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

The Spy Who Loved Us 131
English and fell in love with Chin Chi. After the girls joined the
Tran Van On student protest movement in 1951, Chin Chi
went into the jungle for a year of revolutionary training. When
she returned to finish high school, she was hired as a translator
by the U.S. operations mission, which directed Vietnam’s strategic
hamlet program. She traveled around the country by helicopter,
accompanying doctors and nurses into the field. “I talked
to An and told him everything I saw,” she says. “I was a spy.”
After resisting An’s advances, Chin Chi worked as a spy
until she slipped out of the city in 1965 to take up the life of
a jungle soldier. She remained single until 1968, when she
married a North Vietnamese colonel and gave birth to a daughter.
When I ask Chin Chi if Pham Xuan An was ever in love
with her and wanted to marry her, Tam Thao chuckles and
Chin Chi smiles.
“He wanted to marry me after he came back from the
United States,” she says. “This was in 1959. My family agreed,
but I said no. I turned him down. I wanted to travel abroad. I
wanted to go to England to study, but Mr. Muoi Huong, our
chief, did not approve of my leaving the country. I went into the
jungle instead.
“His wife won’t want to hear me say this,” she adds. “It’s an
old love story. Mr. Muoi Huong supported the marriage, but I
was too young. I wasn’t thinking about love at the time.”
Later in the afternoon, after many more cups of tea, Chin
Chi offers another explanation for why she resisted An’s advances.
“There was a curfew, and everyone had to go home
except for An, because he had a press card and could come and
go whenever he wanted. So he would stay late into the night,
talking, talking. There was no way to shut him up.”
“Seven months after I turned him down, An married Thu
Nhan,” she says. “A spy must have what appears to be a normal
family life and a wife to manage the family, in case he is captured.
There was a problem, though, since Thu Nhan was not
a member of the organization. If An was captured, the secret