News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Grossman Read Free Book Online Page A

Gabriel did not have the heart to tell her what was still an unconfirmed report. A few minutes after that she had a call from Enrique Santos Calderón, her husband’s double first cousin and the assistant manager at
El Tiempo
.
    “Have you heard about Pacho?” he asked.
    María Victoria thought he was referring to another matterhaving to do with her husband, which she already knew about.
    “Of course,” she said.
    Enrique said a quick goodbye so he could call other family members. (Years later, commenting on the mistake, María Victoria said: “That happened to me because I wanted to pass myself off as a genius.”) Then Juan Gabriel called back and told her the whole story: They had killed the driver and taken Pacho.
    PresidentGaviria and his closest advisers were reviewing television ads to promote the election campaign for the Constituent Assembly when his press adviser, Mauricio Vargas, whispered in his ear: “They’ve kidnapped Pachito Santos.” The viewing was not interrupted. The president, who needs glasses to watch movies, took them off and looked at Vargas.
    “Keep me informed,” he told him.
    He put on his glassesagain and continued to watch the ads. His close friend Alberto Casas Santamaría, the communications minister, was sitting beside him and heard the news, and it was whispered from ear to ear along the row of presidential advisers. Ashudder passed through the room. But the president did not blink, following a norm in his life that he expresses in a schoolboy’s rule: “I have to finish this assignment.”When the tape had ended, he took off his glasses again, put them in his breast pocket, and told Mauricio Vargas:
    “Phone Rafael Pardo and tell him to call a meeting of the Council on Security right away.”
    Then he began the planned discussion of the ads. Only when a decision had been reached did he reveal the impact that the news of the abduction had on him. Half an hour later he walked into theroom where most of the members of the Council on Security sat waiting for him. They had just started the meeting when Mauricio Vargas tiptoed in and whispered in his ear:
    “They’ve kidnapped Marina Montoya.”
    It had, in reality, occurred at four o’clock, before Pacho’s kidnapping, but the news did not reach the president until four hours later.
    Ten thousand kilometers away, in a hotel in Florence,Pacho’s father, Hernando Santos Castillo, had been asleep for three hours. His daughter Juanita was in an adjoining room, and his daughter Adriana and her husband were in another. They had been informed by telephone and had decided not to disturb their father. But his nephew Luis Fernando called him direct from Bogotá, using the most cautious opening he could think of for waking his uncle, whowas seventy-eight years old and had undergone five bypasses.
    “I have some very bad news for you,” he said.
    Hernando, of course, imagined the worst, but he put on a good front.
    “What happened?”
    “They kidnapped Pacho.”
    News of a kidnapping, no matter how painful, is not as irremediable as news of a murder, and Hernando breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” he said, and then changed his tone:
    “Okay. Don’t worry. We’ll see what we have to do.”
    An hour later, in the middle of a fragrant Tuscan autumn night, they began the long trip home to Colombia.
    The Turbay family, distraught at having heard nothing from Diana in the week since her departure, requested the government to make official inquiries through the principal guerrilla organizations. A week after the date on which Diana wasdue back, her husband, Miguel Uribe, and Alvaro Leyva, a member of parliament, traveled in secret to Casa Verde, the general headquarters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the eastern mountains. There they were able to contact all the armed groups in an effort to determine if Diana was with any of them. Seven denied it in a joint communiqué.
    Not knowing what to expect,