Kidnapped and a Daring Escape (28 page)

    
Then somebody knocks at the door — the agreed code. She did not
hear any footsteps. She rushes to the door, unlocks, and cautiously opens
it a slit. André is outside, smiling, two pieces of luggage in one hand, her
Louis Vuitton
suitcase in the other. She opens the door fully and throws
her arms around his neck, pressing her head against his chest.

    
"Oh, André, you’re back. I sat on the bed during the whole time, trying
to stop my hands from shaking."

    
"Let’s go inside, love," he murmurs.

    
She lets go and then locks the door behind them.

    
He puts the luggage down. The warm smile still lingers on his face. He
does not look any different than usual. So everything must have gone
well, she figures, and exclaims, hugging him again: "I’m so glad you had
no trouble."

    
"Yes, you might call it that," he replies, a twinkle in his eyes.

    
His answer throws her. "Did you have trouble?"

    
"No, not really. By the way, the desk clerk gave me something that
may interest you — a list of unpaid telephone calls made by your group.
I paid them. There are three international calls, two to Italy, one to
Switzerland." He shows her the list. "These two were made the morning
after our kidnapping, the one to Switzerland three days earlier. And all
calls, including local ones, were made from room 217. Was this
Franco’s?"

    
"217. Yes, he was three doors farther down from mine. Let me see."

    
André hands her the list. "Any of the two Italian numbers familiar?"
he questions, as she studies it.

    
"Yes, the second one is to my parents, and the first one is also a Rome
number, but I don’t know whose it could be."

    
"We can quickly find out by calling the number. Let’s see, Rome is six
hours ahead of Colombia and the time is now almost eleven o’clock. So
it’s not quite five in the morning in Rome. Maybe a bit early to call, but
at least we can be sure somebody is at home if it is a private number."

    
"No, we can’t call that early." Her sense of what is proper asserts
itself. "It’s rude."

    
"True, but do we really care. We’ll not identify ourselves."

    
"Still …" She is torn. On the one hand, she can hardly wait to know
whom Franco called in Rome, on the other hand, propriety demands her
to wait.

    
André pulls out a black gadget from his trouser pocket. She recognizes
it as a iPhone. He switches it on for a few seconds and then switches it
off again. It distracts her for a moment. How come he suddenly has one
again? She clearly remembers ‘
la bête
’ taking it from him.

    
"Where did you get this from?"

    
"I got it back from ‘
le trapu
’ alias ‘
la bête
’ fifteen minutes ago or so."

    
He is grinning. Confused, she opens her mouth to reply, but does not
know what to say. His statement does not make any sense. Why would
‘
la bête
’ give it back? "Did you see him?"

    
"Yes."

    
"And he just gave it back to you, like that?"

    
"Oh, it wasn’t quite that simple. He was no longer in a position where
he could protest or do anything, for that matter."

    
"André," she cries in a mixture of outrage and belated fright, "you said
you had no difficulties."

    
"That’s true. I had no difficulties."

    
She notices that his emphasis is on ‘I’, but it does not allay her fright.

    
"André, you’re cruel. Stop talking in riddles. Tell me what happened."

    
"Come, sit with me," he says, guiding her to the bed and sitting down
with her, an arm over her shoulder. He gives her a summary of the
encounter. When she wants to interrupt him, he asks her to listen him out.
As he recounts the events, she goes through a series of conflicting
emotions.

    
"Are they dead?"

    
"Possibly. I don’t know."

    
"Oh, André, why are you always so reckless? You could have been
killed. You must promise me never to do anything of the sort again."

    
"I’ll happily promise never to put myself willingly into such a
situation again."

    
"No, I want you to promise me that you will never be that reckless
again. You could have called the police."

    
"Yes, I would have done that in most countries, but not in a country
like Colombia where even the
Lonely Planet
says that you do this at your
own risk. So, I’ll restate my promise. I will never be that reckless unless
I have no other choice. What else do you suggest I should have done
instead? Just surrender?"

    
"No, come back safely," she replies, turning to him and kissing his
cheek.

    
"That’s what I also wanted … and shall we now make that call or do
you quickly want to look through your suitcase?"

    
"Yes, I’d feel bad waking somebody at this early hour."

    
They both open their suitcases.

    
"You travel light," she comments, surprised by the smallness of his
case, and then chuckles when the first thing she spots on top is his
computer, the identical mini model of the Sony Vaio she has in her own
suitcase.

    
"I have the same machine," she exclaims.

    
"It’s one of the lightest available. That’s why I have it."

    
He starts his up, commenting: "I just want to check whether it
survived the bashing I handed out."

    
They both watch Windows open.

    
"Seems still OK," he comments, shutting it down again.

    
She now searches through her things, looking for her jewelry case.
"My jewelry is missing."

    
"Was it worth much?"

    
"Yes … no, not really, just a few silver pieces. Some have sentimental
value, though."

