Treasure of Khan (29 page)

Tsengel responded by laughing with a throaty guffaw.

“Ah, yes, the richest herdsmen in the Gobi. Only his mares don't produce a drop of milk,” he smiled, taking another sip of
airag.

“Who built it?” Giordino asked.

“A large crew of men appeared in the desert with equipment, pipe, and a digging machine. They dug tunnels under the surface that run for many kilometers. I was paid a small fee to direct their foreman to the nearest well. He told me that they worked for an oil company in Ulaanbaatar, but were sworn not to tell anyone of their work. Several of the crewmen who talked loudly had disappeared suddenly and the rest of the workers were very nervous. They quickly built the wooden camels and large tanks that look like
gers
, then the men vanished. The tanks in the village stand empty, collecting only dust from the wind. That was many months ago, and I have seen no one return since. It is just like the others.”

“Which others?” Pitt asked.

“There are three other camps of metal
gers
located near the border. They are all the same. They stand empty, but for the wooden camels.”

“Are there existing oil wells or oil drilling in the area?” Pitt asked.

Tsengel thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No. I have seen oil wells in China many years ago, but none in this area.”

“Why do you think they disguise the storage tanks and surround them with wooden livestock?”

“I do not know. Some say that the metal
gers
were built by a wealthy herder to capture the rains and that the water will be used to bring back the grasslands. A shaman claims the wooden animals are an homage, placed in appeasement for the desecration of the desert that occurred by their underground digging. Others say it is the work of a tribe of madmen. But they are all wrong. It is simply the work of the powerful, who wish to exploit the wealth of the desert. Why do they disguise their efforts? Why else but to disguise their evil hearts.”

The
airag
had nearly finished Tsengel off. He slurped the remains of his bowl, then rose uneasily to his feet and bid his guests and family good night. Staggering over to one of the beds, he collapsed onto the covers and was snoring loudly minutes later. Pitt and Giordino helped the others clean up the remains of the meal, then strode outside for a dose of fresh air.

“It still doesn't make any sense,” Giordino said, gazing at the night sky. “Why hide some empty oil tanks out in the desert to collect dust?”

“Maybe there is something more important than the storage tanks that is being hidden.”

“What might that be?”

“Perhaps,” Pitt replied, kicking his toe into the ground, “the source of the oil.”

D
ESPITE
T
SENGEL'S LOUD SNORING
, Pitt and Giordino slept soundly in the
ger
, the boy Noyon giving up his bed to sleep on pillows on the floor. Everyone awoke at sunup and shared a breakfast of tea and noodles. Tsengel had arranged for Pitt and Giordino to accompany Noyon to the nearby village, where the local children were shuttled to a monastery for schooling three days a week. Pitt and Giordino would hop a ride with Noyon to the monastery, where a supply truck from Ulaanbaatar was known to make semiregular visits.

Slipping some dusty bills into her hand, Pitt thanked Ariunaa for the food and comfort, then said good-bye to Tsengel.

“We cannot repay your kindness and generosity.”

“The door to a herder's
ger
is always open. Be well in your travels, and think kindly on occasion of your friends in the Gobi.”

The men shook hands, then Tsengel galloped off to tend his herd. Pitt, Giordino, and Noyon mounted three of the stout horses and loped off toward the north.

“Your father is a good man,” Pitt said as he watched Tsengel's dusty trail disappear over the horizon.

“Yes, but he is sad to be away from the ground of his birth. We are doing well enough here, but I know his heart lies in Hulunbuir, the land to the southeast.”

“If he can prosper here, then I'd say he could make it anywhere,” Giordino said, eyeing the barren landscape around them.

“It is a struggle, but I will help my father when I am older. I will attend the university in Ulaanbaatar and become a doctor. Then I will buy him all the camels he desires.”

They crossed a grainy plain, then threaded their way through a series of sharp sandstone uplifts. The horses plodded their way along without guidance, following the route the way a Grand Canyon mule knows every step to the Colorado River. It wasn't long before Pitt and Giordino found their backsides chafing in discomfort. The horses were outfitted with the traditional Mongol saddles that were constructed of wood. Like most children of the Mongolian Steppes and desert regions, Noyon had learned to ride before he could walk and grew up accustomed to the hard, unforgiving riding gear. For outsiders like Pitt and Giordino, it was like riding a park bench over an infinite row of speed bumps.

“You sure there's not a bus stop or airport around here?” Giordino asked with a grimace.

Noyon thoughtfully considered the question.

