PROLOGUE

The three men are sipping beers at the Casablanca, a shamelessly named sidewalk café on Nguyen Hue Boulevard, and casually watching the local street traffic, which consists mostly of one or two cars, a few rickshaws, and lots of people on bicycles. It is beautiful out, blue skies, low humidity; and in order to kill time until twilight settles in and they can move to one of the more decadently named nightclubs they are amusing each other by sharing that day’s most outrageous dispatches – a blatant violation of military protocol. One of them has brought his portable bong along, and after a few hits they are all in a pretty hilarious mood.

Well, two of them, anyway.

“Get a load of this one,” Intelligence Officer Bobby Newman says, beaming at his companions from across the table. He is about 23 years old, tall and blond, and exuberantly arrogant, and in another lifetime would probably make a fine (if perhaps too jovial) Nazi interrogator. He carefully withdraws from his shirt’s front pocket a sheet of neatly folded paper.

“What’s that?” asks the man sitting across from him, a Lieutenant Michael Escher. Darker haired, and thinner, the Lieutenant is clearly struggling to appear interested. “Another report from Colonel Endicott’s Whorehouse Incursion Unit?”

“No, not this time.” Bobby flattens the sheet out on the table. “The adventures of the WIU are always excellent, of course. Always profound and philosophical. But this is something special, I think.”

He grins, his left eye dancing in the pale afternoon light.

“What are we talking about?” asks the third man, another lieutenant whom everyone refers to only as J T, and who for some time now has been sucking like mad on his little brass pipe. He is already almost completely out of it.

Allowing himself a thin smile, Lieutenant Escher reaches for the paper and slides it towards him. “’Contest,’” he announces, reading the title out loud, then lifts his eyes, and his eyebrows, and gives Bobby a look. “Championship shit-diving, I hope.”

“Just read the thing, okay, Escher?”

“Yeah,” says J T. “Just fucking read the fucking thing.”

“Well, then,” Escher huffs, continuing. “Let’s see what we’ve got here. ‘Win the American Dream,’ it says. ‘That fabulous car you always wanted. That great job. The house in the Hamptons and the 2.4 kids. The beautiful bottle-blonde wife with the artificially enhanced hooters. All the dope you can smoke. Guaranteed erections, all night, every night –’”

“Say, them’s some pretty nice prizes,” interjects J T.

“Oh, I don’t know,” says Escher, scanning down the list. “There’s nothing here about Disneyland.” He is trying very hard to stay focused, to not think about the other thing, and he skips ahead to the end. “To win all this stuff, it says – and much much more, I’m sure – all you have to do, and I quote, is ‘answer on the accompanying form the following question: What is the meaning of life?’”

Bobby hoots. “Some question, eh?”

“What question is that?” asks J T.

Escher only nods and tightens his lips. On any other afternoon he would be enjoying this as much as the others, his cheeks puffed out in wordless mirth, his eyes watering. But for him this has not been any other afternoon. This has been one of those daylight nightmares from which you cannot awake. Xuan Loc, he thinks to himself. Project Phoenix. Designation MF-17.

Words that until this morning have meant little or nothing to him.

He decides to finish up. “‘All entries,’” he reads, “‘must be at least ten words or less, sealed in a self-addressed stamped envelope, and postmarked no later than yesterday. State laws and regulations apply. Void where prohibited. Correct answer selected at random.’”

Bobby can hardly contain himself. J T seems confused. Escher, for his part, merely shakes his head, smiling.

“Are you sure this contest isn’t rigged?” he inquires politely.

For the first time Bobby notices that maybe there is something troubling his friend. “Hey,” he says. “The joke’s funnier than that. Why aren’t you, you know, convulsed?”

Escher, unable to come up with a plausible answer, lifts his hand and tries to catch the eye of a nearby waiter. It’s not fair, he thinks. We’re junior officers working level one encryptions. None of it’s supposed to be important. None of it’s supposed to mean anything.

Around them, the light is already leaving the sky, the rickshaws and the bicycles thinning out. “Something happen today?” Bobby presses.

But before Escher can say anything J T interrupts. “There once was a grunt named Sid Lancelot,” he intones, apropos of nothing, “who out in the field pissed his pants a lot –”

Bobby and Escher both look at him.

“But whenever off-duty, with gookettes of great beauty, the front of those pants would—”

There is a sharp report from across the boulevard, and a sudden eruption of smoke, and then the front facade of a large pink and white building begins to slide in terrible slow motion into the street. There are cries and shouts, and the brittle sound of breaking glass, and as the three of them watch in stunned silence an enormous cloud of dust and debris advances on the Casablanca like some shapeless beast. Their hands automatically move to cover the tops of their beers, and J T’s tiny brass pipe falls to the floor with an audible thunk!

“–advanced a lot,” he finishes lamely, and then drops his mug of beer as well. It explodes at his feet into glass and foam.

“Well, fuck me,” he whispers, all at once perfectly sober, his eyes grown wide as saucers. He glances over at Bobby, and then at Escher.

And then he seems to shake the whole thing off.

“I think I need another beer,” he announces. “How about you guys?”

* * * *

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