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

206 THOMAS A. BASS
An’s official biography, which says that he would have been
made a Hero of the People’s Armed Forces—Vietnam’s highest
military honor—for what he did during Têt alone. “However,
because he was working inside the enemy ranks, the conferment
was delayed in order to ensure absolute secrecy.”
Arriving at 7:00 A.M. to pick up Tu Cang for a day’s journey
out to the Cu Chi tunnels, we find the old warrior standing
outside his gate wearing green army fatigues and a short-sleeved
white shirt. He is holding copies of his books, which he intends
to present as gifts to the soldiers who are still stationed at Cu
Chi. Accompanying us for the day is Thuy Nach, the Vietnamese
wife of a retired U.S. foreign service officer. Thuy, a small,
dark-eyed woman of encyclopedic intelligence, has been helping
me as a translator. She and Tu Cang compare notes on how
they used to rank among the brightest students in their colonial
high schools. Forgetting for the moment that they chose opposite
sides in the war, they soon discover that they can recite
Vietnamese poetry and sing the old patriotic songs together.
Driving into the countryside northwest of Ho Chi Minh
City, we pass through miles of truck traffic and commercial
sprawl. Welders torch rebar on the edge of the road next to vendors
selling cassette tapes, orchids, and cigarettes. Around us
flows a stream of motorcycles as we pass a parade of dieselbelching
trucks and bicycle carts loaded with pigs and chickens
in bamboo cages. A nation of tight-knit family clans centered
around ancestor worship and commercial trading, the Vietnamese
are the world’s least likely Communists. Their primary
allegiance is not to the state but to the family. The unnatural
implantation of Communism into Vietnam was a historical accident.
The Party’s anticolonialism briefly lined up with Vietnam’s
nationalist aspirations, but today the people doing
business around us look more like students of Adam Smith
than Karl Marx.