News of a Kidnapping (8 page)

Juan Vitta and Hero Buss heard the announcement in their prison and thought it the worst news possible. They too had reached the conclusion that they were no more than extras in a horror film. “Just filler,” as Juan Vitta said. “Disposable,” as the
guards said. One of them, during a heated argument, had shouted at Hero Buss:

“You shut up! Nobody invited you here!”

Juan Vitta
sank into a depression, stopped eating, slept badly, felt lost, and opted for the merciful solution of dying just once instead of a thousand times a day. He looked pale, one arm was numb, he found it difficult to breathe, his dreams were terrifying. His only conversations were with his dead relatives whom he saw standing around his bed. An alarmed Hero Buss created a Germanic uproar. “If Juan
dies here, you’re responsible,” he told the guards. They heeded the warning.

The physician they brought in was Dr. Conrado Prisco Lopera, the brother of David Ricardo and Armando Alberto Prisco Lopera—of the famous Prisco gang—who had worked with Pablo Escobar since his early days as a trafficker, and were known as the creators of the crew of adolescent killers from the northeastern slums of
Medellín. They were said to be the leaders of a gang of teenage assassins who took on the dirtiest jobs, among them guarding hostages. On the other hand, Conrado was deemed an honorable professional by the medical community, and the only mark against him was being, or having been, Pablo Escobar’s principal physician. He wore no mask when he came in and surprised Hero Buss by greeting him in fluent
German:

“Hallo Hero, wie geht’s uns.
”

It was a providential visit for Juan Vitta, not because of the diagnosis—severe stress—but for the good it did him as a passionate reader. The only treatment the doctor prescribed was a dose of decent reading—just the opposite of the political news Dr. Prisco Lopera was in the habit of bringing, which for the captives was like a potion capable of killing
the healthiest man.

Diana’s malaise grew worse in November—severe headaches, attacks of colitis, intense depression—but there are no indications in her diary that the doctor visited her. She thought the depression might have been caused by the paralysis in her situation,
which grew more uncertain as the year drew to a close. “Time passes here in a way we’re not used to dealing with,” she wrote.
“There’s no enthusiasm about anything.” A note from this period spoke of the pessimism that was crushing her: “I’ve reexamined my life up to this point: so many love affairs, so much immaturity in making important decisions, so much time wasted on worthless things!” Her profession occupied a special place in this drastic stocktaking: “Though my convictions grow stronger about what the practice
of journalism is and what it should be, I don’t see it with any clarity or breadth.” Her doubts did not spare even her own magazine, “which I see as so poor, not only financially but editorially.” And she judged without flinching: “It lacks profundity and analysis.”

The days of all the hostages, despite their separation, were spent waiting for don Pacho; his visits were always announced, rarely
took place, and were their measure of time. They heard small planes and helicopters flying over the house and had the impression they were routine surveillance flights. But each one mobilized the guards, who assumed combat positions, weapons at the ready. The hostages knew, because it had been repeated so often, that in the event of an armed attack, the guards would begin by killing them.

In
spite of everything, November ended with a certain amount of hope. Azucena Liévano’s doubts melted away: Her symptoms were a false pregnancy, perhaps brought on by nervous tension. But she did not celebrate. On the contrary: After her initial fear, the idea of having a baby had become a desire, and she promised herself she would satisfy it as soon as she was released. Diana also saw signs of hope
in statements by the Notables regarding the possibility of an agreement.

The rest of November had been a time of accommodation for Maruja and Beatriz. Each in her own way devised a survival
strategy. Beatriz, who is brave and strong willed, took refuge in the consolation of minimizing reality. She dealt very well with the first ten days, but soon realized that the situation was more complex and
hazardous than she had thought, and she faced adversity by looking away from it. Maruja, who is a coldly analytic woman despite her almost irrational optimism, had known from the start that she was facing an alien reality, and that her captivity would be long and difficult. She hid inside herself like a snail in its shell, hoarded her energy, and reflected deeply until she grew used to the inescapable
idea that she might die. “We’re not getting out of here alive,” she thought, and was astonished that this fatalistic revelation had a contrary effect. From then on she felt in control of herself, able to endure everything and everybody, and, through persuasion, to make the discipline less rigid. By the third week of captivity, television had become unbearable; they had used up the crossword
puzzles and the few readable articles in the entertainment magazines they had found in the room, the remains, perhaps, of some previous abduction. But even at her worst times, and as she always did in her real life, Maruja set aside two hours each day for absolute solitude.

