At that moment Condley both resented and envied the young man who stood before him. He had been born after the war, or certainly toward the end of it. Manipulation, treachery, betrayal—all were irrelevant unless they kept him from finding a much-needed job, and clearly his own family history had helped him get this one. To such a man, Vietnamese history had no lingering internal markings, no justifiable divisions, no past acts that bore remembering, other than the unexplainable conduct of “puppets” such as Dzung. He had not been a part of the struggle. He brought nothing with him, no scars or memories that needed to be sorted out. Except, perhaps, those that were being carried by his family, and despite such scars, his family had won. So the rest could be forgotten, or at least never gone into. Vietnamese were simply Vietnamese, just as Germans were Germans or New Yorkers were New Yorkers. Some were heroes who were rewarded with good restaurants. And others were traitors who now drove cyclos.

“I’m looking for Colonel Pham.”

“He is expecting you, sir?”

“Tell him Brandon Condley is waiting to see him.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” the young man said, obviously surprised that the ill-dressed man before him was the same person he had been told to await. “You are Mr. Condley?”

“I left my tuxedo in Honolulu,” answered Condley, wearying of the false niceties. “It’s in the backseat of my Mercedes.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the maître d’, hiding his irritation behind a frozen smile. “Please follow me.”

Colonel Pham was sitting near the back of the restaurant, at a table with three others, two of them Vietnamese women and one a well-dressed Caucasian man. From the cut of the man’s gray silk three-button suit and the shaggy length of his hair, Condley could tell he was not American. One of the Vietnamese women was older, presumably the colonel’s wife. The other woman’s back was to him, but from her slimness and the way her long hair flowed so freely down her back, Condley knew she was younger, and probably the girlfriend or wife of the Caucasian man.

The colonel gestured to Condley as he approached, standing up to greet him and calling to a waiter for another chair. “Mister Condley,” he said in Vietnamese. “Please join us.”

The table was against the rear wall, underneath a spotlit reproduction of a Monet landscape of the Alps at Antibes. Condley approached it cautiously, studying the four people for clues so that he might understand the ambience that he was interrupting. For despite Colonel Pham’s tight smile, it seemed that his approach was bringing a tension to the table.