Treasure of Khan (20 page)

“Comrade Al, believe me, we all relish the reforms that have expanded the freedom of individuals. It just occasionally makes my job a little more demanding.”

“And what exactly is your job with the embassy?” Pitt asked.

“Special attaché and assistant director of information, at your service. I help ensure that the embassy is well informed about events and activities within the host country.”

Pitt and Giordino gave each other a knowing look, but said nothing.

“Gloating again, Ivan?” Sarghov smiled. “Enough about you. What can you tell us about Avarga Oil?”

Corsov tilted back in his seat and waited for the waitress to lay a round of drinks on the table, then spoke in a low voice.

“The Avarga Oil Consortium. A strange animal.”

“In what manner?” asked Sarghov.

“Well, the corporate entity is a relatively new concept in Mongolia. Obviously, there was no private ownership under communist rule, so the appearance of autonomous Mongolian companies has only occurred in the last fifteen years. Aside from the explosion of individual or publicly owned companies in the past five years, the earlier entities were all created in partnership with the state or foreign corporations. This is especially true of the mining companies, as the locals had no capital to start with and the state owned the land. Yet this wasn't the case with Avarga.”

“They are not partnered with the Mongolian government?” Pitt asked.

“No, their registry confirms that they are fully privately owned. The point is more interesting, as they were one of the first companies licensed under the newly autonomous Mongolian government in the early 1990s. The company name, by the way, comes from an ancient city believed to be the first capital of Mongolia.”

“It doesn't take much more than a land lease to start an oil company,” Giordino said. “Maybe they only started with a piece of paper and a pickup truck.”

“Perhaps. I can't say what resources they began with, but their current assets are certainly more substantial than a pickup truck.”

“What have you been able to verify?” asked Sarghov.

“They are known to have a minimally producing oil field in the north near the Siberian border, as well as a few exploratory wells in the Gobi. They also own exploration rights to some sizeable lands around Lake Baikal. Their only real physical asset is an oil field services yard in south Ulaanbaatar near the rail depot that's been around for years. And they recently announced commencement of mining operations at a small copper mine near Kharakhorum.”

“Nothing outlandish in any of that,” Pitt said.

“Yes, but those are only the publicly acknowledged holdings. A listing of their more intriguing assets I was able to acquire from the Ministry of Agriculture and Industry.” Corsov's eyes shifted back and forth, indicating that the minister of agriculture and industry did not actually know that Corsov had acquired the information.

“Avarga Oil Consortium has acquired oil and mineral rights to vast tracts of land throughout the country. And more amazingly, they have acquired outright ownership of thousands of acres of former state land spreading all across the country. That is an unusual privilege in Mongolia. My sources tell me that the company paid a considerable sum to the Mongolian government for these land rights. Yet it does not appear to the eye that the company would have the resources to do so.”

“There's always a bank somewhere that's willing to loan money,” Pitt said. “Perhaps funds were fronted by outside mining interests.”

“Yes, it is possible, though I found no evidence to that end. The funny thing is, much of the land is in regions with no known oil or mining geology. A large section courses through the Gobi Desert, for example.”

The waitress appeared and slid a plate of roast lamb in front of Corsov. The Russian stuffed a large piece of meat in his mouth, then continued talking.

“I found it interesting that the company head does not appear to have any political clout or connections, and is actually unknown to most Mongolian government officials. The deals the company made were apparently conjured up with cash, the source of which is a mystery to me. No, the company head keeps a low profile in Xanadu.”

“Xanadu?” asked Pitt.

“It's the name given to the residence, and headquarters, such as it is, of the company's chairman. Located about two hundred fifty kilometers southeast of here. I've never seen it, but was told about it by a Yukos oil executive who was invited there for a business deal some years ago. It is supposed to be a small but opulent palace built on the design of the original summer home of the thirteenth-century Mongol emperor. Filled with antiques. There is supposedly nothing else like it in Mongolia. Oddly, I've never known any Mongolians who have been inside the place.”

