News of a Kidnapping (32 page)

“Ready: Come to Medellín first thing tomorrow.”

Rafael Pardo arranged for a Civil Aeronautics plane to be available at seven o’clock for the official committee that would witness the surrender. Villamizar, fearful of leaks, was at Father García Herreros’s
house by five. He found him in the oratory, the inevitable poncho over his cassock, just as he finished saying mass.

“Well, Father, let’s go,” he said. “We’re flying to Medellín because Escobar’s ready to surrender.”

Traveling in the plane with them were Fernando García Herreros, one of the father’s nephews who acted as his occasional assistant; Jaime Vázquez, from the Council on Public Information;
Dr. Carlos Gustavo Arrieta, the prosecutor general for the republic;
and Dr. Jaime Córdoba Triviño, the special prosecutor for human rights. At Olaya Herrera airport, in the center of Medellín, María Lía and Martha Nieves Ochoa were waiting for them.

The official committee was taken to the capitol building of the department of Antioquia. Villamizar and the father went to María Lía’s apartment
to have breakfast while last-minute arrangements were made for the surrender. There he learned that Escobar was already on his way, traveling by car and on foot to avoid the frequent police checkpoints. He was an expert in those evasive strategies.

Once again the father’s nerves were on edge. One of his contact lenses fell out, he stepped on it, and was so exasperated that Martha Nieves had to
take him to San Ignacio Opticians, where they solved his problem with a pair of normal glasses. The city teemed with rigorous checkpoints, and they were stopped at almost all of them, not to be searched but so the men could thank the good father for everything he was doing for Medellín. In that city where everything was possible, the best-kept secret in the world was already public knowledge.

The Monk came to María Lía’s apartment at two-thirty, dressed for a day in the country with a light jacket and soft-soled shoes.

“Ready,” he said to Villamizar. “Let’s go to the capitol building. You take your car and I’ll take mine.”

He drove off alone. María Lía drove Villamizar, Father García Herreros, and Martha Nieves in her car. The two men got out at the capitol building. The women waited
outside. The Monkey, no longer a cold, efficient technician, was trying to hide inside his own skin. He put on dark glasses and a golfer’s hat, and kept in the background, behind Villamizar. Someone who saw him walking in with the priest rushed to telephone Rafael Pardo to say that Escobar—very blond, very tall and elegant—had just surrendered at the capitol building.

As they were preparing to
leave, the Monkey received a call on
his two-way radio informing him that a plane was heading for the airspace over the city. It was a military ambulance carrying several soldiers wounded in a clash with guerrillas in Urabá. It was getting late and the authorities were troubled, because the helicopters could not fly as dusk was falling, and delaying the surrender until the next day would be calamitous.
Villamizar called Rafael Pardo, who rerouted the flight and repeated his categorical order that the sky be kept clear. As he waited for this to be settled, he wrote in his personal diary: “Not even birds will fly over Medellín today.”

The first helicopter—a six-passenger Bell 206—took off from the roof of the capitol building a little after three, with the prosecutor general and Jaime Vázquez,
Fernando García Herreros, and Luis Alirio Calle, a radio journalist whose enormous popularity was one more guarantee for Pablo Escobar’s peace of mind. A security official would show the pilot the direct route to the prison.

The second helicopter—a twelve-passenger Bell 412—took off ten minutes later, when the Monkey received the order on his two-way radio. Villamizar flew with him and the father.
As soon as they had taken off, they heard a report on the radio that the government’s position had suffered a defeat in the Constituent Assembly, where non-extradition of nationals had just been approved by a vote of fifty-one to thirteen, with five abstentions, in a preliminary ballot that would be ratified later. Though there were no indications it had been planned, it was almost childish
not to think Escobar had known ahead of time and had waited for that precise moment to surrender.

The pilots followed the Monkey’s directions to the site where they would pick up Pablo Escobar and take him to prison. It was a very short flight, and at so low an altitude the directions seemed the kind you would give in a car: Take Eighth, keep going, turn right, more, a little more, to the park,
that’s it. Behind a grove of trees there suddenly appeared a splendid mansion surrounded by the bright colors of tropical flowers, with a soccer field as smooth as an enormous billiard table in the middle of El Poblado’s traffic.

