Before he went to get out of the car I touched him lightly on his arm and, suddenly and uncharacteristically emboldened, said, ‘It’ll cost you.’

‘Cost me?’

‘Your car when I ask. We’re going to Vung Tau. Swim in the sea.’

‘I like it, Mikey. Always good to negotiate from a position of strength. And you got a hot date lined up, I assume.’

‘I’m going with Corley Rodgers.’

‘Roy Rodgers? Corley, Corley, Tell a Story Rodgers?’

He blew a loud stream of breath dismissively and stared at me, but I simply shrugged before telling him I’d look after the car. And a short time later I was sitting poolside with a cold drink watching him do lengths, his hair a splash of flame extinguishing itself each time it went under the water, the tattoo green in the sunlight as his arms rose and fell with a steady fury. But as his broad shoulders broke the surface I thought again of his body overpowering that of Tuyen’s and something tightened and sickened inside me. And I was frightened, too, about what I had agreed to do for him – it was something that was foreign to me and completely out of sync with my instinctive deference to whatever rules authority sought to create.

The following afternoon seemed to drag endlessly as I waited for Greenberg’s phone call, and I started to hope that there had been some change of plan and that my involvement was no longer necessary. But at three o’clock exactly I heard Greenberg’s phone ring and it sounded shriller and more insistent than ever before. A few minutes later I heard him emerging from his office and through the open door I glimpsed him carrying a briefcase and putting on his sunglasses. There was the barely perceptible sound of his lisping breathing and light footsteps on the stairs and then the room was silent again except for the turn of the ceiling fans and the creak of someone’s chair. To my disappointment, my hand touched the cold metal of the key in my pocket, because part of me hoped to find that its presence was a figment of the imagination and that the task imposed on me had been nothing more than a stressful dream.

I looked around at my colleagues engrossed in their endless work and desks littered with piled-up in trays, sagging bulky rows of dictionaries, cassette players and headphones, and I knew that what I had to do had to be done right away or my doubts would leave me unable to go through with it. Lifting a bunch of papers, I walked past their desks, even exchanging greetings with some as I went, making a comment about how busy they were or contributing to some long-running office joke. I gently pulled the door after me, not enough to completely close it but enough to hide my right turn to Greenberg’s office, even though I guessed his departure probably hadn’t registered with most of them. I forced my hand steady and turned the key as quietly as possible and then, with a heart that seemed to drum so loudly it must betray my presence, I was in.