary of his life and its turmoil, and I can tell no one my secret. But it suffocates me internally. Tell me, oh sea:
Can I do it? Should I do it? You who know the history of Colombia, you who saw the Indians worshipping on this shore, you who heard the sound of history: Should I do it? Will I be rejected if I do it? Will I be rejected in Colombia? If I do it: Will there be shooting when I go with them? Will I fall with them in this adventure?

Maruja heard the program too, but it seemed less strange to her
than to many Colombians because she always thought that the priest liked to wander until he lost his way among the galaxies. She viewed him as an inescapable prelude to the seven o’clock news. That night she paid attention because everything that concerned Pablo Escobar concerned her too. She was perplexed, intrigued, and very troubled by doubts about what lay behind that divine rigmarole. Pacho,
however, was sure the priest would get him out of that purgatory, and he embraced his guard with joy.

Father García Herreros’s message created an opening in the impasse. It seemed a miracle to Alberto Villamizar, for at the time he had been going over the names of possible mediators whose image and background might inspire more trust in Escobar. Rafael
Pardo heard about the program and was disturbed by the idea that there could be a leak in his office. In any case, both he and Villamizar thought Father García Herreros might be the right person to mediate Escobar’s surrender.

By the end of March, in fact, the letters going back and forth had nothing left to say. Worse yet: It was evident that Escobar was using Villamizar as a means of sending
messages to the government and not giving anything in return. His last letter was nothing more than a list of interminable complaints—that the truce had not been broken but he had given his people permission to defend themselves against the security forces, that these forces were on the list of people to be killed, that if solutions were not forthcoming then indiscriminate attacks against police
and the civilian population would increase. He complained that the prosecutor
had discharged only two officers, when twenty had been accused by the Extraditables.

When Villamizar reached a dead end he discussed it with Jorge Luis Ochoa, but for more delicate matters Jorge Luis would send him to his father’s house for advice. The old man would pour him half a glass of his sacred whiskey. “Drink
it all up,” he would say. “I don’t know how you stand so much tragedy.” This was the situation at the beginning of April when Villamizar returned to La Loma and gave don Fabio a detailed accounting of his failures with Escobar. Don Fabio shared his disillusionment.

“We won’t screw around anymore with letters,” he decided. “At this rate it will take a hundred years. The best thing is for you to
meet with Escobar and for the two of you to agree on whatever conditions you like.”

Don Fabio himself sent the proposal. He let Escobar know that Villamizar was prepared to be taken to him, with all the risks this entailed, in the trunk of a car. But Escobar did not accept. “Maybe I’ll talk to Villamizar, but not now,” was his reply. Perhaps he was still wary of the electronic tracking device
that could be hidden anywhere, even under the gold crown of a tooth.

In the meantime, he continued to insist on sanctions for the police and to repeat his accusations that General Maza Márquez had allied himself with the paramilitary forces and the Cali cartel to kill his people. This accusation, and his charge that the general had killed Luis Carlos Galán, were two of Escobar’s fierce obsessions
with Maza Márquez. The general’s reply, in public or in private, always was that for the moment he was not waging war against the Cali cartel because his priority was terrorism by drug traffickers and not the drug traffic itself. Escobar, for his part, had written this aside in a letter to Villamizar: “Tell doña Gloria that Maza killed her husband, there can be no doubt about it.” Maza’s response
to the repeated accusation was always the same: “Escobar knows better than anyone else that it isn’t true.”

In despair over this brutal, pointless war that vanquished all intelligent initiatives, Villamizar made one final effort to persuade the government to declare a truce in order to negotiate. It was impossible. Rafael Pardo told him that while the families of the hostages were opposing the
government’s decision not to make any concessions, the enemies of the capitulation policy were accusing the government of handing the country over to the traffickers.

Villamizar—accompanied on this occasion by his sister-in-law, doña Gloria Pachón de Galán—also visited General Gómez Padilla, director general of the National Police. She asked the general for a month’s truce to allow them to attempt
personal contact with Escobar.

