But so much has taken place in the months since Arthur Bowman’s funeral, I realize now that I have no alternative but to tell the story as it really happened. And the truth here will be disturbing to many people.

I: PARIS (MAY–JULY 1994)

I

PARIS

MAY–JULY 1994

1

1

At the time I now regard as the beginning of this story, I was working as the Mirror’s bureau chief in Paris. I had been there two years and I was getting bored. I think that may have been a factor in what happened later. Boredom is ordinarily the fuel of journalism; it is the dry powder that, under the right circumstances, ignites into the flame of curiosity that connects a reporter with his story. We need that burst of energy, because despite what people think, journalism is often quite dull. Reporters spend most of their time waiting for things to happen: for a meeting to end; for one of the cops to give you a fill; for the shelling to stop so you can go outside and see what’s left of the city. And we usually accept the waiting and the passivity; it’s like a launchpad before liftoff. But too much boredom can spark too much heat—creating a passion to connect with the story that is consuming, unbounded, uncontrollable. And I suspect that’s what happened in this case.

It was May 1994, two years before the funeral in Lafayette Square. I was driving to a suburban town east of Paris along the Marne River to interview a French scientist named Roger Navarre. The press spokesman for his company had called me a few days before, claiming that their man had discovered a new technique for regenerating brain cells. He made it sound like a new polio vaccine—something that could cure Alzheimer’s disease, prevent Lou Gehrig’s disease, mend severed spinal cords. Our science editor said it would certainly be newsworthy if true—though he doubted it, since the findings hadn’t been published in any of the U.S. medical journals yet—but he wanted to make sure nobody else scooped us. That’s a strange idea when you think about it—the notion of “scooping” another newspaper about a lifesaving scientific breakthrough—but that’s the way the news business works. At the very least, the science editor said, I would get a nice drive in the country and a feature story about the French biotechnology industry. And I was happy enough to do it; there wasn’t much real news in France that the paper cared about anymore. I had been spending most of my time looking for Lifestyle stories about food and wine and French movie stars—and waiting for a plane to crash or a ferryboat to sink, which would at least get me on the front page for a day.