I told him I did, all the time wondering who we were going to meet, and when I asked he said, ‘There’s a small group of big shots on an important Senate Select Committee who’ve come to see for themselves, and we need to make sure they take the right messages back to Washington, not the bullshit they’re being fed out of the Embassy.’

‘And where do I come into this?’

‘Just be the Ivy League boy, Mikey, the educated languages expert, and if I call on you tell them about all the interviews we’ve done with reliable – no, impeccable sources – who’ve told us that the North isn’t interested in anything other than a complete military victory. And tell them that they’re preparing for a final all-out push, that they’re going to be outside our gates pretty damn soon.’

‘Do I make some of it up?’ I asked.

‘Do whatever you need to do.’

‘What if they ask questions?’

‘Use your imagination, Mikey – all those books you read must be dripping with it – and I’ll be there to bail you out if needed.’

We drove slowly across the congested city, where every street was choked with traffic and accompanied by an incessant and frustrated blare of angry horns through which we made our own expletive-laden snail trail, Donovan’s increasingly strident curses adding to the unrelenting din. The location for the meeting was in a safe house, a private villa in a wealthy district with tree-lined boulevards where the French had lived out their dream of empire. We passed through the metal gates and some security, then into the villa itself. My first impression was of air-conditioned opulence. Five Americans, in crumpled lightweight suits that suggested they weren’t long off a plane, sat on black leather settees round a coffee table drinking coffee and Jack Daniel’s. A woman wearing a dark suit and a pearl necklace sat to one side with an open notebook and pen poised to take dictation and looked as if she had stepped straight out of a Washington office. There was another American standing behind them with a glass in his hand. I saw him look at his watch and shake his head at Donovan before describing him as one of our most valued analysts.

‘Gentlemen, apologies for our lateness – an urgent situation detained us,’ Donovan said in reply and then he introduced me as ‘an experienced field officer, a linguistics expert, who had conducted extensive interviews in both French and Vietnamese with a number of our best sources’.

I simply nodded and hoped I looked vaguely like the person he had described. The woman started taking notes but Donovan intervened, telling the gathering that, due to the extreme secrecy of the intelligence he was about to share, he didn’t want it minuted or attributed to a specific individual. After some brief discussion his wish was granted and when the secretary left the room he started to give a detailed reading of the situation, referring to interviews and occasionally glancing at his pocketbook when he was itemising dates or supposedly quoting some source.