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

The Spy Who Loved Us 187
Flynn, son of French actress Lili Damita and Tasmanianborn
actor Errol Flynn, who played the hero in Captain Blood
and other sword-fighting movies, had dropped out of college and
was drifting around the world, alternating between movie sets
and war zones, when he reached Vietnam in 1965. Flynn idolized
Audie Murphy, the war hero who played the quiet American
in the first movie made from Greene’s novel. Flynn rented
what he thought was Murphy’s apartment on the rue Catinat.
Unfortunately he made a mistake. What he rented was actually
the apartment of Michael Redgrave, who played the British
journalist who was Audie Murphy’s nemesis. It was from the balcony
of this apartment that Redgrave had signaled for Murphy
to be killed.
In April 1970, twenty-nine-year-old Flynn and fellow photographer
Dana Stone left Phnom Penh on rented motorbikes
to find the front lines of fighting in Cambodia. (Cambodia had
become another Asian hot spot after Prince Norodom Sihanouk
was deposed and U.S. troops invaded the country.) Captured by
the Khmer Rouge in eastern Cambodia, Flynn and Stone were
killed sometime the following year. “They were captured in
Chi Pou, not far from Phnom Penh,” An tells me. “They were
killed immediately by the Khmer Rouge, but we didn’t know it.
All we knew at the time was that they had been captured.”
As soon as news of the photographers’ capture reached
Saigon, Time mobilized a rescue effort. Supported by other
bureaus with missing newsmen, they dispatched freelance journalist
Zalin Grant, who had worked in army counterintelligence
before writing for Time. “He needed two people to go
with him to interview the refugees crossing the border from
Cambodia,” An says. “Vuong and I went with him to Trang Bang,
where lots of refugees were pouring out of Cambodia. We asked
them if they had seen these two photographers, Sean Flynn and
Dana Stone.” The rescue effort was carried on for another few
years by British photographer Tim Page, who had been seriously