The visit with Petrushinsky had for some reason deeply shaken Colonel Pham. He was quiet as they made their way across the frostbitten fields toward the subway stop, not with the silent, warlike tension of their journey toward Petrushinsky’s apartment, but with an introspective gloom. He teetered now and then as they walked, still flush from the vodka, looking up at Condley from time to time as if questioning himself for this relationship and indeed for their very journey.

“I know you do not like them, but they were good people,” he finally said as they neared the subway.

Condley was shaking again, his face numb from the cold. “I have no opinion, Colonel.”

“Then you might respect mine.” They reached the subway and walked together down the steps. “What are you going to do now, Cong Ly?”

“I’m going to Bangkok.”

“Please keep this man from getting into trouble. He loves Viet Nam just as you do, and he has given enough.”

“No one will know, Colonel.”

They reached the platform. It was very late and they were the only people there. Pham studied his face for a very long time. “You are a good man, I think. And this devil, I can see how he hurt you. But don’t be stupid. Bad things happen in wars. And this war is over.”

“Almost,” said Condley, holding the colonel’s gaze.

They could hear the train approaching, and then they saw a light, far off inside the tunnel. “I will stay in Moscow for a while longer, Cong Ly. It has been a very long time, and it may be my last visit.”

The train reached the platform and they climbed in, taking seats across from each other. Condley nodded, indicating that he understood. And they did not speak to each other again until they said good night at the hotel.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Sai Gon

“Cong Ly,” she was saying, again and again. “Cong Ly. Are you awake?” And then a lilting, nervous laugh. “Cong Ly, it’s me! Wake up!”

He lay in his bed, clutching the phone to his ear, trying to do just that. So many time zones over such a short period of time, so many airports, so many flights, so many questions, and so many odd, unfulfilling answers. Six hours of sleep beginning in the middle of a Sai Gon afternoon and here he was, helplessly groggy, and yet happy that she was so rudely awakening him.

It was just after ten o’clock. The sky outside his window was pitch-black. The motorbikes serenaded him like an unending stream of two-hundred-pound mosquitoes, whining insistently as they came and went along the street below. He had been dreaming about his mother, the dream itself almost a memory, filled with the warmth in her still-young eyes as she combed his hair just before sending him off to his very first day of school. How many decades ago?