Chapter 4 — The Journey of the Missing Bronze Drum

Mr. Khoat's house is located at the end of a small suburban alley, where the sound of city traffic is only a distant sound, giving way to the chirping of sparrows on the luffa trellis in the front yard. Diem arrived at exactly seven o'clock in the morning, carrying a bag of oranges as was her habit every time she visited the elderly, even though she knew Mr. Khoat didn't care about gifts.

He opened the gate, his figure was thinner than the time she met him two years ago, but his eyes were still as sharp as when he was in office. He led her into the living room, where an old cardboard box had been placed on the table, taped with multiple layers of tape, one corner of the box marked with a faded marker: "48A — kept internally."

"Where did you keep it for twelve years without anyone knowing?" Diem asked, sitting in the chair opposite.

"It's not that no one knows. It's that no one asked." Mr. Khoat poured tea, his hands were shaking slightly but his movements were still neat. "After Mr. Trac passed away, the official file was transferred to superiors, with the conclusion of the case closed in less than three weeks - so fast that I found it unusual, but at that time I was only a deputy, not competent to request a review. I did the only thing within my power: backed up all the documents I had before handing over the originals, kept them separately, and did not notify anyone, including Mr. Trac's wife."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

He looked at her, his eyes both apologetic and tough. "Because at that time you were twenty-two years old and had just lost your teacher. I couldn't bear to push you into an endless investigation, especially when I still had nothing certain other than a hunch and a few fragmentary facts. I waited. Waited until there was an event big enough to prove I wasn't paranoid. Now it's here, in the form of a stolen bronze drum." He pushed the box towards her. "You should watch it. But remember what I told you last night."

Diem opened the box, took out each set of documents carefully wrapped in plastic bags: photos taken at the Vinh Sa port scene twelve years ago, autopsy records, a list of personnel working at the container yard that night, and a set of handwritten notes from Mr. Khoat himself, recording informal conversations with Mr. Trac in the last weeks of his life.

She flipped to the personnel list page, scanning each line. There were about twenty names, mostly loading and unloading workers, a few warehouse managers, and a security team. One name was circled by Mr. Khoat with a red pen, the ink had mostly faded: "Vu Bach Long — warehouse manager No. 4, seasonal contract."

"This person," Mr. Khoat said, his voice was slow, "after the night of Mr. Trac's death, he resigned from his job just a week later. There were no unusual signs recorded in the testimony record - he simply claimed that he didn't have time to meet anyone that night and was staying at a motel five kilometers from the port. I have no way to verify that testimony at that time, because he lived alone, and no one could testify. I also have no reason to be more suspicious than the other people on the list. But you. Trac, in his final notes, mentioned a young warehouse manager who was 'too skilled for his age' so many times that he believed it was no coincidence."

"I read that line in your notebook," Diem said, her voice quiet. "He just abbreviated it as 'L.'"

"That's right. I intended to call him up to ask a second time, but at that time the case was closed, the superiors did not approve any additional investigation activities. After that, I heard that he transferred to a certain shipping company, did well, opened his own company. I didn't follow him closely anymore, partly because I was busy with other work, partly because..." he paused, looking down at his cup of tea, "partly because I was afraid that if I went any further, I would have to face the truth that I was not enough." Courage to face alone.""

Diem closed the file and looked straight at him. "I'm not going alone, Mr. Khoat. This time there's a whole team."

At that moment, her phone vibrated. Captain Hai's phone number.

"Miss Diem, I just received official instructions from my superiors," the man's voice on the other end of the line said, neatly and somewhat hurriedly. "From today, I am assigned to coordinate directly with you in the Go Lang Uyen case. I am near the area you talked about last night, can we meet in an hour?"

"Okay," Diem replied, still looking at the cardboard box on the table. "I'll bring something worth seeing for you."

