Chapter 4 — End of Line Bus 08

The afternoon rain that fell on Saigon suddenly felt like a wet slap in the face, turning the streets into vast waves of water in less than fifteen minutes. Huy huddled under the awning of a closed grocery store, waiting for the rain to stop while his mind still diligently processed the information he had just gathered from his meeting with Tue.

He needed to check one more information channel before boarding the night bus: the local police station might have refused to cooperate, but he had an old friend from the Criminal Police Department who often shared unofficial information over drinks on the weekends.

Huy called Phong - Lieutenant Nguyen Minh Phong, a friend from college - and arranged to quickly meet at a coffee shop near the district police headquarters. Phong arrived in civilian clothes, without a briefcase, with the normal appearance of someone going out for afternoon coffee. But the look in his eyes that looked around for a moment before sitting down in the chair opposite Huy said a lot.

"You asked about the disappearances around Dai Nam Dong area," Phong said directly, without beating around the bush. "How do you know about those things?"

Huy put the sheepskin notebook on the table without explaining further. Phong looked down at the notebook, then back at Huy, and Huy could see a hint of genuine concern in his friend's eyes.

"I ask directly, have you reported this to anyone?"

"No. I just picked it up last night."

Phong took a deep breath and looked out the window. "I will tell you the truth, as a friend, not as a police officer. Last month, my department received an excerpt report about a citizen named Dinh Trong Quy filing a complaint at the district's People's Reception Office. But that complaint was then transferred to superiors for jurisdictional review, and since then there has been no further action."

Dinh Trong Quy - the last name in the notebook. The surveying engineer quit his job. "What does he accuse?"

"I don't know the details of the application. But I do know that after the application was transferred to higher level, a week later, he disappeared." Phong looked straight into Huy's eyes. "And no investigation file has been opened. Officially, he left voluntarily."

Officially. Huy understood the meaning of that statement. "What organization or individual could pressure the denunciation to sink so quickly?"

Phong looked down at his coffee cup and didn't answer right away. Then he spoke slowly, as if choosing each word: "Dai Nam Group has sponsored a lot of local welfare projects in the past three years. The ward's new stadium. Scholarship fund for children of local officials. Private hospital has a joint venture with individual shareholders who are people of the system. You understand."

Huy quickly wrote it down in his notebook. The funding ecosystem is intertwined with local power. Classic.

"You're putting yourself in danger," Phong said more quietly. "The people in that notebook, they are working people with no power, no protectors. If they don't hesitate with those people, do you think they will hesitate with a journalist?"

"Thank you for being frank," Huy stood up, stuffing the notebook into his pocket. "If you find any information about Dinh Trong Quy or the other four people, message me."

Phong did not promise anything. But he didn't stop Huy either.

---

Eight o'clock in the evening. Huy was walking home through a shortcut alley, the path he took every day to avoid Traffic jam on main road. The alley is about three hundred meters long, with high, dark walls on both sides, with only a few flickering street lights creating short periods of light between long stretches of darkness.

He had only gone about a third of the alley when he heard the sound of a motorbike behind him. Nothing unusual - this alley is still passable for motorbikes, although narrow. But the instincts of a person who has been absorbed through many years of investigative reporting made Huy walk faster and turn his head once.

Two motorbikes. No headlights. Slowly run at a speed equivalent to your walking speed, keeping a distance of about fifteen meters behind. The person sitting in the car was wearing a dark full-face helmet, covering his face. There was no significant action, but the way they kept a steady distance, not passing, not getting any closer, created an undeniable chill.

Huy didn't stop, didn't look back anymore. He continued walking steadily, adjusting his direction naturally along the alley, while pulling out his phone, opening the recording app and putting the phone in his jacket chest pocket. He also calculated the distance to the alley gate to the main road ahead: about two hundred meters, two minutes for normal walking, one minute for running.

Twenty meters before the alley gate, one of the two motorbikes began to accelerate slightly, moving closer. Huy increased his steps. The other car also increased.

Fifty meters from the gate to the main road, the first car pulled up to Huy's level and the driver braked, blocking his path. Huy stopped, facing forward calmly as if this was what he had planned.

"Journalist Lam Huy," the first person in the car spoke, not a question but a confirmation. He did not take off his hat or show his face. The voice was low, calm - the voice of someone who had done this many times. "I heard you're investigating a few disappearances in the Thu Duc area. Sincere advice: leave that alone. It's other people's business, it's better to worry about your own."

The second car remained stationary behind Huy, blocking any possibility of retreat.

"Thanks for the advice," Huy said calmly, even though his heart was beating faster than usual. "I noted. But I need to ask one thing again: who are you guys?"

"Someone who cares about your health," the first guy replied. "Seriously, Mr. Huy. Saigon at night is not safe for people who are not reasonable. Wish you peace."

The first car started, pulled aside the small alley, and disappeared into the darkness. The second car slowly backed up and turned around in the opposite direction.

Huy stood silently in the alley for a few more seconds, letting his heart return to its normal rhythm. Then he continued to walk towards the alley gate with calmer steps, eyes glued forward, ears pricked up to listen for any movement.

When he reached a crowded main street, he stopped, took out his phone and turned off the recording application. The recording file saved the entire short "conversation".

The message was clear: they knew about you and knew what you were investigating. But there's something else that's even clearer - they didn't do anything to him. Just a warning. That could mean two things: either they didn't consider him a serious enough threat to take action, or they were being careful because he was a journalist, and overdoing it could attract unnecessary attention.

Both possibilities can change quickly if you go too far deep.

Huy walked into an open pho restaurant, ordered a large bowl and sat down to eat and think. They reacted surprisingly quickly. In the morning he met Tue, in the afternoon he met Phong, and by evening they knew and sent people to approach. It means someone is watching, or someone in the system is reporting.

That means you can't trust any official information channels. And he needed to be more careful, moving in unpredictable ways.

But he also drew another important conclusion: they knew him, but they didn't know where the notebook was. If they knew he had found the notebook and read it, they certainly wouldn't have stopped at just a simple warning.

He took the sheepskin notebook out of his pocket and placed it on the table. This small thing holds human lives. And now, it is also a bait that attracts predators.

Huy ordered another glass of iced tea and looked at the clock: nine thirty at night. There are still two hours until the 11:30 p.m. bus. He opened his phone and composed a short message to Tue: "Someone just warned me on the way home. They know I'm investigating. Are you safe?"

The answer came five minutes later: "I'm fine. This is not strange. Don't go to the bus the usual way. Go to the alley behind the bus station."

This woman is not surprised. Don't be overly afraid. Just be realistic and adaptable. That tells Huy that Tue has lived in the shadow of these threats for longer than he thought, and she has learned to coexist with it without letting it consume her.

A quarter to eleven. Huy went to the bus station through the back alley, as Tue instructed. Car 08 is waiting, the interior lights are yellow. He got on, found a seat in the middle of the car - not the last row like last night, to avoid being recognized in the rearview mirror. Tue didn't look at him when he walked up, but when he sat down, he noticed in the mirror that her eyes had blinked once - confirmation.

The 11:30 p.m. bus started again. This time, Huy did not carry the mentality of a tired passenger who wanted to go home. He carries the eyes of an investigator entering an active crime scene. And tonight, something will happen on this bus. He felt it in his bones.

Outside the window, Saigon passes in the slow rhythm of late night - neon signs fading away, the last bars with customers, motorbikes alone on the wide highway. And when the car entered the road through Dai Nam Dong area, on both sides of the road there was only darkness, corrugated iron fences and dim construction site lights in the distance, like evil eyes watching.