“No bus, other than at the village. But airplane, yes. Not far from here. I will take you to it.”

Before Giordino could say another word, Noyon kicked his horse and galloped off toward a ridge to the east.

“That's all we need, an extra side trip,” Pitt said. “Shouldn't cost us more than a ruptured spleen or two.”

“Who's to say there's not a Learjet waiting for us on the other side of that ridge?” Giordino countered.

They turned toward Noyon's dusty trail and spurred their horses to run, the animals eagerly galloping after the lead horse. They charged up to the base of the ridge, then flanked around its northern tip. The horses' hooves clopped loudly as they crossed a wide section of level sandstone. Winding around some large boulders, they finally caught up with Noyon, who sat waiting in the shadow of a rocky spire. To Giordino's chagrin, there was no jet or airport, or sign of any means of air transportation, for as far as the eye could see. There was just more flat gravelly desert, punctuated by the occasional rocky bluff. At least the boy was truthful in one regard, Giordino thought. They had in fact traveled only a short distance off their original path.

Pitt and Giordino slowed their horses to a walk as they approached Noyon. The boy smiled at them, then nodded toward the back side of the ridge behind him.

Pitt gazed at the ridge, noting only a rocky incline covered in a layer of red sand. A few of the rocks were oddly shaped and seemed to reflect a faint silvery hue.

“A lovely rock garden,” Giordino mused.

But Pitt was intrigued and rode closer, noting two of the protrusions were proportionally shaped. As he drew near, he suddenly saw that they were not rocks at all but a pair of partially buried radial engines. One was attached to the blunt nose of an inverted fuselage while the other was mounted to an accompanying wing that disappeared under the sand.

Noyon and Giordino rode up as Pitt dismounted and brushed away the sand from one of the buried cowlings. Looking up with amazement, he said to Giordino, “It's not a Learjet. It's a Fokker trimotor.”

T
HE
F
OKKER
F. VII
B LAY WHERE
she had crashed, undisturbed for over seventy years. The inverted plane had collected blowing sand by the truckload, until her right wing and most of her fuselage was completely buried. Some distance behind, the port wing and engine lay hidden, crushed against the same rocks that had torn it off during the forced landing. The nose of the plane was mashed in like an accordion, the cockpit filled to the brim with sand. Buried in the dust, the crushed skeletons of the pilot and copilot were still strapped in their seats. Pitt brushed away a thick layer of sand from beneath the pilot's window until he could read the faded name of the plane,
Blessed Betty.

“Heck of a place to set down,” Giordino said. “I thought you said these old birds were indestructible?”

“Nearly. The Fokker trimotors, like the Ford trimotors, were a rugged aircraft. Admiral Byrd used one to fly over the Arctic and Antarctic. Charles Kingsford-Smith flew his Fokker F. VII, the
Southern Cross,
across the Pacific Ocean back in 1928. Powered by the Wright Whirlwind motors, they could practically fly forever.” Pitt was well versed about the old airplane—his own Ford trimotor was wedged in with his collection of antique cars back in Washington.

“Must have been done in by a sandstorm,” Giordino speculated.

As Noyon watched from a respectful distance, Pitt and Giordino followed the sand-scrubbed belly of the fuselage aft until they found a slight lip on the side. Brushing away a few inches of sand, they could see it was the lower edge of the fuselage side door. Both men attacked the soft sand, scooping away a large hole in front of the door. After several minutes of digging, they cleared away an opening around the door, with room to pull the door open. As Giordino scooped away a last pile, Pitt noticed a seam of bullet holes stitched across the fuselage near the door.

“Correction to the cause of crash,” he said, running a hand across the holes. “They were shot down.”

“I wonder why?” Giordino mused.

He started to reach for the door handle when Noyon suddenly let out a slight wail.

“The elders say there are dead men inside. The lamas tell us that we must not disturb them. That is why the nomads have not entered the aircraft.”

“We will respect the dead,” Pitt assured him. “I shall see that they are given a proper burial so that their spirits may rest.”

Giordino twisted the handle and gently tugged open the door. A jumbled mass of splintered wood, sand, and broken pieces of porcelain tumbled out of the dark interior, settling into a small pile. Pitt picked up a broken plate from the Yuan Dynasty, which was glazed with a sapphire blue peacock.

“Not your everyday dinnerware,” he said, recognizing it as an antiquity. “At least five hundred years old, I'd wager.” Though admittedly no expert, Pitt had acquired a working knowledge of pottery and porcelain from his many years of diving on shipwrecks. Often times, the only clues to identifying a shipwreck's age and derivation were the broken shards of pottery found amid its ballast pile.

