“Maybe,” she said, still straddling her motorbike. “Someday.” She turned to him, her face far older than it had been a half hour before in the front room of her father’s house. “You come and go, Cong Ly, and you think nothing of it. You’re going tomorrow or the day after, I know. I heard you talking to my father. I want to go. Not to Russia, but just to go! I want to know what is on the other side. I hear the stories. And I dream. There is nothing wrong with that, Cong Ly. I want that dream.”

At that moment he wanted more than anything to take her into his arms and promise her that somehow she could have her dream, as simple and yet impossible as it was. But he had nothing to offer her. He did not know her, not in that way, and he did not wish to become merely the agent of her fantasies. And so he sat silently on the rear of her little Honda, watching the giant plane unload its cargo, and retreated into his own unending memories.

She remained quiet for a long time, staring at the energy of people coming and going and then back to his face, as if waiting for him to offer a solution. Her silent charisma was urgent and demanding, just as when she had waited outside the hotel that first night as though he would kiss her if she only watched him long enough. And then she suddenly turned away from him and gunned her motorbike.

“I know a good restaurant,” she said over her shoulder as she powered into the traffic. “On Dong Khoi Street, near the river. Do you like fish?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Moscow

The aircraft made its way through what seemed like a never-ending night. The cabin lights were out. Every now and then a sleepy flight attendant passed them in the aisle, offering water or juice. And under the glow of a reading light Colonel Pham matched Condley scotch for scotch, waxing nostalgic for his “student” days in Moscow a quarter century before.