Weiss was furious and wanted to take the case to the United Nations or the International Court of Justice or somebody. But the State Department called Phil Sellinger, the publisher, and advised him that the French had technically been within their rights, and that we would probably be wise to drop the matter. Our own lawyers concurred. In the end, we negotiated a mutual exchange of letters between The New York Mirror and the French Interior Ministry that said absolutely nothing except that I would be allowed to remain in Paris and keep my press credentials.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Weiss. “These people are professional assholes. As far as I’m concerned, you did everything right. I like your hustle. I like your pizzazz. So don’t feel bad. Get some sleep. We love you.”

But I did feel bad. I was convinced that the French government was lying about what had happened that night on the Rue Lamennais, and that they were getting away with it. I tried to contact some of the French hostages, but none of them would agree to be interviewed. Henri, the sommelier, said they had been warned by the DST not to talk to any journalists. What were they hiding? If the hostage rescue was such a glorious triumph, why wouldn’t they let the hostages talk? And for that matter, where were the terrorists themselves? Nobody had seen them, and a rumor was circulating among the Paris press corps that they had secretly been flown back to Africa to “stand trial” there. And finally, what about the money—the billions the terrorists had demanded as the price of surrender?

These mysteries were part of what the French like to call le brouillard, “the fog.” To resolve them, I needed the sort of person known colloquially as un débrouillard—a defogger, literally—a fixer, we would say.

I knew one man in France who fit that description. His name was Ali Aziz. I had met him a decade before in Lebanon, and had maintained regular contact with him ever since. Because of the nature of his business, he knew things that ordinary people didn’t know, especially about West Africa, where he had spent his early years. He lived now in a villa in Cap Ferrat, perhaps the wealthiest enclave on the Riviera. And at that moment, I felt I deserved a vacation in the south of France.

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