“Then we have the world's oldest, as well as largest, jigsaw puzzle,” Giordino said, stepping back from the doorway to let Pitt peer in.

The interior of the plane was a mess. Mangled and splintered crates lay scattered over every square inch of the main cabin, their shattered porcelain contents strewn across the floor in a carpet of blue-and-white shards. Only a few crates wedged near the tail had survived the violent crash landing intact.

Pitt crawled into the fuselage and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark interior. The dim cabin and stale dusty air inside lent an eerie feeling to the Fokker's interior, which was augmented by the rows of wicker seats hanging empty from the ceiling of the inverted aircraft. Ducking his head slightly, Pitt turned and moved first toward the intact crates near the tail section. The broken bits of porcelain crunched under each footstep, compelling him to move tentatively through the debris.

He found five crates that were still intact, with
FRAGILE
and
AT-TENTION: BRITISH MUSEUM
stenciled along the sides. The lid on one crate had been jarred loose, and Pitt grabbed the loose section of wood and pried it open. Inside was a large porcelain bowl wrapped in a loose cloth. Over seven hundred years old, the bowl had a serrated edge and was glazed greenish blue over the white clay base. Pitt admired the floral artistry of the design, then placed the bowl back in the crate. As the debris on the floor seemed to confirm, the plane was carrying a packed cargo of antique ceramics and, thankfully, no passengers.

Pitt moved back up the inverted aisleway, where Giordino joined him at the side door.

“Any clue to the cargo?” he asked in a hushed tone.

“Just that it was headed to the British Museum. A few boxes survived in back. Appears to be all antique porcelain.”

Pitt moved forward, creeping past the first row of seats and toward the cockpit bulkhead. Much of the cargo had been thrown forward when the plane crashed, creating a mountain of debris in the front of the cabin. Pitt stepped over a large fractured pot and spotted a dusty leather jacket lying amid some debris on the floor. Stepping around broken shards, he hoisted a broken crate out of the way to take a closer look, then froze in his tracks. Under the dim light seeping in from the doorway, he could see that the jacket was still occupied by its original owner.

The mummified remains of Leigh Hunt lay where he'd expired, decades after he pulled himself out of the crash in agonizing pain from a broken back. His left arm tightly clutched the yellow wooden box while his bony white right hand was wrapped around a small notebook. A wrinkled grimace was etched into Hunt's face, his features well preserved by the dry desert air and a thin layer of silica.

“Poor devil. He must have survived the crash, only to die later,” Pitt surmised in a hushed tone.

“That box and notebook evidently meant something to him,” Giordino replied.

With an uneasy reverence, Pitt carefully removed the box and notebook from the skeletal grip, handing the wooden box to Giordino. Noticing a dirty worn fedora lying on the floor nearby, he gently placed it over the face of the corpse.

“I don't presume the pilots fared any better,” he said, looking forward. Carefully stepping over Hunt's body, he moved to the forward bulkhead and tried to peer through the cutout into the cockpit. The entire compartment was filled with sand, which had blasted through the pilots' windows when the plane crashed.

“It would take the better part of a day to excavate that,” Giordino said, looking over Pitt's shoulder.

“Maybe on our next visit,” Pitt replied. He had little doubt that the bones of the pilots would be found preserved beneath the heavy layer of sand.

The two men made their way back down the fuselage and climbed out the side door into the bright sunshine. Noyon was pacing back and forth nervously but stopped and smiled with relief when Pitt and Giordino exited the craft. Giordino held the yellow wooden box up for Noyon to see, then gingerly pried off the lid. Inside were the bronze tube and the tightly rolled cheetah skin, in the same pristine condition as when discovered by Hunt.

“Not exactly the crown jewels,” he said, eyeing the contents with minor disappointment. Holding the bronze tube up toward the sun, he saw that there was nothing inside.

“This ought to tell us something,” Pitt said, holding open the notebook. He flipped open the cover and read the title page aloud. “Excavations at Shang-tu. Commencing May 15, 1937. Field Diary of Dr. Leigh Hunt, Expedition Leader.”

“Read on,” Giordino said. “I'm dying to know if the cheetah skin was destined as a footstool in Dr. Hunt's library or as a pillow for his mistress's boudoir.”

“My friends, we must be on our way if we are to catch the bus to the monastery,” Noyon interrupted.

