ABSTRACT
The suite of makeshift offices and bedrooms on the second floor of the Boss Hotel, across a leafy street from one of those sparkling little lakes that decorate the downtown of the Vietnamese capital, could hardly be mistaken for a diplomatic mission. The five or six Americans who live and work in them prefer sport shirts to coats and ties and are sometimes seen wearing baseball caps at lunch in the dining room downstairs. There is no gauntlet of security guards and secretaries barricading the halls—only smiling Vietnamese hotel clerks glad to wave a visitor up to see "the Americans" with or without appointment.
