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

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The Spy Who Loved Us 221

Pham Xuan An.” After giving a rundown of the day’s events in

the south, An filed three more reports before the line went dead.

When his former colleagues first learned An’s story from

rumors that began circulating in the 1980s, each invariably

recalled a questionable incident that was suddenly explained

by the news. Nick Turner, An’s former boss at Reuters,

confirmed his suspicions about An’s unannounced absences

from the office. H. D. S. Greenway, known to his friends as

David, suddenly understood why his former colleague at Time

knew more than he did about the battle of Lam Son 719.

“I had been up on the border near Khe Sanh, watching

badly mauled soldiers retreating from Laos,” Greenway told me.

“I described them as survivors from the original column leading

the attack. ‘No,’ An said, without the slightest hesitation.

‘The original column was wiped out. What you saw were survivors

from the attempt to rescue the column, which also failed.’

Later, when I thought back on it, he seemed remarkably well

informed. This is the kind of insight you’d have only from

knowing what both sides in the battle were doing.”

Nayan Chanda, who was working for Reuters and the Far

East Economic Review, remembered seeing An standing in

front of the Presidential Palace on the last day of the war as

Communist tank 843 smashed through the iron gate. “There

was a strange, quizzical smile on his face. He seemed content

and at peace with himself. I found it odd,” Chanda says. “His

wife and children had just been airlifted out of the country,

and he didn’t seem to have a care in the world.” Chanda later

realized that An was celebrating the Communist victory he

had supported for thirty years.

Aside from Chanda’s fleeting glimpse, An kept his cover

in place after 1975. “It was a dangerous moment for me,” he

says. “It would have been easy for someone to put a bullet

through my skull. I was afraid they would kill me and barbecue

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