News of a Kidnapping (29 page)

On May 13 he received a message from Escobar in which he asked him to bring the father to La Loma and keep him there for as long as necessary. He said it might be three days or three months, because he had to review
in person and in detail every stage of the operation. The possibility even existed that it could be canceled at the last minute if there were any doubts at all about security. Fortunately, the father was always available in a matter that had cost him so much sleep. At five o’clock on the morning of May 14, Villamizar knocked at his front door and found him working in his study as if it were the
middle of the day.

“Come, Father,” he said, “we’re going to Medellín.”

At La Loma the Ochoa sisters were prepared to entertain the father for as long as necessary. Don Fabio was not there, but the
women in the house would take care of everything. It was not easy to distract him because the father knew that a trip as sudden and unplanned as this one could only be for something very serious.

The long breakfast was delicious, and the father ate well. At about ten, making an effort not to be too melodramatic, Martha Nieves told him that Escobar would be seeing him sometime soon. He gave a start, became very happy, but did not know what to do until Villamizar made the reality clear to him.

“It’s better for you to know from the very beginning, Father,” he said. “You may have to go alone
with the driver, and nobody knows where he’ll take you, or for how long.”

The father turned pale. He could barely hold the rosary between his fingers as he paced back and forth, reciting his invented prayers aloud. Each time he passed the windows he looked toward the road, torn between terror that the car coming for him would appear, and fear that it would not come at all. He wanted to make a
phone call but then realized the danger on his own. “Fortunately, there’s no need for telephones when you talk to God,” he said. He did not want to sit at the table during lunch, which was late and even more appetizing than breakfast. In the room that had been prepared for him, there was a bed with a passementerie canopy worthy of a bishop. The women tried to convince him to lie down for a while,
and he seemed to agree. But he did not sleep. He was restive as he read Stephen Hawking’s
A Brief History of Time,
a popular book that attempted to demonstrate with mathematical calculations that God does not exist. At about four he came to the room where Villamizar was dozing.

“Alberto,” he said, “we’d better go back to Bogotá.”

It was difficult to dissuade him, but the women succeeded with
their charm and tact. At dusk he had another relapse, but by this time there was no escape. He knew the grave risks involved in traveling at night. When it was time to go to bed he asked for help in removing his contact lenses, since Paulina was the one who took them out and put them in for him, and he did not know how to do
it alone. Villamizar did not sleep, because he accepted the possibility
that Escobar might consider the dark of night as the safest time for their meeting.

The priest did not sleep at all. Breakfast at eight the next morning was more tempting than the day before, but he did not even sit at the table. He was in despair over his contact lenses, and no one had been able to help him until, after many tries, the woman who ran the farm managed to put them in. In contrast
to the first day, he did not seem nervous or driven to pace back and forth, but sat with his eyes fixed on the road where the car would appear. He stayed there until impatience got the better of him and he jumped up from his chair.

“I’m leaving,” he said, “this whole thing is as phony as a rooster laying eggs.”

They persuaded him to wait until after lunch. The promise restored his good humor.
He ate well, chatted, was as amusing as he had been in his best times, and at last said he would take a siesta.

“But I’m warning you,” he said, his index finger wagging. “As soon as I wake up, I’m leaving.”

Martha Nieves made a few phone calls, hoping to obtain some additional information that would help them to keep the priest there after his nap. It was impossible. A little before three they
were all dozing in the living room when they were awakened by the sound of an engine. There was the car. Villamizar jumped up, gave a polite little knock, and pushed open the priest’s door.

“Father,” he said, “they’ve come for you.”

The father was half-awake and struggled out of bed. Villamizar felt deeply moved, for he looked like a little bird without its feathers, his skin hanging from his
bones and trembling with terror. But he recovered immediately, crossed himself, grew until he was resolute and enormous. “Kneel down, my boy,” he ordered. “We’ll pray together.” When he stood he was a new man.

“Let’s see what’s going on with Pablo,” he said.

Villamizar wanted to go with him but did not even try, since it
had already been agreed that he would not, but he did speak in private
to the driver.

“I’m holding you accountable for the father,” he said. “He’s too important a person. Be careful what you people do with him. Be aware of the responsibility you have.”

The driver looked at Villamizar as if he were an idiot, and said:

“Do you think that if I get in a car with a saint anything can happen to us?”

