“Plausible deniability. That’s exactly what they predicted you’d say,” quipped the CIA agent.

Hanson Muir gestured to a manila folder lying on one edge of the table. “Mister Archer did a very thorough job going over the materials we faxed him, but I’m afraid he doesn’t have much to tell us.”

“Are you the station chief?” asked Condley.

“No, but I’m a lawyer as well as a”—Archer looked briefly around at the other tables—“State Department employee. And I do a lot of work with Interpol.”

“According to a fax I received from a friend of mine at Cinc Pac, your colleague in Moscow, Skip Rogers, seemed to believe you could help us,” said Condley, keeping things deliberately vague.

“I’d like to, but there’s only so much I can do off-line,” said Archer, shrugging hopelessly. “I looked at your stuff and had a few quiet talks with some of our longtime Asia hands, but that’s it. And if we’re talking about the official position of the embassy, there’s really not much that we can do on this at all. Let me explain. Realistically, you’ve got a set of military charges that are now thirty-four years old—one for murder, and another for desertion after the murder. There’s no statute of limitations on either of these two crimes. Murder because it’s a capital offense. Desertion because it’s continuous, meaning that the crime doesn’t end until the desertion does. But I would emphasize that these are military charges, at least at this point, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In addition, they’re very old and we have no suspect. We don’t even have a set of regular criminal charges from a host nation. First, South Viet Nam doesn’t exist anymore, and second, we never allowed the South Vietnamese government to prosecute our military people anyway.”

“What about the murder of an Australian national in 1971?” Condley asked idly.

“Get me an indictment,” said Archer. “We do have strong circumstantial evidence, given the dog tags and the severed hand, but you guys haven’t even officially shared this information with our own government, much less made it public. If I had something of that sort that was official, I could put it into the international system. But even then . . .”

Archer shrugged, not finishing the sentence. Condley reached across the table into a bread basket, stealing one of Muir’s muffins. “We sent you that fax three days ago, Paul. I expected to walk in here and put the cuffs on Deville this morning.”

“Cuffing him would be the easy part,” Archer replied. “If he’s alive, that is. And in Bangkok. And discoverable.”

“I think he’s here,” insisted Condley. “If he’s still alive.”

“Is there a basis for that thought?” asked Archer.

“Invincible optimism.”