PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

THE CAMPUS

THE NORTH KOREANS

OTHER CHARACTERS

PROLOGUE

John Clark didn’t give a damn what anybody said—this was still Saigon.

He knew history, of course. Forty years ago the communists came down from the north and they took the place. They renamed it Ho Chi Minh City in honor of their conquering leader. To the victors the spoils. They executed collaborators and imprisoned unreliables and they changed the politics, the culture, and the fabric of the lives of those who lived here.

It looked a little different now, but to John it felt the same. The cloying evening heat and the smell of exhaust fumes mixing with the pressing jungle, the incense and cigarette smoke and the spiced meat, the buzz of the stifling crowds and the lights from the energetic streets.

And the sense of pervasive danger, just out of sight but closing, like an invading army.

They could name this city after his sworn enemy from the past, they could call it whatever the hell they wanted, but to the sixty-six-year-old man sitting in the open-front café in District 8, that didn’t change a thing.

This was still fucking Saigon.

—

Clark sat with his legs crossed, his shirt collar open, and his tan tropic-weight sport coat lying across the chair next to him because the slow-moving palm-frond fan above him did nothing more than churn the hot air. Younger men and women swirled around him, heading either to tables in the back or out onto the busy pavement in front of the café, but Clark sat still as stone.

Except for his eyes; his eyes darted back and forth, scanning the street.

He was struck by the lack of Americans in uniform, the one big disconnect from his memories of old Saigon. Forty-odd years ago he’d trod these streets in olive drab or jungle camo. Even when he was here in country with the CIA’s MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—Studies and Observations Group), he’d rarely worn civilian clothing. He was a Navy SEAL, there was a war going on, battle dress was appropriate for an American, even one in country working direct-action ops for the Agency.

Also missing were the bicycles. Back then ninety percent of the wheeled traffic on this street would have been bikes. Today there were some bikes, sure, but mostly it was scooters and motorcycles and small cars filling the street, with pedestrian throngs covering the sidewalks.

And nobody wore a uniform around here.

He took a sip of green tea in the glow of the votive candle flickering on his bistro table. He didn’t care for the tea, but this place didn’t have beer or even wine. What it did have was line of sight on the Lion d’Or, a large French colonial restaurant, just across Huynh Thi Phung Street. He looked away from the passersby, stopped thinking about the days when twenty-five percent of them would have been U.S. military, and he glanced back to the Lion d’Or. As hard as it was to divorce himself from the past, he managed to put the war out of his mind, because this evening his task was the man drinking alone at a corner table in the restaurant, just twenty-five yards from where Clark sat.

The subject of Clark’s surveillance was American, a few years younger than Clark, bald and thickly built. To Clark it was clear this man seemed to be having issues this evening. His jaw was fixed in anger, his body movements were jolting and exaggerated like a man nearly overcome with fury.

Clark could relate. He was in a particularly foul humor himself.

He watched the subject...