Chapter 9 — The Code in the Tangerine Garden

Huy did not enter the house. He stood under the fruitless tangerine tree, looking at the T-shaped mark that had appeared on its trunk.

“My father used to say that the person holding the paper was Mr. Tan,” he said. “But he wasn't the first.”

Thu holds a torn piece of paper. “Whose name?”

“Mrs. Luu.”

Mrs. Man looked up.

“Mrs. Luu died before I was born,” Huy continued. "She was the caretaker of the ditch. There was no land in six sections, but she dug the first section by hand when the other families did not agree. That's what my father told me."

“Why was her name smeared?” Quan asked.

"I don't know. Maybe because she doesn't have papers. Maybe because people think effort is not an asset."

Thu looked at the tangerine tree. On the tree trunk, the leaf symbol is not just a tree bed. It is a tribute to the person who paved the way for the garden.

“Why is the company looking for that guy?”

Huy did not respond immediately. He took out his phone and opened a photo of an engineering map. A green area lies below the garden, marked “shallow aquifer”. Next to it are traffic parameters and a note "no registered mining works".

“They discovered the water vein during survey drilling,” Huy said. "If licensed, the company can build an industrial well. But they need to prove that the water source is not tied to the old irrigation project."

“And they think if they buy the garden, the water line will turn into a private project,” Thu said.

"Correct."

The army threw a clod of soil toward the fence. “You work for them but you still talk like an outsider.”

Huy is not angry. "I do it for the salary. I don't do it because I want to rob the country."

“Salaries can't wash that away.”

"I know."

Thu looked at him. “Why are you telling us now?”

Huy pulled out a small key from his pocket. "Because my father left this behind. He said that if the company asked about the garden, I had to remember the promise I signed. I thought he was just talking about old stories. After Uncle Tan passed away, I saw that he had written down these coordinates in a notebook."

“How long did you keep the key?”

“One week.”

“And still brought the offer to buy the land?”

Huy looked at Thu, his voice hoarse. "I need to know if you guys are going to sell before we talk about old things. If you sell, I can ask the company to pay the country. If you don't sell, I have to choose."

“Choose between work and truth?”

“Between keeping my job to pay off my mother's debt and saying something that could cost the whole family their livelihood.”

The army was silent. He looked at Huy as if he wanted to refute but couldn't find a simple answer. The person standing in front of him is not completely innocent, but he is also not someone who just wants to gather land.

Huy led them to the abandoned hut behind his house. In the hut there is an old iron cabinet. The key opens the bottom compartment. Inside is Huy's father's notebook, with many worm-eating items. One page is still readable:

"Ms. Luu keeps the valve. Tan keeps the paper. When she dies, Tan has to keep both. No one can receive water if they don't remember who opened the ditch."

Below is a six-part circle mark and a crossed out T.

Thu asked: "Why did your father cross out the letter T?"

Huy turned to the next page. “Perhaps because he is no longer the representative of his family after selling the land.”

In the cabinet there is a copy of the old minutes. The six signatures are clearer than Thu's, and there is a last line written in blue ink:

"Ms. Luu's public share is kept in the right to travel and the right to be named in every change of ownership."

The letter was read three times. This sentence does not quantify land, but it proves that Ms. Luu is a party to the agreement. The holder of the certificate is not allowed to erase her name.

“Where is the original?” she asked.

Huy pointed to the key. "My father said Mr. Tan kept it in a storage tank. But not the current tank. It's the old tank under the packaging house floor."

“We've been looking.”

“Maybe you haven't found the right lid yet.”

They returned to the garden when it started to rain. Thu, Quan and Huy opened each brick under the packing house. The first ten tablets only contain soil. The sixth bullet from the door was an empty tin can, just like the video. The seventeenth tablet sounded hollow but was stuck to mortar.

Quan used a hammer to tap around the edge. A section of the platform collapsed, revealing a black wooden lid. Below is a small compartment, enough to fit a paper box.

Empty compartment.

Thu picked up a cloth string from the bottom. There was red dust on the wire and the smell of motor oil. Huy saw it and said:

“This is the type of pipe tie used by the survey team.”

Lam, filming at the door, zooms in on the rope. On the edge there is a streak of silver paint, the same color as the reflective strip in the video.

“Tran Khai,” Thu said.

“Not sure yet,” Huy replied. “The survey team has many people.”

“But only one person borrowed the file.”

