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

A Brighter
World
O
n Easter Sunday I wake at five in the morning to catch the
flight from Saigon to Poulo Condore, also known as Con
Dao, after the black Plutonic island at its center. This archipelago
between Vietnam and Malaysia is the sunny purgatory
that served as Vietnam’s preeminent island prison. Pham Xuan
An always presumed it would be his final resting place.
Our thirty-seater Antonov aircraft is piloted by two homesick
Russians who miss their wives and children in Kamchatka.
We land smoothly on the island’s single runway and take a
minivan to the Labor Union Rest House, the cheaper of the two
places to stay on Con Dao. I am traveling with Kyle Hörst, a former
U.N. official who works on refugee issues in Washington,
and Dinh Nguyet Ha, a pleasant, forthright woman who is a
former officer with the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
After checking in to the hotel, Kyle, who was trained as a geologist,
pulls a topo map out of his backpack and starts quizzing
the girls staffing the front desk. They describe the island’s sites
while giggling over the oddity of having a tall Vietnamesespeaking
American in their midst.
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