It surprised him that the slaughterhouse district seemed to have quickly regained its calm. Far down the road he could see people gathered in front of the slaughter pens where the gunfight had taken place, but the trucks were again moving and the hogs were squealing as the workers again stood in the pens, hacking them up for food. The vacant lot where the man had kissed the little boy’s penis was just across the street. He walked slowly to it and then stood for a moment, waiting. But he did not see Manh.

He is angry at me because I killed so many soldiers.

Yes, soldiers, he thought insistently, because that was what he had done. He had again been ordered into battle and he had again survived. And like so many times before, his commanding officer’s orders had to be revised on the battlefield. Manh would have to understand that.

And then a cold thought chilled him. Maybe Manh had prepared him falsely on that one point, deliberately setting him up to die. The thought worked on him as he made his way toward the Vietnamese Embassy, checkpoint by checkpoint, just as Manh had taught him. Maybe all of Manh’s careful preparation was itself a ruse, designed to gain his confidence so that he would not fail in the actual attack. Maybe when he returned to the embassy the Thai police would be waiting for him, alerted by Manh himself that a Vietnamese national had perpetrated a heinous crime. For what did Manh, whose own father had died on the other side, owe a former enemy soldier from District Four?

Another thought visited him as he walked along Bangkok’s dark streets. He was free. He did not have to go back, either to the embassy or to Viet Nam. He could simply keep walking, or turn around and head in another direction, and never be found again. He could learn the language, find work, move to America or Australia, sleep in a bed, wear real shoes.

But after he had thought about such dreams for another block, he knew that they were pure fantasy. Manh had it right. He was as predictable as the rains. He wanted nothing more just then than to go back to Sai Gon, to somehow find where they had taken his cyclo and reclaim it so that he could pedal home to his family again.

Manh was waiting for him at the last checkpoint, two blocks from the embassy. The agent surprised him, stepping out from an alley and suddenly walking beside him. Manh’s face was still bright with amazement as he put an arm around his shoulder.

“So, Mister Trong. You sold your rice very well. And more importantly, you came back!”