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

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242 THOMAS A. BASS

From the balconies in front of our rooms we look through

a leafy furze of tamarisk trees over a bay dotted with rock outcroppings

and little volcanic islands. Anchored in the blue

water are dozens of fishing boats. They fly red flags at their

upturned bows and are outfitted with low, square cabins at

their sterns. Surrounding the hotel’s empty swimming pool and

running along the beach is a profusion of bright pink, white,

and red paper flowers which thrive here, I am told, because they

are poisonous to moths. The temperature is already pushing into

the nineties, and the air is so humid that my notebook has

turned limp with moisture. Sweat drips off our faces as we

begin the walk into town. Other than a handful of bars, an Internet

café, and three restaurants, not counting the one serving

dog meat, Con Dao’s sole diversions are a museum devoted to

the history of its prison camps and a dive shop. The dive shop

owner’s Finnish wife describes how the harbor fills with fishing

boats whenever there is a storm. Sailors drunk on rice wine pass

out in the streets “like beached porpoises.” When the storm

passes, they shake themselves out of their stupor and sail away.

We walk along the harbor front of great stone jetties and

breakwalls built by prison labor before coming to the stone

house, now tumbling into ruin, where Camille Saint-Saëns

composed Brunhilde. A plaque on the wall informs us that

Saint-Saëns’s opera is “the sole beautiful mark left on this island

by the French.”

The Poulo Condore museum, housed in the governor’s

colonial house overlooking the harbor, is filled with engravings,

sketches, newspaper clippings, and black-and-white photographs

of the island’s prisons. One photo shows a pile of

naked bodies heaped on the floor of their cell. Another presents

a hooded figure standing with his arms outstretched in the

form of a cross. Many photos are of American advisers who

visited the island frequently and supervised its operation after

the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. Also displayed are pictures

of Paulo Condore’s “graduates”—a wall of fame that includes

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