Chapter 6 — End of Line Bus 08

The next morning, Huy spread the technical documents from Ms. Hoa's envelope across the desk. Twenty-one sheets, each sheet is a slice of a painting, and the more closely Huy looks at it, the colder he becomes.

I'm not a civil engineer. But after twenty years of investigative journalism, he had learned to read enough technical documents to realize something was wrong. And in these geological drawings, the problem is not subtly hidden - it is clearly visible to anyone with basic knowledge of the project.

The Lot B area of the Dai Nam Dong project - where according to the design there will be a sixty-storey mixed-use tower with four basement parking levels - is geologically surveyed in 2023 and 2024. The official survey report that Huy found on the project's public portal noted that the ground is "qualified to bear the load with appropriate reinforcement measures".

But the papers from Ms. Hoa's envelope show a completely different picture. This is the result of independent measurements performed by Dinh Trong Quy during the subcontracting process. The data show that the soft clay layer at a depth of twelve to eighteen meters below the construction site has a bearing index significantly lower than what the official report announced. Not a small difference in technical errors, but a systematic difference, in a certain direction - official reports always give figures higher than actually measured, at a level of thirty to forty percent.

Huy took photos of all the documents, then sent them to two friends who are construction engineers, asking them for preliminary analysis. The result came within two hours: both responded with careful but clear words. If the data in this document are correct, the construction of a sixty-story tower without special foundation reinforcement would create a serious risk of subsidence, and in the worst case scenario could lead to structural failure within five to ten years after completion.

A sixty-story tower. Thousands of apartments. Tens of thousands of people will live and work in it.

Huy leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. Now he understood the full scale of what was happening. This is not just about poor working people going missing. This is a crime with far greater depths - a massive real estate project built on a foundation of fake data, and those who know the truth are being systematically eliminated to keep it a secret.

He opened the computer and started looking up Dai Nam Group and chairman Bui Thanh Long. Two hours of in-depth research through public financial reports, interviews, and scattered pieces of information on economic forums.

Bui Thanh Long, sixty-two years old, comes from a family with roots in the construction industry since the subsidy period. Dai Nam Group was established in 1998, developing strongly after 2005 when urbanization exploded in the South. Currently, Dai Nam is present in at least eight large projects in Ho Chi Minh City and neighboring provinces, with a total development value estimated at over two billion dollars. Chairman Bui Thanh Long is known to have a wide network of relationships in local government circles, often appearing at charity events and scholarship award ceremonies.

But if you read more closely into the financial section, there are things that don't add up. Dai Nam Dong project has opened sold the apartment three years ago, earning about four hundred million dollars from deposits and money to buy houses in the future. But the construction progress is currently about two years behind the committed plan. The reasons given were Covid and lack of materials - but these reasons have long been irrelevant.

What happens if the investor has to stop construction to solve the foundation problem, but cannot disclose the real reason because then he will have to refund the entire four hundred million dollar deposit and face the risk of default? The answer is simple and cruel: concealment. Continue hiding until you can't hide anymore. And eliminating people can break that cover up.

Huy took a large piece of paper and drew the relationship network diagram according to what he had collected. Five victims, a subcontracting company, a large corporation, and a planning map worth billions of dollars are pressing on unprotected lands and people.

That afternoon, Huy went to meet an old source - a planning officer who worked at the City Construction Department for more than thirty years, is now retired and living in seclusion. Mr. Nam, eighty years old, has wrinkled skin but still sharp eyes, lives in an old house in Binh Thanh. The walls are covered with maps and urban planning diagrams from many decades, covered with a thin layer of dust but arranged very systematically. He received Huy in the living room that smelled of wood and old books, made tea, then sat down to listen to his presentation without interruption, then flipped through each page of the copies of technical documents that Huy brought.

"I'm not surprised," Mr. Nam said finally, his voice calm like someone who has seen too many things in his life. "Fifteen years ago, things like this couldn't happen because there was a cross-checking mechanism in the system. But now..." he shook his head.

"The Dai Nam Dong project was geologically evaluated by which unit?" Huy asked.

"Phuong Nam Geotechnical Survey Co., Ltd. I know that director. The company is small, only established six years ago, but has continuously won bids for large projects in the last two years." Mr. Nam looked straight into Huy's eyes. "The founding shareholder of that company, as far as I know, has a close relationship with a family member of Chairman Bui Thanh Long."

Do your own geological appraisal through a backyard company. There is no independent mechanism for review. And those who discover problems are eliminated. Perfectly closed circle.

Huy bowed his head to thank Mr. Nam and left as the afternoon sun began to fade. He stood on the side of the road, calling Tue to confirm he would get on the bus tonight - and realized her phone had no signal. He texted and waited.

Twenty minutes later, Tue called back. Her voice was normal, but something was a bit urgent: "Mr. Huy, I just discovered that someone added a small device of unknown origin to the rearview mirror in the car. It looks like a small clip. I don't dare to remove it."

Eavesdropping devices, or surveillance cameras. Mounted on a bus - the vehicle they knew Ms. Tue and Huy were using as a base for investigation. "Where are you now?"

"In the factory parking lot, after the afternoon shift. I don't use this phone anymore. I use the secondary phone."

"Good," Huy said. "Don't take that device off. Leave it alone. I'll have someone come take a look." I turned it off phone, immediately call Phong. This time he used the secondary SIM that he always carries with him in case he investigates sensitive cases. "Phong, I need you to do something after hours."

That night, when Tue took the last bus and Phong went to the parking lot to check the strange device, Huy sat in an empty coffee shop, looking at the diagram he had just drawn on the table. The lines and names are gradually converging, forming a complete and horrifying picture.

Five victims. A backyard subcontracting company specializes in falsifying geological data. A billion-dollar real estate corporation is hiding a deadly defect in its construction. And out there, unlicensed motorbikes patrol the darkness, ensuring that the truth never reaches the light of day.

Huy sipped a cup of cold black coffee, looking out at the night through the window. He thought of Ms. Hoa, engineer Quy's wife, who was still waiting for her husband to return. Think of the people who have spent tens or hundreds of millions of dong to buy apartments in a tower that is unknown for how many years it will last. All of those people were victims, in different ways, of a corrupt system protected by violence and deliberate silence.

He knew that the next step - the step he was most afraid of because it meant there was no turning back, no longer being able to say he was just gathering information - was to reach out to those still alive who knew something, those who had not been eliminated but were living in the darkness of fear. And the road to them, he realized, would still be the old, familiar road: the last bus of route 08 rolling every night through stops that no one noticed.