“I cannot tell you how sorry we are, Señora,” the general said, “but we cannot halt operations against this criminal. You are acting at your own risk, and all we can do is wish you luck.”

This was all they accomplished with the police, whose hermeticism was meant to stop the inexplicable leaks that had allowed Escobar to escape the best-planned sieges. But doña
Gloria did not leave empty-handed, for as they were saying goodbye an officer told her Maruja was being held somewhere in the department of Nariño, on the Ecuadoran border. She had learned from Beatriz that the house was in Bogotá, which meant that the police’s misinformation lessened her fear of a rescue operation.

By this time speculation in the press regarding the terms of Escobar’s surrender
had reached the proportions of an international scandal. Denials from the police and explanations from all segments of the government, even from the president, had not convinced many people that there were no negotiations or secret agreements for his capitulation.

General Maza Márquez believed it to be true. What is more, he had always been certain—and said so to anyone who wanted to listen—that
his removal would be one of Escobar’s primary conditions for surrender. For a long time President Gaviria seemed angered
by certain statements made by Maza Márquez to the press, and by unconfirmed rumors that the general was responsible for some of the sensitive leaks. But at this time—considering his many years in the position, his immense popularity because of the hard line he had taken against
crime, and his ineffable devotion to the Holy Infant—it was not likely that the president would remove him without good reason. Maza had to be conscious of his power, but he also had to know that sooner or later the president would exercise his, and the only thing he had requested—through messages carried by mutual friends—was that he be told with sufficient warning to provide for his family’s
safety.

The only official authorized to maintain contacts with Pablo Escobar’s attorneys—provided a written record was kept—was the director of Criminal Investigation, Carlos Eduardo Mejía. He was responsible by law for arranging the operative details of the surrender, and the security and living conditions in prison.

Minister Giraldo Angel personally reviewed the possible options. He had been
interested in the high-security block at Itagüí ever since Fabio Ochoa’s surrender the previous November, but Escobar’s lawyers objected because it was an easy target for car bombs. He also found acceptable the idea of turning a convent in El Poblado—near the residential building where Escobar had escaped the explosion of two hundred kilos of dynamite, attributed to the Cali cartel—into a fortified
prison, but the community of nuns who owned it did not wish to sell. He had proposed reinforcing the Medellín prison, but the Municipal Council opposed the plan in a plenary session. Alberto Villamizar, fearing that the surrender would be thwarted by lack of a prison, interceded with serious arguments in favor of the site proposed by Escobar in October: El Claret, the Municipal Rehabilitation
Center for Drug Addicts, located twelve kilometers from Envigado’s main park, on a property known as La Catedral del Valle, whose owner-of-record was one of Escobar’s front men. The government studied the possibility of leasing the center and converting it into a prison, well
aware that Escobar would not surrender if he could not resolve the problem of his own security. His lawyers demanded that
the guards be Antioquian, and, fearing reprisals for the agents murdered in Medellín, that external security be in the hands of any armed force except the police.

The mayor of Envigado, who was responsible for completing the project, took note of the government’s report and initiated the transfer of the prison, which had to be consigned to the Ministry of Justice according to the leasing contract
both parties had signed. The basic construction displayed an elementary simplicity, with cement floors, tile roofs, and metal doors painted green. The administration area, in what had been the farmhouse, consisted of three small rooms, a kitchen, a paved courtyard, and a punishment cell. It had a dormitory measuring four hundred square meters, another large room to be used as a library and study,
and six individual cells with private bathrooms. A common area in the center, measuring six hundred square meters, had four showers, a dressing room, and six toilets. The remodeling had begun in February, with seventy workers who slept in shifts at the site for a few hours a day. The rough topography, the awful condition of the access road, and the harsh winter obliged them to do without trucks
and carriers, and to transport most of the furnishings by muleback. First among them were two fifty-liter water heaters, military cots, and some two dozen small tubular armchairs painted yellow. Twenty pots holding ornamental plants—araucarias, laurels, and areca palms—completed the interior decoration. Since the former rehabilitation center had no telephone lines, the prison’s initial communications
would be by radio. The final cost of the project was 120 million pesos, paid by the municipality of Envigado. Early estimates had calculated a period of eight months for the construction, but when Father García Herreros came on the scene, the pace of work was speeded up to a quick march.