In spite of everything, the news early in December indicated that there were reasons for them to be hopeful. As soon as
Marina made her terrible predictions, Maruja began to invent optimistic games. Marina caught on right away: One of the guards had raised his thumb in a gesture of approval, and that meant things were going well. Once Damaris did not go to market, and this was interpreted as a sign she did not have to because they would be released soon. They played at visualizing how they would be freed, and they
set the date and the method that would be used. Since they lived in gloom, they imagined they would be released on a sunny day and have a party on the terrace of Maruja’s apartment. “What do you want to eat?” Beatriz asked. Marina, who was a skilled cook, recited a menu fit for a queen. They began it as a game, and it ended as a truth: They dressed to go out, they made
each other up. On December
9, one of the dates that had been mentioned for their release because of the elections to the Constituent Assembly, they were ready, even for the press conference: They had prepared every answer. The day passed in nervous anticipation but ended without bitterness, because Maruja was certain, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that sooner or later her husband would free them.

The abduction of the journalists was, in effect, a response to the idea that had preoccupied President César Gaviria since the time he was a minister in Virgilio Barco’s government: how to create a judicial alternative to the war against terrorism.
It had been a central theme in his campaign for the presidency. He had emphasized it in his acceptance speech, making the important distinction that terrorism by the drug traffickers was a national problem and might have a national solution, while the drug traffic was international and could only have international solutions. His first priority was narcoterrorism, for after the first bombs, public
opinion demanded prison for the terrorists, after the next few bombings the demand was for extradition, but as the bombs continued to explode public opinion began to demand amnesty. For this reason, extradition had to be considered an emergency measure that would pressure the criminals into surrendering, and Gaviria was prepared to apply that pressure without hesitation.

In the first days after
he took office, Gaviria barely had time to talk to anyone; he was exhausted by the job of organizing his government and convening a Constituent Assembly that would undertake
the first major reform of the state in over a hundred years. Rafael Pardo had shared his concern with terrorism ever since the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán. But he too was caught up in endless organizational duties.
He was in a peculiar position. His appointment as adviser on security and public order had been one of the first in a government palace shaken by the renovative drive of one of this century’s youngest presidents, a Beatles fan and an avid reader of poetry, who had given his ideas for drastic changes a modest name: “The Shake-up,” the
Revolcón.
Pardo walked through this windstorm carrying the briefcase
he always had with him, working wherever he could find space. His daughter Laura thought he had lost his job because he did not leave for work or come home at regular hours. The truth is that the informality imposed by circumstances was well suited to Rafael Pardo, whose nature was more that of a lyric poet than a governmental bureaucrat. He was thirty-eight years old, with a solid academic
background: a diploma from the Gimnasio Moderno in Bogotá, a degree in economics from the University of the Andes, where for nine years he had been a teacher and researcher in that same field, and a graduate degree in planning from the Institute for Social Sciences in The Hague. He was also a voracious reader of every book he could lay his hands on, in particular those dealing with two dissimilar
subjects: poetry and security. He owned four ties, which he had received for Christmas over the past four years; he never chose to put them on but carried one in his pocket for emergencies. He never noticed if his trousers and jackets matched, was so absent-minded that his socks were often different colors, and whenever possible he was in shirtsleeves because he made no distinction between heat
and cold. His greatest excesses were poker games with his daughter Laura until two in the morning, played in absolute silence and using beans instead of money. Claudia, his beautiful and patient wife, would become irritated because he wandered the house like a sleepwalker, not knowing where the water glasses were kept or how to close a door or take ice cubes from the freezer,
and he had an almost
magical faculty for ignoring the things he despised. And yet his most uncommon traits were a statue’s impassivity that did not give the slightest clue as to what he was thinking, and a merciless talent for ending a conversation with two or three words, or a heated discussion with a single polished monosyllable.

