Chapter 9 — The One Who Counts Bridges

The Lower Infrastructure Department is located in a new building, the glass facade reflects the Moc River into cold blue strips. Linh An arrived ten minutes early, but the receptionist already knew her name and took her to the eighth floor without checking her documents. The meeting room looks straight at the New Bridge, where bright silver beams connect the two banks.

Tran Duc Minh sat alone in front of the big screen. He was not like the person Linh An imagined from the voice on the tape. The shirt is wrinkled, the hair is gray at the temples, next to a cup of cold tea and three files marked with colored paper.

“You sit down,” he said.

Linh An did not sit. “You want to talk about the seam?”

“I want to talk about how you are handling the data.”

“My data is the scene.”

"The scene does not have meaning on its own. Only the person who reads it creates meaning."

“So how do you read the signing of an addendum that removed the tenth bridge?”

Minh looked up. “There is no tenth bridge in the classification standard.”

“Standards cannot erase the floor.”

“You're talking about an old way of maintenance.”

“A path used by the maintenance team, with railings, drawings, names in my father's book.”

“Your father's books are not planning documents.”

“But your signature under the map is that way.”

Minh was silent. He opened a file and took out a blue and white drawing. On it is Bridge Number Seven, the north abutment, the connecting section and the market land. The path is drawn with thin lines, reading "for technical purposes, not for the public".

“This is the old design,” he said. “Then there was a decision to revoke and change the zoning.”

“Who changed?”

“Board approved.”

“Whose name is it signed?”

“You don't need to ask me what's in the document.”

"I asked for the text. It's locked."

Minh closed the file. "I invited you here to warn. The Song Moc Corridor is a large project, with hundreds of workers and many residential areas waiting to be liberated. If you release incomplete data, you can cause progress to stop, and the longer it takes for people to receive support."

"What support? The money in Mr. Sang's envelope?"

“You're overstepping your bounds.”

“The limit was in my mother's statement.”

Minh saw the brown envelope in her hand. His face changed very slightly.

“Where did you get it?”

“My mother gave it.”

“I didn't know she still had it.”

“You know she used to sign.”

Minh turned to face the glass door. From the eighth floor, people walking under the bridge look like small dots, with no names and no clear purpose.

“I'm not the one writing the testimony,” he said.

“But he was present.”

"I'm in charge of coordination. I have to make sure the support program runs properly."

"He told my mother to sign for money. He told my father to sit down. He signed the appendix."

“I signed in a process that I believe will be supplemented.”

“When should I add it?”

“After the land decision is made.”

“That means never.”

Minh did not deny it. He opened the drawer and took out a white guest card. "You can look at the old files. But don't copy them, don't take photos. If you want to understand, read the whole process, not just one signature."

“Why show me?”

“Because you will find another way if I don't let you.”

“What are you afraid I'll find?”

Minh placed the card on the table. “I'm afraid you just found what you wanted.”

The file warehouse is in basement B2, where the smell of damp paper mixes with the smell of air conditioning. The staff led Linh An through the row of drawers. She saw boxes marked by year, but the five bridge collapses were listed under the label “old storage — pending.”

Minh didn't go with me. Sacred Wearing gloves, he turns over the records in date order. Hoa's measurements are present. A preliminary appendix is present. The meeting minutes have many pages numbered 1, 2, 3 and then jump to 7. Pages 4, 5, 6 are replaced with white paper, without unstaple marks.

She asked the warehouse staff, who said the handover documents were missing from before he took the job. Linh An writes down the box number and asks for confirmation in writing. The employee looked at her with concern.

“Don't write my name down,” he said.

“I won't record it if you don't agree.”

"It's not that I'm afraid. I still have a probationary contract."

A simple sentence made Linh An remember Yen's words: saying the right thing does not make others automatically safe.

In the last box, she found a copy of the delivery book. The recipient of the annex is “Ha Luu Technical Services Company”, not the Infrastructure Department. The company's address is located in the land behind the landfill, the same place where Phuc said Huy had burns.

Linh An took pictures from memory, without using a camera. She wrote down the box number in the book. When I pulled the drawer in, a piece of paper fell to the floor. On it is the bank's seal and the words "design guarantee".

She picked it up and was about to put it back when she heard the warehouse door open. A young man wearing a gray shirt walked in and saw the piece of paper in her hand.

“That's not part of the file you saw,” he said.

“Who are you?”

“Legal assistant of the partnership.”

“This warehouse belongs to the Infrastructure Department.”

“I have work papers.”

“Let me see.”

He didn't give it. Linh An placed the piece of paper on the cabinet. “If you want to retrieve documents, make a record.”

The man laughed. “You have fun working with paperwork.”

“Documents help people remember what they did.”

“It also helps people pretend not to know.”

He took the piece of paper and went. Linh An did not stop. She had read enough to remember the words "design guarantee", but didn't know who they referred to.

Exiting the building, she called Khai. He was at the factory and said he had found a welder named Thanh who used to work under the bridge. Thanh had no burns on his left hand, but kept a list of equipment that had been transferred to the technical services company.

“Whose name is the company in?” Linh An asked.

“A person named Ngo Thanh Lam.”

“Is it related to Huy?”

"Not directly in the name. But the registered address is Ms. Huy's old house."

“Huy's sister?”

“Do Quang Huy has a younger sister named Do Lan.”

“Why is an engineering company standing at his sister's house?”

“Because it's a convenient address.”

“You also speak like a lawyer.”

“I'm learning from you.”

Khai sent a photo of the list. Device line number 17 is “water level sensor, non-refundable transfer”. Next to it is the signature of a person named Le Quoc Thinh.

