“What if they don’t pay?”

“We will kill the hostages. Too bad. Very bad. But the French know. They will pay.” He tried to laugh, as if it were all a joke. I looked down at the poor folks on the floor. I hated to add to their misery, but I had to do my job.

“How will you kill them?”

“We will make them eat what our brothers and sisters in the jungles must eat. The wastes of French nuclear weapons tests. We have brought them from the desert. These wastes have been killing our people, and now they will kill yours, too, unless the French pay us the money.”

At this, one of the hostages—a woman in her fifties, dressed in a Chanel suit and an Hermès scarf—started to moan softly. Her husband began moaning, too, pleading for her life. The captors appeared unmoved, except for the thin black man who had been helping guard the hostages. He moved away from the group and toward me. Monsieur Afrique tried to wave him away, but he was intent.

“I will explain more about Vert/Vertu, sir, so you will understand us better,” he said. “My name is Dr. Obado. I am a professor of biology. I don’t care if you know that. Come with me into the other room, where we can talk.” He beckoned for me to follow. Monsieur Afrique wasn’t happy, but he didn’t stop him.

Dr. Obado sat me down in the outer dining area, a brighter room decorated with beige curtains. He had a wispy, unkempt beard and sharp eyes that were shielded by thick glasses. Where Monsieur Afrique had the easy, languid movements of a man who enjoyed the pleasures of the world, Obado had the austere intensity of an ideologue, a man who believed in abstractions.

“I am the founder of Vert/Vertu,” he said ceremoniously. “I am from Abidjan, in the Ivory Coast. My colleague, who calls himself Monsieur Afrique, is from Gabon. He and these other men asked to join me in Vert/Vertu. They know far more about the world than I do, so I agreed. They are the muscle. I am the brain, and the soul. We do not have thousands of members, unfortunately, but we have the strength of our ideas!”