I hurt all over, but my biggest worry at that point, honestly, was how to get back to the bureau in time to file. There is nothing worse—absolutely nothing—than having a great story, for which you have taken considerable risks, and being unable to get it out. Back in Beirut, I used to save my biggest bribes for the hotel telex operator and, when necessary, I would punch the tape myself, my martini glass rattling on top of the telex console.

They held me all night on the Rue Nélaton. A tired-looking cop with big jowls and a dumpy suit came into the room after a few minutes, looked at me and shook his head. “Tu es vraiment dans la merde,” he said, which meant, more or less, “You are up to your eyeballs in shit.”

I gave him the list of hostages—which seemed only fair—but that just whetted his appetite. He questioned me for hours about what I had seen and heard inside the building. When I wouldn’t answer, he accused me of being part of the terrorist group and told me that the penalty for such crimes in France was death by guillotine, which presumably was meant to frighten me but sounded, in the moment, entirely absurd and caused me to laugh aloud. He asked me a long string of specific questions about Monsieur Afrique and Dr. Obado and what subject the doctor taught in the Ivory Coast, and it gradually dawned on me that they must have planted a microphone inside, and that they probably already had a transcript of everything I’d said. The only question I answered was whether I had actually seen the radioactive material they supposedly were going to use to poison the hostages, and that was easy. I said “No.”

Midnight, the deadline set by the terrorists, came and went. My interrogator wouldn’t answer my questions about what was happening back at Taillevent. I pleaded with him to let me file something—anything—for the paper or at least call New York and let them know I was all right. He found my notion that I had any rights in this situation contemptible. “Tu me fais chier,” he said. “You make me shit.”

They finally released me just after noon. I was taken downstairs to a magistrate, who said the authorities had concluded that I was not a terrorist, and that therefore the charges against me were being dropped. He wanted me to sign some papers, but I refused to sign anything unless I could talk to a lawyer, so he just let me go. It was obvious they wanted me out of there. I was a potential embarrassment.