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Put simply, the tap code was to divide the alphabet into five groups of five letters each, dropping the letter "K."

1 2 3 4 5

1 A B C D E

2 F G H I J

3 L M N O P

4 Q R S T U

5 V W X Y Z

Tap vertically down first and then horizontally until you reached the letter you needed. For example, my name Brace would be tapped: B=1-2; R=4-2; A=1-1; C=1-3; E=1-5. Two taps at the end of each word meant you copied, and a "roger roger" – 4-2,4-2 – was usually sent back at the end of the message to indicate you understood. We signed off with a "GBU" for "God Bless You."

A couple days later I was given a cup and communications were wide open. John brought me up to date on the war, what Johnson had done, and the fact Nixon was running for president again. That was the biggest surprise. John had a loudspeaker in his room and heard The Voice of Vietnam with "Hanoi Hannah" every day. John initiated all communications because his cell looked out on the courtyard and he could keep track of the guards through a small nail hole in his door.

The lights were out in the cells during the day and the guards' eyes couldn't adjust to the darkness from the bright outdoors when they threw open the peepholes to check into the cell. A thump on the wall out of nowhere meant that guards were coming into the cell so stay away from the wall. Next to John were two Air Force officers. They communicated with John somewhat, but weren't as thirsty as I was for news. They had a speaker in their room, too.

My cell on the back of the warehouse building turned out to be an excellent place to establish communications with the north end of the camp. A group of officers living three men in one cell did the dishes for the camp. After each evening meal they would come down between the outside wall and the back of the warehouse to get to the washroom area. One would stride out ahead of the two carrying the basket of plates and say a few words to me as he passed by my louvered windows. On their return trip I would answer him as he again distanced himself from the guard escorting the dishwashers.

At other times I could talk to the men in the first stall of the washrooms, after the guard left the area to pick up another prisoner to put into the next washroom. The men in the washroom could clear the washcourt and would cough a warning if the guard was returning. Communications were absolutely forbidden and punishment could be severe; caution was required. I passed news to John about the happenings in the other parts of the camp and John kept me informed of what was happening in the world – according to the Voice of Vietnam anyway.

Occasionally John would get called up to the "Big House." That's what the prisoners named the building where I was taken the night I arrived in the camp. Sometimes he had news that was not on the speakers in the camp. In September 1968 John had gone through a particularly bad session at the Big House where they had broken his left arm again by bending it beyond its limited mobility. After almost four days of beatings and torture John had signed a "crime confession." In the years to follow in Hanoi I found that most prisoners had been tortured to the extent that many had signed "crime confessions, letters requesting amnesty, or early release, and letters to their buddies not to fly in this cruel and senseless war."

Some had been tortured into reading propaganda over the camp radio. They had tried this on John also, but he screwed it up so bad they could not use the tape they got from John.

The year 1969 passed quickly. John was certain we would be going home this year because they seemed to be bringing in prisoners from the outlying camps. Richard Nixon had won the election, and John felt Nixon would not let us sit there much longer.

In April 1969 I made contact with a Navy Seaman, Douglas Hegdahl, one day out of the louvered window. He was cooking the chopped bamboo and weed mixture they fed the pigs in a large wok over an open fire. The guards thought he was pretty ineffective because he was only about 18, and not an officer, when captured. Hegdahl told me he had fallen off the stern of a Cruiser in the Tonkin Gulf one night when he was dumping garbage. After swimming for the rest of the night he was picked up by a Vietnamese fishing boat. The Vietnamese beat him pretty badly, at first thinking he was a commando trying to swim ashore.

Doug could watch the entry to the washcourt where he was cooking the pig's chow, and I could clear the area back to the left of the window while we talked. A cough meant there was a guard coming.

Doug gave me a lot of news about what was going on in the camp. He explained that the Senior Ranking Officer had given him orders to take early release if it was offered and he would probably be going home in July or August. Doug had memorized some three hundred names of prisoners that were not publicized. Prisoners had been sorted after their capture according to their significance to the North Vietnamese propaganda value. Fully one-half the prisoners were not acknowledge as being alive and were not allowed to write or receive mail.

This did not change until after Doug's release and the Vietnamese turned a list of prisoners over to McGovern to be read at an antiwar rally back home.

Doug would be sure to tell our government that I was alive and in Hanoi. I thought to myself that that would be a great surprise to a lot of people. He asked about John and said to tell him his father was now Commander in Chief of the Pacific. I told him John already knew. A guard came and we had to break off our conversation.

I spent the next hour telling John about the Hegdahl conversation. Of course John had a hundred questions I should have asked Doug, but it was too late. Doug was released that summer and did let the CIA know I was alive and in Hanoi.

My family was warned not to say anything about what they now knew because it might jeopardize my position. My wife, I found out after my release, had remarried. She decided at that time not to tell my four sons that their father was still alive in Hanoi.

There was a communication bust in the building known as the Corn Crib in early fall of 1969. An Air Force pilot, Mel Pollack, and a Navy pilot, Tom Hall, were taken out of the Corn Crib and moved into my old cell behind John. I was moved into the corner cell on the backside of the warehouse. At least this cell had a door. We soon learned we could hold a three way conversation by using our cups in the adjacent corner.

It took about a week to get caught up on family, military careers and shoot-down stories. Then we started playing chess through the wall. We scratched a board on our bedboards and used chips of bricks and pebbles we smuggled back into our room from the washcourt for the pawns. Pieces of toilet paper with characters on them made up the major pieces. John got upset one day when the game was going hot and heavy and told us to cool it for a while or we would be caught. John's warning did not slow us down much.

In December 1969 there was another big communication bust in the camp. The guards found out that everyone knew my name. I was taken up to the Big House and told I must confess my crimes. John had told me to deny, deny, deny, if I was ever caught communicating. To me it was a matter of survival to let the Vietnamese know that I was well known in the camp and that I had talked to Douglas Hegdahl before he left. The interrogator was angry and told me I was to be sent back to the jungle.

Earlier in captivity I would have been beaten severely, but President Ho Chi Minh had died in September 1969 and since his death the treatment had improved.

I was still in solitary four years and six months after my capture. As I was taken back to my cell I thought, "I'll never know what is going on in the jungle." I told John, and the others, what the officer said. They all sympathized of course, but we had no control.

I spent the next week waiting for something to happen. One night they threw open the door to my cell and told me to prepare to move. I rolled up my rice mat and bundled together what clothes I had. Someone coughed out a "GBU" – God bless you – as I was picking up my bundles. I was blindfolded and led into the courtyard on the other side of the warehouse.

I was leaving friends and could hardly hold back tears as they dragged me across the courtyard. They pushed me up into a truck and told me to keep silent. I was up against another prisoner on the floor of the truck. I felt something hit my thigh and then a hand slowly tapped, "MCCAIN, who U." I smiled as I realized I was not being sent back to the jungle after all. I tapped back "EB GBU." Later I was to find that there were four prisoners on that truck leaving the Plantation: John McCain, Swede Larson, Ted Guy and me. Swede tried to join in on the tapping of names, but started his tapping on a guard's leg and received a hard kick for his efforts.

It would be Christmas 1969 in a few days. Little did we know we would see three more Christmases after 1969, still in Hanoi, still in prison.

Mr. Brace is the author of "A Code to Keep," St. Martin's Press, 1988, and Hellgate Press, 2000.