EXCEPT FOR THE part about his niece being held hostage and he himself being the captive of murderous jihadists, this was the best vacation Richard had had in ten years. The only vacation, in truth. He had never understood vacations, never really taken them. But sometimes he talked to people who did understand and take them, and the story they seemed to tell had something to do with getting away from one’s normal day-to-day concerns, putting all that stuff out of one’s mind for a while, and going somewhere new and having experiences. Experiences that were somehow more pure and raw and true—the way small children experienced things—precisely because they were non sequiturs, complete departures from the flow of ordinary life.