Chapter 2 — The Journey of the Missing Bronze Drum

The sky was bright when Diem knelt down next to the empty glass cabinet, her knees sinking in the still wet mud. She put on rubber gloves and used a specialized flashlight to shine a low-angle diagonal light on the surface of the velvet-lined pedestal, where the circular dust streak still clearly imprinted the shape of the bottom of the drum - about forty-eight centimeters in diameter, consistent with the measurements in the excavation records.

"How much does the drum weigh?" she asked Chu Vinh Tru, without looking back.

"Approximately thirty-seven pounds. Solid bronze, the drum body is quite thick compared to other Dong Son specimens of the same era, the pattern of the drum part is almost intact." He sat down next to her, his voice still hoarse from staying up all night. "That's why we put the glass cabinet on the spot, instead of moving it early. Transporting an artifact of that mass, with such a delicate pattern, requires specialized equipment and cannot be done in a hurry."

"Thirty-seven pounds." Diem repeated, her eyes still not leaving the circular dust trail. "One person cannot carry it a long distance without leaving dragging marks. Two people can, if they use a canvas stretcher or transport straps."

She stood up, walked out the shack door, and looked down at the ground. Last night's rain had erased most of the footprints, but right next to the door sill, where the corrugated iron roof hid a small area, there were still two parallel indentations, exactly forty centimeters apart, shallow and even, not like the usual wheelbarrow tracks.

“The wheels have rubber bearings, the shock-absorbing type,” she said, mostly to herself. "It's not a modified vehicle used by local people. This is a cart that transports museum artifacts, or at least it was built to that model."

Doanh, who was standing behind the group leader earlier, suddenly blurted out: "Our group has one, to move artifacts from the dug hole to the shack, but it's locked in the tool shed, the key is only for me and Uncle Tru to keep."

Diem turned back to look at him, her eyes were not accusing, just the simple attention of someone recording data. "Have you checked the tool shed this morning?"

"Not yet... let me go now."

He ran away into the mist that remained on the ground. Chu Vinh Tru sighed, rubbing his hands together as if to dispel the cold that was creeping in more from inside than from outside.

"Do you think someone in the group helped?" he asked, trying to keep his voice calm but unable to hide his tension.

"I haven't thought about anything," Diem replied, "I'm just listing what I can. Maybe the car was temporarily borrowed without permission and then returned this morning, maybe the thief brought his own car of the same type, maybe this trail has nothing to do with the theft. My job now is not to come to the fastest conclusion, but to eliminate it as slowly as possible, so as not to mistakenly eliminate important data."

She turned back to the electric pole more than twenty meters away from the shack, where the technical box was opened, the camera's power cords were neatly cut with a pair of force pliers, the cuts were sharp, not frayed like a regular knife. She took close-up photos, measured the distance from the engineering box to the shack, and made notes in her private notebook: "The actor knew exactly where the engineering box was — no groping, no hesitant footprints around this area."

"Who knows the location of the technical box other than the construction team installing the camera?" she asked.

"The installation team, me, Doanh, and..." Chu Vinh Tru hesitated, "and maybe even the people who visited publicly, because this box was not hidden well, just painted blue to blend into the bushes."

"Who has visited publicly in the past three weeks?"

"Several press groups, a group of archeology students, and..." he paused, "and a private collector, he asked the Department for permission to come and see the artifacts before moving them to the museum, saying he wanted to prepare to sponsor part of the cost of restoring the display. Mr. Ta Bach Son, you probably know, is the owner of Hoai Co Duong gallery in Hanoi. He is very generous, he supports the museum several times every year."

Diem wrote the name in the book without commenting, even though in her mind a small question mark had just been placed next to dozens of other question marks of a new working day.

Before leaving the shack, she pulled from her file bag a set of close-up photos of drums, which she had asked Chu Vinh Tru to email that night for research on the way. Patterns engraved on the funeral rim, often decorated with bird images, in this specimen there were up to nine stray bird wings arranged in rings, long beaks, and tails spread at a consistent angle that she had never seen in any Dong Son drum ever published - including the most famous specimens kept in major museums. Domestic and international researchers, if they knew, would certainly debate for years about the meaning of the number nine: an astronomical symbol, a unit of measurement for seasons, or simply a personal mark of the caster more than two thousand years ago. But that academic value, for those who took the drum last night, would have been just a brief description in a private auction catalog, where the uniqueness of the pattern would be inflated to a number of zeros.

