Inside Room 212 Manh was sitting behind his desk, smoking a cigarette and looking casually across the room. He jolted upright when Dzung burst through his door. Dzung walked inside and stood in front of Manh’s desk, heaving with exhaustion, his face racked with tragedy, trying to gather the composure to speak. And then he noticed a woman of about his age sitting in the chair where Manh had first interrogated him. She was well-dressed and plump, too well-dressed and too plump to be living inside Viet Nam. From her clothes, her haircut, and the heavy jewelry on her wrists and fingers, it was clear she was an overseas Vietnamese, probably back from France or America for a visit. And she and Manh were comfortable with each other, even intimate, although in a nonsexual way, as if they had enjoyed a long and prosperous business relationship.

Or political partnership, thought Dzung as his eyes moved carefully from one to the other. Was this woman one of the Interior Ministry’s many foreign agents, back in Sai Gon under a tourist visa to give them information about the political activities of Vietnamese living overseas?

“What are you doing here?” asked Manh harshly, recovering from his initial surprise. “Why didn’t you knock? Who do you think you are?”

Dzung felt the woman’s eyes on him as she slowly inspected him from the plastic sandals on his unwashed feet to the old baseball cap that covered his rough-cut hair. Following her eyes, he became acutely conscious of his sweat-stained, faded clothes and the gaps between his teeth. And of her obvious opulence, gained from a life in another country, even as she reported on those who had escaped the sad, misguided system that kept him and others in bare feet with their broken teeth and dead children.

“You must go outside until I’m finished,” ordered Manh, ignoring the woman and speaking directly to Dzung. “I tell you, I am in a meeting. You wait outside!”

Dzung stubbornly held his ground, standing halfway between Manh and his overseas informant, suddenly shivering from the whirring coolness of the air conditioner as he alternated his gaze from one to the other. “I’m not leaving until we have spoken privately, Manh. Until I am satisfied. Check my file. I can be very persistent.”

“Excuse me,” said the woman. She rose quickly from the chair and began walking toward the door. “I am sorry. It is time for me to go. Good night.” And she was gone, the door clicking quietly behind her as she pulled it closed.

For a long moment Dzung and Manh stared quietly at each other, neither of them moving from where they sat or stood. Above Dzung’s head the air conditioner whirred, bringing the only sound into the room and causing him again to shiver.

“You forget yourself. Remember your family.” Manh fairly blurted the words, causing Dzung to tremble with rage.