BY JEFF STEIN
EMBERS OF WAR South Vietnamese soldiers move through Danang on May 15, 1966. Stein arrived years later and served as an intelligence case officer.
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THE BLACK MERCEDES WEAVES THROUGH THE SWARMS OF MOTORBIKES IN DANANG, Vietnam. At the wheel is a former Viet Cong guerrilla fighter with a combat ribbon on the lapel of his suit jacket. He takes me along the harbor, once a major port for U.S. Navy ships, then past the site of the former U.S. military command, now occupied by the towering regional headquarters of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Beside him is my minder from the Foreign Ministry in Hanoi, a worldly young man named Duc. I’m in the back seat, next to another former VC fighter, who is regaling me with a tale of ambushing U.S. Marines just north of the city in 1969. Smiling, he raises a trouser leg to show me a bullet wound. I ask him the name of his unit. When he tells me, I nod in recognition.