No Place for Heroes by Laura Restrepo Read Free Book Online

only someone like her, who refused to see the obvious, would have fallen into.
    At seven, she contacted the publisher of her magazine, an influential man who might be able to help her. She made a great effort detailing to him exactly what had happened in a most coherent manner; and through him they gained access to confidential information from several airlines, which gave them access to the passenger lists of flights that had left Bogotá during the last twenty-four hours. It was a futile task,however, since she knew that Ramón would have used false names.
    Flights where? they asked Lorenza. Flights to anywhere. Domestic or international? Domestic and international, it could be any of them, or none of them. It was also possible that he had not left Colombia, or even left Bogotá, although the likeliest scenario was that Ramón had taken Mateo to Argentina, where he knew the land like the back of his hand. It was rather obvious. He wasn’t going to take off to France, or Australia, with a small child in tow, almost no money in his pocket, and ignorant of the language. He had probably returned to Argentina, but he also could have gone anywhere else.
    The head of security at the airport did not think they had boarded a plane and escaped by air. And he tried to reassure Lorenza that no one, not even the father of a child, could take such child out of the country without the express written permission of the mother, a notarized letter from her authorizing the minor’s trip. But nothing was easier for Forcás than falsifying a letter of permission. That would not have been an impediment. The only thing that was evident to Lorenza was that there was so little she could do. There’s no going back, she had told Ramón in the park. She herself had uttered her sentence, there’s no going back, without understanding the weight of its full meaning. Never again, Ramón’s letter said. Never again would Lorenza have her son. Never again. In what corner of the world could she start looking for him, if he and his father could be anywhere at this point? Existingas if in another time, their fingerprints rubbed off, their lives recast.
    Her small child was lost in the immense world, out of her reach. Her son, Mateo, had become a droplet in the ocean. Her son had been snatched from her. What the dictatorship’s henchmen had not been able to do to her, Forcás had just accomplished.
    Since it was Saturday, most of the offices were closed, but hour after hour of that entire day, with her mother perennially at her side, Lorenza was in contact with a lawyer and a government official, the former having the grace to meet her in his own apartment and the latter at his country house. Not that she believed anything would come of her efforts, on the contrary. She knew with certainty that those superficial gestures would yield no results. Ramón must have already gone under and was now moving below the surface.
    Her sister and brother-in-law did whatever they could, and the magazine assigned an investigative team to the case. But by that evening, they still were empty-handed. There was no trace of the boy or of Forcás. Hours had passed and they were still right where they had begun. Everyone they had consulted had advised that she should immediately report the kidnapping of her son to the Argentinean authorities, so that they could garner public support for the case. Her family had the contacts to do it, starting with one of her father’s old friends who had been ambassador to Argentina and who offered himself to make the gesture before the military junta.
    “No,” Lorenza said, “no, no, no, no. I will not cross thatline. Those criminals don’t find children, they make them disappear. No.”
    Although the decision might appear incomprehensible and abhorrent: No. Betray Forcás to the dictatorship? No. She couldn’t go there. She wasn’t going to ally herself with her enemies to chase the man who had once been her closest ally. She would not