The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

106 THOMAS A. BASS
Dr. Tuyen, as he was called. This means, of course, that you are
beholden to every family member who aided you in this project,
and you are particularly indebted to Dr. Tuyen, who delivered
the document.
There was one final hurdle before An could leave. He was
keeping a death watch at his father’s bedside. Tuberculosis had
claimed one of his lungs and weakened his heart. He was gasping
for breath and visibly failing. “One day I had to take my
niece to Cholon on my scooter,” An remembers. “While we
were waiting for the rain to stop, my father said, ‘Hurry home.
I have something important to say to you.’ He ordered my
mother to bring him warm water to wash his face. He changed
his clothes and lay down to rest. On my return from Cholon I
gave him another shot of medicine to help his heart.”
“He started breathing heavily, a labored, hissing kind of
breath, hssssssss. He was having such a hard time breathing that
I held him upright in my arms. ‘Bring me a piece of blank
paper,’ he ordered. I brought him the paper. He signed it. ‘You
can type in the date later,’ he said. He signed ten more sheets
like this. ‘You can use these when I am gone,’ he said.” An’s inheritance
now included his father’s signature, if needed, on
ten forged documents.
“He was expiring. I knew he was dying. The black butterfly
of death, the papillon nocturne, flew in the window. Normally
they fly only at night. It settled on the mosquito net over my
father’s bed. The death throes began, the agony that comes
before you die. My father breathed his last breath. The butterfly
fanned his wings. I knew it was the end. My father’s heart
stopped beating.”
His father died on September 24, 1957, and two weeks
later An arrived in Costa Mesa, California, to enroll as a
freshman at the local community college. An was a thirty-oneyear-old
Communist spy, a retired customs officer and psywar
specialist when he began studying at Orange Coast College,