After he dried himself he was issued a set of snow-white underwear. Once he put on the underwear he was brought into another room, where a frowning, stylishly dressed young woman awaited him. Without saying a word to him, she meticulously blow-dried his hair, rubbing gel into it and styling it for him. She went into a closet and brought out a new, tropical, worsted olive-colored suit, a pair of patterned silk socks, and a pair of brown leather shoes. As he put on the trousers, socks, and shoes, she went back to the closet, bringing out a handful of ties and several shirts. Holding the ties against the suit and looking at his face, she finally chose a blue and gold rep pattern and matched the tie to a sky-blue shirt. He had never knotted a tie before, and so she did that for him, tying it and slipping it around his neck, showing him just how to fold the collar over the tie and how to pinch the knot at the bottom once the tie was tightened around the neck.

And finally Manh brought him back to the first room he had entered, walking him in front of the mirror again.

“Now look,” said Manh as he lit his thirtieth cigarette of the day, a devilish grin slashing across his face. “Who do you see?”

“I see Dzung,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” said Manh. “Look again.”

He moved closer to the mirror, looking more closely. Staring back at him was a sleek, handsome powerhouse, an entrepreneurial giant, the kind of man he could never have dreamed of conversing with on the sidewalk, much less luring into his cyclo.

“I see a hai ngoai,” said Dzung quietly, using the term that identified the overseas Vietnamese who lived in Australia, France, or America.

“You see Nguyen Le Trong,” said Manh. As he spoke, a thin, frazzled man entered the room, carrying a camera. Manh nudged Dzung and pointed toward one of the dull blue walls. “Stand over there with your back to the wall. Hurry up!”

As Dzung stood against the wall, the man took two pictures of him and then quickly left the room. Watching him leave, Dzung shrugged his shoulders absently. “Who is Nguyen Le Trong?”

“You are Nguyen Le Trong,” answered Manh. “Listen to me. You have only a few hours to memorize this and fully understand it. It was impossible to tell you earlier because, quite frankly, it would have been too dangerous to tell you before you were completely under our control. You are Nguyen Le Trong. You were born on March 23, 1949, in a small village in Thua Thien Province. Your father was a doctor. You moved to Hue at an early age. You served in a few innocuous logistics positions during the war but mostly studied economics at Hue University. You are now a businessman—”