Swimsuit

Chapter 59

Henri woke up alone, hearing the chimes, then calling out, “Come in.”

A girl with a red flower in her hair entered, bowed, and served his morning meal on a bed tray: nam prik – rice noodles in a chili and peanut sauce – plus fresh fruit and a pot of strong black tea.

Henri's mind was churning as he ate, thinking over the night before, getting ready to edit his video for the Alliance.

Taking his tea to the desk, he called up the raw footage on his laptop, scrolled through the scene of the massage. He cut away to the shots of water flowing into the soaking tub under the round eye of the skylight, putting a title over the ru

His next scene was a loving and long tracking shot starting at the boys' i

When his own face showed on the screen, Henri used the blur tool to obscure his features as he lifted and lowered the boys into the bath. This shot was a beauty.

He cut and pasted the next sequence, making sure to edit the action so that it appeared seamless: a tight shot on his hands holding down the boys' heads as they fought and floundered, the bubbles coming from their mouths, then angles on their bodies floating, ochiba shigure, Japanese for “like leaves floating on a pond.”

Next a jump cut to Sakda's slack face, droplets of water clinging to his hair and skin. Then the camera pulled back to reveal both boys lying limp on chaises beside the tub, their arms and legs splayed out as if in a dance.

A fly made a four-point landing on Sakda's dewy cheek.

The camera zoomed in, then the screen faded to black. Off camera, Henri whispered his signature line, “Is everybody happy?”

Henri ran the film again, tweaked it, and cut it to ten minutes of savagely beautiful videography for Horst and his company of pervs, a teaser to get them hot for another film.

He composed an e-mail, attached a still shot from the video: the two boys open-eyed, underwater, their faces contorted in terror.

“Offered for your viewing pleasure,” he wrote, “two young princes for the price of one.” He sent the e-mail as the door chimes rang again.

Henri tightened the sash of his robe and opened the door.

The boys burst out laughing, Aroon saying, “So, are we dead, Daddy? We don't feel dead.”

“No, you look very much alive. My two good, lively boys. Let's go to the beach,” Henri said, putting a hand on each of their slender shoulders, leading the boys out the back door of his villa.

“No games, Daddy?”

He tousled the boy's hair, and Sakda gri

Chapter 60

Henri's well-earned holiday continued in Bangkok, one of his favorite cities in all the world.

He met the Swedish girl in the night market, where she was struggling to translate baht into euros so that she could decide whether to buy a small wooden elephant. His Swedish was good enough that she spoke to him in her own language until, laughing, he said, “I've used up all of my Swedish.”

“Let's try this,” she said in perfect, British-inflected English. She introduced herself as Mai-Britt Olsen, telling Henri that she was on holiday with classmates from Stockholm University.

The girl was striking, nineteen or twenty and nearly six feet tall. She wore her flaxen hair cut straight at the shoulders, drawing his attention to her lovely throat.

“You have remarkable blue eyes,” he said.

She said, “Oooh,” and batted her lashes comically, and Henri laughed. She waggled her little elephant, and said, “I'm looking for a monkey, also.”

She took Henri's arm and they strolled down the aisles of colorfully lit stalls of fruit and costume jewelry and sweets.

“My girlfriends and I went to the elephant polo today,” Mai-Britt told him, “and tomorrow we're invited to the palace. We are volleyball players,” she explained. “The 2008 Olympics.”

“Truly? That's fantastic. Hey, I hear the palace is really stupendous. As for me, tomorrow morning I'm going to be strapped into a projectile heading to California.”

Mai-Britt laughed. “Let me guess. You're flying to L.A. on business.”

Henri gri

“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 di

“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 di

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 reco

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.