Arthur Hailey - Evening News

”We will register, “Partridge said, "and we will not be back."

At the end, without great conviction, the juez wished them, 'Il Que vivan los novios!”They had the feeling he had said it many times before.

Both then and later, Partridge wondered how Gemma, who unhesitatingly agreed to a civil ceremony, reconciled it with her religion. She had been born Catholic and her early education, she had told him, was at a Sacre Coeur school. But each time he asked, she merely shrugged and said, "God will understand.”It was, he supposed, typical of a casualness many Italians had about religion. He had once heard someone say that Italians always assumed God to be Italian too.

Inevitably, aboard the papal airplane the news of the marriage spread—as the London Times correspondent put it, quoting Revelation, faster than "the four winds of the earth.”In the press section, after takeoff from Panama, a celebratory party was held with great quantities of champagne, liquor and caviar. As much as their duties allowed, the pursers and cabin crew joined in and told Gemma there would be no work for her through the remainder of that day. Even the Alitalia captain left the flight deck briefly to come back with congratulations.

Amid the revelry and good wishes, Partridge sensed strong doubts by some that the marriage would last, but also among the men, a feeling of envy.

Notably, but not surprisingly, there was no representation at the party from the ecclesiastics, and for the remainder of the trip Partridge was aware of their coolness and disapproval Whether or not the Pope was ever informed of what had happened was something none of the journalists learned, despite inquiries. However, on that journey the Pope did not visit the press section again.

In the limited time they were able to spend together, Partridge and Gemma began planning for their future.

* * *

In a New York hotel room . . . slowly, sadly . . . the image of Gemma faded. The present replaced the past. At last, exhausted, Harry Partridge slept.

In the kidnappers' Hackensack base Miguel received a message by telephone at 7:30 Saturday morning. He took the call in a small room on the first floor of the main building, which he had kept for himself as an office and for sleeping.

Of the six portable cellular phones the group had used, one was earmarked to receive special calls, the number known only to those with authority to make them. Miguel always kept that phone close to him.

The caller, following orders, was using a public pay phone so the call could not be traced, in or out.

Miguel, alert and waiting, had been expecting the call for the past hour. He picked up the handset on the first ring and answered, "Si?”

The caller then challenged him with a prearranged code word, "Tiempo?” to which Miguel responded, "Reldmpago.”

There was an alternative reply. If Miguel's answer to the query "weather?” had been "thunder” instead of "lightning,” it would have meant that, for whatever reason, his group required a twenty-four hours' delay. As it was, "relampago” conveyed: "We are ready to go. Name place and time.”

The crucial message followed: "Sombrero profundo sur twenty hundred.”

Sombrero was Teterboro Airport, slightly more than a mile away, profundo sur the airport's southern end gate. The words "twenty hundred” indicated the time—2000 hours or 8 p.m.when the kidnap victims and those to accompany them would board a Colombia—registered Learjet 55LR which would he there, waiting. The 55, as Miguel already knew, was a larger model with a more spacious interior than the familiar 20 and 30 series Lears. The LR signified Long Range.

Miguel acknowledged curtly, " Lo comprendo , “and the conversation ended.

The caller had been another diplomat, this time attached to the Colombian Consulate General in New York; he had been a conduit for messages since Miguel's arrival in the United States a month earlier. Both the Peruvian and Colombian diplomatic corps were riddled with defectors, either Sendero Luminoso sympathizers or on the Medellin cartel payroll, sometimes both, and performing their double-crosses for the large amounts of money which Latin American drug lords paid.

After receiving the call, Miguel walked through the house and buildings and informed the others, though preparations for departure were already in hand and each group member knew what was required. Those to travel on the Learjet, accompanying the kidnap victims in their caskets, were Miguel, Baudelio, Socorro and Rafael. Julio would remain behind in the United States, resuming his previous identity and becoming, once more, a Medellin cartel sleeping agent. Carlos and Luis would quietly leave the country within the next few days, flying separately to Colombia.

Julio, Carlos and Luis, though, had a concluding duty after the Learjet had gone: to disperse the remaining vehicles and abandon them.

Miguel had given considerable thought about what to do with the Hackensack hideaway. He had considered, as a final act, burning the whole place down, vehicles with it. The collection of buildings was old and would go up like a furnace, especially with the help of gasoline.

But a fire would draw attention and, if investigated, the ashes might yield clues. While in some ways it wouldn't matter since everyone would be gone, it went against reason to make things easier for the American law agencies. So the idea of a fire was out.

If they simply vacated the building, leaving it as it was, their use of the place as a kidnap way station might not be discovered for weeks or months, perhaps never. But that required the disposition of the vehicles—driving them all in different directions for a good distance and then abandoning them. True, there were risks involved, specifically for those who would drive the three cars, the GMC truck and the hearse, but Miguel believed they weren't great. In any case it was what he had decided on.

He encountered Rafael first and told him, "We leave here this evening at 7:40.”

The burly handyman-mechanic, who was in the outbuilding they used as a paint shop, grunted and nodded, seeming more interested in the GMC truck, which he had repainted the day before. The former white truck with the legend "Superbread” had been transformed to an almost totally black one with the name "Serene Funeral Homes” in discreet gold lettering on both sides.

Miguel had ordered the change himself. Satisfied, he told Rafael, " Bien hecho! A pity it will only be used once.”

The big man swung around, clearly pleased, a slight smile on his scarred and brutish face. It was strange, Miguel thought, that Rafael who could be so savage in action, taking demoniac delight in inflicting suffering or killing, at other moments behaved like a child in need of approval.

Miguel pointed to the truck's New Jersey license plates.”These are fresh ones?”

Again Rafael nodded.”From the last set. Ain't been used yet, an' I switched the others.”

It meant that all five remaining vehicles now had license plates which could not have been seen during the Larchmont surveillance, so that driving and abandoning them would be that much safer.

Miguel went outside to where, within a cluster of trees, Julio and Luis were digging a deep hole. The ground was wet from yesterday's rain and the work heavy going. Julio was using his spade to sever a rugged tree root and, seeing Miguel, he stopped, wiped his swarthy, sweating face with a sleeve, and cursed.

” Pinche abrol! This is shit work—for oxen, not men.”

On the point of snapping back an obscenity, Miguel checked himself. The ugly knifing scar on Julio's face was turning crimson, a signal of the man's foul temper and that he was spoiling for a fight.