Chapter 18 — The Journey of the Missing Bronze Drum

The technical team cut and sealed under the supervision of both parties, in accordance with the legal process: a record made on the spot, signatures of confirmation from Toan Hai Phat representative, customs representative, and investigation team. The container door opened with the creaking sound of steel hinges, revealing neatly stacked stacks of ceramic boxes, carefully wrapped in shockproof foam, exactly as declared on the bill of lading.

Diem stepped inside, her heart pounding, and began checking each layer of goods in the order previously agreed upon with the technical team: checking from the outside to the inside, from top to bottom, not missing any gaps that could hide a large block of metal.

Half an hour passed. Then another hour.

Nothing.

Each box of ceramics was opened, checked, and compared with the declared list - everything matched, no excess or missing, no hidden compartments were discovered even though the technical team used hand-held metal detectors to scan all corners of the container.

Diem stood in the middle of the empty container, sweat soaking the back of her shirt under the stifling heat of the closed metal space, a feeling of disappointment rising in her throat. She remembered her first morning at Go Lang Uyen, the feeling of standing in front of an empty glass case, the only round speck of dust remaining — and now, more than two weeks later, she was standing in front of another empty space, though this time a purposeful one, arranged to deceive exactly what she was looking for.

She stepped outside, the bright sunlight made her squint her eyes after a long time in the dark space of the container, looked at Hai, just shook her head, without saying a word.

Vu Bach Long stood not far away, his arms crossed over his chest, his face did not show obvious triumph, but there was an almost brazen calmness in his eyes. "Like I said," he said, his voice calm, "I have nothing to hide."

"What about the thirty-seven kilogram weight difference?" Hai asked, trying to keep his voice calm even though he was clearly disappointed.

"Weight and measurement error," Vu Bach Long replied, shrugging his shoulders. "The types of shockproof foam boxes we use, depending on the production batch, can vary in weight by several tens of kilograms compared to standard specifications if the supplier changes the material thickness. That is why the customs industry has an allowable margin of error, ma'am."

Diem didn't answer, just turned away, trying to keep a calm expression while her mind was racing, trying to find holes in the theory that had just collapsed before her eyes. She pulled Hai away a bit and lowered her voice.

"Something's not right," she said. "He was so calm. Not the calm of someone who is completely innocent, but the calm of someone who knows we won't find anything."

"Do you think the goods have been moved?" Hai asked, lowering his voice.

"I think it's exactly what he said when he was in the office," Diem replied, trying to piece together the events. "He knew in advance, or at least had a very strong suspicion, that we would come to inspect this container. Ta Bach Son's call last night, although made cautiously, was enough to alert him. It is possible that during the night, before our search warrant could be approved, the goods were transferred to another container, or another vehicle altogether."

She quickly thought of another possibility: maybe the thirty-seven kilogram difference in weight had nothing to do with this particular bronze drum, but was a pure numerical coincidence—a possibility that made her shudder at the level of confusion it sowed into the entire chain of reasoning she had been building over the past two weeks. But she dismissed that thought almost immediately. Too many pieces of the puzzle had fit together systematically for it all to be coincidental—the recorded call, the symbol TXHU mentioned on speakerphone, the number thirty-seven pounds matching perfectly. If there is a deviation, it lies in the timing, not in the nature of the hypothesis.

She turned to look at Vu Bach Long, who was still standing there, patiently waiting for the official conclusion of the search, like a person completely confident in his own innocence.

"I need to see all of your company's container yard entry logs for the past twenty-four hours," Diem said, turning to face him, her voice final. "Including forklifts, internal trucks, any vehicle that has moved goods in this area."

For the first time since they met this morning, a glimpse of something flashed across Vu Bach Long's face - very quickly, very faintly, but enough for Diem, with eyes accustomed to reading microscopic details on ancient patterns, to realize: it was a surprise. He didn't anticipate she would ask for this.

"Of course," he said, regaining his composure after just a second, "I'll have the staff prepare it right away."

But that fleeting hesitation, even though it only lasted less than a second, was enough for Diem to know one thing for sure: she was on the right track. An empty container is not a failure. It was a clue, simply a clue that took a different shape than she expected.

When Toan Hai Phat's technical staff brought a printed copy of the logbook entering and leaving the yard, Diem and Hai bent down to review each line of data. Most records show normal operations throughout the week — forklifts moved goods on a fixed schedule, nothing out of the ordinary, until they hit a notable period: from eleven o'clock last night to three o'clock this morning, there were three forklifts in and out of the area near the TXHU container seven seven three zero zero two, briefly noted "routine maintenance check" — but no other containers in that area were scheduled for maintenance according to official technical records of the company.

"Here," Diem said, pointing to the data stream, her voice booming. "Three moves, right around the time after Mr. Son called. Enough for them to open the container, take out the artifacts, transfer them to another vehicle, and then re-seal them exactly like the original."

"Fake sealing is also a skill that requires expertise," Hai said, nodding in agreement. "But with a sophisticated operation like this, they probably have the equipment and personnel on hand to do it in a few hours, which isn't too difficult."

Diem turned to the last page of the diary, looking for the driver's name and the forklift code used in those three suspicious movements. "We need to interrogate these forklift operators today, before they can agree on their statements."

Hai immediately called two colleagues waiting nearby and assigned them the task of determining the identities and current locations of the three drivers. While waiting, he turned to Diem, his expression both worried and somewhat respectful.

"You just turned a seemingly complete failure into a new line of investigation in a matter of minutes," he said. "I have to admit, when the container opened empty, I thought we had just lost our only chance."

"I thought so too, in the first moment," Diem admitted, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. "But my teacher once taught me something, when I was a freshman, standing in front of an excavation hole that had found nothing after a week of digging: a void is never the end of an investigation. It's just a new question, in a different form."

"He didn't expect us to ask to see the internal diary," she said quietly to Hai as they stepped out of Vu Bach Long's earshot. "That means he's convinced we'll stop as soon as this container is empty, a dead end. He's not prepared for the possibility of us digging deeper."

"So what's the next step?" Hai asked.

Diem looked out at the vast panorama of the container yard stretching out before her eyes, thousands of steel blocks stacked on top of each other like a giant maze, knowing that somewhere in that maze, or maybe no longer within the port, a bronze drum with a nine-winged lost bird pattern was still waiting, and time was running out hour by hour.

"The next step," she said, "is to find out who alerted him, exactly when, and where the goods went during that time. Because if I'm right, we're not just dealing with Vu Bach Long. We're also dealing with a leak source, somewhere very close to us, whose identity we haven't yet identified."

She looked toward the distant row of containers one last time before turning away, a burning question nagging at her mind all the way back to the chemical inspection station: if Ta Bach Son hadn't intentionally betrayed him again, then where did that leak come from — from inside Long's own line, from a gap in their communication system, or worse, from somewhere closer to her own investigation team than she dared to think.