A few seconds of surprise showed in their dusky faces. Then their tension seemed to lessen. But as they passed him, a warning drifted back—“Go home Français de souche!” The phrase literally meant “French with roots,” slang for ethnic French.

He stared thoughtfully after them, the bulges in the hip pockets of their low-slung jeans revealing what he had suspected—they were carrying knives.

Feeling a chill, Crane reminded himself he had walked into more dicey situations than this. An investigative reporter for Reuters, he seldom talked about his successes, but back in the 1990s he had discovered vital information that helped lead to charges of war crimes against Radovan Karadzic, the alleged architect of Bosnia’s holocaust. Later he uncovered the atrocity-filled Cosa Nostra background of a top Italian presidential candidate, creating headlines across Europe and sending the politician to prison. And last year, while working on a small story he had dug up a large prize—one of Saddam Hussein’s secret caches of gold, despite having three mercenaries on his tail the whole time.

Remembering all of that, the journalist marched resolutely into Les Bosquets, his large feet eating up the distance among the towering maze of dilapidated cement tenements. Pole lamps were alight, the ones that were working. He watched women in hijabs and blousy clothing move languidly in and out of doorways, many holding babies. Radio news in Arabic chattered from an open window. High above, colorful desert robes were draped over balconies, ready to dry in the morning sun.

He sensed no danger, but still he slowed and looked around carefully. He knew he had made no mistake in the directions, but none of the buildings carried anything close to the number he needed.

He forged onward, heading toward the next corner. He turned it in time to see two youths with reckless faces negotiating a drug deal. Watching it from a front stoop was a man in a bushy black beard, who was openly cleaning a 9mm Beretta pistol. The man quickly shifted his gaze to Crane, his sharp brown eyes assessing, a hawk spotting potential prey.

Suddenly the scarred door of the facing building swung open, and three men in denim jeans and short-sleeved shirts swarmed out, cradling sub - machine guns. The weapons were Ingram Model 10s, short, compact and fitted with MAC suppressors, which reduced emergent gas velocity to subsonic level.

Pierre Crane froze.

The pair involved in the drug deal ran in opposite directions. The man with the Beretta vanished indoors. All that remained were the armed trio—and Crane.

As they stared at him, expressions grim, sweat slid down his spine. Hoping they were who he thought they might be, he said the Arabic words he had been told to say: “aaDetni aa’rabba.” I’ve been bitten by a scorpion.