Chapter 22 — The Journey of the Missing Bronze Drum

The cold room door opened with a soft hiss, cold air rushed out and touched Diem's face like thousands of small needles. Inside, white fluorescent lights illuminated a space that was narrower than she had imagined, empty steel shelves lined both sides of the wall, and in the center, perched on a wooden pedestal lined with dark red velvet, was a circular block covered in layers of moisture-proof fabric.

Diem stepped forward, her hands shaking from both the cold and extreme nervousness, gently lifting each layer of covering fabric. The first layer of fabric slides down, revealing a protective layer of foam. She continued to unwrap, slowly and carefully, as if she were removing thousands of years of history from the temporary cover of an escape.

And then, under the cold fluorescent light of the room once used to preserve frozen seafood, the pattern of the nine-winged peanut bird appeared, the moss-green bronze drum's surface reflected the ancient lines that she had memorized through hundreds of research photos over the past two weeks.

"LU-07," she whispered, her voice choked. Not the cold academic words of an expert appraiser, but the name of something she feared she would never find again.

She gently touched the rim of the pattern, feeling each familiar engraved line under her fingertips, immediately comparing it in her mind with the image she had memorized from the excavation report: the outline of a stray bird arranged in a circle, nine wings evenly, without any further wear or damage compared to the photos taken before it disappeared.

She tilted the drum to a small angle, inspected the bottom - where appraisers often look for signs of illegal intervention or restoration - and was relieved to see that the original copper patina was still intact, with no traces of scraping or artificial polishing, a sign that the smuggling ring, although ruthless in the way it operated, was at least knowledgeable enough not to intervene and destroy the original value of the object before it could be sold on the black market.

One of the two technicians gave her a handheld temperature and humidity measuring device. "You need to check to see if this temporary storage environment is harmful?"

Diem nodded, quickly measured the indicators, and took notes in her public service notebook. "The temperature and humidity are both within acceptable limits. Luckily, this cold room happens to be a pretty good preservation environment for metal artifacts, although that is certainly not the intention of those who hid it here."

"It's intact," she said to the team of technicians waiting outside the door, her voice cracking with uncontrollable emotion. "It's intact."

She pulled out her phone, took photos of the situation from many angles according to the correct procedure, her hands were still shaking, then allowed two technicians to come in and help pack the artifacts according to safe transportation standards, using a specialized support frame instead of carrying them directly.

*

A few hundred meters away, the pursuit was still going on among the maze of dark warehouse rows. Hai ran at full speed, two special forces soldiers followed closely on both sides, flashlights continuously scanned every hidden corner, the sound of Vu Bach Long's motorbike engine was near and far, as if he was deliberately winding through narrow paths that only people familiar with the terrain would dare to recklessly run through in the dark.

"Second line, the suspect is heading towards you!" Hai shouted into the walkie-talkie, breathing heavily.

"Get it, get ready to block!"

The sound of the motorbike engine suddenly stopped, followed by a deafening metallic collision - Vu Bach Long, when running near the side gate, discovered that the escape route was blocked by the second vehicle. He was forced to turn the wheel suddenly, the motorbike skidded on the wet ground and tilted to one side.

He scrambled up, left the car behind, and ran toward the barbed wire fence surrounding the industrial park, trying to find a gap to climb through.

"Stop! Don't move any further!" Hai shouted loudly, approaching him less than twenty meters away, his pistol raised according to procedure but not yet loaded, just for deterrence purposes.

Vu Bach Long stopped, turned around, raised his hands high, panting. In the flashlight shining directly on his face, his familiar calm face had now completely disappeared, replaced by a look of exhaustion and a strangely cold resignation.

"I surrender," he said, his voice broken by his rapid breathing. "No need to use force."

Hai approached, signaled two special forces soldiers to handcuff him, and read the arrestee's rights according to legal procedures. While being handcuffed, Vu Bach Long looked up at Hai, a bland, incomprehensible smile flashed across his lips.

"Where is Miss Diem?" he asked, his voice chillingly calm, as if his arrest was just a temporary setback, not the collapse of the entire empire he had built over twelve years.

"She's taking care of her job," Hai replied, his voice cold, not giving him any chance to continue manipulating the other person's psychology.

"Then tell her for me," Vu Bach Long said, as two soldiers began to escort him towards the waiting police car. "I'm ready to talk. But only to her, no one else."

Hai didn't answer, just signaled the escorting team to keep moving, but inside, that sentence left an unpleasant echo — not because it was threatening, but because it showed that Vu Bach Long, even in the most obvious moment of defeat, was still trying to hold on to some semblance of control in his hands, like a chess player who had never really accepted that the game was over.

He pulled out his radio and reported to headquarters. "The main suspect has been arrested, there are no casualties. Being escorted to headquarters."

On the way to escort, one of the two special forces soldiers walking next to Vu Bach Long suddenly spoke up, his voice somewhat filled with uncontrollable curiosity. "Why didn't you flee abroad before, if you knew this would happen one day?"

Vu Bach Long was silent for a moment, his steps still steady under the flashlight, then replied, his voice slow as if he was questioning himself rather than answering the question. "I've thought about it many times. But this port, this line, it's more than just a job to make money for me. It's the only thing I've ever truly owned, since I was a kid cleaning warehouses whose name no one remembers. Leaving, to me, is scarier than being caught."

That answer made the young soldier silent. He did not ask any more questions, just continued to escort him to the waiting police car under the headlights that illuminated a corner of the sky that had not yet dawned.

Then he turned and ran quickly back to the warehouse area, where the light from the main cold room still shone through the open door, eager to know the results of the remaining mission - a mission that, to Diem, had greater meaning than any hunt.

When he ran there, he saw Diem standing in the middle of the cold room, her hands holding the carefully packed box of artifacts, her face wet with tears mixed with the cold air still on her cheeks, a smile that was trembling but more genuine than any smile he had ever seen from her during the two weeks of working together.

"Found it," she said, her voice choking. "Hai, we found it."

Hai stepped closer, looked down at the box containing the artifacts in her hand, then looked up at her face, where the tears had not yet been wiped away. He didn't say anything for a moment, just raised his hand and gently wiped a tear from her cheek, a gesture so natural that neither of them had time to realize it was more intimate than anything that had happened between them in the past two weeks.

"You did it," he said, his voice deep. "We both did it."

Diem nodded, did not say anything more, just let that moment pass, between the cold air still lingering in the air and the distant noise of the special task force completing the work of seizing evidence throughout the cold storage area.

Outside, the eastern sky had begun to glow with a faint streak of light, signaling the approach of dawn—not the bright light of a complete end, but the ordinary, plain light of a new day, carrying within it a whole load of unfinished business: interrogation, filing, official appraisal, and a question that still hung, unanswered, about the death of a man twelve years ago.

But at least, for the first time after a long journey, Diem felt like she was standing on the light side, no longer groping alone in the darkness of unanswered questions.