“More evidence of unaccountable wealth,” Sarghov said. “So what of our captives? Would they have been taken to the industrial site in town or to this Xanadu?”

“It is difficult to say. The trucks would easily pass unnoticed in and out of the facility here, so that would be a good starting point. Tell me, though, why were these oil workers abducted?”

“That is a good question, and one we would like to find out,” Pitt replied. “Let's start with the industrial site. Can you get us inside for a look?”

“Of course,” Corsov replied as if insulted by the question. “I have already surveyed the facility. It is protected by security guards; however, access should be attainable near the rail line.”

“A quick nighttime look-see around shouldn't bother anyone,” Giordino said.

“Yes, I suspected that would be your wish. You only need verify the presence of the survey team. Once we establish they are here, then we can push the Mongolian police authorities to act. Otherwise, we will be old men before anything gets done. Believe me, comrades, time can indeed stand still in Mongolia.”

“What about the woman, Tatiana. Have you any information on her?”

“Unfortunately, no. She may have traveled to Siberia under an assumed name, if the immigration authorities are to be believed. But if she is part of Avarga Oil and here in Mongolia, then we will find her.”

Corsov finished devouring his lamb and knocked back a second Chinese-brewed beer.

“Midnight tonight. Meet me at the back of the hotel and I will take you to the facility. Of course in my capacity, it is too dangerous for me to join you.” He smiled, his large teeth glistening.

“I'm afraid I must be sidelined from the cloak-and-dagger business as well,” Sarghov said, waving a bandaged wrist. “I'll do my best to assist in any other way,” he added with disappointment.

“Not a problem, comrades,” Pitt replied. “No sense in creating an international incident with both our countries. We'll just play the lost tourists if anything happens.”

“There should be little danger in some harmless trespassing,” Sarghov agreed.

Corsov's cheerful face suddenly turned solemn.

“There is some tragic news I must warn you about. A LUKOIL Russian oil survey team was ambushed and killed by men on horseback in the mountains north of here two days ago. Four men were brutally murdered for no apparent reason. A fifth man witnessed the murders but managed to escape undetected. A sheepherder found him exhausted and terrified not far from the village of Erõõ. When the man returned to the scene with the local police, everything was gone—bodies, trucks, survey gear—it had all vanished. An embassy representative met him and escorted him back to Siberia, while LUKOIL officials confirmed that the rest of the survey team had gone missing.”

“Is there any link with Avarga Oil?” Giordino asked.

“Without any evidence, we just don't know. But it does seem an odd coincidence, you must agree.”

The table fell silent for a moment, then Pitt said, “Ivan, you have told us little about the owners of Avarga Oil. Who is the face behind the company?”

“Faces, actually,” Corsov corrected. “The company is registered to a man named Tolgoi Borjin. He is known to have a younger sister and brother, but I could not produce their names. The woman, Tatiana, may well in fact be the sister. I will attempt to find further information. Public records being what they are in Mongolia, little is known of the family publicly or even privately. State records indicate that Borjin was raised in a state commune in the Khentii province. His mother died at an early age and his father was a laborer and surveyor. As I mentioned, the family doesn't seem to have any particular political influence and are not known to have a visible presence in Ulaanbaatar's upper society. I can only repeat a rumor that the family are self-proclaimed members of the Golden Clan.”

“Deep pockets, eh?” Giordino asked.

Corsov shook his head. “No, the Golden Clan has nothing to do with wealth. It is a reference to lineage.”

“With a name like that, there must have been some old money somewhere along the line.”

“Yes, I suppose you could say that. Old money and land. Lots of it. Nearly the entire Asian continent, as a matter of fact.”

“You're not saying…,” Pitt started to ask.

Corsov cut him off with a nod. “Indeed. The history books will tell you that the Golden Clan were direct descendants of Chinggis.”

“Chinggis?” Giordino asked.

