Swimsuit - James Patterson [49]
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.
“Are you okay, Paul?” she asked. “Are you angry that that man was staring at me?”
Together they watched Carl Obst leave the restaurant with his date. He didn’t look back.
Henri smiled, said, “No, I’m not angry. Everything is fine.”
“Good, because I was wondering if we should continue the evening more privately?”
“Hey, I’m sorry. I wish I could,” Henri told the girl with the most elegant neck since Henry VIII’s second wife. “I really wish I had the time,” he said, taking her hand. “I have that early flight tomorrow morning.”
“Screw business,” Mai-Britt joked. “You’re on holiday tonight.”
Henri leaned across the table and kissed her cheek.
He imagined her nakedness under his hands — and he let the fantasy go. He was already thinking ahead to his business in L.A., laughing inside at how surprised Ben Hawkins would be to see him.
Chapter 63
HENRI SPENT a three-day weekend at the airport Sheraton in L.A., moving anonymously among the other business travelers. He used the time to reread Ben Hawkins’s novels and every newspaper story Ben had written. He’d purchased supplies and made dry runs to Venice Beach and the street where Ben lived, right around the corner from Little Tokyo.
At just after five that Monday afternoon, Henri took his rental car onto the 105 Freeway. The yellowing cement walls lining the eight-laner were illuminated by a golden light, randomly splashed with spiky vines of red and purple bougainvillea and gothic Latino gang graffiti, giving the drab Los Angeles highway a Caribbean flavor, at least in his mind.
Henri took the 105 to the 110 exit at Los Angeles Street, and from there he made his way through stop-and-go traffic to Alameda, a major artery running to the heart of downtown.
It was rush hour, but Henri was in no rush. He was keyed up, focused on an idea that over the last three weeks had taken on potential for life-changing drama and a hell of a finale.
The plan centered on Ben Hawkins, the journalist, the novelist, the former detective.
Henri had been thinking about him since that evening in Maui, outside the Wailea Princess, when Ben had stretched out his hand to touch Barbara McDaniels.
Henri waited out the red light, and when it changed he took a right turn onto Traction,