Detour

FOURTEEN

He would have eighteen hours.

Three-quarters of one day. One thousand eighty minutes.

That’s it.

In those eighteen hours, he would have to swallow thirty-six condoms filled with two million dollars’ worth of pure, undiluted cocaine, take a plane to Kennedy Airport, and get to a house in Jersey City, where he’d be expected to deposit them onto a dirty Newark Star-Ledger .

If he made it to the house one minute after the eighteen hours allotted him, Joanna and Joelle would be killed.

If he made it to the house and only thirty- five condoms came out of him, Joanna and Joelle would be killed.

If he didn’t get the condoms out in time and one of them dissolved inside his stomach, he’d be killed.

His heart would go into cardiac arrest, his body into toxic shock.

He’d begin salivating from the mouth and shaking uncontrollably. He’d be dead before anyone knew what was wrong with him.

This was carefully and painstakingly laid out for him by Arias. To get his attention, to have him maintain focus.

A kind of pep talk.

Of course, if he made it to the house in eighteen hours with all thirty-six condoms still inside him, a call would be placed to Arias.

Joanna and Joelle would be set free to join Paul in New York.

They had Arias’ word on it, as a FARC revolutionary in good standing.

THE NIGHT BEFORE THEY HAD BROUGHT HIM TO THE CUTTING house where mestiza women in sports bras worked tirelessly on Colombia’s number one export, they heard someone singing that plaintive lullaby just outside the door.

Joanna, who’d been trying to grab some sleep on the ripped and dirty mattress, immediately woke and lurched to a standing position. The lullaby continued, seeped through the door like the irresistible aroma of a longed-for food.

The door opened.

Joanna put her knuckles to her mouth in an effort to stifle a sob, but she was only half successful.

“Please,” she said. “Please.”

Galina. Standing there with Joelle nestled against her chest.

“Please . . . Galina . . .”

Galina entered the room as someone locked the door behind her.

She met Joanna in the middle of the room, gently placing Joelle into her already reaching arms. Paul believed that gentleness like that couldn’t be faked. That Galina was someone who loved children even as she kidnapped their parents, a dichotomy he found hard to reconcile.

There was no such dichotomy with Joanna. She folded her daughter against her chest and silently wept.

Paul stood next to her with his arm around her shoulders, the circle made whole once again. He couldn’t help looking outside the circle. At Galina. He wanted her to look back —he thought that might be hard for her to do. He was wrong.

She met his gaze with perfect equanimity.

She even smiled, as if she’d just taken Joelle for another walk around the block and was ready to resume her duties as übernurse.

“See,” Joanna said to Paul. She’d rolled up the left leg of Joelle’s blue stretchie and was pointing at an amber beauty mark just below the knee. Right where she’d said it was.

“Joelle,” she whispered, and kissed her daughter’s face. “Can she stay with us tonight?” she asked Galina. “Please?”

Galina nodded.

“Thank you,” Joanna said.

And Paul thought how quickly captives become so grateful for any kindness from their captors. Please and thank you to the people who’ve snatched you from the world and locked you away in an airless room.

Galina reached into the pocket of her loose black shift. She brought out a baby bottle already filled with thick yellowish formula, and two diapers.

Paul took the bottle from her; he couldn’t help remembering that the last time he’d accepted liquid refreshments from her, they’d been laced with escopolamina .

Galina turned to leave.

Paul wouldn’t let her go without some acknowledgment of what she’d done to them. Some declaration of responsibility, even if it was defiant or angry or unpleasant.

“How many people have you done this to, Galina?” he said.

Galina turned back. “It isn’t your country,” she said slowly. “You don’t understand.”

Before Paul could answer her, before he could tell her that understanding and kidnapping didn’t belong in the same universe, much less the same sentence, she turned around and knocked twice on the door.

The boy opened it and let her out.

JOANNA UNDRESSED JOELLE.

She looked over every inch of her body for any bruises, scratches, or suspicious discolorations. Any evidence at all that they’d hurt her daughter. Apparently not. Paul could sense the joy Joanna was experiencing just to be touching Joelle again, feeling her heartbeat, stroking her hair.

“It’s going to fall out, you know,” Joanna said softly.

“What?”

“Her hair. It comes in like this when they’re born, then they lose it.” Joelle’s hair was ink black and soft as angora.

“When does it grow back?” Paul asked, even as he wondered if they would be around to see that. He sensed that Joanna might be asking herself the same thing.

“Six months, I think,” she answered. “Around that.”

There was something surreal about their conversation. As if they were having it back home in their apartment, two new parents just like any other new parents, wondering aloud at the miracle that’s their daughter. As if the future stretched limitlessly ahead of them—preschool and kindergarten and grade school. Graduations, confirmations, and birthday celebrations. Girlfriends and boyfriends. Diaries and dance lessons.

Paul understood. They’d have this one night before he left. They’d treat it as normally as possible.

PAUL AND JOANNA SENSED THAT IT WAS MORNING WITHOUT actually knowing it. Their watches had been taken, the windows were boarded up tight. But their bodies had grown attuned to the different times of day, like blind people whose other senses compensate for lost sight. The morning felt different than the night.

This morning felt different than other mornings.

In a little while Paul would be leaving Joanna behind. He’d be leaving the country and leaving her here .

She’d fallen asleep with Joelle in her arms, and sometime later he’d fallen asleep with Joanna in his. When he opened his eyes, it took him several minutes to realize that Joanna was also awake—he could tell by her breathing, neither one evidently ready to face the other.

Not yet.

Then Joanna said, “Good morning.”

“Back to you.”

His arms were numb from holding her all night, but he didn’t dare move them. It might be the last time for a while. It might be the last time, period.

“At least they brought us Joelle,” she whispered. “Maybe they’re not so bad. They didn’t have to do that.”

“They weren’t being kind, Joanna,” he whispered back.

“No? Then why’d they do it?”

“To remind me, I think.”

“Of what?”

“What’s at stake. What I’ll lose if I don’t get the drugs there—if I fuck up. I think they wanted to make her real again for me. That’s all.”

Joanna pressed her back against him, as if trying to burrow right up inside of him.

“Paul,” she said slowly, “if you get there and decide to tell someone, do it. I’ll understand. Maybe they can be negotiated with. Maybe you can give them something in return.”

“Remember the pictures we saw on the airport wall—the deputy mayor of Medellín? They found his head two blocks from the car bomb. I think that’s pretty much how they negotiate. I’m going to deliver the drugs and then they’re going to make that call and they’re going to let you go. You and Joelle.”

They lay there silently for a while.

Then she said:

“Sometimes I think we’ve been pretty unlucky. Sometimes I think just the opposite. We couldn’t have a baby—that was tough, the toughest thing I’ve ever gone through. Before this. I mean who has to go through this ? We’re a newspaper story now, aren’t we? But then, I’ve loved you. All this time I have. And I think you’ve loved me too—despite everything, I do. And that’s lucky, isn’t it? So who knows.”

It was her good-bye to him.

Just in case.

He was trying to think of his good-bye. He was trying to string together the right words to convey the ravenous ache that was gnawing at his insides. He was trying to articulate hope. He was trying to compose himself; to say good-bye without breaking down. There was a shuffle outside the door.

Then it swung open and Arias was there.