A King's ransom

46

Jenna and I caught the morning flight to Miami. She was going to cab it home, but I talked her into letting me give her a lift. Driving out of the airport, I plugged my cell phone into the cigarette lighter and phoned my mother to let her know I was back. She was frantic.

“I’ve been trying to reach you. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“Battery ran out. I’m sorry.”

“We got a package this morning.”

“From. . them?”

“It’s a videotape of your father.”

“Have you watched it yet?”

“Yes.”

I was almost afraid to ask. “Is he alive?”

“Yes,” she said, straining. “Oh, Nick, he looks so awful.”

I steered toward the exit for Coral Gables. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Call Alex.”

“I did. She’s on her way here.”

“Great. You did exactly the right thing.”

She fell silent, as if collecting her composure. “It barely even looks like him,” she said in a weak, shaky voice. “I almost didn’t recognize him.”

“I know it has to be a shock, but believe me, this is such good news. He’s alive. We know he’s okay.”

I was trying hard to lift her spirits, but she didn’t respond. I was about to say more, then stopped. At that moment words couldn’t possibly have helped. I knew that the best thing was to let her have her cry. I steered with one hand and held the phone to my ear with the other, racked by the sounds of my mother’s painful sobs.

It was probably my longest drive home ever, but Mom had regained her composure by the time Jenna and I arrived. She and Alex were in the family room in front of the television.

I was about to make introductions, but the women were ahead of me. “I’m Alex,” she said as she and Jenna shook hands. “We met once before at Duffy’s.”

“I remember. I’m helping Nick with his lawsuit against the insurance company. We had to go to Bermuda.”

“Bermuda, eh? Tough assignment.”

“Actually, it was all work, no play. You know how that is.”

“Sure.”

I sensed a little tension, and it was only sidetracking us. “Let’s watch the videotape.”

“Good idea,” said Mom. She popped it into the VCR. The women took a seat on the couch. I pulled up a barstool from the counter.

The screen was blue. Mom had the remote in hand, ready to start. “The whole thing is less than thirty seconds. There is audio, but they don’t let your father say much. Most of the talking is from the kidnappers.”

I nodded, signaling that I was ready. Mom hit the “Play” button. The blue screen went snowy, and then the image appeared. Even my mother’s sobbing on the telephone hadn’t prepared me for what I saw.

“My God,” I said, completely involuntarily.

They’d videotaped him indoors, from the waist up. His face was thin, and his skin so lacked color that for a moment I thought the adjustments on the television set were off. Dad never had been able to grow a beard, so his unshaved growth looked especially shabby. His hair was dirty and uncombed. He showed little expression, neither a smile nor a frown. He was looking directly into the camera, then lowered his eyes and read from a prepared script.

“This message is to my family,” he began.

I stepped down from my bar stool and walked to the set, drawn by his voice, as if compelled to be closer to my father’s image.

“I am being treated well. I will be safe as long as you obey all instructions.”

He laid the script aside and picked up a copy of El Tiempo, a widely distributed Bogota daily newspaper. The camera zoomed in on the headline and the date.

“Three days old,” I said. “That’s pretty good.”

The camera zoomed out, again showing my father.

“It’s interesting he’s wearing only a T-shirt,” said Mom. “I guess they’re keeping him someplace warm.”

“They do that to confuse you,” said Alex. “I’m sure they’re in the mountains.”

Back on-screen, my father put down the newspaper, then seemed to turn to someone off camera, as if looking for instruction.

“Freeze the frame,” I said.

Mom hit the pause button. I walked right up to the screen and checked the side of his head. The rest of the video had shown him straight-on only, but these last few frames had caught his profile.

“It looks like somebody did a pretty lousy job of stitching up a good three-inch gash on the side of his head.”

Alex came forward to have a look. “I’m afraid you’re right.”

My mother let out a combined groan and whimper. It was time to move on. “Hit the play button, Mom.”

My father’s image was on-screen for only a few seconds longer. Then it went black.

“What’s going on?” I said.

Mom said, “This is the part where the kidnapper talks in Spanish.”

Alex took a notepad from her purse, ready to translate. I leaned closer to listen, as if that would help my mediocre Spanish.

It was a man’s voice, the same one Alex and I had heard over the shortwave radio in Bogota. I’d had no trouble understanding him then, but here he was speaking too fast for me to pick up every word. Mom and Jenna looked even more clueless. Alex was scribbling feverishly on her notepad.

In twenty seconds he was finished. Mom switched off the tape. I was perplexed, not sure if I’d heard the last few words correctly. I asked Alex, “Did I hear him right?”

“Let me start at the beginning. He says that the radio contact scheduled for Sunday the nineteenth of November is canceled.”

“What?” I hadn’t caught that part.

She shushed me, then continued. “ ‘Mr. Rey has proved to be a difficult prisoner,’ ” she read. “ ‘We will tolerate no more delays. We will contact you by radio in our usual place on Sunday, the twelfth of November, at sunrise. The safety of the prisoner can be guaranteed no longer if you do not pay two hundred fifty thousand dollars at this time.’ ”

“Two-fifty! That’s what I thought he said. They’ve come off their own demand.”

“Why would they do that?” asked Jenna.

“It’s like Alex told me from the beginning. Most kidnappers end up settling for about ten to fifteen percent of the initial demand. Dad’s a pain in the neck,” I said, smiling. “They must want to cut through all the back-and-forth negotiation and get rid of him. God, I love him!”

“It’s not what you think,” said Alex.

I stopped cold. From the expression on her face, I knew that it wasn’t time to celebrate. “What do you mean?”

“The word for ransom in Spanish is ‘rescate.’ That’s not the word he used.”

“He said two hundred fifty thousand. Even I understood that.”

“They want two-fifty to keep your father alive. He didn’t say they’d give him back. It’s not a ransom. It’s what they call a safety guarantee.”

My mother looked ill. “What the hell kind of sickos are these people? Whoever heard of such a thing as a safety payment?”

“I’ve seen it before,” said Alex. “Especially when a prisoner violates a rule or gets in some kind of trouble. From the looks of that gash on the side of Matthew’s head, he’s probably been more trouble than his kidnappers bargained for.”

“This is absurd,” I said. “They expect us to hand over a quarter million dollars for nothing?”

“It’s not for nothing,” said Alex. “They’ll kill him if you don’t.”

My mother looked at me, her face etched in fear. “What do we do?”

The room was spinning, I was so upset. I went to the window and looked out at the yard. “What choice do we have?” I said quietly.