“Skip it,” said Alex.
“Why?”
“Because any time I’m in Colombia to negotiate with kidnappers, my basic rule is to trust no one.”
“Not even the foundation?”
“No one.”
“I don’t have to tell them I came here to talk to the kidnappers.”
“What are they going to think? Your father was kidnapped by guerrillas, so you decided this would be a dandy spot for a vacation?”
“No. They’ll think I came all the way to Bogota because my family is pursuing every possible angle to make sure my father is released as quickly as possible. How can that hurt?”
“Look, I’m not putting down the foundation. They do a lot of great things. But keep in mind that they helped push for the passage of Colombia’s antikidnapping law in the early nineties. One of the things that law did was make it illegal for the families of kidnap victims to pay ransom.”
“You mean if we pay a ransom, we’re breaking the law?”
“Don’t worry. That part of the law was declared unconstitutional by the Colombian Supreme Court. The government still opposes the payment of ransom, but I’ve done everything we need to do to make sure the authorities look the other way.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you can’t begin to understand the scope of the kidnapping and ransom problem in this country, and I don’t want you making side trips to talk to people at the foundation or anywhere else. From now until the time we leave, I’d prefer that you stay within my line of sight.”
“Come on, Alex. I appreciate all you’re doing for me, and probably a little paranoia is understandable. But you’re starting to sound worse than me.”
She suddenly turned angry. “You want to see paranoid? I’ll show you.”
She steered down a side street and stepped on the gas. The tires squealed as the little car cornered up a winding road to the top of a steep hill. Minutes later we stopped at the side of the road, where the view of the valley was unobstructed for a good square mile. She stepped down from the car, and I followed her to the edge of the cliff. Below was a residential neighborhood, hundreds of middle- and upper-middle-class homes on the wealthy north side of Bogota.
“Look,” she said.
We had a bird’s-eye view of the rooftops. The houses were nice, but they were little fortresses. Security walls surrounded each home, some topped with razor wire. Dobermans roamed many of the properties. Dozens had guards posted along the walls or at the doors, like sentries, armed with automatic rifles.
“When I was a little girl, this neighborhood was like the one you grew up in. Kids could ride their bicycles. Mothers could stroll with their babies. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
I nodded slowly, taking it in.
“That green house on the corner,” she said, pointing. “FARC has their twenty-two-year-old son. The yellow house five doors down. They took a father of three. Shot him in the head six months later when he tried to escape, then came back and snatched his eight-year-old daughter while his widow was out making the funeral arrangements. That two-story house on the hill over there-”
“Okay, enough,” I said. Reading the Pais Libre statistics was one thing. Seeing where the victims actually lived was quite another.
“These aren’t drug dealers. They aren’t even super-rich people. They’re normal families who worked hard to have a decent home and a few nice things. Bankers, shop owners, lawyers like you. This is the way they have to live now.”
I noticed her voice tightening. Obviously this wasn’t easy for her to talk about.
“If you want to wander around Colombia against my advice, Nick, don’t do it while you’re my responsibility.”
I looked at her, then back at the fortified homes. “I’m sorry,” I said softly.
“Let’s go.”
We got back into the car, neither of us saying a word. What I’d seen had definitely made an impact. Certainly there was every reason to take precautions. As she’d said in the airport, “No se puede dar papaya.” But her refusal to stay at a hotel or drive a rental car seemed a bit overboard to me, not to mention her going so far as to make a phony hotel reservation purely as a diversion to would-be followers. And her fears of an organization like Fundacion Pais Libre seemed almost irrational.
The ignition whined, then screeched, and finally the car started. As Alex struggled to find first gear, I was starting to wonder. Maybe she was being extra careful for my benefit. She feared for the safety of the gringo.
Then again, maybe it was Alex herself who was hiding from someone.
I glanced back once more toward the houses in the valley, then tucked my knees against the glove box as she drove us back into the city.
23
Two things struck me about television in Colombia. Well, one thing, really. I suppose I’d expected the daily toll of violence on the evening news-murders, kidnappings, muggings. You could get that in Miami. But the nudity was the real shocker, not in the programs but the commercials. To be sure, American TV had its share of scantily clad models selling beer, cars, cologne. But American ads were puritanical by Colombian standards. With the amount of flesh flashing here, who needed the Spice Channel?
Television was about all I saw during my first eight hours in Bogota. Alex had me holed up in our flat all day. It wasn’t a bad place actually. But by eight o’clock I was feeling claustrophobic.
“Want to get some dinner?” said Alex.
“You mean go out?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?” I said, teasing. “I thought you’d have me disguise my voice and order pizza under an alias.”
“Very funny.”
I smiled, but in truth I needed to get out. Watching television in my distant-second language was tiresome, and I found myself slipping into nonproductive worries about my father. “Let’s go,” I said.
We drove north of downtown to a trendy area called Zona Rosa, a maze of music clubs, bars, restaurants, and cafes that seemed to compress into a small nucleus of vibrant Bogota nightlife somewhere around Calle 84. We ducked into a tiny, relatively quiet bistro, where doting waiters wore traditional white shirts and black vests. Several teams of them hovered over a dozen small tables for two. A canopy of twinkling white lights hung in strands from the ceiling, reminding me of Christmas. Our table was in front by the window, with a view of the steady parade of cars outside. The rich were chauffeured in bulletproof Mercedes-Benzes and Renaults. Smartly dressed couples entered in the company of bodyguards. The women wore no jewelry, but once safely inside the restaurant, they opened their purses and applied their diamond earrings or emerald rings as a matter of course, the way American women might check their makeup. It was one of the safer areas, according to Alex, but people never let their guard down completely in Bogota.
The restaurant specialized in food from Antioquia, one of Colombia’s largest and richest departments, which included the city of Medellin. It was a region fond of parties and prayer, Alex told me, known for orchids, gold, coffee, and the distinctive architecture of rural towns that had stood for centuries. Most renowned of all were its native people, the paisas, famous for their hospitality and interesting customs. Alex ordered a glass of wine to start. I took only mineral water, as I was still having a little trouble with the trip from sea level in Miami to over eighty-six hundred feet in Bogota, and alcohol wouldn’t help the adjustment.
“Nice place,” I said.
“After scaring you to death all day, I thought you should see another side of Bogota. People haven’t stopped living.”
I tried a breadstick. “Do you think I was foolish to come here?”
“I understand why you did it.”