“Put it down over there,” the Monkey said, pointing. “Don’t turn off the engine.”

Villamizar did not realize until they were right over the house that at least thirty
armed men were waiting all around the field. When the helicopter landed on the grass, some fifteen bodyguards moved away from the group and walked uneasily to the helicopter in a circle around a man who was in no way inconspicuous. He had hair down to his shoulders, a very thick, rough-looking black beard that reached to his chest, and skin browned and weathered by a desert sun. He was thick-set,
wore tennis shoes and a light-blue cotton jacket, had an easy walk and a chilling calm. Villamizar knew who he was at first sight only because he was different from all the other men he had ever seen in his life.

After saying goodbye to the nearest bodyguards with a series of powerful, rapid embraces, Escobar indicated to two of them that they should climb in the other side of the helicopter.
They were Mugre and Otto, two of the men closest to him. Then he climbed in, paying no attention to the blades turning at half-speed. The first man he greeted before he sat down was Villamizar. He extended his warm, well-manicured hand and asked with no change in his voice:

“How are you, Dr. Villamizar?’

“How’s it going, Pablo?” he replied.

Then Escobar turned to Father García Herreros with
an amiable smile and thanked him for everything. He sat next to his two bodyguards, and only then did he seem to realize that the Monkey was there. Perhaps he had expected him only to give directions to Villamizar without getting into the helicopter.

“And you,” Escobar said, “in the middle of this right to the end.”

Nobody could tell if he was praising or berating him, but his tone was cordial.
The Monkey, as confused as everyone else, shook his head and smiled.

“Ah, Chief!”

Then, in a kind of revelation, it occurred to Villamizar that Escobar was a much more dangerous man than anyone supposed, because there was something supernatural in his serenity and self-possession. The Monkey tried to close the door on his side but did not know how and the co-pilot had to do it. In the emotion
of the moment, no one had thought to give any orders. The pilot, tense at the controls, asked a question:

“Do we take off now?”

Then Escobar let slip the only sign of his repressed anxiety.

He gave a quick order: “What do you think? Move it! Move it!”

When the helicopter lifted off from the grass, he asked Villamizar: “Everything’s fine, isn’t it, Doctor?” Villamizar, not turning around to
look at him, answered with all his heart: “Everything’s perfect.” And that was all, because the flight was over. The helicopter flew the remaining distance almost grazing the trees, and came down on the prison soccer field—rock-strewn, its goalposts broken—next to the first helicopter, which had arrived a quarter of an hour earlier. The trip from the residence had taken less than fifteen minutes.

The next two minutes, however, were the most dramatic of all. Escobar tried to get out first, as soon as the door was opened, and found himself surrounded by the prison guards: some fifty tense, fairly bewildered men in blue uniforms who were aiming their weapons at him. Escobar gave a start, lost his control for a moment, and in a voice heavy with fearsome authority he roared:

“Lower your weapons,
damn it!”

By the time the head of the guards gave the same order, Escobar’s command had already been obeyed. Escobar and his companions walked the two hundred meters to the house where the prison officials, the members of the official delegation, and the first group of Escobar’s men, who had come overland to surrender with him, were all waiting. Also present were Escobar’s wife and his mother,
who was very pale and on the verge of tears. As he
passed he gave her an affectionate little pat on the shoulder and said: “Take it easy, Ma.” The director of the prison came out to meet him, his hand extended.

“Señor Escobar,” he introduced himself. “I’m Luis Jorge Pataquiva.”

Escobar shook his hand. Then he raised his left pant leg and took out the pistol he was carrying in an ankle holster.
It was a magnificent weapon: a Sig Sauer 9mm with a gold monogram inlaid on the mother-of-pearl handle. Escobar did not remove the clip but took out the bullets one by one and tossed them to the ground.

It was a somewhat theatrical gesture that seemed rehearsed, and it had its intended effect as a show of confidence in the warden whose appointment had caused so much concern. The following day
it was reported that when he turned in his pistol Escobar had said to Pataquiva: “For peace in Colombia.” No witness remembers this, least of all Villamizar, who was still dazzled by the beauty of the weapon.

