Conspiracy

79

Dean pushed back in the chair as Phuc Dinh rose.

“I have enjoyed our meeting,” Phuc Dinh said perfuncto-rily, his tone suggesting the opposite.

“Thank you,” Dean told him. “I appreciate your time.

And your honesty.”

Once more, a faint hint of a smile appeared on Phuc Dinh’s face, only to dissolve. As Dean watched him walk toward the door, it occurred to him that it would be an easy thing to shoot him, completing the mission he had been assigned thirty-five years before.

But Phuc Dinh had not caused Longbow’s death any more than Dean had.

Meeting his Vietnamese enemy reminded Dean not of the war but of how much had changed in the intervening years.

As a sniper, he’d seen Vietnam, the world, as black-and-white. Now he saw only colors, infinite colors. He knew his job and his duty, and would perform both. But he no longer had the luxury the teenager had of looking at targets through a crosshaired scope. What he saw was weighted with the time he’d come through, the miles he’d walked.

The ghosts he’d shared space with, haunted by and, in turn, haunting.