*

Bien Dong Hai turned out to be younger than Diem imagined from the voice on the phone - perhaps only a few years older than her, with a solid figure, a straightforward, colorless way of speaking. He chose an empty cafe near the Department's headquarters as a meeting place, ordering two cups of black coffee before Diem could speak.

"I read the scene report you sent this morning," he said, opening his laptop in the middle of the table. "Your analysis of the locking mechanism and cart traces is very detailed, I appreciate it. But I need to say one thing straight before we work together: my approach is different from yours. You go from artifacts, from patterns, from physical traces. I go from cash flow, from paperwork, from mismatched numbers on the books."

"I have no problem with your approach," Diem replied, "as long as we get to the same point."

"That's good, because I once worked with another museum specialist who insisted on proving the symbolic meaning of each pattern before believing in an unusual accounting number. It took me half a year to convince her that sometimes invoices say more than the artifacts." Hai took a sip of coffee, the corner of his mouth curled up in a half smile, half mocking himself. "I don't want a repeat of that half year."

"Have you been following the antiques segment for a long time?"

"Two and a half years, since I transferred from the anti-electronic smuggling team. To be honest, at first I considered this a lighter segment — no guns, no drugs, just old items. I was wrong." His voice lowered a bit. "Last year, I followed a case of an ancient stone statue being chiseled out of a small temple in the Central region. The next time I was on the same line for three months, my only contact - a local person who had provided information - died in a traffic accident right before the date of meeting again. The local police concluded that it was a simple accident. I don't say it was murder, I have no evidence. But from then on I understood, this ring, when cornered, was not as gentle as the elegant antique dealer's appearance. it."

Diem looked at him, a silent sympathy rising that she couldn't put into words. It turned out that both carried a name that was not mentioned in any official reports.

"Good." Hai typed a few keys and turned the screen towards her. "So I'll start with this number: in the past three years, there have been seven cases of the loss of antiquities at archaeological sites and small museums across the country, all of which were closed due to lack of evidence and no culprit found. I quietly reviewed six months ago, after receiving an anonymous tip saying that there was a ring behind it all, operating very discreetly, never leaving a clear financial trace. The Go Lang Uyen case is the eighth case, and the first time We have a specific physical clue — the note I found."

Diem pushed Mr. Khoat's cardboard box towards him, recounting everything she had just learned: case 48A, the death of teacher Trac, the name Vu Bach Long circled in red in the list of old personnel.

Hai listened to everything, did not interrupt, just took quick notes in an electronic notebook. When Diem finished speaking, he sat still for a moment, his fingers lightly tapping on the table.

Hai flipped Mr. Khoat's file to the personnel list page, his finger stopped at the name circled in red. "Vu Bach Long. I need to check this guy through three layers: business registration, tax history, and if possible, immigration data. But I won't check directly with a legitimate business account — if he has acquaintances in the system, a data query suddenly showing his name right after the Go Lang Uyen incident would be a huge red flag. I'll go through an indirect channel, slower but safer."

"You think the line has eyes and ears in the public system?"

"I don't think, I assume," Hai replied, his voice decisive. "In this business, assuming the worst is always safer than hoping for the best. If it's as you think," he continued, "then this is no longer a single antiquities theft. This is the tip of a ring that has existed for at least twelve years, long enough for a seasonal warehouse manager to become the owner of a shipping business to have his name legally on all export documents. I need time to look up Vu Bach Long's company, see if there are any clues. any unusual signs in the business, but it has to be done quietly — if it's him, and he's been on high alert for twelve years, one wrong lookup move could let him know we're getting close."

"So where do we start, if we can't touch Vu Bach Long right away?"

Hai closed his laptop and looked at her with the eyes of someone who had a plan in mind before this meeting.

"Since the line still needs to sell goods domestically before being smuggled out," he said. "The anonymous source I received six months ago, without naming specifically, mentioned a location: Hang Nau antique market. If the artifact that was just taken from Go Lang Uyen had not yet left the border, it is likely that it is temporarily residing somewhere near that market, waiting for paperwork to be completed before leaving."