06.2 Ransom

A glimmer of hope when police called to say his Ferrari had been located but it’d not be collected immediately from an undisclosed location. It’d be observed. Observed! Normally they leave them to rust. Lucero was sent home in Belgrano on Thursday. He could barely meet an eye with his kids or his wife, the employer or a client. He stayed home indisposed. Even if he had to face the worse, it’d be at home.

He proposed because she was a natural blonde. Savannah had broken every piece of vase or glass she could get her hands on. “Qué Cabrón!” Nothing could stop her.

Nothing did until Friday she collected a paper on the doorstep – a copy of Cruzado. A paper they never took interest, never ordered, never read. On the front page it was Maradona arrested by the police that morning. He was in Argentina after the Italian Football Federation suspended him tested positive for cocaine. On the third page, it displayed a half-page image of a woman lying on a beach – bare naked.

A black-and-white photograph printed on paper in fine grain that of Marina – the one her husband was having a secret affair with and busted. Nobody would read this article in Cruzado that day. Nobody could even cross an eye on the picture. All the newspapers, and for that matter a lot in the country, talked about Maradona.

Somewhere in Buenos Aires, Jamal saw the paper. He was reading this article instead that of the football star. He murmured, “Son of a bitch! Diego…” and correctly pronounced the last name, “Lopez!” He passed this black-and-white photograph to Lopez but passed no raw print to Roco.

Who else read? A bale purchased by a top-notch hotel in La Recoleta where the Arabs arrived in style – The Grand Palace.

In the Medina of Marrakech, thousands of miles away in Morocco, a family sat around the telephone to weep. Marina’s parents and siblings; three brothers and two sisters. The youngest in the family, Calima, returned from Barcelona after hearing the sad news that her sister gone missing. She was twenty-two and studying architecture in Spain. She was in the payroll of Zaid Falak’s fellowship scheme. And this larger-than-life house in the heart of the densely packed medina was his dowry to wed Marina. All this fortune came from the eldest daughter of El Mazarie who were indigenously farmers living in the cold mountains. For this reason, they all treated her with deep respect though she was scarce for seventeen years.

Seventeen years ago, one day, a group of nomads from Mashriq arrived in Maghreb on an excursion to catch the snow on the Atlas Mountains. That cold dry night they pitched a tent next to the farmer’s hut. El Mazarie kindly offered some delicacy his family prepared. For his delight – his smile could tell. And a peasant girl entered the light carrying papa’s food tray on her head in a rustic black skirt and a white linen blouse.

She did not like the way that man in the middle stared her down from head to toe. She wasn’t bothered. She was too young to bother but looked mature. She just did not like him.

Zaid Falak was thirty-four. The sun did not set on the coast of Atlantic next day before the mazarie agree with a house in the medina. And the rest was history.

This family was very disconnected and they did not get a call from anyone to tell what was happening. They were all waiting for that call. And when it rang it always happened to be the foreign office in Rabat.

Monday, this family received mail from The Grand Palace in Buenos Aires; copies of various Argentinean newspapers narrating the kidnapping. Among these journals was a copy of Cruzado.