MOST AIXOIS TENDED to turn up their nose at Marseilles. Paul Martineau had always been seduced by it. The port city the Greeks had called Massalia was now the second largest in France, and it remained the point of entry for the majority of immigrants to the country, most of whom now came from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Divided roughly in half by the thunderous boulevard de la Canebière, it had two distinct faces. South of the boulevard, on the edge of the old port, lay a pleasant French city with broad pedestrian walks, exclusive shopping streets, and esplanades dotted with outdoor cafés. But to the north were the districts known as Le Panier and the Quartier Belsunce. Here it was possible to walk the pavements and hear only Arabic. Foreigners and native Frenchmen, easy prey for street criminals, rarely strayed into the Arab neighborhoods after dark.

Paul Martineau had no such misgivings about his security. He left his Mercedes on the boulevard d’Anthènes, near the base of the steps that led to the St-Charles train station, and set out down the hill toward rue de la Canebière. Before reaching the thoroughfare he turned right, into a narrow street called the rue des Convalescents. Barely wide enough to accommodate a car, it sloped downward toward the port, into the heart of the Quartier Belsunce.

It was dark in the street, and Martineau, at his back, felt the first gusts of a mistral. The night air smelled of charcoal smoke and turmeric and faintly of honey. A pair of old men, seated on spindly chairs outside the doorway of a tenement house, shared a hubble-bubble water pipe and studied Martineau indifferently as he trod past. A moment later a soccer ball, deflated and nearly the color of the pavement, bounded toward him out of the darkness. Martineau put a foot on it and sent it adroitly back in the direction from which it came. It was scooped up by a sandaled boy, who, upon seeing the tall stranger in Western clothes, turned and vanished into the mouth of an alleyway. Martineau had a vision of himself, thirty years earlier. Charcoal smoke, turmeric, honey . . . For an instant he felt as though he was walking the streets of south Beirut.

He came to the intersection of two streets. On one corner was a shwarma stand, on another a tiny café that promised Cuisine Tunisienne. A trio of teenage boys eyed Martineau provocatively from the doorway of the café. In French he wished them good evening, then lowered his gaze and turned to the right.