His office and university colleagues, however, could not understand his lack of standing
at home, for they knew him as an intelligent, organized worker who possessed an almost terrifying serenity, and whose befuddled air was no doubt intended to befuddle others. He became irritated with simple problems, displayed great patience with lost causes, and had a strong will tempered by an imperturbable, sardonic sense of humor. President Virgilio Barco must have recognized how useful
his hermeticism and fondness for mysteries could be, for he put him in charge of negotiations with the guerrillas, and the rehabilitation programs in war zones, and in that capacity he achieved the peace accords with the M-19. President Gaviria, who was his equal in secretiveness and unfathomable silences, appointed him head of security and public order in one of the least secure and most disordered
countries in the world. Pardo assumed the post carrying his entire office in his briefcase, and for two weeks had to ask permission to use the bathroom or the telephone in other people’s offices. But the president often consulted with him on a variety of subjects, and listened with premonitory attention when he spoke at difficult meetings. One afternoon, when they were alone in the president’s
office, Gaviria asked him a question:

“Tell me something, Rafael, aren’t you worried that one of these guys will suddenly turn himself in and we won’t have any charge to arrest him with?”

It was the essence of the problem: The terrorists hunted by the police would not surrender because they had no guarantees for their own safety or the safety of their families. And the state had no evidence
that would convict them if they were captured. The
idea was to find a judicial formula by which they would confess their crimes in exchange for the state’s guarantee of protection for them and their families. Rafael Pardo had worked on the problem for the previous government, and when Gaviria asked the question, he still had his notes among all the other papers in his briefcase. They were, in
effect, the beginning of a solution: Whoever surrendered would have his sentence reduced if he confessed to a crime that would allow the government to prosecute, and a further sentence reduction if he turned goods and money over to the state. That was all, but the president could envision the entire plan because it was consonant with his own idea of a strategy focused not on war or peace but on law,
one that would be responsive to the terrorists’ arguments but not renounce the compelling threat of extradition.

President Gaviria proposed it to Jaime Giraldo Angel, his justice minister, who understood the concept immediately; he too had been thinking for some time about ways to move the problem of drug trafficking into a judicial framework. And both men favored the extradition of Colombian
nationals as a means of forcing surrender.

Giraldo Angel, with his air of a distracted savant, his verbal precision, and his genius for organization, completed the formula, adding some of his own ideas combined with others already established in the penal code. Between Saturday and Sunday he composed a first draft on a laptop computer, and first thing Monday morning showed the president a copy
that still had his handwritten deletions and corrections. The title, written in ink across the top of the first page, was a seed of historic importance: “Capitulation to the Law.”

Gaviria is meticulous about his projects and would not present them to his Council of Ministers until he was certain they would be approved. He therefore reviewed the draft in detail with Giraldo Angel and with Rafael
Pardo, who is not a lawyer but whose sparing comments tend to be accurate. Then he sent a revised version
to the Council on Security, where Giraldo Angel found support from General Oscar Botero, the defense minister, and the head of Criminal Investigation, Carlos Eduardo Mejía Escobar, a young, effective jurist who would be responsible for implementing the decree in the real world. General Maza
Márquez did not oppose the plan, though he believed that in the struggle against the Medellín cartel, any formula other than war would be useless. “This country won’t be put right,” he would say, “as long as Escobar is alive.” For he was certain Escobar would only surrender in order to continue trafficking from prison under the government’s protection.

The project was presented to the Council
of Ministers with the specification that the plan did not propose negotiations with terrorism in order to conjure away a human tragedy for which the consuming nations bore primary responsibility. On the contrary: The aim was to make extradition a more useful judicial weapon in the fight against narcotraffic by making non-extradition the grand prize in a package of incentives and guarantees for those
who surrendered to the law.