He took out a baseball cap and told the priest to put it on so nobody
would recognize his white hair. He did. Villamizar could not stop thinking about the fact that Medellín was a militarized zone. He was troubled by the idea that they might stop the father, that he would be hurt, or be caught in the cross fire between the killers and the police.

The father sat in front next to the driver. While everyone watched as the car drove away, he took off the cap and threw
it out the window. “Don’t worry about me, my boy,” he shouted to Villamizar, “I control the waters.” A clap of thunder rumbled across the vast countryside, and the skies opened in a biblical downpour.

The only known version of Father García Herreros’s visit to Pablo Escobar was the one he recounted when he returned to La Loma. He said the house where he was received was large and luxurious, with
an Olympic-size pool and various kinds of sports facilities. On the way they had to change cars three times for reasons of security, but they were not stopped at the many police checkpoints because of the heavy, pounding rain. Other checkpoints, the driver told him, were part of the Extraditables’ security service. They drove for more than three hours, though the probability is that he was taken
to one of Pablo Escobar’s residences in Medellín, and the driver made a good number of detours so the father would think they were far from La Loma.

He said he was met in the garden by some twenty men carrying
weapons, and that he chastised them for their sinful lives and their reluctance to surrender. Pablo Escobar was waiting for him on the terrace. He was dressed in a casual white cotton outfit
and had a long black beard. The fear confessed to by the father from the time of his arrival at La Loma, and then during the uncertainty of the drive, vanished when he saw him.

“Pablo,” he said, “I’ve come so we can straighten this out.”

Escobar responded with similar cordiality and with great respect. They sat in two of the armchairs covered in flowered cretonne in the living room, facing each
other, their spirits ready for the kind of long talk old friends have. The father drank a whiskey that helped to calm him, while Escobar sipped at fruit juice as if he had all the time in the world. But the expected duration of the visit shrank to forty-five minutes because of the father’s natural impatience and Escobar’s speaking style, as concise and to the point as in his letters.

Concerned
about the priest’s lapses in memory, Villamizar had told him to take notes on their conversation. He did, but went even further, it seems. Citing his poor memory as the reason, he asked Escobar to write down his essential conditions, and when they were written he had him modify or cross them out, saying they were impossible to meet. This was how Escobar minimized the obsessive subject of removing
the police he had accused of atrocities, and concentrated instead on security in the prison where he would be confined.

The priest recounted that he had asked Escobar if he was responsible for the assassinations of four presidential candidates. His oblique response was that he had not committed all the crimes attributed to him. He assured the father he had not been able to stop the killing of
Professor Low Mutra on April 30 on a street in Bogotá, because the order had been given a long time before and there was no way to change it. As for the release of Maruja and Pacho, he avoided saying anything that might implicate him as the responsible party, but did say that the Extraditables kept them in
normal conditions and in good health, and that they would be released as soon as terms for
the surrender had been arranged. Regarding Pacho in particular, he said with utmost seriousness: “He’s happy with his captivity.” Finally, he acknowledged President Gaviria’s good faith, and expressed his willingness to reach an agreement. That paper, written on at times by the father, and for the most part corrected and clarified in Escobar’s own hand, was the first formal proposal for his surrender.

The father had stood to take his leave when one of his contact lenses fell out. He tried to put it back in, Escobar helped him, they asked for assistance from his staff, all to no avail. The father was desperate. “It’s no use,” he said. “The only one who can do it is Paulina.” To his surprise, Escobar knew who she was and where she was at that moment.

“Don’t worry, Father,” he said. “If you like
we can bring her here.”

But the father had an unbearable desire to go home, and he preferred to leave not wearing his lenses. Before they said goodbye, Escobar asked him to bless a little gold medal he wore around his neck. The priest did so in the garden, besieged by the bodyguards.

“Father,” they said, “you can’t leave without giving us your blessing.”

They kneeled. Don Fabio Ochoa had said
that the mediation of Father García Herrero would be decisive for the surrender of Escobar’s men. Escobar must have agreed, and perhaps that was why he kneeled with them, to set a good example. The priest blessed them all and also admonished them to return to a lawful life and help to establish peace.

It took just six hours. He returned to La Loma at about eight-thirty, under brilliant stars,
and leaped from the car like a fifteen-year-old schoolboy.

