Chapter 13 — Shrimp Street Without Name

Mr. Tam Lanh, the former recording secretary of the old fishing fleet, lives alone in a small house along the canal, about half an hour by motorbike from the town center. Kien came to pick up Hai Yen early on Saturday morning. They both went together to increase trust, because Mr. Tam knew Kien through many years working at the port, and Hai Yen was just a strange name he had never met.

Mr. Tam is over seventy, his back is bent, but his eyes are still sharp, sitting to receive guests on an old wooden plank in the middle of the house, next to a pot of ready-made tea. "Kien called and said there was something important. I guess it's related to Khai, right?" He opened his mouth as soon as the two of them sat down, his voice was not ambiguous.

“Yes, sir,” Kien replied. "This is Ms. Yen, who is helping me learn more about that period. She does food safety inspection and is auditing another but related case."

Mr. Tam looked at Hai Yen for a moment, his eyes searching but without malice. "If you work in that profession, you probably understand numbers and paperwork. Okay, let me tell you something. I've been keeping it in my heart for seven years. It's time to say it out loud."

He stood up, rummaged through an old wooden chest in the corner of the house, took out a stack of yellowed papers, and carefully tied it with a rubber band. "These are a few pages I hand-copied from the ship's log book. At that time, I worked as a recording secretary for three ships of the team, including the one where Khai worked."

“Why do you keep the manuscript separate?” Hai Yen asked, trying to keep her voice gentle even though she had partly guessed the answer.

“Because I think something is wrong,” Mr. Tam said, his voice low. "About three weeks before Khai passed away, I received an order from above, telling me to combine many days of voyage records into one, no need to detail each day like before. I've been doing this job for decades, I immediately knew it wasn't a normal thing, recording it like that was to hide the ship's true itinerary during those few days."

He opened the pad of paper and pointed to a paragraph he marked with a red pen. “Here, in this section, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth day of that month, the official book only recorded a single line ‘the ship moved in the near-shore waters, fishing normally.’ But my handwritten copy, which I recorded according to memory and according to what Khai told me over the phone, during those few days the ship traveled much farther than usual, going out near the border waters, picking up a few more people on board in the middle of the sea, not familiar crew members.”

“Pick up someone in the middle of the sea?” Kien asked again, his voice clearly tense.

"Yes. Khai told your mother on the phone that some strangers were brought on the ship. They didn't speak Vietnamese well, didn't seem to be professional seafarers, and kept vomiting because of seasickness. The ship took them for two more days and then dropped them off at another place, not returning to their home port." Mr. Tam shook his head, his voice heavy. "At that time, I didn't dare to think too far. I only guessed that it was probably transporting people across the border or smuggling smuggled goods or something. It wasn't my job. I just worried about keeping records according to orders from my superiors and keeping my mouth shut for peace of mind."

Hai Yen quickly took notes in her notebook, her mind reeling with the new possibilities that opened up. If Ocean's ship was ever used to illegally transport people, this is no longer simply a story about shrimp quality fraud, but has expanded to a much more serious crime.

“Do you think about your business? Is Khai's death related to that trip? Kien asked, his voice shaking slightly.

Mr. Tam sighed and was silent for a long time before answering. “I can't confirm, but I remember, after that trip, Khai was completely different. He is less talkative, often startled, once I saw him standing alone on the side of the ship looking down at the sea for a long time, as if thinking about something very serious. Less than two weeks later, he died.”

The house was silent for a while, only the sound of the old fan whirring and the sound of the motorboat running in the distance on the canal. Hai Yen looked at Kien and saw him clenching his hands on his thighs, his jaw stiffened as if trying to suppress a big emotion.

“Uncle Tam,” Hai Yen spoke up, trying to keep her voice calm so as not to make the atmosphere heavier. “Do you remember who ordered you to combine the diary? Where did that order come from?”

