Chapter 9: Chapter 9 The survivors — Ink on an Old Map

The journey back out of the foggy valley seemed harder and harder than the journey in. Lê An carried a backpack on her shoulder that was heavy not only with broken ceramic pieces, a bronze pipe, and a cold stone tablet, but also with the bloody historical truth just excavated from a deep mud hole. She left Mr. Bay all the dry food, drinking water, and a thermal blanket made of foil, carefully instructing him to hide. She promised to come back for him and get him out of this hell on earth when everything was clear. Looking at the skinny old man waving goodbye in the mist, An's heart ached with indescribable sadness.

Returning to the border town when the sun had completely hidden behind the distant mountains, An was exhausted, her whole body covered in red basalt mud from head to toe. She returned the Minsk car to the owner of the repair shop. That austere man could only shake his head sadly, looking at the tattered figure as if the young city girl had just risen from the grave. However, with the experience of a person living in a land full of taboos, he wisely did not ask any more questions; he simply accepted the money and took the dirty car into the house.

Returning to the shabby motel room, stuffy with a musty smell, the first thing An did after showering was to carefully lay out the physical evidence on the white sheet bed, the only clean thing in the room. She used a soft towel to wipe the Le family tablet again, cherishing it like a sacred treasure. Under the yellow neon light, the engraved Hán Nôm characters glowed a mysterious red, like the blood of the deceased demanding justice. An took dozens of photos from different angles, then sent them via an end-to-end encrypted communication channel to Nam in Hanoi.

"Nam, listen to me," An called, her voice a whisper but urgent, her breathing not yet calm after the exhausting trip to the forest. "That valley is truly a mass grave. They mercilessly killed hundreds of innocent people to rob a huge store of natural agarwood hidden in an underground cave. Afterward, they used tons of explosives to destroy the bunker and everything in it. Finally, to legalize the crime, they reported a military relocation operation codenamed X-14 to the central government, then used that damn chemical ink to erase the name Đan Trầm from the map."

The other end of the line fell into a long, suffocating silence. Nam, a GIS data analysis expert, a person who always uses dry statistics and computer algorithms to perceive geographical history, also seems to be defeated by the unimaginable brutality of the truth.

"Are you sure, An?" Nam's voice trembled, losing his usual calm and joking tone. "If this scandal is exposed, it will create a shocking scandal not only in the historical world, but also reach the highest levels of power. Do you understand? Such a large-scale campaign of deception, involving both the erasure of maps and the fabrication of military records, cannot be arbitrarily decided by an individual like Colonel Hung. There must be a system of tolerance, a line of power to back their greed."

"I have absolute physical proof," An replied firmly, reaching out to caress the rough surface of the stone tablet. "I have found the master tablet of the Le family, the family of the village chief. Nam, history cannot be whitewashed that easily. I need your help with one more thing, a very important thing. If they created a drama about relocating villagers to cover up that brutal massacre, then administratively, they must have created a fake records system. A virtual line of information about the new settlement of those people to report to superiors, to cover up the disappearance of a community. Please search the administrative data system of the Central Highlands region from late 1968 to 1969. Find out if there are any resettlement areas that were unusually established, recording the reception of 'evacuated highlanders'."

"I understand what you mean," Nam replied simply, immediately switching to work mode with the sound of clicking keys resounding through the phone. "Send me a center coordinate. Give me exactly two hours, I will scan all the data."

An brewed a cup of thick instant coffee, sat with her knees drawn up on the bed, and counted the passing seconds. Physical fatigue seemed to be completely overwhelmed by the extreme tension of her nervous system. Exactly two hours later, Nam's text message arrived.

"There is an extremely suspicious point, An," Nam said over the phone, his voice hoarse with tension. "In November 1968, about half a year after the launch of the fake X-14 campaign, the local government at that time established a resettlement area called 'Bình Minh New Settlement'. It was located in a barren hill area about 50 kilometers southeast of your valley coordinates. Records recorded that this area received about a few dozen scattered people from villages devastated by bombs and bullets. The data is very vague. The specific origin was not clearly stated, and the name was also falsified. It was clearly a fake suppression file."

"Fifty kilometers." An calculated in his head. That distance, given the mountain and forest road conditions of that time, was far enough to isolate rare witnesses from the crime scene, preventing them from returning to search for relatives. But it was also close enough for the local authorities at that time, who may have colluded with Colonel Hung, to easily manage, stifle all voices and closely monitor them.

"Do you think anyone in the Bình Minh area is still alive? It's been half a century," Nam asked, unable to hide his concern.

"There's only one way to know," An replied decisively, starting to pack up and hide the evidence items in the most secret compartment of his backpack. "Tomorrow morning, as soon as it's light, I'll go to Dawn New Settlement. If there are any survivors from the tragedy, they are the final key."

