Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [33]
Part Two
Deliberation
3
Fear
The Body and Mind of a Hostage
THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC’S embassy in Bogotá, Colombia, occupied a large but rather shabby building outside of the usual diplomatic enclave. It would take U.S. ambassador Diego Asencio, his driver, and four bodyguards at least half an hour to drive there. But the Dominican ambassador was celebrating his country’s independence day, and by tradition, every diplomat attended everyone else’s party. Besides, it was Asencio’s job to pan for treasure at cocktail parties. There was always the chance he would carry home some small rumor, floated theory, or unkind whisper that might prove valuable.
At age forty-eight, Asencio was “used to the low lighting of comfortable offices,” as he would later put it. He had grown up in working-class Newark, New Jersey, the son of Spanish immigrants. Through charm, hard work, and fluent Spanish, he managed to tunnel his way into the squirearchy of diplomacy. He graduated from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. Then he worked in embassies in Mexico, Panama, Brazil, and Venezuela before going to Colombia. Around the State Department, Asencio was known as a gregarious, pipe-smoking character unafraid to offer his opinion on delicate matters. He liked dirty jokes, “the dirtier the better,” according to one newspaper account from the time. By February 27, 1980, the day of the party, he had been the U.S. Ambassador to Colombia for two and a half years.
Asencio swept into the party around noon with a short agenda: greet the host, say hello to a few friends, and then gracefully exit in time for lunch. About sixty people had already arrived. The banter, as usual at such functions, was collegial but calculated. Asencio began making his rounds. Ambassadors from Israel, the Soviet Union, Egypt, and Switzerland, as well as the pope’s representative, exchanged kisses and handshakes and picked at the canapés. Around the time the Venezuelan ambassador pulled Asencio aside to debate a proposal affecting the local beef industry, Asencio sensed it was time to go. He started to glide toward the door and compose his good-byes.
Just then, two well-dressed couples walked in through the front door, past Asencio’s armored Chrysler Imperial limousine and his bodyguards. The couples wore unusually serious expressions for such an affair, but attracted no special attention. There were bound to be a few professional party crashers in attendance—a tradition at diplomatic functions in Colombia.
But the four young arrivals were members of M-19, a group of violent, nationalist rebels, and they had come to take the diplomats hostage. Lining up in the front of the room, they opened up their jackets, pulled pistols from their belts, and started firing at the ceiling. There was total quiet at first, as plaster fell to the floor. Then a few women started screaming. Men shouted. Despite his rather portly build, Asencio did not hesitate. He dove to the ground and crawled between a sofa and a wall. Others did nothing at all, silently watching the world collapse around them.
From the ground, as the gunfire continued, Asencio looked up to see his host, the Dominican ambassador, run shrieking from the room—followed immediately by the countershriek of his wife, who yelled, “Mallol, act like a man!” and sent her husband spinning back inside. Meanwhile, another twelve young people who had been casually kicking a soccer ball around across the street ran into the embassy, pulling shotguns, carbines, and pistols from their gym bags and firing at Asencio’s bodyguards outside the door.
The security men returned fire, but they were now badly outnumbered. As the sixteen terrorists barricaded themselves inside the embassy, the cacophony of screaming,