‘I’ll find other people. People who will listen. I’ll come in the morning. I promise.’

She took a fat envelope from her pocket and held it out to me but I refused, telling her that I didn’t want her money and again that I would come in the morning. But the words offered her little comfort and she hesitated and, suddenly sensing for one terrible second that she was thinking of offering herself and desperate to avoid that mutual humiliation, I raised my hands and told her that I was going to do everything possible to help. That she could trust me. Then, bowing her head, she was gone and I stood at the window and watched her cross the street below until her lingering scent and the smoke of her cigarette were the only evidence of her presence.

In her absence I tried to make a decision. I knew Donovan wasn’t good at sharing things with most people in the Embassy, particularly in relation to sources, and for all I knew Vien, Quyen and Tuyen weren’t on anyone’s radar except his own. And why hadn’t I been shipped out? I couldn’t imagine that anyone thought of me as essential. So several conflicted hours after Quyen left my room I made my decision, and I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that, in addition to whatever redemptive element there might have been, it also involved the configuration of two very contrasting impulses. However unworthy it might sound now, a part of me at least saw it as allowing me to exert retribution on Donovan, while another, very different part imagined it as the romantic gesture that my life had never been given the opportunity to make. So yes, I would offer Tuyen my protection, claim her to be my prospective wife, and let the future take whatever course fate decreed.

The streets were crowded and frenetic in the hours before curfew and the air felt brittle with apprehension and menace before being suddenly riven by thunder. While I searched for a taxi I saw a fist fight between a group of young men disputing the ownership of a Honda while military jeeps passed by indifferently. Ragged families carried what looked like the totality of their possessions on their backs and in small carts but I had no idea where they were heading. Some of the sidewalks had been transformed into impromptu shopfronts selling everything from refrigerators to what looked like surplus ARVN gear. When I eventually got a taxi the driver was intensely silent and I was conscious of his resentful eyes glancing at me at intervals in his mirror. He turned down a couple of streets I wasn’t familiar with and for a few seconds I wondered where he was taking me. After I repeated the name of my destination he merely flicked his head slightly then mumbled something under his breath. But eventually we pushed out into an almost solid block of traffic running parallel with the river and, realising it would be quicker to walk, I got him to pull over.