Treasure Of Khan Part 27

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

"Unfortunately, no. She may have traveled to Siberia under an a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sist 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 trespa.s.sing," 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 Eroo. When the man returned to the scene with the local police, everything was gonebodies, trucks, survey gearit had all vanished. An emba.s.sy 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."

-18-

DRESSED IN DARK clothes, Pitt 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 cafe across from the hotel's rear entrance. The cafe 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 pa.s.sed 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. emba.s.sy, not the Russian emba.s.sy."

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 cafe," 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.