“Take it easy, my boy,” he said to Villamizar, “no problems here, I had them all on their knees.”

It was not easy to calm him down. He was in an alarming state of excitation, and no palliative, and none of the Ochoa sisters’ tranquilizing infusions, had any effect. It was still raining, but he wanted to fly back to Bogotá right away,
announce the news, talk to the president, conclude the agreement without further delay, and proclaim peace. They managed to get him to sleep for a few hours, but in the middle of the night he was walking around the darkened house, talking to himself, reciting his inspired prayers, until sleep got the better of him at dawn.

When they reached Bogotá at eleven o’clock on the morning of May 16, the
news was thundering across the radio. Villamizar met his son Andrés at the airport and embraced him with emotion. “Don’t worry, son,” he said. “Your mother will be out in three days.” Rafael Pardo was less easy to convince when Villamizar called.

“I’m truly happy, Alberto,” he said. “But don’t hope for too much.”

For the first time since the abduction, Villamizar went to a party given by friends,
and no one could understand why he was so elated over something that was, after all, no more than a vague promise, like so many others made by Pablo Escobar. By this time Father García Herreros had been interviewed by all the news media—audio, visual, and print—in the country. He asked people to be tolerant with Escobar. “If we don’t defraud him, he will become the great architect of peace,”
he said. And added, without citing Rousseau: “Deep down all men are good, although some circumstances can make them evil.” And surrounded by a tangled mass of microphones, he said with no reservation:

“Escobar is a good man.”

El Tiempo
reported on Friday, May 17, that the father was the bearer of a private letter that he would give to President Gaviria on the following Monday. In reality, these
were the notes he and Escobar had written together during their interview. On Sunday, the Extraditables issued a communiqué that almost went unnoticed
in the clamor of news: “We have ordered the release of Francisco Santos and Maruja Pachón.” They did not say when. The radio, however, took it as a fait accompli and crowds of excited reporters began to stand guard at the captives’ houses.

It was
over: Villamizar received a message from Escobar in which he said he would not release Maruja Pachón and Francisco Santos that day but the next—Monday, May 20—of seven in the evening. But on Tuesday, at nine in the morning, Villamizar would have to go back to Medellín for Escobar’s surrender.

Maruja heard the Extraditables’ communiqué at seven o’clock on the evening of Sunday, May 19. It did not mention a time or a date for their release, and considering how the Extraditables operated, it could happen either in five minutes or two months
later. The majordomo and his wife burst into the room, ready for a party.

“It’s over!” they shouted. “We have to celebrate.”

Maruja had a hard time convincing them to wait for a direct official order from one of Pablo Escobar’s emissaries. The news did not surprise her, for in the past few weeks there had been unmistakable signs that things were going better than she had supposed when they made
the disheartening promise to carpet the room. More and more friends and popular actors had appeared on recent broadcasts of “Colombia Wants Them Back.” Her optimism renewed, Maruja followed the soap operas with so much attention that she thought she could find coded messages even in the glycerine tears of impossible loves. The news from Father García Herreros, which grew more spectacular every
day, made it clear that the unbelievable was going to happen.

Maruja wanted to put on the clothes she had been wearing
when she arrived, foreseeing a sudden release that would have her appearing in front of the cameras dressed in a captive’s melancholy sweatsuit. But the lack of new developments on the radio, and the disappointment of the majordomo who had expected the official order before he
went to bed, put her on guard against playing the fool, if only to herself. She took a large dose of sleeping pills and did not wake until the following day, Monday, with the frightening impression that she did not know who she was, or where.

Villamizar had not been troubled by any doubts, for the communiqué from Escobar was unequivocal. He passed it on to the reporters, but they ignored it.
At about nine, a radio station announced with great fanfare that Señora Maruja Pachón de Villamizar had just been released in the Salitre district. The reporters left in a stampede, but Villamizar did not move.

“They would never let her go in an isolated place like that, where anything could happen to her,” he said. “It’ll be tomorrow, for sure, and in a place that’s safe.”

A reporter barred
his way with a microphone.

“What’s surprising,” he said, “is the confidence you have in those people.”

“It’s his word of honor,” said Villamizar.

The reporters he knew best stayed in the hallways of the apartment—and some were at the bar—until Villamizar asked them to leave so he could lock up for the night. Others camped in vans and cars outside the building, and spent the night there.

