James Patterson - Swimsuit

“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 grinned up at him. “No, just swimming and splashing,” Henri said. “And then back here for my lovely massage.”

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 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.

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.

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.