Chapter 25 — Shrimp Street Without Name

Two days after the meeting with Hai Yen, Mr. Son did not actively contact him again as promised. Instead, what Hai Yen received was a suspicious silence from the factory: all work appointments were postponed for vague reasons, employees who were familiar with her were now much more reserved, and Mr. Son himself no longer appeared at any audit-related meetings.

The source of information about what was happening inside Dai Duong came to Hai Yen through an unexpected route: Ms. Hong, the head of the quality department, who had always maintained a cold professional attitude, suddenly called her late one evening, her voice was somewhat unusual, urgent and a bit like real worry.

“Miss Yen, I'm not calling because of work,” Ms. Hong said, her voice lowered as if she was afraid someone would hear. "I just want to let you know, the atmosphere in the company has been very tense these past few days. Mr. Son was called to meet Chairman Bao privately twice in a row, and when he left the room his face was pale. This morning I heard that he asked for a long-term leave, suddenly, for unknown reasons."

“Do you know where Mr. Son is?” Hai Yen asked, a feeling of insecurity rising in her heart.

“I don't know,” Ms. Hong replied. "But I vaguely heard, it seems like the company is arranging for him to go on a business trip somewhere outside the province for a while, saying it's for him to rest. Ms. Yen, I don't know what's going on, but I have a feeling something isn't right. I called you because... because I also have a family, I don't want to get involved in anything dangerous, but I also don't want to silently watch everything happen without saying anything."

Hai Yen thanked Ms. Hong, understanding that this was a brave action for someone who was always cautious like her, especially in a context where the company's internal affairs were becoming so tense. Immediately after hanging up, she called Kien and recounted all the information she had just received.

“It sounds like Mr. Bao knew about it,” Kien commented, his tone serious. "Maybe Mr. Son told you about the meeting, or someone else told Mr. Bao. Taking Mr. Son out of the province could be a way to isolate him, preventing him from reaching you or the investigation agency before everything is under control."

“I'm worried about Mr. Son,” Hai Yen said. “If he really wanted to testify, being taken so far away could have been a form of isolation, even a silent warning.”

“There's not much we can do right now,” Kien said, his voice somewhat helpless. "He's an adult, making his own decisions. We can only hope he has the courage not to completely turn his back on what he told you."

The next morning, Hai Yen decided to speed up the process of filing an official denunciation following the advice of lawyer Hoang, not wanting to wait any longer as the situation was evolving in an unpredictable direction. She and Kien spent the entire morning completing the dossier, attaching all the evidence they had collected: a comparison table between the two notebooks, Ms. Tuyet's recordings and emails, a preliminary audit report on discrepancies in test results, and information about the altered ship's logbook provided by Mr. Tam Lanh.

When the file was almost completed, Hai Yen's phone received a call from an unknown number, with no name saved. She hesitated for a second before picking up the phone, and the voice rang out The other end of the line made her heart clench.

“Miss Yen, I'm Son.” His voice was low and somewhat hoarse compared to the last time we met, as if he had gone through days of not sleeping peacefully. "I don't have much time left to talk, they're preparing to take me away. I just want to tell you something before I lose contact."

“Go ahead, I'm listening,” Hai Yen replied, signaling to Kien that this was an important call.

“The person behind all this, the person who came to me ten years ago, is not just Mr. Bao,” Mr. Son said, his voice urgent as if afraid he wouldn't have time to finish before being interrupted. "Mr. Bao is just one part. There is a group of investors behind, from outside the province, I even think there are foreigners. They are not only interested in shrimp, but also in land, in coastal exploitation licenses. The Kenh Ba cooperative case is just a small piece in a much larger plan."

“Do you have any names or evidence about that group of investors?” Hai Yen asked, trying to keep her voice calm even though this information made the entire scale of the incident suddenly expand far beyond what she had ever imagined.

"I don't have specific evidence, I just overheard a few times when Mr. Bao had a private meeting with a few strangers, speaking broken Vietnamese," Mr. Son replied. “But I remember, they often mention a project name, called ‘The Cua Bien Project.’ If you learn more about that name, it may lead to something bigger than you think.”

The call was suddenly interrupted, perhaps because someone appeared near Mr. Son. Hai Yen called back immediately but the phone was turned off and could no longer be contacted.

She looked at Kien, both of them understood that what they had just heard opened up a whole new dimension to the case - not just a matter of shrimp quality fraud within a company, but could be part of a larger plan, related to land, to interest groups beyond the boundaries of this Nam Can region alone.

“Cua Bien Project,” Kien repeated, his voice thoughtful. "I've never heard of this name before. But if it's related to coastal land, maybe I can find a clue through the public planning records at the provincial committee."

“We need to investigate further before filing a complaint,” Hai Yen said, her voice both worried and determined. "If it is true as Mr. Son said, this is no longer just my family's or Kien's case, but could affect the entire future of this coastal area."

That afternoon, Kien took advantage of his break, went to the Provincial Committee's electronic information portal, looked up the public planning section and investment projects awaiting approval. After nearly two hours of searching with many different keywords, he found a short document, posted quite discreetly in the public comment section, mentioning an "Integrated coastal economic zone development project - internal code CB-2028", including a deep-water port, high-end resort and high-tech aquaculture area, with an area of up to thousands of hectares stretching across many coastal communes, including areas that used to belong to the cooperative. Kenh Ba commune.

He took a photo of the entire document and immediately sent it to Hai Yen with a message: "CB could stand for Cua Bien. The project area is incredibly large, covering almost the entire area we are investigating."

Hai Yen opened the file, read each line carefully, and felt cold spine as they realized the true scale of what they were facing. The list of joint venture enterprises proposing projects does not specify specific names, it is only written in general as "joint venture of domestic and foreign investors", a vague expression often seen in the early stages of large projects when the parties do not want to make their full identities public.

She immediately called Kien. “If this project is truly related to Dai Duong and the investment groups behind Mr. Bao, then the collapse of Kenh Ba cooperative ten years ago, along with the subsequent collection of cheap land, could all be just the first step to pave the way for a plan that was drawn up a long time ago, much earlier than we ever thought.”

"If that's true," Kien said, his voice heavy, "then Khai's death, Uncle Tien's case, the land being sold off at cheap prices, maybe even what's happening to Mr. Son right now, are all just paving stones for a much larger project. We're not just fighting a fraudulent shrimp company, Yen. We're fighting a plan on a provincial scale, maybe even larger."

Hai Yen sat silently in front of the computer screen, looking at the preliminary planning map attached to the document, where a light blue area stretched out to cover almost all the places that had become familiar to her over the past month: Kenh Ba, Rach Goc, Dam Cung, and the market where her mother still sold dried shrimp every day. Feelings of both overwhelm and determination mixed in her heart, when she realized that the journey to find justice for her father was now inseparably linked to the future of an entire land that she once thought she would only visit on a short business trip.