News of a Kidnapping Read Online Free PDF

sent to kill Villamizar, but it was established that in the United States a fake death certificate haddeclared him dead.
    On the night that Maruja and Beatriz were abducted, Villamizar’s house was filled to overflowing. There were people in politics and the government, and the families of the two victims. Aseneth Velásquez, an art dealer and close friend of the Villamizars, who lived in the apartment above them, had assumed the duties of hostess, and all that was missing was music to make theevening seem like any other Friday night. It can’t be helped: In Colombia, any gathering of more than six people, regardless of class or the hour, is doomed to turn into a dance.
    By this time the entire family, scattered all over the world, had been informed. Alexandra, Maruja’s daughter by her first marriage, had just finished supper in a restaurant in Maicao, on the remote Guajira peninsula,when Javier Ayala gave her the news. The director of “Enfoque,” a popular Wednesday television program, she had gone to Guajira the day before to do a series of interviews. She ran to the hotel to call her family, but all the telephones at home were busy. By a lucky coincidence, on the previous Wednesday she had interviewed a psychiatrist who specialized in treating cases of clinical depressionbrought on by imprisonment in high-security institutions. When she heard the news in Maicao, she realized that the same therapy might be useful for kidnapping victims as well, and she returned to Bogotá to start to apply it, beginning with the next program.
    Gloria Pachón, Maruja’s sister, who was then Colombia’s representative to UNESCO, was awakened at two in the morning by Villamizar’s words:“I have something awful to tell you.” Maruja’s daughter Juana, who was vacationing in Paris, learned the news a moment later in the adjoining bedroom. Maruja’s son Nicolás, a twenty-seven-year-old musician and composer, was in New York when he was awakened by a phone call.
    At two o’clock that morning, Dr. Guerrero and his son Gabriel went to see the parliamentarian Diego Montaña Cuéllar, presidentof the Patriotic Union—a movement linked to the Communist Party—and a member of the Notables, a group formed in December 1989 to mediate between the government and the kidnappers of Alvaro Diego Montoya. They found him not only awake but very dejected. He had heard about the abduction on the news that night and thought it a demoralizing symptom. The only thing Guerrero wanted to ask was if hewould act as mediator with Pablo Escobar and persuade him to hold Guerrero hostage in exchange for Beatriz. Montaña Cuéllar’s answer was typical of his character.
    “Don’t be an ass, Pedro,” he said. “In this country there’s nothing you can do.”
    Dr. Guerrero returned home at dawn but did not even try to sleep. His nerves were on edge. A little before seven he received a call from Yami Amat, thenews director at Caracol, and in the worst state of mind responded with a rash challenge to the kidnappers.
    At six-thirty, without any sleep, Villamizar showered and dressed for his appointment with Jaime Giraldo Angel, the justice minister, who brought him up-to-date on the war against narcoterrorism. Villamizar left the meeting convinced that his struggle would be long and difficult, but gratefulfor the two hours he had spent finding out about recent developments, since for some time he had paid little attention to the issue of drug trafficking.
    He did not eat breakfast or lunch. By late afternoon, after variousfrustrating errands, he too visited Diego Montaña Cuéllar, who surprised him once again with his frankness. “Don’t forget that this is for the long haul,” he said, “at leastuntil next June, after the Constituent Assembly, because Maruja and Beatriz will be Escobar’s defense against extradition.” Many of his friends were annoyed with Montaña Cuéllar for not disguising his pessimism in the press, even though he belonged to