News of a Kidnapping Read Online Free PDF Page B

the Notables.
    “Anyway, I’m resigning from this bullshit,” he told Villamizar in his florid language. “We don’t do anything but stand around likeassholes.”
    Villamizar felt drained and alone when he returned home after a fruitless day. The two neat whiskeys he drank one after the other left him exhausted. At six in the evening his son, Andrés, who from then on would be his only companion, persuaded him to have breakfast. They were eating when the president telephoned.
    “All right, Alberto,” he said in his best manner. “Come over and we’lltalk.”
    President Gaviria received him at seven in the library of the private wing in the presidential palace, where he had lived for the past three months with his wife, Ana Milena Muñoz, and his two children, eleven-year-old Simón, and María Paz, who was eight. A small but comfortable refuge next to a greenhouse filled with brilliant flowers, it had wooden bookshelves crowded with official publicationsand family photos, a compact sound system, and his favorite records: the Beatles, Jethro Tull, Juan Luis Guerra, Beethoven, Bach. After long days of official duties, this was where the president held informal meetings or relaxed with friends at nightfall with a glass of whiskey.
    Gaviria greeted Villamizar with affection and spoke with solidarity and understanding, and with his rather abrupt franknessas well. But Villamizar was calmer now that he had recovered from the initial shock, and he had enough information to know there was very little the president could do for him. Both men were sure the abduction of Maruja and Beatriz had political motivations, andthey did not need to be fortune-tellers to realize that Pablo Escobar was behind it. But the essential thing, Gaviria said, was not knowingit but getting Escobar to acknowledge it as a first important step in guaranteeing the safety of the two women.
    It was clear to Villamizar from the start that the president would not go beyond the Constitution or the law to help him, nor stop the military units that were searching for the kidnappers, but it was also clear he would not attempt any rescue operations without the authorization ofthe families.
    “That,” said the president, “is our policy.”
    There was nothing else to say. When Villamizar left the presidential palace, twenty-four hours had passed since the kidnapping, and he felt like a blind man facing the future, but he knew he could count on the government’s cooperation to undertake private negotiations to help his wife and sister, and he had Rafael Pardo, the president’ssecurity adviser, ready to assist him. But what seemed to deserve his deepest belief was Diego Montaña Cuéllar’s crude realism.
    The first in that unprecedented series of abductions—on August 30, 1990, a bare three weeks after President César Gaviria took office—was the kidnapping of Diana Turbay, the director of the television news program “Criptón” and of the Bogotá magazine
Hoy x Hoy,
and thedaughter of the former president and leader of the Liberal Party, Julio César Turbay. Four members of her news team were kidnapped along with her—the editor Azucena Liévano, the writer Juan Vitta, the cameramen Richard Becerra and Orlando Acevedo—as well as the German journalist Hero Buss, who was stationed in Colombia. Six in all.
    The trick used by the kidnappers was a supposed interview withManuel Pérez, the priest who was supreme commander of the guerrilla group called the Army of National Liberation (ELN). Few people knew about the invitation, and none thought Dianashould accept it. Among them were the defense minister, General Oscar Botero, and Rafael Pardo, who had been informed of the danger by the president so that he could communicate his concerns to the Turbay family. Butanyone who thought Diana would cancel the trip did not know her. In fact, the press interview with Father Manuel Pérez probably did not interest her as much as the possibility of a dialogue on