One of the crucial discussions concerned the time limits for the crimes that judges would have to consider. This meant that no crime committed after the issuing date of the decree would be protected. The secretary general of the presidency, Fabio Villegas, who was the most lucid opponent of time limits, based his position on a cogent argument: When the period of pardonable
offenses ended, the government would have no policy. The majority, however, agreed with the president that for the moment they should not extend the time limits because of the certain risk that this would become a license for lawbreakers to continue breaking the law until they decided to turn themselves in.

To protect the government from any suspicion of illegal or unethical negotiations, Gaviria
and Giraldo Angel agreed not to meet with any direct emissary from the Extraditables while the trials were in progress, and not to negotiate any question of law
with them or with anyone else. In other words, they would not discuss principles but only procedural matters. The national head of Criminal Investigation—who is not dependent on or appointed by the chief executive—would be the official
in charge of communicating with the Extraditables or their legal representatives. All exchanges would be written and, therefore, on record.

The proposed decree was discussed with an intensity and secrecy that are in no way usual in Colombia, and was approved on September 5, 1990. This was Decree 2047 under Martial Law: Those who surrendered and confessed to their crimes could receive the right
not to be extradited; those who confessed and also cooperated with the authorities would have their sentences reduced, up to a third for surrender and confession, up to a sixth for providing information—in short, up to half of the sentence imposed for one or all the crimes for which extradition had been requested. It was law in its simplest, purest form: the gallows and the club. The same Council
of Ministers that signed the decree rejected three extradition requests and approved three others, a kind of public announcement that the new government would view non-extradition only as a privilege granted under the decree.

In reality, rather than an isolated decree, this was part of a well-defined presidential policy for fighting terrorism in general, not only narcoterrorism but common criminal
acts as well. General Maza Márquez did not express to the Council on Security what he really thought of the decree, but some years later, in his campaign for the presidency, he censured it without mercy as “a fallacy of the times.” “With it the majesty of the law is demeaned,” he wrote, “and traditional respect for the penal code is undermined.”

The road was long and complex. The Extraditables—which
everyone knew was a trade name for Pablo Escobar—rejected the decree out-of-hand while leaving doors open so they could continue to fight for much more. Their principal argument was that it did not state in an incontrovertible way that they would not be extradited. They also wanted to be considered as political offenders
and therefore receive the same treatment as the M-19 guerrillas, who had
been pardoned and recognized as a political party. One of the M-19’s members was the minister of health, and all of them were participating in the campaign for the Constituent Assembly. Another concern of the Extraditables was the question of a secure prison where they would be safe from their enemies, and guarantees of protection for their families and followers.

It was said that the government
had issued the decree as a concession to the traffickers under the pressure of the abductions. In fact, it had been in the planning stage before Diana’s kidnapping, and had already been issued when the Extraditables tightened the vise with the almost simultaneous abductions of Francisco Santos and Marina Montoya. Later, when eight hostages were not enough to get them what they wanted, they took
Maruja Pachón and Beatriz Villamizar. That was the magic number: nine journalists. Plus one—already condemned to death—who was the sister of a politician hunted by Escobar’s private police force. In this sense, before the decree could prove its efficacy, President Gaviria began to be the victim of his own creation.

Like her father, Diana Turbay Quintero had an intense, passionate feeling for
power, a capacity for leadership that shaped her life. She grew up surrounded by the great names in politics, and it was to be expected that she would have a political perspective on the world. “Diana was a stateswoman,” a friend who understood and loved her has said. “And the central concern of her life was a stubborn desire to serve her country.” But power—like love—is a double-edged sword: One
wields it and is wounded by it. It generates a state of pure exaltation and, at the same time, its opposite: the search for an irresistible, fugitive joy, comparable only to the search for an idealized love that one longs for but fears, pursues but never attains. Diana experienced an insatiable hunger to know everything, be involved in everything, discover the why
and how of things, the reason
for her life. Some of those who were close to her perceived this in the uncertainties of her heart, and believed she was not happy very often.