Captain Yuki took over Hiro’s position and rank and continued to search for both the gold and the man who had hidden it. They hired local guides to search for him, but they had no success. They kept an eye out for him, sure that he’d return to steal their gold, and one day he did just that. They didn’t see him come but one of their informants heard of a local headman who was attempting to sell a gold ingot. Yuki and his men went to the village and beat a confession out of him. His story was this: a Japanese major in uniform had arrived at the village by truck one night with an order written in Vietnamese for the headman to provide a dozen men to dive into the river and salvage some items there. The major didn’t speak at all. He took the village team to the river and pointed to the spot where he wanted them to dive. The gold was exactly where the salvage team had first discovered it in its original cases. Hiro had merely returned it to the river. The paperwork story had been merely a distraction.

The headman, like most locals in the region, was overawed by the might of the Japanese and he had no thought of taking the gold for himself. But the document had promised him one ingot in payment, for which he was most grateful. They helped the major load the gold into the truck and he went on his way with a friendly nod. The headman did have the foresight to jot down the number of the truck and he had kept the official order. Yuki noted that it was a very clever forgery, as were the travel papers deposited at every guard post between there and Thakhek. There they found the truck deserted on the bank of the Mekong River. This was another of Hiro’s ruses, as he had already offloaded the gold and had not used the Mekong as a transportation route. But Thakhek became the center of operations for Yuki and his gang in their search for the treasure that would have made them all very rich men. The war ended; the salvage unit deserted and relocated to rebel bases in the central region. They had no sympathy for the cause of the men and women fighting the French, but they needed to be close to the town where Hiro was last known to have been. They went their separate ways but kept in touch, always asking if anyone had run across a mute Japanese, always hoping that Hiro would come out of hiding and lead them to their rightful booty. They aged, got out of shape, and fought halfheartedly, but the scent of the gold never left their nostrils. Then, at last, a flash of light.