Inside the apartment Petrushinsky took another long drag on his cigarette and showed them into his living room. “This is where I live. This is where I remember what my life was like when I had a life. So, please, sit down.”

Following Skip Rogers’s instructions, Condley had brought Petrushinsky the finest bottle of vodka available at the hotel. He handed it to him as he entered the small living room.

“To thank you for your hospitality,” he said. “And in hopes that we might become friends.”

The former soldier’s eyes widened with pleasure as he examined the label. “Ah, very good! Very good vodka!” He raised the bottle to Condley and Pham, walking from the room. “So, I think we should have a drink. I will be right back.”

The living room was furnished with a thin metal reading lamp, a small cloth couch, and two stuffed chairs. On one wall was a large bookshelf, and it was evident that, despite his recent hard times, Petrushinsky was an avid reader. A hundred books lined the shelves, and a half dozen others were stacked on the coffee table in front of the couch. But Condley’s eyes were immediately drawn to a shelf table behind the couch, against another wall, where three miniature models of Vietnamese village homes had been carefully constructed.

Condley and Colonel Pham walked together to the dollhouse-size models, studying them with vast appreciation. Someone, perhaps Petrushinsky himself, had created a small hamlet in the living room. The models were intricately done, from the thatch roofs of the homes to the mud walkways surrounding them to the water buffalo pens that adjoined them off to the side. Tiny toy waterbulls were in the pens and in the fields behind the houses. Miniature Vietnamese villagers sat in the homes, washed at the wells, and rode atop the waterbulls.

“Very good,” commented the colonel, pointing at the models. “Mien trung,” he said. Central Viet Nam.

“Yes, mien trung,” said Petrushinsky, appearing behind them as he reentered the living room. He was carrying a small tray with three full glasses of vodka. “It took me more than a year to build them. But it is the way I am able to remember. When I look at them, sometimes I feel as though I am there again.”

The burly Russian carefully set the tray on the coffee table, pushing a few books out of the way to do so. Then he put one hand on his heart and made a fist with the other, a gesture of solidarity with the colonel. “Viet Nam! Viet Nam! I have been many places in my life. Germany. Poland. Cuba. Yes, even Afghanistan. But in my heart, Colonel, I have never left Viet Nam!”