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

136 THOMAS A. BASS
side, I had many American friends. On the other side—
my side—were the Communists. This is often the case for
human beings. They find themselves in complicated situations.
I had to solve the problem the most humane way I could. I didn’t
want to create more animosity between Americans, Vietnamese,
and Koreans, and I didn’t want to see innocent people getting
killed.” I ask An if running the Korean story might have prevented
similar atrocities from occurring in the future. “You
cannot prevent them from happening,” he says, before repeating,
“You cannot.”
My daily conversations with An fall into a pattern. I arrive
at his gate in the morning and pull the bell. An shuffles
down the driveway and shakes my hand with his bony fingers.
We stroll through the garden, admiring his cocks and singing
birds and greeting the little dogs he keeps tied near his front
door, before sitting for hours in his salle de séjour. His voice is
low, hardly a whisper over the sound of the traffic roaring outside
his gate. As the hours advance, I move from the couch into
a chair next to him. Pretending to adjust the microphone at his
throat, I lean my ear toward his lips. Like a Vietnamese Jean-
Paul Sartre, who preferred to conduct his political battles over
a cup of coffee at the Café de Flore, An rarely claims to have
done anything more during the war than observe and analyze
events. But we know of several occasions when he reached behind
the curtain to adjust the scene. One was the battle of Ap
Bac in 1963, which marked a turning point in the expanding
American war. For the first time the Vietcong fought at battalion
strength and won a decisive victory against Vietnamese
army units supported by American helicopters, armored vehicles,
and artillery. Two Vietcong soldiers received North Vietnamese
military exploit medals for winning this battle. One
was the commander of the Communist forces. The other was
Pham Xuan An, who devised the winning strategy.