Another obstacle to surrender had been the dismantling of Escobar’s private army. He did not seem to consider
prison a legal recourse
but as protection from his enemies, and even from ordinary law enforcement agencies, but he could not persuade his troops to turn themselves in. He argued that he could not provide for the safety of himself and his family and leave his accomplices to the mercies of the Elite Corps. “I won’t surrender alone,” he said in a letter. But for many this was half a truth, since
it is also likely that he wanted to have his entire team with him so he could continue to run his business from jail. In any case, the government preferred to imprison them along with Escobar. There were about a hundred crews that were not on permanent war footing but served as frontline reserve troops, easy to mobilize and arm in a few hours. It was a question of having Escobar disarm and bring
to prison with him fifteen or twenty of his staunch captains.

In the few personal interviews that Villamizar had with the president, Gaviria’s position was always to offer his personal efforts to free the hostages. Villamizar does not believe that the government held any negotiations other than the ones he was authorized to engage in, which were already foreseen in the capitulation policy. Former
president Turbay and Hernando Santos—though they never expressed it, and were not unaware of the government’s institutional difficulties—no doubt expected a minimum of flexibility from the president. His refusal to change the time limits established in the decrees, despite Nydia’s insistence, entreaties, and protests, will continue to be a thorn in the hearts of the families who pleaded with
him. And the fact that he did change them three days after Diana’s death is something her family will never understand. Unfortunately—the president has said in private—by that time altering the date would not have stopped Diana’s death or changed the way it happened.

Escobar never felt satisfied with only one avenue, and he never stopped trying to negotiate, with God and with the Devil, with
every kind of legal or illegal weapon, not because he trusted one more than the other, but because he had no confidence in any of them. Even when he had secured what he wanted from Villamizar,
he still embraced the dream of political amnesty, an idea that first surfaced in 1989 when the major dealers and many of their people obtained documents identifying them as members of the M-19 in order to
find a place on the lists of pardoned guerrilla fighters. Commander Carlos Pizarro blocked their way with impossible demands. Two years later, Escobar tried it again through the Constituent Assembly, several of whose members were subjected to various kinds of pressure ranging from crude offers of money to the most serious intimidation.

But Escobar’s enemies were also working at cross-purposes.
This was the origin of a so-called narcovideo that caused an enormous, unproductive scandal. Presumably filmed in a hotel room with a hidden camera, it showed a member of the Constituent Assembly taking cash from an alleged lawyer for Escobar. The assembly member had been elected from the lists of the M-19 but in fact belonged to the paramilitary group that worked for the Cali cartel in its war
against the Medellín cartel, and he did not have enough credibility to convince anyone. Months later, a leader of some private militias who turned in his weapons to the police said that his people had made that cheap soap opera in order to prove that Escobar was suborning members of the Assembly, and thereby invalidate amnesty or non-extradition.

One of the many new fronts that Escobar tried
to open was his attempt to negotiate the release of Pacho Santos behind the back of Villamizar just as his efforts were beginning to bear fruit. In late April Escobar sent Hernando Santos a message through a priest he knew, asking that he meet with one of his attorneys in the church in Usaquén. It was—the message said—a matter of utmost importance regarding the release of Pacho. Hernando not only
knew the priest but considered him a saint on earth, and so he went alone and arrived punctually at eight on the evening of the specified date. Inside the dim church the lawyer, almost invisible in the shadows, told him he had nothing to do with the cartels but that Pablo Escobar had paid for his education and he could not refuse
him a favor. His mission was only to hand him two texts: a report
from Amnesty International condemning the Medellín police, and the original copy of an article that had all the airs of an editorial attacking the abuses of the Elite Corps.