“Private Kevin Jones,” Janson said. In his moments of lucidity, he had created a whole life behind that name—an infantryman from Nebraska, a little trouble with the law after high school, a pregnant girlfriend at home, a brigade that had got lost and wandered away from where it was supposed to be. The character seemed almost real to him, though it was cobbled together from snippets of popular novels, movies, magazine stories, TV shows. Out of the thousand tales of America, he could craft something that would ring truer than any true American tale. “U.S. Infantry.”

The small man flushed as he boxed Janson on his right ear, leaving it bruised and ringing. “Lieutenant Junior Grade Paul Janson,” said Phan Nguyen. “Do not undo all the good work you have done.”

How did they know his true name and rank?

“You told us all this,” Phan Nguyen insisted. “You told us everything. Have you forgotten, in your delirium? I think so. I think so. This happens often.”

Was it possible? Janson locked eyes with Nguyen, and both men saw their suspicions confirmed. Both saw that the other had lied. Janson had revealed nothing —or nothing until now. For Nguyen could tell from his reaction, not of fear or perplexity, but of rage, that his identification was correct.

Janson had nothing to lose: “Now it is you who lie,” he growled. He felt a sharp, stinging thwack of the bamboo stick across his upper body, but it was more for show than anything else; Janson had come to be able to judge these minuscule gradations.

“We are practically colleagues, you and I. Is that the word? Colleagues? I think so. I think so.” Phan Nguyen, as it emerged, often said those words, I think so, almost beneath his breath: they distinguished questions that did not require voiced assent from those that did. “Now we will speak candidly to each other, as colleagues do. You will drop your lies and fables, on the pain of … pain.” He seemed pleased with the English idiom, with the way it could be twisted this way and that. “I know you are a brave man. I know you have a high tolerance for suffering. Perhaps you would like us to test just how high, like an experiment?”

Janson shook his head, his innards churning. Suddenly he heaved forward and retched. A small amount of vomit reached the hard-packed ground. It looked like coffee grounds. A clinical sign of internal hemorrhage.

“No? Just for now, I’m not going to press you for answers. I want you to ask yourself the questions.” Phan Nguyen sat down again, looking intently at Janson with his intelligent, curious eyes. “I want you to ask yourself how it was that you were captured. We knew just where to find you—that must have puzzled you, no? What you faced wasn’t the response of surprised men, was it? So you know what I say is so.”