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Chapters (48)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. TITLE PAGE
  3. EPIGRAPH
  4. PRAISE
  5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  6. MAP
  7. PROLOGUE
  8. CHAPTER ONE
  9. CHAPTER TWO
  10. CHAPTER THREE
  11. CHAPTER FOUR
  12. CHAPTER FIVE
  13. CHAPTER SIX
  14. CHAPTER SEVEN
  15. CHAPTER EIGHT
  16. CHAPTER NINE
  17. CHAPTER TEN
  18. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  19. CHAPTER TWELVE
  20. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  21. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  22. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  23. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  24. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  25. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  26. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  34. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  43. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  44. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  46. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  47. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  48. What’s next onyour reading list?

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Condley picked up the manila folder. “Some sick, treasonous deserter named Deville meets an Aussie photographer who had a wild hair up his ass and ran off to do a story on the VC, then murders him on a muddy trail in Ninh Phuoc—Ninh Phuoc, a scabby little village that doesn’t even have an outdoor toilet—and we end up on paid vacations to Australia and Russia.”

“Now, didn’t I tell you that anthropology was an exciting profession?” laughed Hanson Muir. “I rest my case.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Sai Gon

Dzung’s cyclo clattered slowly along the broken concrete alleyway a few blocks from his house. The cyclo swayed in the pavement’s gullies and Dzung swayed with it, side to side, leaning and muttering as he pedaled, urging his carriage along as if it were a tired old horse headed for its stall. It had been a long and disappointing day, nine hours of pedaling after his usual morning session at the firing range with Manh. And all for just under fifty thousand dong, less than five dollars.

Dzung’s feet moved steadily on the pedals, almost robotically, requiring neither thought nor conscious action on his part. He was exhausted, ready to fall immediately into bed when he reached his shanty of a home. But as he pedaled past one house and looked into the open windows of its front room, Dzung’s body immediately became electric with an unwanted, dreadful certainty. Quoc, his eldest child, was not at his usual position against one inside wall. And Dzung knew something was seriously wrong.

Nguyen Van Tam, once an ARVN soldier, now a shoemaker, lived two blocks away from Dzung’s house along the same crumbling alley. The dimly lit front room of Tam’s two-story concrete house was the District Four equivalent of a factory floor. Lacking even benches and chairs, a half dozen local workers spent their days sitting on the floor against a wall, chatting and smoking cigarettes as they cut patterns from synthetic leather. The patterns were then taken upstairs, where Tam and his wife formed them and sewed them into shoes. Twice a week Tam took his shoes to the Ben Thanh and Sai Gon markets, selling them for four thousand dong, or about forty cents.

Quoc had begun working for Tam three years before, when he turned ten. Little Quoc worked eight hours a day. He learned fast and worked hard, cutting fabric insoles, for which Tam paid him five thousand dong a day. Quoc was deeply proud of his employment and frequently bought the family extra water and rice. A responsible, serious child who bore the sorrows of his father as a personal burden, Quoc had never missed a day of work.