“What’s in it for him?” Muir leaned toward Condley, speaking softly, almost conspiratorially. “They could take us down by the river and strip us clean and leave us dead. No one would ever know the difference.”

“Oh,” laughed Condley, enjoying himself immensely. “Now you’re worried about it! I thought you said it would never happen in Sai Gon.”

“Okay, I lied.”

District Four was an island, separated from Sai Gon by a few tawdry bridges. In 1975 the victorious communists had relocated thousands of former South Vietnamese soldiers and their families into the district, reasoning that if they ever tried to revolt they could be quickly contained by putting soldiers on the bridges. Over the years the population inside the district had swollen, even as basics such as water and electricity had slowly been allowed to atrophy.

“Welcome to District Four, Professor.”

The crumbling sidewalks on the Nguyen Tat Thanh bridge were crowded with human effluvium from the district on the other side. Small unwashed children played in the dirt behind tiny stalls. Women sat listlessly on straw mats at the stalls, selling drips of gasoline from glass bottles, cigarettes from little display cases, soft drinks, stale bread, whatever might work to whomever might care. The water below was stagnant, choked with waste and trash. On the far end of the bridge, a gathering of patched-plywood shanties spilled out on poles above the water. The morning’s attempt at laundry hung below the eaves of tin and canvas rooftops that were held unconvincingly in place by loose slats of wood and thin old bicycle tires. Near the shanties a few small boats with roofs and walls of straw were moored in the mud, home to those who could not afford a shack.

Muir gulped as they finished crossing the bridge, staring into District Four and swallowing back his fear. “What’s here?”

“The people we left behind.”

Nguyen Tat Thanh Street teemed with heavy traffic. It actually cut through the district, past Sai Gon’s main port, off to the left a few hundred meters in front of them, and over another bridge that headed south out of Sai Gon. Nguyen Tat Thanh was Ho Chi Minh’s true name, the one he had used when he had sailed from the port for France, hoping for a position in the colonial civil service and ending up a revolutionary. The unending slums of the district itself bordered the road on the right.

Dzung leaned over to Condley. “Anh muon di dau?” he asked. Where to?

Condley answered in Vietnamese, not wanting Muir to understand. “Into the district. On a smaller road,” he said.

Dzung laughed again, his way of telling Condley that he was both nervous and excited. He stretched high in his seat as he looked for an opening in the traffic and chattered back and forth with Luong. Then they turned right, onto a narrower road.