“Accomplished tactician, conqueror, and perhaps the greatest leader of the medieval age,” Pitt injected with regard. “Better known to the world as Genghis Khan.”

D
RESSED IN DARK CLOTHES
, P
ITT
and Giordino left the hotel after a late dinner, making a loud show of asking the front desk where the best neighborhood bars were located. Though foreign tourists were no longer a rarity in Ulaanbaatar, Pitt knew better than to raise suspicions. Casually walking around the block, they settled into a small café across from the hotel's rear entrance. The café was crowded, but they found a corner table and nursed a pair of beers while waiting for the clock to strike twelve. A nearby throng of drunken businessmen warbled ballads in noisy unison with a red-haired barmaid who played a stringed instrument called a “yattak.” To Pitt's amusement, it seemed as if the song never changed.

Corsov appeared promptly at midnight driving a gray Toyota sedan. He barely slowed for Pitt and Giordino to climb in, then accelerated down the street. Corsov took a circuitous route around the city, driving past the large open Sukhbaatar Square. The public gathering place in the heart of Ulaanbaatar was named for a revolutionary leader who defeated the Chinese and declared Mongol independence on the site in 1921. He would have probably been disappointed to know that a local rock band surrounded by teens in grunge attire was the main draw as Corsov drove by.

The car turned south and soon left the city center traffic as Corsov drove through darkened side streets.

“I have a present for you on the backseat,” Corsov smiled, his buckteeth gleaming in the rearview mirror. Giordino searched and found a couple of weathered brown jackets folded on the seat, topped by a pair of battered yellow hard hats.

“They'll help ward off the evening chill and make you look like a couple of local factory workers.”

“Or a couple of skid row hobos,” Giordino said, pulling on one of the jackets. The worn coat was moth-eaten in places and Giordino felt like his muscular frame would burst the shoulder seams. He smiled when he saw that the sleeves on Pitt's jacket came up six inches short.

“Any all-night tailors in the neighborhood?” Pitt asked, holding up an arm.

“Ha, very funny,” Corsov laughed. He then reached under the seat and handed Pitt a large envelope and a flashlight.

“An aerial photo of the area, courtesy of the Ministry of Construction and Urban Development. Not very detailed, but it gives you a rough layout of the facility.”

“You've been a busy boy this evening, Ivan,” Pitt said.

“With a wife and five kids, you expect me to go home after work?” he laughed.

They reached the southern fringe of the city where Corsov turned west, following alongside a set of railroad tracks. As they passed Ulaanbaatar's main train station, Corsov slowed the car. Pitt and Giordino quickly studied the photograph under the glow of the flashlight.

The fuzzy black-and-white aerial photograph covered a two-square-mile area, but Corsov had circled the Avarga facility in red. There wasn't much to see. Two large warehouse buildings sat at either end of the rectangular compound, with a few small structures scattered in between. Most of the yard, which was walled on the front street and fenced on the rear and sides, was open-air storage for pipes and equipment. Pitt tracked a rail spur that ran out of the east end of the yard and eventually met up with the city's main rail line.

Corsov turned off the headlights and pulled into a vacant lot. A small, roofless building sat at the edge, streaked with black soot marks. A former bakery, it had long ago caught fire and burned, leaving only singed walls as its skeletal remains.

“The rail spur is just behind this building. Follow the tracks to the yard. There is just a chain-link gate over the rail entry,” Corsov said, handing Pitt a small pair of wire cutters. “I'll be waiting at the train depot until three, then I'll make a brief stop here at three-fifteen. Any later and you are on your own.”

“Thanks, Ivan. Don't worry, we'll be right back,” Pitt replied.

“Okay. And please remember one thing,” Corsov grinned. “If anything happens, please call the U.S. embassy, not the Russian embassy.”

Pitt and Giordino made their way to the burned-out building and waited in the shadows for Corsov's taillights to disappear down the road before moving around back. A few yards away, they found the elevated rail spur running through the darkness and began following the tracks toward an illuminated facility in the distance.