Huy's phone vibrates. Ms. Van called. He answered the phone, only said a few words and then turned it off.

“The company wants me to sign a record confirming that the family has no water line disputes,” he said.

Quan burst out laughing. “They want you to sign a disclaimer.”

“If I don't sign, they will replace me.”

“You can refuse.”

“Refuse does not make the spring disappear.”

The letter asked: “What did they do with the survey?”

Huy opened the email. A new map was sent to him, in which the white strip of land had turned into an unannotated gray line. The coordinates of the tank are recorded as "unknown private land area".

“They corrected the map,” Thu said.

“This is the internal version.”

“But it will become a record.”

Huy nodded.

The rain is heavier. Water flows from the packed roof into the trench, carrying red soil with it. Quan saw a streak of water leaking from the corner of the north wall, where the old pipe passed. The water is cloudy and has a faint smell of oil.

He knelt down and took the sample into the bottle.

“Someone poured something into the tank,” he said.

Letter giving sample to Huy. “I'll have it tested at an independent place.”

“I can send it to the company's technical department.”

"Are not."

Huy understands. “I know a private laboratory.”

Lam turned the camera toward the water. “If they pollute the source, they will say the water line is unsafe and then ask for permission to handle it.”

“Or they were just testing the pipeline,” Huy said.

“You still find reasons for them,” Quan snapped.

Huy turned around. “I'm trying not to condemn without results.”

“And I'm trying to keep my daughter alive until the next tangerine season.”

No one continued speaking. Quan went into the house and closed the door firmly.

Thu and Huy stood in the rain. She asked:

“You think my father knew he was dying?”

“I think he knows he doesn't have much time left.”

“So why not say it directly?”

“Maybe because he's afraid that saying anything will make you guys sell immediately.”

“He has no right to make decisions for us.”

"Correct."

“Don't defend.”

"I'm not defending. I'm just saying my father did the same thing."

Huy looked towards his house. "He sold the land to treat my illness. After that, he didn't say that the water rights still existed. He thought that hiding it would help me not be known for selling the ditch. Then everyone was so quiet that no one knew what to say."

Thu looked at him. She realized this was the reason why Huy understood her father but still repeated his ways.

That night, the laboratory confirmed that the water sample had mineral oil at levels low, not immediately dangerous but does not appear naturally in underground tanks. Huy sent the results to Thu and said the company would deny it.

Near midnight, Lam watched old videos again. He discovered that in the noisy video, there was a frame that stood still longer than usual. Behind father is a board with the picking schedule. On the last day, instead of a circle symbol, dad wrote a letter of the person's name.

Lam zoomed in.

The first letter is L.

Mrs. Man looked at the screen, her hands shaking slightly.

“Mrs. Luu,” she said.

Right below that word, an arrow pointed out into the garden, toward a line of abandoned trees.

And on the reflected screen, a person was standing behind her father, holding a stack of original papers.

Lam paused the frame, then increased the brightness. The person turned sideways so his face could not be seen, but on his wrist there was a scar stretching from the back of his hand to near his elbow. The other hand wears a square watch. Father Thu did not look at that person; he looked into the lens, as if he knew the camera was recording them both.

“Dad is trying to show us,” Thu said.

Huy leaned close to the screen. “This scar could be Dung.”

“You know Dung has a scar?”

"He was cut by a cutter while doing construction work. But Khai also had marks on his hands."

Lam rewinds each frame. In one frame, the clock reflects light. The watch face has the company logo, but the strap has changed color. Huy said the company distributed GPS watches to the survey team, each with its own code.

“Can you look up the code?” Thu asked.

“Not while I'm still locked out of the system.”

“So we need someone inside.”

Huy looked at the USB. “There may be.”

Quan called back and said Na had just drawn a clock on the edge of the notebook. She said her grandfather used to look at the clock and close the valve at a certain time. The letter stated that the time was 02:17, the same time the camera's power was cut off.

“They don't just come in to get paper,” she said. “They watch when the water pressure changes.”

Lam looked at the small stream of water in the ditch. “And dad had the camera at the right angle.”

Huy pulled out his phone and texted a former technician. That person replied that the watch code belonged to Tran Khai's group, but the device was reported lost before Thu's father passed away.

“Khai could tell someone took the watch,” Huy said.

“But the equipment loss date is before the company surveys,” Thu replied.

Before they could identify the person in the picture, it started to rain. The reflection on the screen blurred, but the stack of papers still glowed with a streak of white.