“Sensor recognition?”

“According to paper.”

“But not in the field inventory.”

"I know."

Linh An remembers the photo taken at the scene by Khai: the photo has the scarred hand on the beam. Maybe that person didn't just remove the ciphertext. They took water level sensors, which could demonstrate when the water rose.

Yen met them at a coffee shop next to the bus station, where the machine was loud enough to cover a conversation. She brought along Thinh's call data, which her family agreed to provide. Three days before his death, he called a prepaid number several times, then had a small bank transaction repeated four times.

“I don't know the owner yet,” Yen said. “But there was a 17-minute call at 9:17 p.m., the night before he died.”

“Whose number is it?”

“Ha Luu Technical Services Company.”

Linh An placed the company photo on the table. Khai see, don't say.

“We shouldn't assemble everything into a bad guy right away,” Yen said. “That company may take a lot of business calls.”

“Then check the content.”

“No right to listen to calls.”

“There is a bank schedule.”

"You also don't have the right to take it arbitrarily."

Khai said: "Some people want us to see traces but not enough to draw conclusions."

“Counter,” Linh An said.

“Or people who want to make up stories.”

Yen nodded. "That's why there's a need for an independent point. Something that's not part of their paper system."

Khai took out an old laser measure from his pocket. “If the maintenance bridge has a foundation located on public or private land, we will know who benefits from calling it a temporary road.”

That afternoon, they arrived at the western leveling area. A high corrugated iron fence covers the land, but the gap between the two panels is enough to look down. Khai uses a mechanical locator, not a phone. Linh An compared the paper map and found that the bridge foundation was 42 centimeters from the private land boundary, not entirely located in the public area as per the project documents.

“This error is not due to the machine,” she said.

“No. The boundary is pulled away from the claw.”

“If the foundation is on private land, who has to ask for the right to use it?”

"Project."

“If you don't ask?”

“They called it a temporary item and then removed it.”

An elderly woman came out of the house next to the fence. Her name is Tham, she sells water to workers. She said the bridge existed before the landfill was built, and every flood season people crossed it to get to the old school. Huy once came and gave her money to sign that the bridge had been abandoned a long time ago.

“Have you signed yet?” Linh An asked.

"I signed the paper to receive money to repair the roof. They said it was not related to the bridge."

“Do you have any paper left?”

Tham took an income and expenditure book from home. The amount of money is dated 12 years ago, item "roof repair after flood", the transferee is Ha Luu Technical Services Company. The recipient's signature is hers, but below is a typed line: "There is no dispute over the land with temporary construction."

“Do you understand this line?”

"No. I just asked the person who gave me the money if I had to sign it. They said I should sign it so the bank can transfer it."

Linh An did not take photos of the notebook pages. She asked permission to write down every word so that Tham could keep the original. She asked if she could save the bridge.

“I don't know yet,” Linh An replied.

"Don't say you know if you don't know. Hoa was the same in the past. He said he could endure whatever he could, but he didn't promise that the bridge wouldn't collapse."

Hearing that sentence, Linh An felt pain in a different way. Her father is not the hero on the poster. He was the one who said the right thing that other people didn't want to hear.

The sky started to turn cloudy. Khai took one last measurement, then told them to leave the beach before the security guard arrived. At the same time, a black pickup truck stopped next to the fence. Do Quang Huy stepped down, not wearing a protective vest.

“Miss Linh An,” he said, his voice calm. “I was told you were measuring the project's land.”

“I measure the existing structure.”

“You have no right to enter.”

“I stood outside the fence.”

Huy looked at Khai. “You still work for her?”

“I do it for myself.”

“Then you should remember the old contract.”

“I even remember the reason I was suspended.”

Huy did not reply. He turned to Linh An. "Do you know how many things a big project has to balance? If you only look at a line of ink on paper, you will cause people to lose the opportunity to change their lives."

“If you only look at progress, you will make them lose their way back.”

“You are using your father's story to force the project.”

“You just called my father's name first.”

Huy looked at the notebook in Mrs. Tham's hand. “Mrs. Tham, me I think you should go home.”

“I'm on my home land,” Tham replied.

Huy returned to Linh An. “Come to my office tomorrow. I will show you the file and explain why the bridge section must be removed.”

“I don't work with you personally.”

“Then invite Yen and Khai. Don't make me a faceless person.”

He left, but before getting into the car, his left hand was exposed out the door. A curved scar runs across the wrist.

Linh An saw it. Huy noticed her looking and pulled down his sleeve.

That night, she put three things on the table: her father's map, her mother's testimony, and the photo of the hand of the person in the camera Khai. None of them is enough proof, but all three point in the same direction: the so-called temporary bridge section was intentionally kept, and then also intentionally deleted.

Yen texted another line: "The account receiving Thinh's design money once transferred a large sum to a person named Do Lan."

Linh An did not answer immediately. She looked at the clock. 9:17 am.

In the Infrastructure Department's email, a new message appeared:

“The internal inspection session will take place tomorrow. It is recommended that Ms. Linh An participate as a data provider. Do not bring storage devices.”

Below is the signer's name: Tran Duc Minh.

Linh An read the word "internal", then hung up. Huy invited her to look at the file. Minh invited her to the testing session. They both wanted her to come into their room.

Khai called out: "Don't go alone."

“I'm not going.”

“I mean don't let them take away the right to tell the story.”

Linh An looked at the suitcase lying in the cooperative warehouse. She has left home, but has not left the story. For the first time, she understood what Mr. Bay said: people who count don't count to prove they are right. They counted to see who was standing on the other side of the door.