We returned to the house as darkness fell. I hung back as Ti-Anna punched the buzzer. The gate opened, Ti-Anna disappeared, the gate swung back—and paused, for just an instant. Without thinking—or maybe because in some corner of my mind I’d been thinking about it all day—I darted through the gap before the gate clicked shut, and dropped into the shrubbery. Ti-Anna was being escorted up the path, through shadows. I assumed the man next to her was Rat-face. I squatted in the humid Hanoi night, surrounded by cicadas even noisier than my ragged breathing. I had no plan. I couldn’t have told you why I had done what I did, or what I thought I was going to do next, except that I didn’t trust Mr. Thieu, and I didn’t want a wall separating me from Ti-Anna. I edged forward through an unkempt garden. The driveway opened onto a gravel-covered lot that encircled Thieu’s house like a moat. It wasn’t really a house, though—it looked more like a squat pagoda, with the ground floor lit up and the higher floors in darkness.
