The wife quietly began to cry and her husband slid his hand over hers.
‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Nguyen Van Tran. I am here because after three years in a concentration camp in Vietnam, I escaped. That part at least is true.’
‘So why pretend to be Cambodian? America has accepted many South Vietnamese who fought with us in that war.’
‘Because I was a major in the Vietcong.’
Dexter nodded slowly.
‘That could be a problem,’ he admitted. ‘Tell me. Everything.’
‘I was born in 1930, in the deep south, up against the Cambodian border. That is why I have a smattering of Khmer. My family was never communist, but my father was a dedicated nationalist. He wanted to see our country free of the colonial domination of the French. He raised me the same way.’
‘I don’t have a problem with that. Why turn communist?’
‘That is my problem. That is why I have been in a camp. I didn’t. I pretended to.’
‘Go on.’
‘As a boy before World War II, I was raised under the French lycée system, even as I longed to become old enough to join the struggle for independence. In 1942 the Japanese came, expelling the French even though Vichy France was technically on their side. So we fought the Japanese.
‘Leading in that struggle were the communists under Ho Chi Minh. They were more efficient, more skilled, more ruthless than the nationalists. Many changed sides, but my father did not. When the Japanese departed in defeat in 1945, Ho Chi Minh was a national hero. I was fifteen, already part of the struggle. Then the French came back.
‘Then came nine more years of war. Ho Chi Minh and the communist Vietminh resistance movement simply absorbed all other movements. Anyone who resisted was liquidated. I was in that war too. I was one of those human ants who carried the parts of the artillery to the mountain peaks around Dien Bien Phu where the French were crushed in 1954. Then came the Geneva Accords, and also a new disaster. My country was divided. North and South.’
‘You went back to war?’
‘Not immediately. There was a short window of peace. We waited for the referendum that was part of the Accords. When it was denied, because the Diem dynasty ruling the South knew they would lose it, we went back to war. The choice was the disgusting Diems and their corruption in the South or Ho and General Giap in the North. I had fought under Giap; I hero-worshipped him. I chose the communists.’
‘You were still single?’
‘No, I had married my first wife. We had three children.’
‘They are still there?’
‘No, all dead.’
‘Disease?’
‘B fifty-twos.’
‘Go on.’
‘Then the first Americans came. Under Kennedy. Supposedly as advisors. But to us, the Diem regime had simply become another puppet government like the ones imposed under the Japanese and the French. So again, half my country was occupied by foreigners. I went back to the jungle to fight.’
‘When?’
‘Nineteen sixty-three.’
‘Ten more years?’
‘Ten more years. By the time it was over, I was forty-two and I had spent half my life living like an animal, subject to hunger, disease, fear and the constant threat of death.’
‘But after 1972, you should have been triumphant,’ remarked Dexter. The Vietnamese shook his head.
‘You do not understand what happened after Ho died in 1968. The party and the government fell into different hands. Many of us were still fighting for a country we hoped and expected would have some tolerance in it. The ones who took over from Ho had no such intention. Patriot after patriot was arrested and executed. Those in charge were Le Duan and Le Duc Tho. They had none of the inner strength of Ho, which could tolerate a humane approach. They had to destroy to dominate. The power of the secret police was massively increased. You remember the Tet Offensive?’
‘Too damn well.’