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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 255

me that he is taking rhinoceros horn to cure his emphysema. He

is no longer joking about his death. His brown eyes are liquid

and large. Trying to catch his breath, he grimaces with pain.

Summoning the reserves of willpower and energy for which he

is famous, he starts talking, and he is still talking two hours

later, when I insist on leaving.

An tells me this is the last time we will meet. He gives various

reasons, none of them convincing, and I sense that the decision

to break off our conversations has been made elsewhere.

We talk about my New Yorker article published in May 2005.

An complains that the photographer nearly killed him in a

photo shoot that lasted half a day. Following this ordeal, his favorite

lark lost all his feathers and didn’t sing for a week. Then

the magazine’s fact checker pestered him with phone calls

but she still misidentified his great-grandfather’s birthplace in

North Vietnam.

“I know what happened to you,” a Vietnamese friend later

tells me. “You published information that should not have

gotten out. It violated the protection of state secrets. After you

let the cat out of the bag, someone made the decision to close

you down.” I am saddened to think that an old man taking rhinoceros

horn and gasping for breath can still be considered

dangerous to state security. I am also unnerved by realizing

that An is still taking orders from his superiors. Like An’s other

American friends, I believed he was his own man, the one free

soul in Vietnam who could speak his mind while flying the flag

of liberty.

An returns to complaining about my New Yorker article.

“Lots of people are no longer talking to me, and many others

are spreading lies and rumors.” He mentions attacks on his

family but refuses to give any details.

“You were only doing your duty. You were a patriot,” I say,

trying to calm him down.

“All Vietnamese are patriots, even if they disagree with the

party in power,” he says. “Many others were braver and did

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