Kidnaped.

Before landing at Munich, the Alitalia jetliner slowly circled the lighted city. Through the window I saw the avenues and squares of a great city in holiday mood: it was Carnival Night, which nowhere in Germany, aside from Cologne, is celebrated with more enthusiasm and joy.

I didn’t know then, having just spent more than a fortnight in Rome with my wife and daughters—during which time I had received no mail—that the important German newspaper Deutsche Zeitung had revealed, in its issue of February 21, that a commando group of French secret service agents, the ones they call “barbouzes” today, had been sent to Munich to try to capture me. As the plane circled for the landing, I hoped I would see my old friend N in Munich. Above all, my thoughts were of my wife Fouri, an Iranian, and the two daughters she had given me in thirteen years of marriage: Marie-Claire, eleven, whom we call Chabiche and Catherine, nine, whom we call Kabi; the people I love most in the world and who have been the major joy of my hard life as soldier, outlaw and political refugee.

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Antoine Argoud

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Before landing at Munich, the Alitalia jetliner slowly circled the lighted city. Through the window I saw the avenues and squares of a great city in holiday mood: it was Carnival Night, which nowhere in Germany, aside from Cologne, is celebrated with more enthusiasm and joy.

I didn’t know then, having just spent more than a fortnight in Rome with my wife and daughters—during which time I had received no mail—that the important German newspaper Deutsche Zeitung had revealed, in its issue of February 21, that a commando group of French secret service agents, the ones they call “barbouzes” today, had been sent to Munich to try to capture me. As the plane circled for the landing, I hoped I would see my old friend N in Munich. Above all, my thoughts were of my wife Fouri, an Iranian, and the two daughters she had given me in thirteen years of marriage: Marie-Claire, eleven, whom we call Chabiche and Catherine, nine, whom we call Kabi; the people I love most in the world and who have been the major joy of my hard life as soldier, outlaw and political refugee.