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

158 THOMAS A. BASS
of the city. “If Radio Catinat is the most central and most public
place for the dissemination of information, true and false,
there are other places, not far off, which are also important, each
in its own way,” Shaplen writes. An took Shaplen first to the
Ham Nghi animal and bird market near the old American embassy.
“The market, which stretches for about half a block, sells
monkeys, civets, ocelots, rabbits, guinea pigs, and all sorts of
dogs, cats, fish, and birds—among the last being cuckoos from
Africa, pigeons from France and Mozambique, owls, myna
birds, parrots, skylarks, pheasants, and canaries. For those who
favor ancient folk remedies, bats are available; a well-regarded
cure for tuberculosis involves cutting the throat of a bat and
drinking its blood mixed with rice wine.”
The military intelligence available in the bird market came
from studying the supply of crickets. As An explained to a reporter
for Le Monde, “If there weren’t any crickets in the market
it was because the areas that supply them had been seized
by the Vietcong, and if crickets reappeared in the market, it was
because the government had recaptured those areas. The same
thing was true with rare birds and fowl.”
Shaplen continues following An on his daily rounds. “Adjacent
to Ham Nghi is a street called Nguyen Cong Tru, where
each morning at about ten o’clock Chinese businessmen or
their Vietnamese agents meet in two or three cafés to determine
collectively what the day’s black-market piaster rate will be and
also to set the prices of rice, pork, and other basic commodities.
Within half an hour after their decisions are made, the word goes
out to the two main commodity markets in Saigon and Cholon
and to the dollar black market. This Chinese-dominated strip
dates back to the days of the French, who operated out of the
same places through their Chinese compradors.”
The daily price fixing is followed by a tour of Saigon’s black
market. Here An records any shift in the mix of stolen goods or
uptick in commodity prices. “In the same block, and extending
along part of Ham Nghi, is the center of the sidewalk black-