"This type of pattern," Diem said, almost talking to herself, "once it gets out of the border, there will never be a second chance to bring it back to its original state. The discreet buyer did not show it off to a private museum, they kept it in a cellar, with only a few people seeing it with their own eyes. It seems to have disappeared from human history, although the drum body is still intact somewhere."

She returned to the shack, this time paying attention to the locking mechanism. Electronic digital lock, type with eight-digit code, equipped with a backup mechanical latch. She removed the outer shell and looked at the inside contact slot with the magnifying glass she brought.

"This is not a sign of being unlocked by force," she said, calling Chu Vinh Tru closer. "The circuit board inside is disassembled in the correct technical order, then reassembled almost in its original state. This style requires knowledge of this specific lock line, not general lock picking skills. Where did you buy the type of lock you used?"

"The party providing field protection equipment is from a private company, under a service contract with the Department. I don't know the technical details, just signed the handover."

"So that means there is a list of employees from that company who know the internal structure of the exact type of lock you are using." Diem stood up straight, looking out at the gradually brighter sky, the gray clouds dissolving on the horizon. "That list, I need it today."

She spent the rest of the morning circling the entire excavation site, recording every little detail: the distance from the guard shack to the dirt road leading to the highway, the average time it took a pickup truck to get there from the nearest point, the locations of other security cameras in the area — all of which recorded nothing unusual other than the main camera's power cut, as if the perpetrator had carefully surveyed the coverage of each one.

In the middle of the morning, Diem called the main security guard, who had handed over the shift to Doanh the previous afternoon and then returned to the infirmary due to fever. His voice was weak over the phone, but he still clearly remembered every detail of the handover: it was eleven o'clock, everything was intact, the camera still flashed steadily, the lock was still secure when he personally checked it one last time before leaving the area. There was nothing unusual during his shift, not a single stranger lingered near the fence all afternoon.

"So the only gap is from eleven twenty, when Doanh last checked there were still flashing lights, to around midnight, when he discovered it was missing," Diem told Chu Vinh Tru, drawing a line of time on the page. "Less than an hour to cut the power cord, disable the lock, remove the artifact and leave without leaving any significant traces. This is not the job of one person, much less the job of someone doing this for the first time."

At noon, Doanh returned to report: the cart transporting the artifacts was still in the tool warehouse, the lock was intact, with no signs of being used. Diem nodded, not showing surprise.

"So the guy brought his own vehicle, something like that," she said. "That means they prepared in advance, knew the exact weight and size of the artifact that needed to be moved. It's not like a petty thief saw something precious and got greedy in the middle of the night."

Chu Vinh Tru looked at her, his eyes both admiring and a little uneasy. "You talk as if this isn't the first time you've encountered something like this."

Diem did not answer immediately. She looked out toward the excavation pit, where wooden sticks marking the cultural layer were still neatly stuck under the red soil, where three weeks ago a bronze drum with an unprecedented pattern was brought out of the ground after more than two thousand years of resting.

"Not the first time," she said finally, her voice very quiet. "But last time, I wasn't there in time."

She pulled out her phone and called a number she had saved with the name "Captain Hai — Economic Police", the number she had just requested this morning following coordinated instructions from her superiors.

"Mr. Hai," she said when the other end of the line picked up, "I'm Hoang Thuc Diem, Heritage Tracing Team. I need your help with something urgent: the personnel list of a company providing locks to protect archaeological sites, and a piece of handwritten symbol I just collected at the scene of the loss of bronze drums in Go Lang Uyen. I think it's not a new symbol."

"How old is the symbol?" The man's voice on the other end of the line asked again, a bit curious and cautious.

Diem looked down at the piece of paper in the evidence bag, the series of red symbols were still clearly visible under the plastic layer.

“Twelve years,” she said.