The next morning, a rickety bus with exhaust fumes dropped An at a dusty asphalt intersection at a quiet noon. The new settlement of Bình Minh appeared before An's eyes. Contrary to its name full of hope, after half a century of existence, this place has now become a poor, desolate and sad neighborhood. Completely different from the lush, lush greenness of rubber plantations or vast coffee fields commonly found in the neighboring Central Highlands, this land seems to be under a curse of eternal barrenness. The land is arid and rocky, dry and cracked. Dilapidated four-level houses with rusty corrugated iron roofs or gray tiled roofs are scattered along the dusty dirt road, exposed to the scorching sun.

An wore a backpack and slowly walked on the dirt road, feeling the poverty evident in every corner. She stopped by a small, dilapidated grocery store at the beginning of the neighborhood, pretending to buy a bottle of cold mineral water to find an opportunity to talk to the owner, a woman in her fifties, her austere face had deep crow's feet.

"Can I ask you a few questions? Is there any family in our neighborhood who was originally from Đan Trầm village, Hòn Sương area, who evacuated here in the past?" An cautiously inquired, trying to smile in a friendly manner.

Just hearing the words "Đan Trầm", the eager smile inviting customers on the shop owner's lips suddenly disappeared as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown. She snatched the extra change from An's hand, her eyes suddenly turned around full of fear and panic as if An had just called out the name of some kind of dark magic.

"I don't know! There's no one here named Đan Trầm or Dan Treo. Who are you? Where do you come from? Get out of here quickly. At noon, don't go around asking random questions that will bring disaster to yourself and the whole neighborhood."

The owner of the restaurant was cold and decisively waved her hand to chase An out of the restaurant. Without waiting for An to say another word, she hastily pulled the iron folding door shut, slammed it shut, and locked it from the inside.

An stood frozen on the road, holding a cold bottle of water. The shopkeeper's extreme reaction did not discourage An, but on the contrary, it reinforced and confirmed that her hypothesis was completely correct. The ghost of Đan Trầm, the ghost of the disastrous X-14 campaign, still casts a suffocating shadow over this poor settlement. They were not just miserable refugees, they were actually hostages, unincarcerated prisoners, held down by extreme fear for decades. The brutal ban on speaking from the past was still in effect, hovering above their heads like an invisible sword waiting to strike.

Not giving up, An continued along the winding dirt road through the village, trying to smile and start conversations with older people chopping wood, weaving, or drying rice in front of their earthen houses. But the responses were identical, like a pre-programmed script: terrifying silence, hurried turns away, shaking heads, and especially eyes fixed on the ground in fear. It was as if merely uttering the words "Đan Trầm" would bring tragedy upon them and their families. They would rather take their secrets to the grave than speak.

The sun began to cast its shadow toward the West, bringing with it the stifling heat of the late afternoon. An tiredly sat down on an orphaned rock on the side of the road, feeling a surge of despair. If no one here dared to open their mouth, all the physical evidence they had worked so hard to find in that mud pit of death would be flawed, missing the most important piece: the testimony of a living witness, someone who could name the perpetrator. That precious stone tablet only proves that Đan Trầm village once existed, but it is an inanimate object, it cannot open its mouth to recount the crimes of looting and killing of those cloaked in X-14 campaign.

Just as An was about to give up, put her backpack back on her shoulder, and was about to turn back to the highway to catch the afternoon bus back to town, she suddenly heard hesitant, tiptoeing footsteps behind her.

She turned around. Standing a few steps away from her, nestled on the side of a hibiscus hedge, was a young woman, wearing faded work clothes, holding a sleeping baby girl in her arms. The woman's eyes looking at An contained caution and anxiety, but deep inside flashed a strange desire, an irrepressible urge.

"You... you're from the capital, working for the government, right?" The woman asked softly, the volume only enough for An to hear, her eyes still constantly looking around as if afraid of being seen by someone. "Are you really looking for the survivors of Đan Trầm village?"

An nodded repeatedly, her heart seeming to jump out of her chest. She took a step forward, lowered her voice, and tried to sound as friendly and sincere as possible. "That's right. I specialize in historical research. Do you know anyone? Trust me, you only need to talk to them. I swear I will not reveal my identity or disturb anyone's peaceful life here."

The young woman bit her lip so hard that it bled, her eyebrows furrowed in thought. She hesitated for a long time, then finally lowered her voice and whispered decisively: "My grandmother... my grandmother just heard someone asking about me. She wants to see you. But you have to be absolutely careful. Wait until it's dark before going around the weedy path behind the village. The last thatched house is located close to the foot of a bare hill, with no electricity. My grandmother has been blind for many years, but she said... she has been up all night waiting for someone like you to come find her for fifty years." An's heart beat with a rhythm of extreme hope. She nodded firmly in agreement. Finally, a small crack appeared in the solid wall of silence of fear. Tonight, in this shabby cottage at the bottom of a poor neighborhood, buried history will speak for itself, through a pair of blind eyes that can see through all the darkest truths of half a century ago.