“Yes,” spoke up a man from the center of the circle. I hadn’t noticed him before. He had a round, gentle face, with a fringe of unruly curly hair encircling a large bald spot. He was well dressed, in a linen suit, wearing large tortoiseshell glasses.

“What’s your name and where are you from?”

“George Frankheimer. I’m a lawyer, from Washington, D.C. I’m in Paris on business.”

“How did you happen to come to Taillevent today?”

“Just lucky,” he said with a thin smile. “It’s my birthday. I thought I would give myself a treat.”

“What did you have for lunch?” It was a gruesome detail, given the circumstances, but I thought it would interest readers.

“Poached asparagus with truffle juice and rack of lamb with a purée of green beans. Accompanied by a half-bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin.”

“And for dessert?”

“I was just about to order dessert when these gentlemen arrived. I think I would have had the crème brûlée. But I hadn’t decided yet.”

I wrote it all down. There were moments, even in extremis, when a journalist got to hear the sound of one hand clapping.

“How was the food?” I asked.

“Very good. One of the best meals I’ve ever had, actually.”

I briefly interviewed the wealthy French couple, because they demanded it. He was an industrialist from Lyons and still seemed convinced that he could bribe his way out of there; he even offered me cash to get him out. I also tried to interview the Taillevent sommelier, Henri, who was the ranking employee of the restaurant and was wearing his pin of grapes on his lapel, but he was trembling, poor man, and not up to it. A tuxedoed captain spoke up for the employees. He said stoically that the restaurant was very sorry for the inconvenience its guests had experienced—as if this were all the management’s fault—and that he was also sorry for all the people whose dinner reservations for that night had of necessity been canceled.

I looked at my watch again. More than my allotted five minutes had passed. I asked all the hostages to give me their names and addresses, and wrote down all fifteen very carefully. I promised that someone would contact their families to let them know they were safe. That was the least I could do. Then it was time to go.

Dr. Obado led me toward the door, but on the way out the man with the café au lait skin emerged again from wherever he had been hiding.

“Should we let him go?” he asked. “He knows what we look like. He will tell the police.”

“No, I won’t,” I said emphatically. “I don’t work for the police. I work for The New York Mirror. The only people I’m going to talk to are the readers of my newspaper.”

“Bosh!” he said. “What a fairy tale.”