Escobar greeted everyone. The special prosecutor held on to his hand as he said: “I am here, Señor Escobar, to make certain your rights are respected.” Escobar thanked him with special deference.
Then he took Villamizar’s arm.

“Let’s go, Doctor,” he said. “You and I have a lot to talk about.”

He led him to the end of the outside gallery, and they chatted there for about ten minutes, leaning against the railing, their backs to everyone. Escobar began by thanking him in formal terms. Then, with his awesome calm, he expressed regret for the suffering he had caused Villamizar and his family,
but asked him to understand that the war had been very hard on both sides. Villamizar did not miss this opportunity to solve three great mysteries in his life: why they had killed Luis Carlos Galán, why Escobar had tried to kill him, and why he had abducted Maruja and Beatriz.

Escobar denied all responsibility for the first crime. “The fact is that everybody wanted to kill Dr. Galán,” he said.
He admitted
being present at the discussions when the attack was decided, but denied taking part or having anything to do with what happened. “A lot of people were involved in that,” he said. “I didn’t even like the idea because I knew what would happen if they killed him, but once the decision was made I couldn’t oppose it. Please tell doña Gloria that for me.”

As for the second, he was very
explicit: A group of friends in congress had convinced him that Villamizar was uncontrollable and stubborn and had to be stopped somehow before he succeeded in having extradition approved. “Besides,” he said, “in that war we were fighting, just a rumor could get you killed. But now that I know you, Dr. Villamizar, thank God nothing happened to you.”

As for Maruja’s abduction, his explanation
was simplistic. “I was kidnapping people to get something and I didn’t get it, nobody was talking to me, nobody was paying attention, so I went after doña Maruja to see if that would work.” He had no other reasons, but did drift into a long commentary about how he had gotten to know Villamizar over the course of the negotiations until he became convinced he was a serious, brave man whose word was
as good as gold, and for that he pledged his eternal gratitude. “I know you and I can’t be friends,” he said. But Villamizar could be sure that nothing would happen to him or anybody in his family again.

“Who knows how long I’ll be here,” he said, “but I still have a lot of friends, so if any of you feels unsafe, if anybody tries to give you a hard time, you let me know and that’ll be the end
of it. You met your obligations to me, and I thank you and will do the same for you. You have my word of honor.”

Before they said goodbye, Escobar asked Villamizar, as a final favor, to try to calm his mother and wife, who were both on the verge of hysteria. Villamizar did, without much hope of success, since both were convinced that the entire ceremony was nothing but a sinister trick on the
part of the government to murder Escobar
in prison. Finally Villamizar went into the director’s office and dialed 284 33 00, the number of the presidential palace, which he knew by heart, and asked them to find Rafael Pardo no matter where he might be.

He was in the office of Mauricio Vargas, the press adviser, who answered the phone and passed Pardo the receiver without saying a word. Pardo
recognized the grave, quiet voice, but this time it had a glowing aura.

“Dr. Pardo,” said Villamizar, “I’m here with Escobar in prison.”

Pardo—perhaps for the first time in his life—heard the news without passing it through the filter of doubt.

“How wonderful!” he said.

He made a rapid remark that Mauricio Vargas did not even try to interpret, hung up the phone, and walked into the president’s
office without knocking. Vargas, who is a born reporter twenty-four hours a day, suspected that Pardo’s hurry, and the amount of time he spent in the office, meant that something important had happened. His nervous excitement could not tolerate a wait of more than five minutes. He went into the president’s office without being announced, and found him laughing out loud at something Pardo had
just said. Then he heard the news. Mauricio thought with pleasure about the army of journalists who would burst into his office any minute now, and he looked at his watch. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. Two months later, Rafael Pardo would be the first civilian named defense minister after fifty years of military ministers.

Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria had turned forty-one in December. According
to the medical examination required when he entered prison, his state of health was that of “a young man in normal physical and mental condition.” The only unusual observation
was congestion in the nasal mucous membranes and something that looked like a plastic surgery scar on his nose, but he said he had been injured as a boy during a soccer game.