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

The Spy Who Loved Us 5
medals, awarded for valorous service in Vietnam’s wars against
the French and Americans.
Ever since our first meeting in 1992, An had put me off the
trail to discovering what he actually did during the First and
Second Indochina Wars and what he continued to do as a “consultant”
for Vietnam’s intelligence services until his death on
September 20, 2006. He hid these facts from outsiders, with the
brilliant sleight of hand and charming humor for which he was
famous. When my inquiries became too pointed, he turned
from assisting my book project to trying to block it. His superiors
in military intelligence had given him permission to talk to
me for a magazine article. He had been fond of The New Yorker
from the days when he worked as assistant to Robert Shaplen,
the magazine’s Far Eastern correspondent. An must have told
his bosses, “It’s only a magazine article. I’ll spin the story, maybe
at greater length than usual, but without giving away anything
we don’t want to give away.” They had allowed him to undertake
this assignment, supposedly limited in scope, but they explicitly
denied him permission to work with me on a book. As
soon as the article was published, An put an end to our meetings
and hastily arranged for another “official” biography to be
written, one designed to keep his cover securely in place.
An was a brilliant conversationalist. His method throughout
his life had been to disguise his activities through talk. How
could someone so voluble and open about his life be a spy?
How could someone so funny and pointed in his remarks about
human stupidity be a Communist? This method worked so
well that it became ingrained in his personality. There was no
way to shut him up. An talked and talked, and in the end, for
a mere magazine article, we had recorded sixty hours of taped
interviews. Many more hours of conversation were transcribed
in the written notes of our meetings. As I replayed these tapes
and reread my notes, the variations in An’s narrative began to
intrigue me. Only once, for example, among a dozen descriptions
of the “crash course” that had trained him as a Viet Minh