Colonel Pham’s formality was to be expected. Perhaps fifteen years older than Condley, the former Viet Cong soldier was rarely emotional in public and almost deceptively nondescript. Condley had learned that the colonel’s controlled emotions were a camouflage that hid the kind of man whom in Asia too many Americans overlooked at their peril, and usually to their later regret. The colonel’s teeth were stained from years of strong tobacco and poor dental hygiene. His glasses looked as if they had been bought forty years before. Several long strands of hair grew from a mole on his chin, just to the right of his mouth. His small, pawlike hands hung slightly in front of his thighs, as if he had spent so many years carrying weight on his back—pack and weapon and rice roll—that his shoulders and fingers were permanently curved. And he clearly did not belong in a suit. He wore it loosely and messily, the collar too big, the knot of the tie too fat, the shirtsleeves too long, making him appear ungainly and even more diminutive than he actually was.

But from the very first, Condley had picked up a sureness in the older man, a toughness that those who had not fought the war could never fully penetrate. Pham had made hard decisions, of the sort a mere businessman could never conceive. He had endured years in the jungle, conquering it and making it his friend. He had ordered soldiers to their deaths. He had killed people. And from the measuring look he and Condley had always exchanged behind their smiles, it was clear that Pham had killed Americans.

Condley knew that Pham had always read his own face just as quickly. Yes, their eyes said to each other every time they met, we both endured and we both killed. But that was then, and this is now. So where do we go from here? In a way this knowledge gladdened both of them, giving them an odd but unbreakable bond. He and Pham shared a secret kinship. They knew the truth of the battlefield, a conviction so real and permeable that neither of them would ever need to mention it to the other.

“Chao Ong,” said Condley, shaking the colonel’s hand and moving to the chair the waiter had placed at the head of the table. Taking his seat at the colonel’s elbow, for the first time he turned to the others.

“You have never met my wife,” said the colonel in Vietnamese, gesturing formally to the older woman at the table. His very comment was a half-embarrassed admission that their relationship over the past three years had been cordial but never fully personal. “Her name is Tho.”

“I am very glad to meet you,” said Condley, nodding to the older woman from across the table.