News of a Kidnapping (9 page)

It is impossible to know—without asking her the question directly—which of the two edges of power inflicted the more serious wounds. She must have felt them in her own flesh when she was her father’s private secretary and right hand at the age of twenty-eight,
and found herself trapped in the crosswinds of power. Her friends—and she had many—have said she was one of the most intelligent people they had ever known, with an unsuspected store of knowledge, an astonishing capacity for analysis, and a supernatural gift for sensing another person’s most hidden agenda. Her enemies say straight out that she was a disruptive influence behind the throne.
But others think she disregarded her own well-being in a single-minded desire to defend her father against everything and everybody, and could therefore be used by hypocrites and flatterers.

She was born on March 8, 1950, under the inclement sign of Pisces, at a time when her father was already in line for the presidency. She was an innate leader wherever she happened to be: the Colegio Andino
in Bogotá, the Academy of the Sacred Heart in New York, or Saint Thomas Aquinas University of Bogotá, where she completed her law studies but did not wait to receive her degree.

Her belated career in journalism—which is, fortunately, power without the throne—must have been a reencounter with the best in herself. She founded the magazine
Hoy x Hoy
and the television news journal “Criptón” as a
more direct way to work for peace. “I’m not ready to fight anymore, or give anybody any arguments,” she said at the time. “I’ve become totally conciliatory.” To the point where she sat down to talk about peace with Carlos Pizarro, the commander of the M-19, who had fired the rocket that just missed the room where President Turbay had been sitting. The friend who told this story says, with a laugh:
“Diana understood
that in this business she had to be a chess player, not a boxer punching at the world.”

And therefore it was only natural that her abduction—above and beyond its emotional impact—would have a political weight that was difficult to control. Former President Turbay said, in public and in private, that he had heard nothing from the Extraditables, because this seemed the most prudent
course until it was known what they wanted, but in fact he had received a message from them soon after the kidnapping of Francisco Santos. He had told Hernando Santos about it as soon as Santos returned from Italy, when Turbay invited him to his house to devise a common strategy. Santos found Turbay in the semi-darkness of his immense library, devastated by the certainty that Diana and Francisco
would be executed. What struck him—and everyone else who saw Turbay during this time—was the dignity with which he bore his misfortune.

The letter addressed to both men consisted of three handwritten pages printed in block letters, with no signature, and an unexpected salutation: “A respectful greeting from the Extraditables.” What did not permit any doubt regarding its authenticity was the concise,
direct, unequivocal style typical of Pablo Escobar. It began by taking responsibility for the abduction of the two journalists who, the letter said, were “in good health and in good conditions of captivity that can be considered normal in such cases.” The rest was a brief against abuses committed by the police. Then it stated three nonnegotiable conditions for the release of the hostages:
total suspension of military operations against them in Medellín and Bogotá; withdrawal of the Elite Corps, the special police unit dedicated to the fight against drug trafficking; dismissal of its commander and twenty other officers accused of responsibility for the torture and murder of some four hundred young men from the northeastern slums of Medellín. If these conditions were not met, the Extraditables
would undertake a war of extermination,
including bombings in major cities and the assassinations of judges, politicians, and journalists. The conclusion was simple: “If there is a coup, then welcome to it. We don’t have much to lose.”

Their written response, with no preliminary discussions, was to be delivered within three days to the Hotel Intercontinental in Medellín, where a room would be
reserved in Hernando Santos’s name. The Extraditables would choose the intermediaries for any further communications. Santos agreed with Turbay’s decision not to say anything about this message, or any that might follow, until they had more substantive information. “We cannot allow ourselves to be anybody’s messengers to the president,” Turbay concluded, “or to behave in an improper way.”

