BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- At first, the entrepreneur didn't allow the
                  phone calls past his secretary. But the caller politely persisted and the
                  businessman finally picked up.

                  He wishes he hadn't.

                  On the line was a guerrilla. He was calling via a stolen cellular phone from
                  mountains just outside the capital. He wanted a "contribution" to the cause.

                  Following that call two years ago, the entrepreneur became one of hundreds,
                  perhaps thousands, of businessmen in Bogota who now discreetly make
                  regular extortion payments to the country's largest leftist rebel band, the
                  Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

                  "It's a hush-hush problem, of incalculable criminal proportions," says Juan
                  Mesa, who runs Pais Libre, an independent citizen rights group that keeps
                  track of extortions and kidnappings.

                  Despite living in a country distinguished since the mid-1980s by the world's
                  highest kidnapping rate, Bogota's business class had always lived relatively
                  free from the rebel extortion that has long afflicted ranchers and oilmen in the
                  countryside.

                  That changed roughly two years ago. No longer a refuge, the capital became
                  fertile ground for rebel "tax collectors" demanding payments known
                  euphemistically as "la vacuna," or vaccine.

                  Businessmen were suddenly confronted by a simple fact of an encroaching
                  conflict: Wherever the guerrillas outmuscle the state, they demand their due.

                  Already masters in roughly half of rural Colombia -- and looking for new
                  revenue sources beyond the taxing of illicit drug production and ransom
                  kidnappings -- a handful of enterprising FARC commanders hatched the
                  urban extortion scheme.

                  The risks are minimal. The FARC simply hires criminal bands to do any dirty
                  work -- surveillance, enforcement, abduction of targeted businessmen who
                  refuse to pay. They never need step foot in the capital. Payments are made
                  outside Bogota in rebel-held areas.

                  As the 48-year-old entrepreneur discovered -- after initially resisting
                  payment and contacting law enforcement officials -- the police could not
                  help him. Nor is he wealthy enough to buy a bulletproof car and hire
                  round-the-clock protection for himself and his family.

                  So he decided to pay.

                  "It's the perfect scam," said the entrepreneur, who set strict conditions in
                  talking to The Associated Press: "You can't mention any particulars about
                  me, about my business or my family or I'll be a dead man."

                  This affable man at the height of his earning powers is all frayed nerves and
                  paranoia. His wife is ill, consumed by fear. He worries constantly about his
                  children.

                  "You spend all your days, all your waking hours, thinking about it," he says.
                  "You try to figure out how to get out of it, but in the end you can't. You're
                  trapped."

                  So far, he has paid 40 million pesos -- about $30,000 -- divided into two
                  annual payments. He says he personally knows 20 people who do the same,
                  though the amounts vary.

                  The rebels identify their victims -- factory owners, distributors, restaurant
                  operators -- by consulting business magazines and newspaper society pages
                  and by obtaining membership lists of Colombia's principal trade associations.

                  Gen. Rafael Pardo, national chief of the anti-kidnapping police, says 1,015
                  extortion cases were reported across Colombia in the first 81/2 months of
                  this year, and authorities made 539 arrests in solving nearly half. But Pardo
                  adds that most extortion victims never report the crime.

                  Mesa, of Pais Libre, says he personally knows of between 200 and 300
                  companies that have been approached by rebel extortionists. Some have
                  refused to pay, but executives of some of those companies were kidnapped
                  by guerrillas as a result.

                  As the war intensifies in the countryside, there has also been a 20 percent
                  increase in kidnappings over 1998. Abductions in the capital are more
                  brazen than ever, with at least five committed by men in traffic police
                  uniforms, Mesa says.

                  The rebels have vowed to make Colombia's upper class feel the pain of a
                  conflict whose main victims have long been the rural poor _ and the new
                  rash of extortion in Bogota appears an outgrowth of that strategy.

                  The result of the extortion and kidnappings is a chill on an already moribund
                  economy suffering its deepest recession since the 1930s.

                  "What a lot of the top businessmen who've been extorted by the FARC do
                  is get their families out and come visit once a week to check on their
                  businesses," says Salamon Kalmanovitz, a director of Colombia's central
                  bank.

                  Along with moving their families out of the country, often to Miami, many
                  business people are removing their money, too.

                  Eight businessmen who fled the country because of FARC extortion
                  declined interview requests relayed through religious leaders and other
                  contacts, largely because they hope to return someday.

                  The entrepreneur understands the fear. He says the rebels send spies to
                  keep tabs on their prey, and call periodically to check up. They mention
                  seeing a child at a discotheque. They know where the wife buys groceries.
                  They ask about a recent trip.

                  "Their tone is always very cordial," he says. "What they do is demonstrate
                  that they can come take you at any moment."

                    Copyright 1999 The Associated Press.