Dzung looked out the window, vainly searching faces among the stream of the motorbikers and cyclo drivers who were looking into the van as they passed. “That is an odd way to put it, Manh. You’ve given me a gun. You want me to use it, for the good of the revolution. I may not survive. And then you tell me I am too careless with my own safety.”

“Enough,” warned Manh, lighting a fresh cigarette as he held it at the bottom of two fingers near the palm. His eyes were on the mirror as the driver looked back at them with disapproval, and his face had grown suddenly hard. “I am serious about this. We have developed a . . . certain way of talking to each other, which might cause you great difficulty in the coming few hours if you continue to use it. No more silly talk. You may think you are protected from retaliation because we need you to perform this service, but you should remember that there is life on the other side of what you are about to do. Assuming you do it successfully, that is. And that life will be just like this life, Dzung. So these are your choices: fail in your task, in which case you will not survive. Or carry out your task, in which case you still belong to us.”

“Those are really not such different choices,” shrugged Dzung, feeling somehow emboldened by their very futility. “Fast death or slow death. But I will succeed. For the good of the revolution, right, Manh?”

Manh finally waved a hand into the air, looking out the window and dismissing him. “Be careful, Dzung. I am serious. We will not forget.”

District Three faded behind them, as did the busy markets of Cho Lon. Dzung lost his bearings as the van twisted and turned along the crowded streets. Finally they reached a walled compound that covered an entire city block. Barbed wire ran along the top of the walls. Sentry boxes manned by hard-faced soldiers sat atop the walls at every corner and on both sides of the double iron gate, as if they had reached a prison.

“My new home?” teased Dzung as the gates slowly opened, allowing the van inside.

“You’re not that lucky,” snorted Manh, grinding out his latest cigarette on the van’s metal floor. The van halted, and the Interior Ministry agent slid the door open, jumping outside. He pointed to Dzung, his demeanor and his voice having lost all hint of familiarity.

“Okay, out.”