Turbay
suggested to Santos that each of them write a separate response, which they would then combine into a single letter. This was done. The result, in essence, was a formal statement to the effect that they had no power to interfere in governmental matters but were prepared to make public any violation of the law or of human rights for which the Extraditables had conclusive evidence. As for the police
raids, they reminded the Extraditables that they had no means to stop them, could not seek to have the twenty accused men removed from office without proof, or write editorials against a situation they knew nothing about.

Aldo Buenaventura, a public notary and solicitor, a fervent aficionado of the bullfights since his student days at the Liceo Nacional in Zipaquirá, and an old and trusted friend
of Hernando Santos’s, agreed to carry the letter. No sooner had he walked into room 308 at the Hotel Intercontinental, than the phone rang.

“Are you Señor Santos?”

“No,” Aldo replied, “but I am here as his representative.”

“Did you bring the package?”

The voice sounded so proprietary that Aldo wondered if it was Pablo Escobar himself, and he said he had. Two young men who dressed and behaved
like executives came to the room. Aldo gave them the letter. They shook his hand with well-bred bows and left.

In less than a week, Turbay and Santos were visited by Guido Parra Montoya, an Antioquian lawyer, who had another letter from the Extraditables. Parra was not unknown to political circles in Bogotá, but he always seemed to live in the shadows. He was forty-eight years old, had served
twice in the Chamber of Deputies as a replacement for two Liberal representatives, and once as a principal for the National Popular Alliance (ANAPO), which gave rise to the M-19. He had been an adviser to the judicial office of the presidency in the government of Carlos Lleras Restrepo. In Medellín, where he had practiced law since his youth, he was arrested on May 10, 1990, on suspicion of abetting
terrorism, and released two weeks later because the case lacked merit. Despite these and other lapses, he was considered an expert lawyer and a good negotiator.

However, as a confidential representative of the Extraditables, it was hard to imagine anyone less likely to be self-effacing. He was one of those men who take ceremony seriously. He wore silver-gray suits, which were the executive uniform
of the time, with bright-colored shirts and youthful ties with wide Italian-style knots. His manners were punctilious, his rhetoric high-flown, and he was more obsequious than affable—suicidal circumstances if one wishes to serve two masters at the same time. In the presence of a former Liberal president and the publisher of the most important newspaper in the country, his eloquence knew no
bounds. “My illustrious Dr. Turbay, my distinguished Dr. Santos, I am completely at your service,” he said, and then made the kind of slip that can cost a man his life:

“I am Pablo Escobar’s attorney.”

Hernando caught the error in midflight.

“Then the letter you’ve brought is from him?”

“No,” Guido Parra corrected the mistake without batting an eye, “it is from the Extraditables, but you should
direct your response to Escobar because he will be able to influence the negotiation.”

The distinction was important, because Escobar left no clues for the police. Compromising letters, such as those dealing with the abductions, were printed in block letters and signed by the Extraditables or a simple first name: Manuel, Gabriel, Antonio. When he played the part of accuser, however, he wrote
in his own, rather childish hand, and not only signed the letters with his name and rubric but drove the point home with his thumbprint. At the time the journalists were abducted, it would have been reasonable to doubt his very existence. The Extraditables may have been no more than his pseudonym, but the opposite was also possible: Perhaps Pablo Escobar’s identity was nothing more than a front for
the Extraditables.

Guido Parra always seemed prepared to go beyond what the Extraditables stated in writing. But everything had to be examined with a magnifying glass. What he really wanted for his clients was the kind of political treatment the guerrillas had received. He brought up the question of internationalizing the narcotics problem by proposing the participation of the United Nations.
Yet in the face of Santos’s and Turbay’s categorical refusal, he was ready with a variety of alternative suggestions. This was the beginning of a long, fruitless process that would go in circles until it reached a dead end.

After the second letter, Santos and Turbay communicated in person with the president. Gaviria saw them at eight-thirty in the evening in the small room off his private library.
He was calmer than usual, and anxious to have news about the hostages. Turbay and Santos brought him up-to-date regarding the two exchanges of letters and the mediation of Guido Parra.