On
Monday Villamizar woke to the six o’clock news, as he always did, and stayed in bed until eleven. He tried to use the phone as little as possible, but there were constant calls from reporters and friends. The news of the day continued to be the wait for the hostages.

Father García Herreros had visited Mariavé on Thursday to tell her in confidence that her husband would be released the following
Sunday. It has not been possible to learn how he obtained the news seventy-two hours before the first communiqué from the Extraditables, but the Santos family accepted it as fact. To celebrate they took a picture of Hernando with Mariavé and the children and published it on Saturday in
El Tiempo,
hoping that Pacho would understand it as a personal message. He did: As soon as he opened the paper
in his captive’s cell, Pacho had a clear intuition that his father’s efforts had come to a successful conclusion. He spent an uneasy day waiting for the miracle, slipping innocent-seeming ploys into his conversation with the guards to see if he could catch them in an indiscretion, but he learned nothing. Radio and television, which had reported nothing else for several weeks, did not mention it
at all that Saturday.

Sunday began the same way. It seemed to Pacho that the guards were tense and uneasy in the morning, but as the day wore on they made a gradual return to their Sunday routine: a special lunch of pizza, movies and taped television programs, some cards, some soccer. Then, when they least expected it, the newscast “Criptón” opened with the lead story: The Extraditables had announced
the release of the last two hostages. Pacho jumped up with a triumphant shout and threw his arms around the guard on duty. “I thought I’d have a heart attack,” he has said. But the guard responded with skeptical stoicism.

“Let’s wait till we get confirmation,” he said.

They made a rapid survey of other news programs on radio and television, and found the communiqué on all of them. One was transmitting
from the editorial room at
El Tiempo,
and after eight months Pacho began to feel again the solid ground of a free life: the rather desolate atmosphere of the Sunday shift, the usual faces in their glass cubicles, his own work site. Following another
repetition of the announcement of their imminent release, the television program’s special correspondent waved the microphone and—like an ice cream
cone—put it up to the mouth of a sports editor and asked:

“What do you think of the news?”

Pacho could not control the reflexive response of a chief editor.

“What a moronic question!” he said. “Was he expecting them to say I should be held for another month?”

As always, the radio news was less rigorous but more emotional. Many reporters were concentrating on Hernando Santos’s house, broadcasting
statements from every person who crossed their path. This increased Pacho’s nervous tension, for it did not seem unreasonable to think he might be released that same night. “This was the start of the longest twenty-six hours of my life,” he has said. “Each second was like an hour.”

The press was everywhere. Television cameras moved back and forth from Pacho’s house to his father’s, both of which
had been overflowing since Sunday night with relatives, friends, curious onlookers, and journalists from all over the world. Mariavé and Hernando Santos cannot remember how many times they went from one house to the other, following each unforeseen turn in the news, until Pacho was no longer certain which house was which on television. The worst thing was that at each one the same questions were
asked over and over again, and the trip between the houses became intolerable. There was so much confusion that Hernando Santos could not get through the mob crowding around his own house, and had to slip in through the garage.

The off-duty guards came in to congratulate Pacho. They were so happy at the news that he forgot they were his jailers, and it turned into a party of
compadres
who were
all the same age. At that moment he realized that his goal of rehabilitating his guards would be frustrated by his release. They were boys from the Antioquian countryside who had emigrated to Medellín, lost their way in the slums, and killed and were killed with no scruples. As a
rule they came from broken homes where the father was a negative figure and the mother a very strong one. They were
used to working for very high pay and had no sense of money.

When at last he fell asleep, Pacho had a horrifying dream that he was free and happy but suddenly opened his eyes and saw the ceiling unchanged. He spent the rest of the night tormented by the mad rooster—madder and closer than ever—and not knowing for certain where reality lay.

At six in the morning on Monday, the radio confirmed
the news with no indication of the hour of their possible release. After countless repetitions of the original bulletin, it was announced that Father García Herreros would hold a press conference at noon following a meeting with President Gaviria: “Oh God,” Pacho said to himself. “Don’t let this man who has done so much for us screw it up at the last minute.” At one in the afternoon they told him
he would be freed, but he was not told anything else until after five, when one of the masked bosses said in an unemotional way that—in line with Escobar’s feeling for publicity—Maruja would be released in time for the seven o’clock news, and he in time for the newscasts at nine-thirty.