"Oral orders were passed down through the captain," Mr. Tam replied. “The captain said the order came from above the company, without specifying who. That captain has now retired and moved back to live with his children in Soc Trang. I still keep his old phone number, I don't know if I can still contact him."

“Can you give me that number?” Hai Yen asked.

Mr. Tam nodded, searched through an old phone book, and wrote down the number for her. “You should be careful when contacting him. That captain has a cowardly personality. If you ask too directly, he will be afraid and shut his mouth, unable to say anything."

Before leaving, Hai Yen asked permission to take pictures of all of Mr. Tam's handwritten notes, promising to keep the source confidential unless he agreed to make it public. Mr. Tam agreed, only giving them one more word as he saw them out the door.

“Whatever you two do, remember to keep to yourself. This is not a small matter. If there really is a ring to smuggle people through fishing boats, there must be someone with authority behind it, it's not something a normal shrimp company dares to take risks."

On the way home, Kien drove slower than usual. Both were silent for a long time, each pursuing their own thoughts about what they had just heard. Finally, Kien broke the silence.

“I never thought Khai's story would involve anything so big,” he said, his voice choking. “For the past seven years, I have simply thought that the company has been negligent and did not care about the safety of crew members. Now that I've heard it, I feel more scared than relieved."

“I understand that feeling,” Hai Yen replied. “But at least now we know what we're facing, instead of fumbling around in the dark like before.”

“Do you think that smuggling incident has anything to do with your father's case?”

Hai Yen was silent for a moment, looking out the car window at the shrimp fields stretching out on both sides of the road in the early morning sunlight. “I don't know for sure. But if both stories point back to the same company, around the same time that company began to expand rapidly after buying land from collapsed cooperatives, I think we can no longer think of them as two completely separate stories.”

The car continues to roll down the empty road, carrying two people who have just discovered that the incident they are following is not just a matter of their family's past, but may be part of something much bigger, deeper, and more dangerous than either of them ever imagined when they started.

At noon, after seeing Kien back to the port in time for the afternoon shift, Hai Yen sat alone in the motel room, holding a piece of paper with the old captain's phone number on it, pondering for a long time before dialing. The bell rang for nearly ten hours before someone picked up, the voice of an older man, a bit hoarse.

“Hello, who is it?”

"Hello, my name is Yen. I'm sorry for calling suddenly. Uncle Tam Lanh, who used to be a secretary for the fleet, gave me his number. I wanted to ask you a few questions about when you were a captain."

The other end of the line was silent for a long time, enough for Hai Yen to think the call had been cut. “What's going on?” he asked at last, his voice already alert.

"I want to ask about a trip to the sea seven years ago, around the middle of the month, the ship picked up more people in the middle of the sea," Hai Yen said, trying to keep her voice gentle, not pressing. "I don't mean to make things difficult for you, I just want to understand the truth about the person who died on that train."

“I don't remember anything,” the captain replied quickly, his voice growing urgent. "It's been so long, I'm old, my memory is bad, you asked the wrong person. I'll hang up now, I'm busy."

The call ended abruptly, leaving Hai Yen sitting looking at the phone screen, not too surprised by that reaction, just as Mr. Tam had warned. The captain's hasty, almost panicked refusal was itself a kind of indirect confirmation: this was not the story of an old man who had forgotten, but the story of someone who still remembered it very clearly, and was still scared enough not to dare mention it even after seven years had passed.

She recorded the call content in her notebook, along with comments on the captain's reaction, then sent a text message back to Kien. He responded immediately, suggesting to let time pass, try contacting him again after a while when the captain was less wary, or find an indirect approach through his relatives instead of asking directly.

In the afternoon, when the sunlight had subsided, Hai Yen sat on the steps of the inn, looking at the flow of people passing by in the market, her heart heavy with what she had just learned during the day. She realized that the journey she was on was no longer simply about finding justice for her father. If what Mr. Tam told is true, then somewhere out there, there may still be other people, like Khai, who have or are paying the price for the silence of a system whose outer shell she has only just touched.