What metaphors are used in The Tears of Autumn by Charles McCarry?

Bangkok becomes a metaphor for Asian destabilization. A city smelling of waste, whose people sleep in the streets, Bangkok, Thailand, marks the end of Paul Christopher's three weeks of work on the coast of Asia trying to destabilize the Ngo regime in South Vietnam, and what lamentably appears to be his final parting with spy/friend Vuong Van Luong. Luong has been watching an important North Vietnamese visitor, Do Minh Kha and a beautiful young woman. Only late in the novel is it learned that Nicole/Dao is telling her biological father about the Ngo family's plans to assassinate President John F. Kennedy and seeking his help in hiring an assassin.