アンはベトナムの歴史と政情に関する博識から、海外記者たちにとっては絶好の情報源であり、サイゴン中心部のコンティネンタルやカラベルといったホテルの目の前と言っていいカフェ「Givral」、あるいは「Brodard」では彼の状況分析が記者たちに対して毎日のように行われ、その集まりは「Radio Catinat」と呼ばれたりもしていた。これは余談になるかもしれないが、開高作品に登場する「ブロダール」は「Brodard」に間違いないだろう。「チュドー通りの喫茶店」や「ジェヴェール」は「Givral」のことではないかと想像する。自作の訳者からの質問に対し、「二つともキャフェの名ですが、正確な綴りが思いだせません」と開高は一九七四年の七月あるいは八月に返答している31。最後となったベトナム滞在から彼が帰国したのは、そのわずか一年ほど前の前年六月のことだったのだが。近藤と古森の著作にも「喫茶店」や「カフェ」が登場し、場所から推測して「Givral」かと思わせるが、店の名まで明らかにしてはいない。
さて、ファム・スアン・アンがどのように評価されていたかであるが、以下の引用によって彼の能力とともに、交流の幅広さが理解できる。
"... [Neil] Sheehan, [Mert] Perry, [Nick] Turner, [Nguyen Ngoc] Rao, An and myself had created a small but first-rate intelligence network. Each of us had a different specialty and area: An, for instance, had the best military contact in the country, since he had served in the Army with many of the majors and lieutenant colonels as a young officer."
これは南ベトナム政府による仏教徒弾圧が激しくなっていた昭和三十八（一九六三）年八月の情勢について書かれたもので、本書が出版されたのは四十（六五）年である。つまり、出版の時点でアンが北側の工作員であったことは知られていない。また、シーアン、ペリー、ターナー、ラオ、アンは、それぞれ当時、ニューヨーク・タイムズ紙、タイム誌、ロイター通信、ＵＰＩ、ロイター通信の記者だった。仏教徒弾圧はケネディ政権との隙間を広げることになり、クーデターと大統領暗殺へとつながっていく。著者であるハルバースタムは、
"This book is a reporter's story, and as such it belongs as much to those others who were there: Mert Perry, Neil Sheehan, Nguyen Ngoc Rao, Mal Browne, Ray Herndon, Peter Arnett, Pham Xuan An, John Sharkey, Nick Turner, Francois Sully, Vo Huynh, Ha Thuc Can, and Charley Mohr."
と記し、同書が描く内容に深く関わった記者の名を挙げている32。さらに、
"One person whose sentiment I had looked forward to hearing was Phan [sic] Xuan An, one of my oldest Vietnamese friends.... We had met in Saigon twenty years before, when he represented Reuters.... Judicious and tireless, he had the best Vietnamese sources in town, and he had generously provided me with reliable information. Such was his skill, in fact, that my successors at Time hired him as a staff correspondent – the only Vietnamese journalist to attain full status in an American news organization.32"
"[An] spoke passionately about his trade and with fondness about his many American friends in journalism, mentioning many of the era's best-known reporters, including Robert Shaplen, Stanley Karnow, Frances FitzGerald, Robert Sam Anson, Frank McCulloch, David Halberstam, Henry Kamm, and Neil Sheehan. He told me that his circle of friends extended well beyond journalism to include the CIA's Lou Conein, Colonel Edward Lansdale, and former CIA director William Colby, who had been the CIA station chief in Saigon. He also mentioned many South Vietnamese politicians and generals, including General Tran Van Don, Ambassador Bui Diem, General Duong Van Minh, known as Big Minh, who was the last president of the Republic of South Vietnam, and former prime minister and vice president Nguyen Cao Ky....33"
"Recognized as a brilliant political analyst, beginning with his work in the 1960s for Reuters and then for the New York Herald Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor, and finally as a Time correspondent for eleven years, Pham Xuan An seemed to do his best work swapping stories with colleagues in Givral, a café on the old rue Catinat. Here he presided every afternoon as the best news source in Saigon. He was called 'dean of the Vietnamese press corps' and 'voice of Radio Catinat' – the rumor mill.34"
"My biggest disappointment in Ho Chi Minh City, though not an altogether unexpected one, was being unable to see a former prominent Vietnamese journalist who had been one of my closest friends for a dozen years. He had solicited and accepted my advice to send his wife and children to the United States in April 1975, but had decided to stay on himself, 'at least for a while,' he told me in part because of his mother, who was old and ill. Some time later, though, he had arranged for his family to return to Vietnam, and we correspondents subsequently heard that he had secretly been a Communist intelligence agent all through the war.... [H]e was surely one of the best-informed men in town and had countless news sources that no one else seemed to have. In our conversations over the years, often lasting for hours, I discovered that the facts and opinions he furnished about the Communists, the government, and the many contending individuals and groups – including Buddhists and Catholics who opposed both sides I the conflicts – were more on the mark than anything I could obtain from other sources, not excluding the American Embassy, which often knew surprisingly little about what was going on among the non-establishment Vietnamese.
"Despite the rebuff in my efforts to find my friend, I kept searching for him, hoping I might bump into him on the street or find him in one of the cafés or restaurants he used to frequent. This feeling that he and others I had once known who, willingly or unwillingly, had stayed behind were somewhere about the city, were watching me even if I couldn't see them, kept bothering me through my stay....35"
名を明らかにすることが躊躇われたのだろうが、誰のことを述べているのかは、自明である。
"Pham Xuan An was a correspondent for Time magazine in Saigon. His beat was Vietnamese politics and military affairs. He was among the best connected journalists in the country. In Time he was considered a sage. It was always An who would brief new correspondents; it was An who even the competition sought when trying to unravel the hopelessly complicated threads of Vietnamese political loyalties.
"An was an open and engaging man with a wonderful sense of humor, always welcome at American and Vietnamese military and diplomatic occasions, one of the few Vietnamese reporters admitted to off-the-record briefings by the American mission. It was rumored that he was a CIA agent.36"
31 Seigle, Cecilia S. Takeshi Kaikō – 開高健, 2016 (https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=ealc)
31 Halberstam, David. The Making of a Quagmire, 1965
32 Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History, 1983
33 Berman, Larry. Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter & Vietnamese Communist Agent, 2007
34 Bass, Thomas A. The Spy Who Loved Us: The Vietnamese War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game, 2009
35 Shaplen, Robert. Bitter Victory: A Veteran Correspondent's Dramatic Account of His Return to Vietnam and Cambodia Ten Years after the End of the War, 1986
36 Safer, Morley. Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam, 1990
No comments:
Post a Comment