“A bad emissary,” said the president. “Very smart, a good lawyer, but extremely dangerous. Of course, he does have Escobar’s complete backing.”

He read the letters with the power of concentration that always impressed
everyone: as if he had become invisible. His complete comments were ready when he finished, and his conjectures on the
subject were laconic. He said that none of the intelligence agencies had the slightest idea where the hostages were being held. The important news for the president was confirmation that they were in the hands of Pablo Escobar.

That night Gaviria demonstrated his skill at questioning
everything before reaching a final decision. He thought it possible that the letters were not genuine, that Guido Parra was working for somebody else, even that it was all a clever ploy by someone who had nothing to do with Escobar. Santos and Turbay left more discouraged than when they came in, for the president seemed to view the case as a serious problem of state that left very little
room for his own feelings.

A major obstacle to an agreement was that Escobar continued to change the terms as his own situation evolved, delaying the release of the hostages in order to obtain additional, unforeseen advantages while waiting for the Constituent Assembly to pass judgment on extradition, and perhaps on a pardon. This was never made clear in the astute correspondence that Escobar
maintained with the families of the hostages. But it was very clear in the secret correspondence he maintained with Guido Parra to instruct him in strategy and the long-term view of the negotiation. “It’s a good idea for you to convey all concerns to Santos so we don’t get further entangled in this,” he said in one letter. “Because it must be in writing, in a decree, that under no circumstances will
we be extradited, not for any crime, not to any country.” He also asked for specific details regarding the confession required for surrender. Two other essential points were security at the special prison, and protection for families and followers.

Hernando Santos’s friendship with former President Turbay, which had always had its foundation in politics, now became personal and very close. They
could spend hours sitting across from each other in absolute silence. Not a day went by that they
did not speak on the phone, exchanging their intimate thoughts, secret assumptions, new information. They even devised a code for handling confidential matters.

It could not have been easy. Hernando Santos is a man with extraordinary responsibilities: With a single word he could save or destroy a
life. He is emotional and raw-nerved, and has a tribal sense of family that weighs heavily in his decisions. Those who accompanied him during his son’s captivity were afraid he would not survive the blow. He did not eat, or sleep through the night, he always kept a telephone within reach and grabbed at it on the first ring. During those months of grief, he socialized very little, received psychiatric
counseling to help him endure his son’s death, which he viewed as inevitable, and lived in seclusion, in his office or rooms, looking at his brilliant collection of stamps, and letters scorched in airplane accidents. Elena Calderón, his wife and the mother of his seven children, had died seven years earlier, and he was truly alone. His heart and vision problems grew worse, and he made no effort
to hold back his tears. His exemplary virtue in these dramatic circumstances was keeping the newspaper separate from his personal tragedy.

One of his essential supports in that bitter period was the strength of his daughter-in-law María Victoria. Her memory of the days following the abduction was of her house invaded by relatives and her husband’s friends who stretched out on the carpets and
drank whiskey and coffee until the small hours of the morning. They always said the same thing, while the impact of the abduction, the very image of the victim, grew fainter. When Hernando came back from Italy, he went straight to María Victoria’s house and greeted her with so much emotion that she broke down, but when he had anything confidential to say about the kidnapping, he asked her to leave
him alone with the men. María Victoria, who has a strong character and mature intelligence, realized she had always been a marginal figure in a male-dominated family. She cried for an entire day, but in the end she was fortified by the determination
to have her own identity and place in her own house. Hernando not only understood her reasoning but reproached himself for his own thoughtlessness,
and he found in her the greatest support in his sorrow. From then on they maintained an invincible intimacy, whether face-to-face, or on the telephone, or in writing, or through an intermediary, and even by telepathy: In the most intricate family meetings they only needed to exchange glances to know what the other was thinking, and what they should say. She had some very good ideas, among them to
publish editorial notes in the paper—making no effort to conceal their purpose—to let Pacho know about events in the life of the family.