A harsh exchange in Vietnamese. The eyes belonged to an officer, either of the NVA or the Viet Cong. He was a captive American soldier, and there was clarity in that. From some distance came the static of a shortwave radio, like a section of tuneless violins: the volume waxed and waned until he realized that it was his perception, not the sound, that was shifting, that his consciousness was zoning in and out. A black-clad soldier brought him rice gruel and spooned it into his parched mouth. He felt, absurdly, grateful; at the same time, he realized that he was an asset to them, a potential source of information. To extract that information was their job; to prevent them from extracting it, while keeping himself alive, was his. Besides, he knew, amateur interrogators would sometimes reveal more information than they elicited. He told himself that he would have to use his powers of concentration … when they returned. Assuming they ever did.

A bit of the rice gruel caught in his throat, and he realized it was a beetle that had fallen into the pasty substance. A half smile flickered on the face of the soldier who fed him—the indignity of feeding a Yank made up for by the indignity of what he was feeding him—but Janson was past caring.

“Xin loi,” the soldier said, cruel as a jackknife. One of the few Vietnamese idioms Janson knew: Sorry about that.

Xin loi. Sorry about that: it was the war in a nutshell. Sorry we destroyed the village in order to save it. Sorry we napalmed your family. Sorry we tortured those POWs. Sorry about that—a phrase for every occasion. A phrase nobody ever meant. The world would be a better place if someone could say it and mean it.