When the first police officer reached me, he hit me with a wooden club and knocked me back down to the roof, which was unnecessary, and when I tried to get up, he did it again. The second blow hurt. I reached up to touch the wound and felt it wet with blood. A more senior officer arrived a few moments later, demanding to know who I was and what I was doing. When I told him I was a reporter and handed him my press card, he studied it for a moment and then laughed derisively. “Connard!” he muttered, a vulgar expression that translates roughly as “Stupid cunt!”

The police officer didn’t know what to do with me, so he radioed his boss, who was in the command post across from the restaurant. This gentleman, in turn, apparently wanted to swear at me himself. So the French police sent me back down the metal ladder to the alleyway, and then back along the Rue Lamennais. The little knot of French reporters was still in the same place. As they saw me walk past with my police escort, they shrugged and shook their heads. Several of them actually looked pleased—like trained poodles watching a stray dog carted off to the pound. Fuck them, I thought. At least I wouldn’t end up like that.

I was led up the street, past the restaurant, to a mobile command post that was parked on the Avenue de Friedland. I tried to look inside Taillevent as we passed, but the curtains were all drawn. Except for the floodlights and the cops outside, it might have been just another evening of three-star dining. Inside the police trailer sat a dark little man in plain clothes, who was barking orders into a telephone. He had the intense, Mediterranean features of the Corsicans who were said to dominate the French security services. He glanced at me and the press card I was waving at him, muttered an oath and told one of his aides to take care of my head wound. It was duly cleaned and bandaged in a medical trailer.

After twenty minutes I was returned to the Corsican commander. He was alone in his trailer now, smoking a cigarette. He asked for my identification.

“I should arrest you,” he said after studying the documents. “You are interfering with the police.”

“I should sue you,” I answered. “My head hurts from where your man hit me.”

“What were you doing on the roof of that building?”

“I was doing my job. I wanted to get into the restaurant to interview the hostages and the people holding them.”

“Fous le camp,” he said, shaking his head. Get the fuck out of here. He told me to wait outside until they found a policeman to escort me back to my office.