After that, she remained silent about what happened. Valencia had cried when she reunited with her mother and father, but she didn’t tell them why. Discussion of the kidnapping, and what happened afterward, was limited. Even in these circumstances, her family’s rule about what they did and did not talk about remained in effect. Valencia went back to school. She studied, she excelled, life returned to normal. Her mother had her talk to a psychiatrist and a priest. She told both about watching the journalist torn from the car, but with neither did she confess her sin. The psychiatrist sniffed around for evidence of trauma like a pig rooting for truffles. Finding nothing, she’d declared her a perfectly healthy, normal, resilient young woman. The priest took her through her paces, going down the usual catalogue of sins and pronouncing her forgiven.
Of course, she didn’t tell him her real sin. He would have forgiven her, and it would have felt like blasphemy against the seriousness of what she’d done to believe forgiveness could come so easily. I have done evil, and the evil cannot be erased by a priest with some magic words. Later, when her faith returned more fully to her, she would describe this feeling as the sin of pride.
She and Sara got coffee, and Sara seemed strangely fine. She spoke of the coming peace vote, of her new boyfriend, who’d thrown a Molotov cocktail at a police vehicle during a student protest a couple of years ago, of how Human Rights Watch was allying with the conservatives to trash the peace.
“Left and right long ago collapsed into each other. This is what capital does,” she said, as if that explained things.
Valencia tried to get her to talk about La Vigia and was cut off. “It was a waste of time,” Sara said. “I’m done with human rights.”
“You’re dropping the class?”
“I’ll finish the class for the credits, but then I’m done,” she said. “You know, half the people here would think Agudelo is a hero, but he’s just as stuck in the past as the FARC.” Then she launched into what seemed like a rehearsed rant about how fixating on whether guerrillas or politicians or soldiers or narcos are playing nice obscured how “technocapital,” whatever that was, jumped forward, outsourcing and automating, sending T-shirt jobs to Vietnam and the rest of manufacturing to robots.
“Have you thought about what we did?” Valencia asked.
Sara stopped. “I never met Alma,” she said, as if the name were a strange new dish she was tasting for the first time. “I only saw her coming in and out of the offices. I never heard her testimony.”
“Would you like to?”
Sara’s hard features softened into an expression of surprise. Perhaps fear.
“I have the audio,” Valencia added. “I could send it to you.”
“No.”
It was only after she’d been home for a few weeks, and after her father had noted for the fourth time that she still didn’t seem to be herself, that he decided they needed a night out. He took her to the restaurant on top of Monserrate, and they ate, and he spoke to her of the journalist and how terrifying it must have been and so on. He told her about the possible end of his military career, and his plans to continue using the skills he had acquired for the good of the world, but that his next step might mean even more time away from home than usual.
“I got someone killed,” she said. And she told him about Sara, and the photo of Jefferson, and what they’d done with it, and how it had gotten Alma killed. And she saw how her father was stunned into silence. The sun was setting over Bogotá, her breath was coming short, and she focused in on herself, determined not to cry or in some other way shame herself further.
“Mother of God,” he said. “Mother of God. That was you? Mother of God!”
Miserably, she nodded.
“Mother of God,” he said again. He controlled himself, reached forward and held her by the chin, bringing her face up, staring intently in her eyes, as if searching for something there. “Of course,” he said.
He let his hand down, but continued staring at her. “Of course,” he said again. And then he smiled. “I’m proud of you.”
“What?”
“I’m proud of you.”
And he explained how they’d been getting conflicting reports about who had taken the gringa, and why, and her little stunt had focused attention and, critically, resources on Jefferson. All of which had led to his death.
“You killed that son of a whore,” he said. Her father. Who didn’t curse. “Like you wanted to. Clever girl.”
“But . . .”
“This woman. Alma?”
She nodded. She could not say her name.
“You were in a war, my dear.”
She nodded yes.
“People die in battle. Yes?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I know,” he said. “I know. I know well. I know what it’s like to lose men. You’ll have to find her family. Send . . . money. Something. It will make you feel better. And it’s good to do. But listen to me well. I know what it is to lose men.”
He reached down and covered her hand with his.
“Some officers can’t risk their men in battle. They don’t have the guts for it. They lose a taste for boldness. They just want to protect their men, and themselves. They’re cowards. In the long run, they get more people killed. But you, my daughter. My daughter.” He was grinning widely now. “You’re in some little town in the countryside, surrounded by narcos and guerrillas, and what do you do? You take action. You take bold action.”
She shook her head.
“I know,” he said again, and he put his palm over his heart. “The deaths, they weigh on you. Daughter, I know. I know very well. And you remember