“The mystery will have to wait,” Pitt said. He slipped the diary into his shirt pocket, then walked over and closed the Fokker's side door.

“How about our friends inside?” Giordino asked.

“I'll call Dr. Sarghov when we make it back to Ulaanbaatar. He should know who to contact in the Mongolian government to ensure a proper excavation is carried out. We owe it to Dr. Hunt to see that a professional retrieval is made of the artifacts he gave his life for.”

“As well as see that he and the pilots are given a proper burial.”

Pitt scooped a pile of sand in front of the airplane door to keep it sealed while Giordino stuffed the wooden box into a leather saddlebag. Then they remounted the horses that Noyon had held, settling in to the uncomfortable wooden saddles.

“You sure there weren't any down pillows inside those rear crates?” Giordino asked with a wince.

Pitt just shook his head with a smile. As they trotted toward the village, he turned and gazed a last time at the dusty remains of the old plane and wondered what secrets Hunt's diary would reveal.

An hour's ride took them to the diminutive settlement of Senj. The village, such that it was, would be found on few maps, as it was nothing more than a few
gers
crowded around a small watering hole. The spring flowed year-round, offering permanent sustenance for the resident herders and their flocks who otherwise would be forced to migrate several times a year in chase of fertile grasslands. As was the usual case in the rural countryside, the camels and horses milling about the village greatly outnumbered the human residents.

Noyon led Pitt and Giordino to a
ger
flying an orange banner, where they tied the horses to a staked rope. Several small children were busy playing chase with one another nearby, stopping for a moment to ogle the strange men before resuming their game. Climbing off his horse, Giordino swayed like a drunken sailor, his legs and rear aching from the hard saddle.

“Next time, I think I'll try the camel and take my chances with the humps.”

Pitt was equally sore and glad to be standing on his feet.

“A season with the herd and you'll be riding like an
arat,
” Noyon said, referring to the local horsemen.

“A season in that saddle and I'd be ready for traction,” Giordino grumbled.

An elderly resident of the village spotted the men and hobbled over on a game leg, speaking rapidly to the boy.

“This is Otgonbayar,” said Noyon. “He invites you to visit his
ger
and enjoy a bowl of
airag
.”

The low whine of a truck echoed off the surrounding hills, then a small faded green bus crested a ridge and turned toward the village, trailing a cloud of dust. Noyon looked toward the approaching vehicle, then shook his head.

“I'm afraid our bus has arrived,” he said.

“Please tell Otgonbayar that we appreciate his invitation but will have to join him another time,” Pitt said. He walked over to the old man and shook his hand. The old man nodded and smiled in understanding, exposing a pair of toothless gums.

With a loud squeal of its brakes, the bus ground to a stop and the driver tapped the horn. The playing children ceased their rough-housing and marched single file to the bus, hopping inside after its accordion side door swung open.

“Come on,” Noyon said, leading Pitt and Giordino aboard.

The 1980s-era Russian-built bus, a KAvZ model 3976, was a forgotten relic of the Soviet Army. Like many vehicles that ended up in Mongolia, it had been passed along from the old guardian state long after its useful life had been reached. With faded paint, cracked windows, and bald tires, it showed nearly every one of the quarter-million miles that had been placed on her. Yet like an old boxer who refuses to quit, the beaten hulk was patched up and sent back onto the road for another round.

Climbing up the steps after Noyon, Pitt was surprised to find the bus driver was an older Anglo man. He smiled at Pitt through a white beard, his ice-blue eyes sparkling with mirth.

“Hi, boys,” he said to Pitt and Giordino. “Noyon tells me that you're from the States. Me, too. Grab a seat and we'll be on our way.”

The bus held twenty passengers and was nearly full after scooping up kids from three neighboring encampments. Pitt noticed the seat behind the driver was occupied by a black-and-tan dachshund, stretched out on its side in a deep sleep. The seat opposite the aisle was empty, so he plopped down there, Giordino sliding in beside him. The driver closed the door and quickly wheeled out of the village. Driving clear of the working herd, he mashed the accelerator down as he shifted through the gears. With a shrill whine from its engine, the old bus soon crept up to fifty miles per hour as it bounced over the hard desert surface.

“Bulangiin Monastery ain't exactly a destination resort,” the driver said, looking at Pitt and Giordino in the rectangular mirror mounted above his visor. “You boys on one of those horseback adventure tours of the Gobi?”

“You could say that,” Pitt replied, “though I hope we're done with the horseback portion of the tour. We are just looking to return to Ulaanbaatar at this point.”