Since no one has answered - figured to throw in my 2 cents.

I looked at termcap on my server (Solaris) and it doesn't have control characters - it does have ^J and others, but if you move the cursor across them, they are each two characters, the ^ and then the letter. So double check that these are actually escape characters. If not, you don't need the next part.

But, in vi, you can add a control character. Go into Input mode and use the Control key and V together and then use the Control key and the letter you need.