Nineteen hours in Colombia. I’d counted off every one of them, including the wee hours of a sleepless night.
Alex and I had returned from the restaurant before midnight. She went straight to bed. The couch was all mine. I nearly dozed off around 1:00 A.M., then shot bolt upright at the shrill noise of what at first sounded like a drunk screaming his lungs out on the balcony next door. Turned out it was actually a rooster crowing at the moon. Naturally this startled me, since it was hours before dawn and silly me had always thought it was the big orange ball on the horizon that got roosters to crowing. Once awake, I quickly put aside the whole question of this bird’s lousy sense of timing and wondered, more to the point, what in the world a rooster was doing in an apartment building in downtown Bogota in the first place. I had just about convinced myself that it was all a dream when, fifteen minutes later, the crazy bird crowed again, this time waking Alex. She came out to the kitchen for a drink of water and explained that roosters lose all sense of time when housed in a high-rise building. Her tone was so matter-of-fact, as if the whole world knew how screwed up an urban rooster could be. She went back to sleep without a problem. I, on the other hand, was awake for good, anticipating the cock’s next untimely crow, checking the clock repeatedly, counting the hours and then the minutes to our deadline, even though the letter from the kidnappers had set a time for our meeting that wasn’t determined by any clock or insomniac rooster: Sunday at sunrise.
At 4:00 A.M. I was dressed and ready to leave the apartment. Alex was in the shower. I waited in the living room, no television and no radio. Noise traveled freely in the old apartment, even through closed doors, and without moving from the couch I could still hear Alex humming what sounded like a bolero as streams of hot water pelted her firm body. The thought of her nakedness flashed in my mind, though I was far too stressed to be even remotely aroused. Last night’s dinner and conversation still had me puzzled anyway. One moment it had felt like a first date, the next like a jailhouse interview with a convicted felon. The last thing it had resembled was a conversation with a trained negotiator the night before a first communication with kidnappers. Only now, as we were about to head out and accomplish the thing we had come here to do, did I finally see the wisdom in her curious method. We had prepared thoroughly back in Miami, and any last-minute discussion about the kidnapping would only have made me crazy with anticipation and worry. She’d taken my mind as far away from this morning’s meeting as possible, teasing me with her past, even flirting a little with her eyes over a delicious Antioquian dinner. My friend J. C. would have said she was messing with my head. In reality she was just keeping my head screwed on before the most stressful event in my life. At least, that’s what I assumed she was doing.
“You ready, Nick?” she asked as she emerged from her bedroom.
“I think so.”
“You nervous?”
“I know so.”
“I can go alone, if you want.”
“Are you crazy? Let’s do it.”
It was almost two hours before sunrise when we left the apartment and drove east to Calle 20 in the historic Barrio la Candelaria, Bogota’s well-preserved city center. We parked near Quinta de Bolivar, an impressive colonial mansion that was once Bolivar’s home, now a museum. More important, it marked the beginning of our climb to Monserrate, the lower of two impressive peaks that rise to the east of Bogota.
Monserrate was a popular tourist destination. At over thirty-two hundred meters, the summit offered an inspiring view, though according to Alex the expensive French restaurant alone was worth the journey. It could be reached by a funicular railway and cable car, but not at five o’clock in the morning. At that time of day walking was the only option, and it took us about an hour and fifteen minutes with no rest stops. It turned cooler as we climbed, and in the early-morning dampness I was glad for a thick sweater and jacket. Alex and I took turns carrying the shortwave radio in the backpack. Fortunately, the path was comfortably graded, and dressed stone from bottom to top offered secure footing. To my surprise, we weren’t the only climbers. The safety was marginal, but even bandits had to sleep, and Sunday at 5:00 A.M. was about the only time anyone in their right mind ascended Monserrate in the dark.
Four climbers in front of us headed straight for the observation deck near the old church. We walked in the same general direction, past the street vending stalls that were all closed, heading finally toward the picnic grounds behind the church. The kidnappers hadn’t told us to ascend to the top of Monserrate to enjoy views of the city’s tiled roofs and the plains that stretched beyond to the rim of the savanna. It was all about reception on our shortwave radio.
Alex set up the radio on a picnic table near the ridge. For miles below us stretched Bogota and the suburbs it had swallowed to the north. The sun had not yet appeared, but its anticipatory glow was already brightening the horizon. It was that ambiguous hour between night and day. Block by block the shadows were disappearing. The city lights seemed fuzzy, still burning but fading fast, like persistent guests who’d overstayed their welcome. It would be daylight in a few minutes, and in a few hours the park would be crowded with visitors. For now, however, Alex and I were completely alone. She switched on the shortwave radio and set it to the frequency the kidnappers had specified in their letter. I heard nothing but static, but it wasn’t quite sunrise. All we could do was wait.
“What if they don’t call us?” I asked.
“They will.”
She answered with such assurance that I didn’t doubt her for a second.
The radio hissed in a low, empty tone that signified nothing. Alex listened, alert for any change in reception. For nearly twenty minutes we sat at that picnic table, the radio set to the same blank frequency. Through the trees I watched the top of the orange globe rise from behind the peaks to the east. With each passing minute it grew bigger, its arrival magnified by the low band of clouds that turned purple and pink, an endless ribbon stretching the length of the Andes. Slowly the ribbon burned away, and the sun was alone in the sky, too bright to look at directly. At that very moment the radio crackled. At first it was a subtle break in the hiss. Then we heard the voice in Spanish.
“Rey family. Are you there?”
Alex grabbed the microphone. “Yes. We’re here. Go ahead, please.”
“Good morning, my friend.”
It sickened me to hear him call me “friend,” but Alex just rolled with it. “Good morning. We’ve been expecting you.”
“ ‘We?’ ” he said, his tone slightly suspicious. “Exactly who is there with you?”
“Don’t worry, no police. Just me and a member of the family. That’s it. I’m their representative. Call me Alex.”
“All right. Call me Joaquin. I’m sure we will get along just fine. So long as the Rey family is prepared to pay us some money.”
“We don’t even have a demand yet.”
“I thought we’d let you open.”
“Excuse me?”
“You have a member of the family there, don’t you?”
“Yes, but-”
“Who is it?”
“The son.”
“That must be Nick.”
It was strange to hear my name, but at least it confirmed that we were really dealing with the kidnappers.
“That’s right,” said Alex.
“Perfect. Ask him how much his father is worth to him.”
“Knock off the games,” she said harshly.
“It’s not a game. I’m sitting here with his father. Tell Nick to make an offer. If it’s enough, I’ll let his father go free. If it’s not enough, I’ll kill him.”
I looked at Alex, my heart pounding. “Could he be serious?” I asked softly.
She spoke into the microphone, “This isn’t the way we do business. The family has come to deal in good faith. I was hoping you would do the same.”
“Really? Well, how’s this for good faith? I have a pistol to his father’s head as we speak. Make an offer. Make
