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

214 THOMAS A. BASS
booths next to Givral’s windows, while the Vietnamese sat inside
toward the bar, talking discreetly as they sipped iced coffees
sweetened with condensed milk.
The inner courtyard of the Continental, with its famous
garden, remains unchanged from the days when An and Tu
Cang sat here planning the Têt Offensive. In this cloistered
space with tables set under flowering frangipanis, I sit next to
espaliered trees in Chinese vases, a palm tree whose trunk is
decorated with red foil, a fishpond filled with carp, and a belle
epoque lamppost that could have been designed by Gustave
Eiffel himself. Over my table rises a frangipani with wildly
waving arms that stretch thirty feet into the air, before arriving
at a fringe of spatulate leaves and white flowers that scent the
air with a heady tropical aroma.
The day has already turned vaporous, with the sun beating
down through a layer of diesel fumes and dust, when Viet, my
Honda man, and I head to the Ben Thanh market. Sighting the
telltale water tower that Tam Thao has given as a landmark, we
turn down an alley no wider than my outstretched arms, before
the track appears to end at a pagoda with fish and fruit vendors
squatting in front of it. Asking for directions to An’s house, we
are told to knock on the door of an old woman who has lived
here for many years. We find her at home chewing betel nut,
and, yes, she remembers the journalist who parked his car out
on the boulevard and who, because of his press pass, was the
only person in the neighborhood allowed to come and go at all
hours of the day and night.
The old woman directs her niece to lead us through the
maze of streets behind the pagoda. We follow her down a crevasse
beside the temple, which I hadn’t noticed before. We
jog right, left, right. With the alleyway narrowing at every turn,
my elbows graze the walls if I hold my arms akimbo. A crowd
of onlookers gathers as people come out of their houses to
stare at the commotion, and soon the entire neighborhood is in-