“So why did you bring me here?” Dzung spoke quietly now, his mood deflated by the slow realization that he had just come within a few words of being marched away to the oblivion of another prison. “What did I do?”

“You have become suspicious,” said Manh simply, as if the answer was in the word itself. “You want a license to operate a business. Where are you going to get the money for a license? And a car. Why should the American buy a car for you? What great skill do you have to offer, what connections with important people, what family history? We have many who suffered greatly during the war, who served proudly on behalf of the revolution, who still have nothing. Why should we allow an enemy soldier to move ahead of them? And I must ask something vitally important, Dzung. Your future hangs on it. What is it that has put all of these things into motion, just at the moment your American friend is probing too deeply into the past?”

Dzung looked at the floor, confused and disappointed. “I have no knowledge of what Cong Ly does. He is my customer for a very long time. I take him places when he is not working. I don’t even know what his work is. He is generous. A good man.”

“Cong Ly! Cong Ly!” Manh spat the words out. “All of you have perverted his name as if you are speaking code, twisting his very image into that of justice! Is he asking you to help him?”

“I am serious, I don’t even know what he does, except that he looks for bones,” answered Dzung. “He told me he would buy a car and that we could have a business. That when we made money I could move my family out of District Four, maybe to Song Be.”

“The government tells you when you have permission to move. Not an American spy.”

“We were talking only of possibilities,” answered Dzung quietly. His mood had irreversibly sunk, because he was beginning to understand. He had tried to warn Cong Ly, and he knew now that the whole scheme had been hopeless. Not only hopeless, but destructive, summoning up the magnifying glass of the Interior Ministry’s intrinsic paranoia.

“We do not understand this man.” Manh was peering intensely at Dzung, as if he were asking a question. “We have followed him for years. We listen to him. We watch him. And still we do not know him.”