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

Baptism
by Fire
H
o Chi Minh City—or Saigon, as it is still commonly
called—is a single-mindedly commercial place. Filled
with pushcarts and vendors selling everything from soup to
CDs, the streets are roaring rivers of two-stroke motorcycles.
The exhaust fumes are so thick that Saigon’s famously beautiful
women have started covering their faces with scarves. “We
are all Muslims now,” says Viet, my Honda man, who drives me
around the city on the back of his motorcycle.
Approaching An’s house—a villa in District Three, a
densely settled neighborhood near the train station—we pass
an intersection full of motorcycle repair shops and come to a
street that specializes in selling tropical fish, including the
Siamese fighting fish that An admires. I tug on the bell that
hangs from his green metal gate. As the dogs start barking, I
peer through the grill to see An shuffling down the driveway on
this sunny day in January 2004. A wispy figure, he wears a
white, short-sleeved shirt with a ballpoint pen in the pocket,
gray trousers that flap around his legs, and rubber sandals. He
arrives winded but smiling and greets me with a handshake
11