Maruja’s morning had been more pleasant. A low-ranking boss came into the room at about nine and said she would
be released that afternoon. He also told her some of the details of Father García Herreros’s efforts, perhaps by way of apology for an injustice he had committed on a recent visit when Maruja asked if her fate was in the hands of Father García Herreros. He had answered with a touch of mockery:

“Don’t worry, you’re much safer than that.”

Maruja realized he had misinterpreted her question, and
she was quick to clarify that she always had great respect for the father. It is true that at first she had ignored his television sermons, which at times were confusing and impenetrable, but after the first message
to Escobar she understood that he was involved in her life, and she watched him night after night, paying very close attention. She had followed the steps he had taken, his visits
to Medellín, the progress of his conversations with Escobar, and had no doubt he was on the right path. The boss’s sarcasm, however, caused her to wonder if the father had less credit with the Extraditables than might be supposed from his public statements to journalists. The confirmation that she would soon be freed through his efforts made her feel happier.

After a brief conversation regarding
the impact their release would have on the country, she asked about the ring that had been taken from her in the first house on the night of her abduction.

“Not to worry,” he said. “All your things are safe.”

“But I am worried,” she said, “because it wasn’t taken here but in that first house, and we never saw the man again. It wasn’t you, was it?”

“Not me,” he said. “But I already told you
to take it easy, your things are safe. I’ve seen them.”

The majordomo’s wife offered to buy Maruja anything she needed. Maruja asked for mascara, lipstick, eyebrow pencil, and a pair of stockings to replace the ones that had been torn on the night she was kidnapped. Later the majordomo came in, troubled by the lack of new information regarding her release, afraid there had been a last-minute
change in plans, as so often happened. Maruja, however, was calm. She showered, and dressed in the same clothing she had worn on the night of her abduction, except for the cream-colored jacket, which she would put on when she went out.

For the entire day the radio stations kept interest alive with speculations on the waiting hostages, interviews with their families, unconfirmed rumors that were
canceled out the next minute by even more sensational ones. But nothing definite. Maruja listened to the voices of her children and friends with an anticipatory jubilation threatened by uncertainty. Again she saw her redecorated
house, her husband conversing easily with a crowd of journalists who were growing tired of waiting. She had time to study the decorative details that had bothered her
so much the first time, and her frame of mind improved. The guards took a break from their frenetic cleaning to watch and listen to the newscasts, and they tried to keep her spirits up but had less and less success as the afternoon wore on.

President Gaviria woke without the help of an alarm clock at five on the morning of his forty-first Monday in office. He got up without turning on the light
so as not to disturb Ana Milena—who sometimes went to bed later than he did—and when he had shaved, showered, and dressed for the office, he sat in a folding chair that he kept outside the bedroom, in a cold, gloomy hallway, in order to hear the news without waking anyone. He listened to the radio newscasts on a pocket-size transistor that he held up to his ear and played at very low volume. He
glanced through the papers, from the headlines to the advertisements, and tore out items to be dealt with later with his secretaries, advisers, and ministers. On one occasion he had found an article on something that was supposed to be taken care of and was not, and sent it to the appropriate minister with a single question scrawled in the margin: “When the hell is the ministry going to resolve this
mess?” The solution was instantaneous.

The only news that day was the imminent release of the hostages, and that included his meeting with Father García Herreros to hear his report on the interview with Escobar. The president reorganized his day so that he would be available at a moment’s notice. He canceled some meetings that could be postponed, and adjusted others. His first was with the presidential
advisers, which he opened with his schoolboy’s comment:

“Okay, let’s finish this assignment.”

Several of the advisers had just returned from Caracas, where
they had talked on Friday with the reticent General Maza Márquez. In the course of the conversation the press adviser, Mauricio Vargas, had expressed his concern that no one, inside or outside the government, had a clear idea of where Pablo
Escobar was really heading. Maza was sure he would not surrender because he trusted nothing but a pardon from the Constituent Assembly. Vargas replied with a question: What good would a pardon do for a man sentenced to death by his own enemies and by the Cali cartel? “It might help him, but it’s not exactly a complete solution,” he concluded. Escobar was in urgent need of a secure prison for himself
and his people under the protection of the state.