Mai-Britt laughed. “Let me guess. You're flying to L.A. on business.”
Henri grinned. “That's a very good guess. But that's tomorrow, Mai-Britt. Have you had dinner?”
“Just little bites in the market.”
“There's a place close by that few people know. Very exclusive and a little risqué. Are you up for an adventure?”
“You are taking me to dinner?” Mai-Britt asked.
“Are you saying yes?”
The street was lined with open-air restaurants. They passed the boisterous bars and nightspots on Selekam Road and headed to an almost hidden doorway that opened into a Japanese restaurant, the Edomae.
The maitre d' walked Henri and Mai-Britt into the glowing, green-glass-lined interior, partitioned with aquariums of jewel-colored fish from floor to ceiling.
Mai-Britt suddenly grabbed Henri's arm, making him stop so she could really see.
“What are they doing?”
She jutted her chin toward the naked girl lying gracefully on the sushi bar and a customer drinking from the cup made by the cleft of her closed thighs.
“It's called wakesame,” Henri explained. “It means 'floating seaweed.' ”
“Hah! That is quite new to me,” she said. “Have you done that, Paul?”
Henri winked at her, then pulled out a chair for his dinner companion who was not just beautiful, but had a daring streak, was willing to try the horsemeat sashimi and the edomae, the raw, marinated fish that the restaurant was named for.
Henri had already fallen half in love with her – when he noticed the eyes of a man at another table fixed on him.
It was a shock, as though someone had dumped ice down the back of his shirt. Carl Obst. A man Henri had known many years ago, now sitting with a lady-boy, a high-priced, very polished, transvestite prostitute.
Henri was sure that his own looks had changed so much that Obst wouldn't recognize him. But it would be very bad if he did.
Obst's attention swung back to his lady-boy, and Henri let his eyes slip away from Obst. Henri thought he was safe, but his good mood was gone.
The enchanting young woman and the rare and beautiful setting faded as his thoughts were hurled back to a time when he was dead – and yet somehow he still breathed.
Chapter 61
Henri had told Marty Switzer that being in an isolation cell was like being inside his own bowel. It was that dark and stinking, and that's where the analogy ended. Because nothing Henri had ever seen or heard about or imagined could be compared to that filthy hole.
It had started for Henri before the Twin Towers came down, when he was hired by Brewster-North, a private military contractor that was stealthier and deadlier than Blackwater.
He'd been on a reconnaissance mission with four other intelligence analysts. As the linguist, Henri was the critical asset.
His unit had been resting in a safe house when their lookout was gutted outside the door where he stood guard. The rest of the team was taken captive, beaten just short of death, and locked away in a prison with no name.
By the end of his first week in hell, Henri knew his captors by name, their tics and preferences. There was the Rapist, the one who sang while hanging his prisoners like spiders, their arms chained above their heads for hours. Fire liked to use burning cigarettes; Ice drowned prisoners in freezing cold water. Henri had long conversations with one soldier, Cocktease, who made tantalizing offers of phone calls, and letters home, and possible freedom.
There were the brutes and the ones who were more refined, but all the guards were sadistic. Had to give credit where it was due. They all really enjoyed their work.
One day Henri's schedule was changed.
He was taken from his cell and kicked into the corner of a windowless room – along with the three remaining men from his unit, all bloodied, with broken bones and oozing sores.
Bright lights flashed on, and when Henri could finally see he took in the cameras and the half-dozen hooded men lined up against a wall.
One of those men grabbed his cellmate and friend Marty Switzer, pulled him to the center of the room, and hauled him to his feet.
Switzer answered their questions, saying that he was Canadian, twenty-eight, that his parents and girlfriend lived in Ottawa, that he was a military operative. Yes, he was a spy.
He lied as expected, saying that he was being treated well, and then one of the hooded men threw Switzer to the ground, lifted his head by his hair, and drew a serrated knife across the back of his neck. Blood spouted, and there was a chorus of the takbir: Allahu Akbar. Allah is great.
Henri was transfixed by how easily Switzer's head had been severed with a few saws of the blade, an act both infinite and quick.
When the executioner held up Switzer's head for the camera, his friend's expression of despair was fixed on his face. Henri had thought to call out to him – as though Marty could still speak.
There was one other thing that Henri could never forget. How as he waited to die, he felt a flush of excitement. He couldn't understand the emotion, and he couldn't put it down. As he lay on the killing floor, he had wondered if he was elated because soon he'd be free of his misery.
Or maybe he'd just realized who he really was, and what was at his core.
He got a thrill from death – even his own.
Chapter 62
Fresh tea was poured into his cup at the Edomae, and Henri came back to the present; he thanked the waiter automatically. He sipped the tea but couldn't entirely pull himself back from the memory.
He thought of the hooded tribunal, the headless body of a man who'd been his friend, the stickiness of the killing floor. His senses had been so acute then; he could hear the electricity singing in the light fixtures.
He had kept his eyes on the remaining men in his unit as they were separated from the heap. Raymond Drake, the former marine from Alabama who screamed for God to help him. The other boy, Lonnie Bell, an ex-SEAL from Louisiana, who was in shock and never said a word, never even screamed.
Both men were beheaded to exultant cries, and then Henri was dragged by his hair to the bloody center of the room. A voice came out of the darkness beyond the lights.
“Say your name for the camera. Say where you are from.”
He answered in Arabic, “I will be armed and waiting for you in hell. Send my bottomless contempt to Saddam.”
They laughed. They mocked his accent. And then, with the smell of shit in his nostrils, Henri was blindfolded. He waited to be shoved to the ground, but instead a coarse blanket was thrown over his head.
He must have passed out because when he awoke, he was tied with ropes and folded into the rear of a vehicle in which he rode for hours. Then he was dumped at the Syrian border.
He was afraid to believe it, but it was true.
He was alive. He was alive.
“Tell the Americans what we have done, infidel. What we will do. At least you try to speak our language.”
A boot struck him hard in the lower back, and the vehicle sped away.
He returned to the United States through an underground chain of friendly back doors from Syria to Beirut, where he got new documentation, and by cargo plane from Beirut to Vancouver. He hitched a ride to Seattle, stole a car, and made his way to a small mining town in Wisconsin. But Henri didn't contact his controller at Brewster-North.
He never wanted to see Carl Obst again.
Still, Brewster-North had done great things for Henri. They'd eradicated his past when they hired him, had thoroughly expunged his real name, his fingerprints, his entire history from the records. And now he was presumed dead.
He counted on that.
Across from him now, inside an exclusive Japanese club in Thailand, the lovely Mai-Britt had noticed that Henri's mind had drifted far away from her.