“Help!”
He didn’t recognize his own voice. It sounded high-pitched and desperate. “Help,” he said again. “Please . . . help us . . .”
The girl cocked her head, took a step back.
“We’re prisoners,” Paul continued, pushing both hands out the window, wrists together as if they were tied, in a kind of primitive pantomime.
It looked like a glimmer of understanding passed across the girl’s face. Then she turned to her left, as if someone had called out to her. She looked back at them, smiled sweetly, walked off.
“No!” Paul shouted.
He’d forgotten where he was.
In a locked room. Under armed guard.
It was just a matter of time.
He heard them seconds later. The sound of boots running on tile, of a key being jammed into the door lock, of nervous, angry jabbering.
He desperately tried to put the plank of wood back in the window, to shove it into place and hope they wouldn’t notice. Like a child trying to glue a smashed vase back together before his parents make it through the front door. It was useless.
The first man through was the one who’d laid out the rules for them. It obviously didn’t escape his attention that they’d broken at least two of them. Thou shalt not go near the windows. Thou shalt not attempt escape. For a moment he simply stopped and stared at Paul, who was standing there holding the piece of shattered wood in his hand like a shield. It didn’t provide much protection. The man made it over to Paul in three quick strides and smashed him across the face with the rifle butt. Paul’s head snapped back and hit the wall. He tasted blood. The piece of wood clattered to the floor.
Paul could see Joanna’s ashen face staring back at him. The man swung his rifle again, clipping Paul under the chin. He bit his tongue, tasted bits of broken tooth. He retreated against the wall, hiding his face behind both hands.
“Put them down,” the man said.
This was real power, Paul realized. There wasn’t a need to force Paul’s hands away; he was going to make Paul do it himself.
“No,” Joanna said. “It’s my fault. I told him to do it. Leave him alone. Please. ”
“Put your hands down,” the man repeated.
“I said it’s my fault.” Joanna tried to insinuate her body between Paul and his attacker. “Hit me. Me. ”
The man sighed, shook his head, gathered the neck of Joanna’s dress in his fist, lifting her up off the ground.
“If you don’t move your hands, I beat her. If you put them there again, I beat her worse.”
Paul dropped his hands.
TWELVE
Sometimes they were given newspapers.
They were allowed this small luxury by the powers-that-be. An infinitesimal luxury, since neither of them spoke Spanish. But things were coming back to Paul—dribs and drabs, words and phrases, sometimes entire sentences.
Anyway, it gave them something to do. Paul discovered you needed things to do to keep your mind off the unspoken question of the hour. What was going to happen to them?
The boy dropped off whichever newspapers their guards had discarded—mostly of the tabloid variety.
The back pages were filled with the local scores. After a while Paul understood that the front pages were too. It was as if Colombia were one big soccer match, both combatants going goal for goal, playing to the death. Guarding the left goal were their captors, FARC, and guarding the right one, the USDF, with the government ineffectually attempting to referee.
Kidnappings, bombings, and executions were how they kept score.
There was invariably a kidnapping story on the front page. A file picture of the snatched state senator, missing radio personality, or waylaid businessman. (The Breidbarts were conspicuously absent from the gallery of the gone.) There was generally an accompanying photo of the weeping wife, teary children, or somber family spokesperson.
The Spanish word for kidnapping was secuestro.
Bombings were only a little less frequent. For example: A ten-year-old boy named Orlando Ropero who liked soccer and ventello music was asked to deliver a bicycle by a teenager in the town of Fortul. He was given the equivalent of thirty-five cents as an inducement. When the bicycle and bicyclist, an excited and gratified Orlando, reached an intersection where two soldiers were stationed, he simply exploded. Remote control, said the papers.
Responsibility was placed at the doorstep directly to Paul’s left. FARC. He decided to keep this particular article to himself.
Then there were the obligatory retaliatory bombings from the right: the paramilitary units of the United Self-Defense Forces, self-defense apparently consisting of killing as many people as possible with no particular regard for innocence. The generalissimo of this august organization for law and order was currently residing in a U.S. prison for drug smuggling.
Paul had read about Manuel Riojas in the States, of course.
Who was he exactly? Drug kingpin, legitimate politician, USDF commander, songwriter. He was one of those, two of those, or possibly all four. Certainly a songwriter. He’d reputedly written a number one hit for the Colombian songbird Evi, which had gotten some play in the States. A love song titled “I Sing Only for You.” A title that took on ironic implications when she was discovered lying half dead on the floor of her penthouse apartment with her vocal cords surgically removed. Apparently, the lovers had experienced a falling-out. Evi had declined to press charges— I don’t remember, she’d scrawled on a pad when she was asked to explain who’d done that to her.
Murder and torture were said to be Riojas’ other vocations.
He was one of those people whose names were always followed by the word alleged. It was alleged, for example, that he had his own zoo on one of his many haciendas, used to allegedly feed his rivals to the tigers. That he allegedly enjoyed dropping people from a Blackhawk helicopter into a pool of writhing piranhas. That he offered human sacrifices in bloody and bizarre rites of Santeria—that was alleged too. He was clearly the stuff of tabloids; the tabloids took full and voracious advantage.
Paul and Joanna passed the newspapers back and forth till the ink stained their hands and their eyes grew blurry.
ONE NIGHT JOANNA WOKE PAUL AND ASKED HIM TO LOOK IN ON the baby.
It took Paul a moment to understand that she was deluded.
That they weren’t in the hotel room sleeping next to Joelle, but in a locked room with no air.
His face stung where the man had repeatedly smashed him with the rifle butt, a beating that had lasted at least five minutes and felt much longer. He’d lost at least one tooth; his lip was split open and still covered in dried blood. Afterward, they’d had to watch contritely from the center of the floor as two guards came in and hammered a new piece of wood back into place, muttering at them the whole time.
“Shhh,” Paul whispered to Joanna. “You’re sleeping.”
She opened her eyes.
“I thought I heard . . .” She began to cry. Soft, muffled sobs that seemed even more nakedly pitiable with no other sounds around to cloak them.
Paul put his arms around her. “Please, Joanna. We’ll get out of this. They’re not going to kill us—they had their chance when they caught us at the window. We’re going to get out of here. We’re going to get Joelle back. I promise.”