Go! It was like jumping off a high dive. You either did it, or you didn’t. A jolt of electricity shot through my legs as I bolted from the shadows and turned the corner into the Rue Lamennais. The black awning was fifteen yards away, ten, five. The French police were screaming at me to stop, a siren behind me was sounding, and I heard a gun go off—a warning shot, thank God, and then another. I kept running. The heavy glass door of the restaurant was opening, the screams and sirens outside were getting louder. In a moment, I was inside the door.

“Bravo!” came a voice from inside the restaurant, and then another, and some cheers. The reaction of the people inside—hostage takers and hostages alike—was that I was very brave and very stupid.

3

3

The man who opened the door was a heavyset West African, with skin as dark as a bar of unsweetened chocolate. He escorted me down a paneled hallway into the main dining room, where the hostages were still shouting about my sudden visit. They were gathered in a circle on the floor, their hands tied behind their backs. The group was split about evenly between members of the restaurant staff—dressed in tuxedos or white coats, depending on their station—and diners who had been unlucky enough to have booked a table for a late lunch that afternoon. Facing them on three sides were men holding guns—a spindly black man, an Arab with sunken cheeks and pockmarked skin and a wild-eyed European who looked as if he were auditioning for the part of Jesus Christ.

“Quiet!” shouted the long-haired European guard, and the hostages immediately fell silent. They looked up at me now imploringly, desperately—imagining that I was somehow going to deliver them from their fate.

I surveyed the dining room. It had the feel of a wealthy gentleman’s library, paneled in dark wood with blue banquettes and crisp white tablecloths. The decorations were an eclectic mix that might have come from a French estate: Chinese lamps, dark oil paintings of French lords and ladies, fine old porcelain displayed in wooden cabinets, fresh-cut daisies on each table, and at each place a profusion of china, wine goblets and silver flatware. On a few of the plates you could still see the remnants of the exquisite meals these poor diners had been eating before the terrorists burst in the door and seized control of the place. A silver dustpan and brush, normally used to sweep up crumbs from the white tablecloths, lay askew on one of the tables.

The heavyset African man looked nervously at his watch. A pistol was tucked into his pants, half hidden by the bulge of his stomach. “Now you are here, my friend, what do you want?”