Condley grunted, unimpressed. “For what? If he takes responsibility for our conduct, that means he’s guaranteeing that we won’t do anything to hurt the government or they can send his own ass off to jail. That’s what taking responsibility is all about in this system: You volunteer to be the scapegoat if things go wrong. Which also means he’ll do everything he can to keep us from finding anything, even if he personally goes with us on the trip. And if we do find something—which I intend to do—and they hold him accountable, we’ve just screwed our best friend in the whole Vietnamese government.”

“Yes,” said Muir, smiling with satisfaction. “Not to mention the father of your girlfriend, with whom you are now fully enamored.”

“Professor, now you’re hurting my feelings.”

“Let the record show that Brandon Condley has feelings.”

“Anyway, she’s not my girlfriend. She’s engaged to a Frog.”

“Sorry about that.”

Condley grinned slyly. “Pass on your condolences to the Frog.”

“For now,” said Muir, not losing his own smile. “Anyway, I thought about the situation with the colonel. But we can empower him, so that if we find something their government gets the credit. And if that happens, he wins.”

“Now, there’s a baby-boomer concept,” laughed Condley. “You want to empower a communist government official. Have you taken a look around here lately, Professor? I hate to break this to you, but they pretty much have all the power they want.”

“Slow down, Brandon. Listen to me. We empower him in the media. We can arrange it so that it’s his discovery, not ours. We tell him the story is going to come out sooner or later anyway because my colleague back in Hawaii heard about the Deville situation and is preparing a report. We tell him that the Vietnamese government has the ability to preempt a very nasty set of questions that will soon be coming their way from the international media. We also guarantee that we’ll support the Vietnamese government’s version of the story. Which will be that the Que Son Mountains are so remote, and their inhabitants so primitive, that it was impossible to make the determination before now, anyway. That Pepper has simply been living up there with a bunch of Montagnards, hiding from everyone, including their government. So Colonel Pham, or his boss if he wants, becomes the hero, instead of the Vietnamese being the villains.”

“What about the fact that Pepper was a turncoat?”

“We tell him we don’t know anything about that.” Muir looked hard at Condley, his face bright with challenge. “Do we? I mean, truthfully, isn’t it a fact? We don’t even know who he is.”

“Yet,” said Condley, meeting the professor’s stare.