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

The Spy Who Loved Us 201
While shuttling between life underground in the Cu Chi tunnels
and intelligence work in Saigon, Tu Cang was An’s direct
leader in the Communist intelligence services from 1962
to 1970.
“The U.S. soldiers pumped gas down the tunnels and
cleared off all the trees and animals with Agent Orange,” Tu
Cang says. “We thought it was raining when they dropped
chemicals on us from their airplanes. We came close to death
many times.” He circles his arms overhead to show me how
American paratroopers dropped down from the sky like airborne
ferrets to chase him underground. In addition to commanding
the intelligence network in Saigon, Tu Cang directed
the city’s guerrilla terror campaigns. “We were divided into
frontline soldiers and inner-city soldiers,” he tells me. “The
second of these exploited the enemy’s weaknesses, attacking
restaurants and bars. We worked in teams of six or seven sapeurs
dans les villes, inner-city terrorists.”
In 2004, on my first visit to Tu Cang’s house, I drive down
a dirt alley to a walled compound that used to be a farm before
the city grew up around it. After touring a garden filled with
prized orchids, my translator and I kick off our shoes and enter
the salon, an airy room with a red tile floor. At the back of the
room hangs the rope hammock in which Tu Cang takes his afternoon
naps. A large man with a winning grin, he has a highdomed
forehead crowned with thinning black hair. Barefoot, he
sits with his knees pulled up to his chest. A brown and white dog
sleeps at his feet. His wife, a sharp-eyed woman with her gray
hair pulled into a bun, bustles around us, pouring tea and
straightening the house. At one point, she stops dusting and
picks up a book I am carrying, one of the three Vietnamese biographies
on Pham Xuan An. She leafs through it, carefully
noting every underlined passage and marginal note. Tu Cang
tells us that his wife was a sergeant in the army, a liaison officer
with four military exploit medals. He himself has thirteen medals
and was recently named a Hero of the People’s Armed Forces.