    
"And it’s not in the handbag either?" He hands her the fancy
Gucci
bag. "Do you have lead in this handbag? What makes it so heavy?"

    
"Nothing I can think of. Why do you ask?"

    
"It just seems unnatural for it to be so heavy unless there are heavy
things inside."

    
She opens the bag and searches through its content. "No jewelry in
here either, and all my perfumes are gone too."

    
"May I take everything out?"

    
"Yes, if you must."

    
He removes a hairbrush, a small make-up kit, two pocket packages of
tissues, and a silk shawl. Nothing weighs much. Then he lifts the empty
bag up again. He hands it to her. "Hold it. Has it always been that
heavy?"

    
She takes it, surprised by its weight. "I can’t tell … I never really
noticed before. It was always full, but it seems heavy for an empty bag.
Is it the leather that makes it so?"

    
"The question is: is it really empty?"

    
"What do you mean?"

    
He does not answer, but inspects the bag from all sides. Then he
presses a hand on the outside and inside of its stiff bottom. "This is about
two centimeters thick," he comments. "I would have thought that a one-
to two-millimeter board of some stiff and light material should provide
enough support."

    
"What are you implying, André?" Seeing his somber face, she
suddenly feels apprehensive.

    
"I’m wondering whether there is more than simply a reinforcing board
hidden in the bottom of this bag."

    
"What do you mean? What else could be in there?"

    
"That’s what I would like to find out. Will you let me check what’s
underneath the lining?"

    
"Why? It would wreck the bag."

    
"Yes, it would, but I think there may be something hidden in its
bottom. That is why I want to check."

    
"If you must." But she does not like the idea. It is a very expensive
bag, a gift from her father.

    
He inspects all the seams and joints of the inside lining. "I can’t find
any obvious signs that is was tampered with." His eyes light up as if
some revelation has occurred to him. "Bianca, have a careful look at this
bag. Is it really yours?"

    
"I think so. It looks like mine."

    
"Can you remember whether yours had any blemishes, a scratch or any
other distinctive marks in the leather?"

    
She thinks about it for a moment. "Yes, I once spilled part of a bottle
of cologne in it and it left a slight ring where it dried."

    
"Can you find it?"

    
She takes the bag to the light and searches in all four corners. "It isn’t
there. I clearly remember seeing it when I emptied the bag after our
return from the
Ciudad Perdida
… You think somebody substituted a
different bag for mine?"

    
"Yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is another of Franco’s nasty
deeds." He pauses for a moment. "There is one more thing about that
encounter in the Alcazar Bar that I now remember and never told you
about. When I saw ‘
le trapu
’ enter, he was carrying a dark-colored lady’s
handbag like this one. When he left, he was empty-handed. Sometime
toward the end of the conversation between him and ‘
le richard
’ I heard
the latter ask: ‘Is it a genuine
Gucci
?’ and later he said: ‘Here is the
agreed sum.’ When I saw him, walk out, he was carrying the bag. So it
is fair to assume they exchanged the bag as part of a drug deal …
Meade
,
if it is what I think it is, namely cocaine, we would have been in serious
trouble if we had shown up with this at the airport. It would have
guaranteed us free meals and lodging for the next ten to twenty years in
a Colombian jail."

    
"You mean Franco substituted bags and planned that I carry a bag full
of drugs across borders?" A sudden shiver of hot and cold goes down her
spine. She slumps back onto the bed, pressing both hands to her chest,
taking deep breaths.

    
"Yes, on substituting bags, but no on you taking it across borders. I
guess he thought that after the kidnapping your things would simply be
shipped back as freight to Rome where he planned to intercept your bag
and retrieve the stuff. He never expected that you would take it across a
border in person. I doubt that he would have been that mean or that
stupid."

    
"This proves again that he expected me to be killed. Oh, André, what
are we going to do?"

    
"We are going to flush that stuff down the toilet and dump the bag in
the rubbish. I don’t want to run the risk of being stopped, body searched,
interrogated, and detained for several days at every customs check."

    
"Would we?"

    
"Yes, there always remain residual traces of the stuff that any sniffer
dog will detect."

    
He sits next to her and takes her hands. She puts her head on his
shoulder. Her mind is in renewed turmoil. Franco really expected that she
would disappear without a trace. Why did she fail to see behind his
mask? Why had she been so blind and not noticed that his vague
assertion of devotion to her were false, that all he was after was her
money? She loathes herself for having fallen for him. Then another
thought occurs to her. Did he organize this South American study tour
just to have her kidnapped? All his previous archaeology tours had
always been to Greece, Turkey, Jordan or Egypt. This was his first to
South America. Did he start planning this shortly after they got engaged,
almost a year ago? She suddenly sits upright and takes a deep breath. I
will pay him back. "No, we’re not going to flush that stuff down the
toilet. We’re going to mail the bag to Franco, as a gift."