“The records we got from the US embassy start on December twenty-eighth,” said Dtui. “Apart from a break for Christmas Day so the pilots could have some nice roasted chicken and a cold beer, Hanoi was spattered with ordnance for eleven days straight. As they couldn’t leave, Henry was still in a cell at the clinic where you met him. The US bombed the fuel plant and missed. They leveled a suburb for four blocks in either direction. The clinic was reduced to rubble. One of the pilots was killed but not Henry.”

“What happened to him?” Daeng asked.

“In the chaos of the bombing, thousands were killed, communication networks were destroyed and the surviving MIA pilots were forgotten and left to fend for themselves. Despite the fact that their country was raining bombs from B-52s on the Vietnamese, they gave themselves up to the authorities. I’m guessing they had no other choice. Henry wasn’t amongst them. He’d fled.”

“How could an American remain unnoticed in Hanoi?” asked Daeng.

“There were foreigners in Hanoi, even through the bombing,” said Siri. “There were Eastern European advisors, press, tourists. All he needed to do was get a change of clothes.”

“Even so, he wasn’t about to walk out of Vietnam during the heaviest bombing of the war,” said Phosy.

“But he could fly,” said Dtui, flipping over the page. “The last entry in Henry’s file is this mention of a group of American folk singers staying at the Reunification. While they were down in the bunker hiding from the air raids, someone broke into the room of a guitar player and stole his passport and air ticket as well as a large sum of money. When they noticed the robbery the next day it took forever to find someone to report it to. The Committee for Solidarity with the American People in Hanoi was obviously not quite as enamored of their American guests as they had been before the bombings. It would have taken some time to arrange replacement travel documents for the guitarist. But, that morning, a commercial flight left for southern China. On board, having successfully changed the date of his flight was someone claiming to be the guitarist. That same person made an ongoing flight to Bangkok. There’s no firm evidence that it was Henry who stole the passport, but there was no trace of him in Hanoi.”

“When I interviewed him he had a two-month old beard,” said Siri. “He could have easily passed for a folk singer. I’m sure Immigration didn’t look too closely.”

“And that brings us back to his Thai family,” said Daeng. “His plan had failed. He was still poor. But by now the Thai authorities would have been alerted to look out for him. The Americans were on his trail.”