News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Grossman

daughter was in the hands of the Extraditables, but he had decided not to acknowledgethis in public until he knew for certain what they were after. A group of journalists had asked the question the week before, and he had eluded them with a daring swirl of the cape.
    “My heart tells me,” he said, “that Diana and her colleagues have been delayed because of their work as reporters, but that it isn’t a question of their being detained.”
    Their disillusionment was understandable afterthree months of fruitless efforts. This was Villamizar’s interpretation, and instead of being infected by their pessimism, he brought a new spirit to their common struggle.
    During this time a friend was asked what kind of man Villamizar was, and he defined him in a single stroke: “He’s a great drinking companion.” Villamizar had acknowledged this with good humor as an enviable and uncommon virtue.But on the day his wife was abducted, he realized it was also dangerous in his situation, and decided not to have another drink in public until she andhis sister were free. Like any good social drinker, he knew that alcohol lowers your guard, loosens your tongue, and somehow alters your sense of reality. It is a hazard for someone who has to measure his actions and words in millimeters. And sothe strict rule he imposed on himself was not a penitential act but a security measure. He attended no more gatherings, he said goodbye to his light-hearted bohemianism, his jovial drinking sessions with other politicians. On the nights when his emotional tension was at its height, Andrés listened as he vented his feelings, holding a glass of mineral water while his father found comfort in drinkingalone.
    In his meetings with Rafael Pardo, they studied alternative courses of action but always ran up against the government policy that left open the threat of extradition. They both knew this was the most powerful tool for pressuring the Extraditables into surrendering, and that the president used it with as much conviction as the Extraditables when they used it as a reason for not surrendering.
    Villamizar had no military training, but he had grown up near military installations. For years his father, Dr. Alberto Villamizar Flórez, had been physician to the Presidential Guard and was very close to the lives of its officers. His grandfather, General Joaquin Villamizar, had been minister of war. One of his uncles, Jorge Villamizar Flórez, had been the general in command of the Armed Forces.From them Alberto had inherited his dual nature as a native of Santander and a soldier: He was cordial and domineering at the same time, a serious person who loved to drink, a man who never misses when he takes aim, who always says what he has to say in the most direct way, and who has never used the intimate
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with anyone in his life. The image of his father prevailed, however, and he completedhis medical studies at Javieriana University but never graduated, swept away by the irresistible winds of politics. Not as a military man but as a Santanderean pure and simple, he always carries a Smith & Wesson .38 that he has never tried to use. In any case, armed or unarmed, his two greatest virtues are determinationand patience. At first glance they may seem contradictory, but life has taughthim they are not. With this kind of heritage, Villamizar had all the daring necessary to attempt an armed solution, but rejected it unless the situation became a matter of life or death.
    Which meant that the only solution he could find in late November was to confront Escobar and negotiate, Santanderean to Antioquian, in a hard and equal contest. One night, tired of all the wheel-spinning, hepresented his idea to Rafael Pardo. Pardo understood his anguish, but his reply was unhesitating.
    “Listen to me, Alberto,” he said in his solemn, direct way. “Take whatever steps you like, try anything you can, but if you want our cooperation to continue, you must know you can’t overstep