“You know, we could be back sampling the local vodka in that cozy café,” Giordino noted as a chilled gust of wind blew over them.

“But the barmaid was married,” Pitt replied. “You'd be wasting your time.”

“I've never yet found drinking in a bar to be a waste of time. As a matter of fact, I have discovered that time often stands still while in a bar.”

“Only until the tab arrives. Tell you what, let's find Theresa and her pals, and the first bottle of Stoli is on me.”

“Deal.”

Walking several feet to the side of the railroad tracks, they moved quickly toward the facility. The gate across the rail spur was as Corsov described, a swinging chain-link fence padlocked to a thick steel pole. Pitt pulled the wire cutters from his pocket and quickly snipped an inverted L shape in the mesh. Giordino reached over and pulled the loose section away from the fence so Pitt could crawl through, then scampered in after him.

The rambling yard was well lit, and, despite the late hour, a steady buzz of activity hummed from within. Keeping to the shadows as best they could, Pitt and Giordino moved alongside the large fabricated building on the east end of the yard. The building's sliding doors opened to the interior of the yard, and the men crept toward the entrance, pausing behind one of the large doors.

From their vantage point, they had a clear view of the facility. To their left, a dozen or so men were working near the rail line, milling over four flatbed railcars. An overhead crane loaded bundled sections of four-foot-diameter pipe onto the first railcar, while a pair of yellow forklifts loaded smaller drill pipe and casings onto the other cars. Pitt was relieved to see that several of the men wore mangy brown jackets and battered yellow hard hats that matched their own.

“Drill pipe for an oil well and pipeline to transfer it to storage,” Pitt whispered as he watched the loading. “Nothing unusual there.”

“Except they have enough materials to drill to the center of the earth and pipe it to the moon,” Giordino mused, gazing across the yard.

Pitt followed his gaze and nodded. Acres of the yard were jampacked with forty-foot sections of the large-diameter pipe, stacked up in huge pyramids that towered over them. It was like a huge horizontal forest of metal trees, cut and stacked in an orderly sequence. A side section of the yard was filled with an equally impressive inventory of the small-diameter drill pipe and casings.

Turning his attention to the open warehouse, Pitt inched around the corner and peered in. The interior was brightly illuminated, but Pitt saw no signs of movement. Only a portable radio blaring an unrecognizable pop tune from a small side office indicated the presence of any workers. Striding into the warehouse, he walked behind a truck parked near the side wall and took inventory with Giordino beside him.

A half dozen large flatbed trailers occupied the front of the building, wedged between two dump trucks. A handful of Hitachi heavy-construction excavators and bulldozers lined the side wall, while the rear of the building was sectioned off as a manufacturing area. Pitt studied a stack of prefabricated metal arms and rollers that were in various stages of assembly. A nearly complete example stood in the center, resembling a large metal rocking horse.

“Oil well pumps,” Pitt said, recalling the bobbing iron pumps he used to see as a kid dotting the undeveloped fields of Southern California. He noted that they appeared shorter and more compact than the type he remembered, which were used to pump oil out of mature wells that were not pressurized enough to blow the black liquid to the surface on their own.

“Looks more like the makings of a merry-go-round for welders,” Giordino replied. He suddenly nodded toward a corner office, where they could see a man talking on the telephone.

Pitt and Giordino were creeping behind the cover of one of the flatbed trucks and inching toward the warehouse entrance when two more voices materialized near the door. The two men quickly ducked down and scurried around the back of the flatbed and knelt behind its large rear wheel. Through the wheel well, they watched as two workers strolled by on the opposite side of the truck, engaged in an animated conversation as they walked to the office in back. Pitt and Giordino quickly moved through the line of trucks and exited the building, regrouping behind a stack of empty pallets.

“Any one of those flatbeds could have been at Lake Baikal, but there was nothing that resembled the covered truck we saw at the dock,” Giordino whispered.

