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happened?”
    “I cheated on him and he couldn’t forgive me.”
    “Did you love him?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “Do you still love him?”
    I hadn’t expected him to ask me that. “I’m married to you now, Connor,” I said, and in that moment I resolved not to see Reyes again, not even to think about him. I couldn’t stand the pain in Connor’s eyes. “Can we go home?”
    “Go back to New York? What the hell for?”
    “Because we’re in danger.”
    “I’m not going to let these guys intimidate me.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because once I start doing that, I may as well give up my job. You sure there’s no other reason? Is it because you’re scared? Or because you don’t want to see this Reyes Garcia again?””
    “You don’t get it, do you? I don’t know if this story you’re onto is going to hurt the Salvatore family or not, but if it does, you are in real danger here. They’ll only warn you once.”
    “I’ll take my chances.”
    “Well you can take them without me,” I said, and rolled away from him and turned off the light.
    He reached for me in the dark but I kept my back to him. I’d married him to get away from this world and now he’d dragged me back into it.
    I didn’t sleep much at all that night. He was awake, as he always was, just before dawn. I heard him dress and slip out. After he’d gone I tossed and turned but even though my head ached and my eyes were gritty with exhaustion I couldn’t switch off. Around seven I got up and showered and then went down and had three strong coffees on the terrace. I stared at the bootblacks and the beggars in the square and I realized I had made a terrible mistake. If I wanted to get away from the past so badly why had I come to Saigon, when I knew that Reyes was here?
    As for Connor, if he wanted to kill himself there was nothing I could do to stop him. The best thing to do would be to go home, before I got in too deep.
     
     
     

Chapter 9

     
    REYES
    The arrival of the American war machine had destroyed the time-old rhythms of life in Saigon. In the colonial days all the shops had lowered their steel shutters for a few hours in the heat of the day, but now many of the shops stayed open all day. The tawdry neon-lit bars on Tu Do and Le Loi only ever closed for curfew, keeping the off-duty servicemen plied with rock music, sex and beer round the clock.
    Reyes was parked on a stool in a bar called the Pink Pussy . The owner, another Agency old boy known to everyone as Mac, still thought the name was hilarious. He had never been a subtle man.
    He was ten minutes early for his appointment. He ordered a Tiger beer and waited. From his vantage point at the end of the bar Reyes could look across the street and stare at the blackened shell of the Nevada .
    A jukebox screamed to Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower.” The place was breathless and dark, filled with off-duty Marines. A few of them were smoking joints with their beers. The bar girls ignored Reyes, they knew who he was and didn’t waste their time. One of them, tottering on three-inch heels and wearing a crazy blonde curly wig, was pulling a drunken Marine towards the curtained off area at the back for bamilam .
    A man in a camouflage jacket sat down next to him and ordered a beer. There was a white label sewn on his jacket that said bao chi - ‘journalist.” He still looked fresh to Reyes, had the pale-skinned and wide-eyed look of a new boy. He sounded Boston-Irish.
    “Can I buy you a beer?” he said.
    “I like to buy my own,” Reyes said. He didn’t like or trust journalists, had no reason to after the life he had led.
    The guy said nothing for a while, just drank his beer. One of the girls tried to sit on his lap and he pushed her away.
    “You’re Reyes Garcia, right?” The guy held out his hand. “Connor O’Loughlin.”
    So this was Magdalena’s husband. He looked him over, figured she could have done better.
    Reyes ignored his hand. “Who do you work