I spent that night in a hotel room, which I had booked under a false name. I wasn’t really frightened anymore, but there was something to be said for staying out of harm’s way. And I truly wanted to hide. In all the great events of my life, from winning my first big tennis tournament to graduating from college, my way of celebrating has been to disappear. My own satisfaction in those moments is sweeter than any words I might hear from others.

Libération chimed in the next morning, with its own detailed dossier of what was now being called L’Affaire Costa. The other French newspapers and magazines followed, as did the American press. By that weekend the Mirror had lots of company. The next week, the crisis was resolved in a characteristic French way. Maurice Costa resigned as minister of defense. Thereupon, he was immediately appointed by the Élysée Palace to head a new commission to be called France 2000 that would plan for the twenty-first century. His first trip would be to visit old friends in Africa, and then he would travel on to Beijing.

8

8

I was a hero. It is immodest to say so, but it was true. My story had toppled a powerful French politician and altered, in at least a minor way, the conduct of French politics. Because of my reportorial antics, I had also become part of the story. With my editors’ blessing, I appeared on Nightline and was profiled in the press sections of both Time and Newsweek. People magazine sent out a photographer, but they were running their special “High School Sweethearts” issue that week—with pictures of Hollywood stars and the people they took to the senior prom—so they never ran the article about me.

Ed Weiss was happy as the proverbial pig in shit. He gloried in moments like this. He embraced any opportunity to talk about the Mirror’s big scoop, and made a point of showing reporters who came calling the two now famous cables—his ordering me home and my “message unreceived” response—which he had framed and put on the wall of his office. Weiss said he planned to nominate me for a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk award. As things turned out, the Pulitzer was a long shot—that was the year the world learned the truth about Bosnian death camps, and it was assumed the prize would go to the reporter who did the most to uncover them—but Weiss said I had a lock on the Polk, which was named for a journalist who had gotten killed in the line of duty. I seemed to be their kind of guy.