Everything now blurs in its precise chronological sequence as I remember how things rushed to their inevitable end and the city became the eye of the storm, its streets filling with a panicked population, a continued influx of refugees and sullen soldiers carrying their M16s like curses ready to explode. Non-essentials were being shipped out in chartered and scheduled flights and in C-141 transports. I couldn’t decide whether I had become an essential or whether I had been simply forgotten about, but no one made any attempt to inform me or allocate a departing flight. Corley left at short notice, being given a seat on a plane to Thailand when someone declined it at the last moment. I knew because I found a note slipped under my door when I returned later the same day. Long lines formed outside the Embassy, ever-increasing sums of money changed hands for exit visas or a set of forged papers, and some of those elegant houses in the rich boulevards were being sold for a fraction of their former value or hastily boarded-up. Businessmen everywhere tried to decide whether to stay or go and the evacuation of Vietnamese that was well intentioned and ultimately facilitated by many brave people was tainted by the places won by self-interest and personal loyalties, rather than the priority of need.

All of those Vietnamese I worked with were ‘endangered’ but they still turned up every day and did whatever tasks reached their desks. Then, one afternoon after the doors had been closed and all non-essential staff cleared from the building, Greenberg addressed them and promised everyone safe passage out as soon as it was necessary, even offering, if slightly vague, assurances about immediate family members. Soon after, though, he too was gone – I learned later that he had taken his cook and maid with him. Some of the staff began bringing suitcases to work and a group started to sleep in the building, so that in the morning the office was filled with the smell of the previous evening’s food. Gradually the flow of work petered out and on the rare occasions a courier arrived he would find himself stared at intently before they realised he had not come with the news they were waiting for. In the absence of incoming work the translators would huddle in small groups and sometimes voices were raised. Inevitably I became the focus for their questions and I felt their increasing frustration with my lack of information and sensed that some had started to suspect I was withholding what I knew from them. They discreetly watched me, and that included Danh and Corrine, perhaps looking for some sign, hoping to detect some glimmer of knowledge, and even when I went to the washroom I felt their eyes following me as if they were uncertain as to whether I would return. I put on an act of being relaxed but repeatedly phoned people in the Embassy, to be told each time that everything was under control and an inventory of staff had already been made, that arrangements were being put in place and that in the meantime it was vital to avoid any kind of panic. All my attempts to contact Donovan ended in failure and no one seemed able to put me in touch with him. I began to believe that, like Greenberg, he too had left.