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

176 THOMAS A. BASS
reception. He is sitting in a wheelchair holding a bouquet of
flowers. Standing behind him, wearing a brown suit that swims
around his skeletal frame, is a smiling Pham Xuan An.
An describes for me how he got his information “to the
other side,” as he calls it. “I wrote my reports and analyses
in secret ink,” he says. “You put a small bit of rice in a saucer,
which you hold over a flame. After a while, the gluten and
starch come out. You take a clean pen. I used what the French
call a plume, a quill pen, made from a goose feather, which I
trimmed with a pair of scissors. I dipped this sharpened pen in
the rice starch and used it to write on what we call cement
paper, because it is the same gray-brown color as the paper
used to wrap bags of cement. I wrote my reports on this cement
paper, which is hard to do, since you have to write very fast before
the ink dries out. As soon as it dries you can no longer see
where you were writing. You get lost in the middle of your report.
This is why you have to write in the nighttime, under a
bright light. You can’t do this in the middle of the day, when
people are walking around. So I would wait until midnight
every night, after everyone had gone to bed, to begin writing
my reports.”
“You hold the light very close to the paper while you’re
writing. The rice starch ink, when it’s wet, is shiny and reflects
the light, but when it dries, you can’t see anything. So you have
to write very fast, which is why you should have your report
memorized. You have to write it continuously, without pausing
while you’re writing. When you’re finished and the ink has
dried, you end up with what looks like a normal piece of paper.
You wrap something with it, some egg rolls or rice, and give it
to your courier to take into the jungle. Our base at Phu Hoa
Dong wasn’t very far away.
“When the report arrives, you mix up a solution of water, iodine,
and one hundred percent alcohol. You use a piece of cotton
to dab the solution over the document. The solution has to