“There's still the other side of the yard,” Pitt replied, nodding toward the warehouse on the opposite side of the facility. The other building sat in a darkened section of the yard and appeared sealed shut. Together, they moved off toward the second building, threading their way through a small collection of storage sheds that dotted the northern side of the yard. Midway across, they approached a cluster of sheds and a small guard office that marked the main entrance to the complex. With Giordino on his heels, Pitt circled well clear of the entrance, then picked his way closer. Stopping at the last shed, which contained a bin full of grease-stained yard tools, they studied the second warehouse.

It was the same dimension as the first warehouse yet devoid of activity. Its front bay door was sealed shut, as was a small doorway to the side. What also made the building different was that an armed guard patrolled the perimeter.

“What's worth guarding at an oil field depot?” Giordino asked.

“Why don't we find out?”

Pitt stepped over to the tool bin and rummaged through its contents. “Might as well look the part,” he said, hoisting a sledgehammer off the rack and toting it over his shoulder. Giordino picked up a green metal toolbox and emptied its contents, save for a hacksaw and monkey wrench.

“Let's go fix the plumbing, boss,” he muttered, following after Pitt.

The twosome marched into the open and toward the building's façade as if they owned it. The guard initially paid little attention to the two men, who, in their ragged coats and banged-up hard hats, looked like any other workers in the yard. But when they completely ignored his presence on the way to the smaller entry door, he snapped into action.

“Stop,” he barked in Mongolian. “Where do you think you're going?”

Giordino did stop, but only to bend down and retie his shoelace. Pitt kept walking toward the door as if the guard did not exist.

“Stop,” the guard yelled again, shuffling toward Pitt as his hand reached for his holster.

Pitt kept walking until the guard was only a step away, then he slowly turned and smiled broadly at the man.

“Sorry,
no habla
,” Pitt said, shrugging his shoulders benignly.

The guard contemplated Pitt's Caucasian features and indecipherable phrase with a look of utter confusion. Then the blunt side of a green toolbox arced out of nowhere and struck him in the side of the head, knocking him cold before his body could hit the ground.

“I think he bent my toolbox,” Giordino said huffily, rubbing a large dent on the end of the green case.

“Maybe he's got insurance. I think we might want to find a different resting place for Sleeping Beauty,” Pitt replied, stepping around the body.

He walked over and tried the handle on the entry door but found it locked. Hoisting the sledgehammer, he swung the iron head against the door handle with a punishing blow. The lock smashed free of the doorjamb and Pitt easily kicked the door open. Giordino already had the guard's torso in his arms, and dragged the unconscious man through the doorway and deposited him to the side as Pitt closed the door behind him.

The interior was dark, but Pitt flicked on the light switches next to the door and flooded the interior with fluorescent light. To his surprise, the building was nearly empty. Just two flatbed haulers sat side by side in the middle of the floor, taking up a fraction of the otherwise deserted warehouse. One of the flatbeds was empty, but the other held a large protruding object covered from view by a canvas tarp. The object under wraps had a streamlined shape resembling a subway car. It was nearly the opposite in dimension of the jaggedly vertical object that they had seen concealed on the truck at Lake Baikal.

“Doesn't look like the present we were looking for,” Pitt remarked.

“Might as well unwrap it and find out what the big secret is,” Giordino replied, pulling out the hacksaw from his battered toolbox. Jumping onto the flatbed, he attacked a maze of ropes that secured the canvas in a mummy wrap. As the cut ropes fell away, Pitt reached up and yanked at the canvas covering.

As the canvas tarp fell to the floor, they stood staring at a tube-shaped piece of machinery that stretched almost thirty feet long. A tangled maze of pipes and hydraulic lines ran from a large cylinder head at the front end to a frame support at the tail. Pitt walked around and studied the prow of the device, finding a circular plate eight feet in diameter studded with small beveled disks.