Treasure of Khan

-10-

Captain Steve Howard squinted through a scratched pair of binoculars and scanned the bright aqua blue waters of the Persian Gulf that glistened before him. The waterway was often a bustling hive of freighters, tankers, and warships jockeying for position, particularly around the narrow channel of the Strait of Hormuz. In the late afternoon off Qatar, however, he was glad to see that the shipping traffic had almost vanished. Ahead off his port bow, a large tanker approached, riding low in the water with a fresh load of crude oil in its belly. Off his stern, he noted a small black drill ship trailing a mile or two behind. Tanker traffic was all he was hoping to see and with a slight relief, he lowered the glasses down to the bow of his own ship.

He needed the binoculars to obtain a clear view of his own ship's prow, for the stodgy forepeak stood nearly eight hundred feet away. Looking forward, he noted rippling waves of heat shimmering off the white topside deck of the Marjan. The massive supertanker, known as a "Very Large Crude Carrier,"

was built to transport over two million barrels of oil. Larger than the Chrysler Building, and about as easy to maneuver, the big ship was en route to fill its cavernous holds with Saudi light crude oil pumped from the teeming oil fields of Ghawar.

Passing the Strait of Hormuz had flicked on an unconscious alarm in Howard. Though the American Navy had a visible presence in the gulf, they couldn't blanket every commercial ship that entered the busy waterway. With Iran sitting across the gulf and potential terrorists lurking in a half dozen countries along the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, there was reason to be concerned. Pacing the bridge and scanning the horizon, Howard knew he wouldn't relax until they had taken on their load of crude and reached the deep waters of the Arabian Sea.

Howard's eyes were drawn to a sudden movement on the deck and he adjusted the binoculars until they focused on a wiry man with shaggy blond hair who tore across the deck on a yellow moped. Ducking and weaving around the surface deck's assorted pipes and valves, the daredevil whizzed along at the moped's top speed. Howard tracked him as he rounded a bend and sprinted past a shirtless man stretched out on a lounge chair holding a stopwatch in one hand.

"I see the first mate is still trying to top the track record," Howard said with a grin.

The tanker's executive officer, hunched over a colored navigation chart of the gulf, nodded without looking up.

"I'm sure your record will remain safe for another day, sir," he replied.

Howard laughed to himself. The thirty-man crew of the supertanker was constantly creating ways to stave off boredom during the long transatlantic voyages or the slack periods when oil was being pumped on or off the ship. A rickety moped, used to traverse the enormous deck during inspections, was suddenly seized upon as a competitive instrument of battle. A makeshift oval course was laid out on the deck, complete with jumps and a hairpin turn. One by one, the crew took turns at the course like qualifying drivers for the Indy 500. To the crew's chagrin, the ship's amiable captain had ended up clocking the best time. None had any idea that Howard had raced motocross while growing up in South Carolina.

"Coming up on Dhahran, sir," said the exec, a soft-spoken African American from Houston named Jensen. "Ras Tanura is twenty-five miles ahead. Shall I disengage the auto pilot?"

"Yes, let's go to manual controls and reduce speed at the ten-mile mark. Notify the berthing master that we'll be ready to take tugs in approximately two hours."

Everything about sailing the supertanker had to be done with foresight, especially when it came to stopping the mammoth vessel. With its oil tanks empty and riding high on the water, the tanker was somewhat more nimble, but, to the men on the bridge, it was still like moving a mountain.

Along the western shoreline, the dusty brown desert gave way to the city of Dhahran, a company town, home to the oil conglomerate Saudi Aramco. Steering past the city and its neighboring port of Dammam, the tanker edged toward a thin peninsula that stretched into the gulf from the north. Sprawled across the peninsula was the huge oil facility of Ras Tanura.

Ras Tanura is the Grand Central Station of the Saudi oil industry. More than half of Saudi Arabia's total crude oil exports flow through the government-owned complex, which is linked by a maze of pipelines to the rich oil fields of the interior desert. At the tip of the peninsula, dozens of huge storage tanks stockpile the valuable black liquid next to liquid natural gas tanks and other refined petroleum products awaiting shipment to Asia and the West. Farther up the coast, the largest refinery in the world processes the raw crude oil into a slew of petroleum offshoots. But perhaps the most impressive feature of Ras Tanura is barely visible at all.

On the bridge of the Marjan, Howard ignored the tanks and pipelines ashore and focused on a half dozen supertankers lined up in pairs off the peninsula. The ships were moored to a fixed terminal called Sea Island, which stretched beamlike across the water for more than a mile. Like an oasis nourishing a heard of thirsty camels, the Sea Island terminal quenched the empty supertankers with a high-powered flow of crude oil pumped from the storage tanks ashore. Unseen beneath the waves, a network of thirty-inch supply pipes fed the black liquid two miles across the floor of the gulf to the deepwater filling station.

As the Marjan crept closer, Howard watched a trio of tugboats align a Greek tanker against the Sea Island before turning toward his own vessel. The Marjan's pilot took control of the supertanker and eased the vessel broadside to an empty berth at the end of the loading terminal, just opposite of the Greek tanker. As they waited for the tugs to push them in, Howard admired the sight of the other seven supertankers parked nearby. All over a thousand feet long, easily exceeding the length of the Titanic, they were truly marvels of ship construction. Though he had seen hundreds of tankers in his day and served on several supertankers before the Marjan, the sight of a VLCC still filled him with awe.

The dirty white sail of an Arab dhow caught his eye in the distance and he turned toward the peninsula to admire the local sailing vessel. The small boat skirted the coastline, sailing north past the black drill ship that had tailed the Marjan earlier and was now positioned near the shoreline.

"Tugs are in position portside, sir," interrupted the voice of the pilot.

Howard simply nodded, and soon the massive ship was pushed into its slot on the Sea Island terminal. A series of large transfer lines began pumping black crude into the ship's empty storage tanks, little by little settling the tanker lower in the water. Secured at the terminal, Howard allowed himself to relax slightly, knowing that his responsibilities were through for at least the next several hours.

***

It was nearly midnight when Howard awoke from a short nap and stretched his legs with a stroll about the forward deck of the tanker. The crude oil loading was nearly complete, and the Marjan would easily meet its three a.m. departure schedule, allowing the next empty supertanker in line to take its turn at the filling depot. The distant blast from a tug's horn told him that a tanker further down the quay had completed its fill-up and was preparing to be pulled away from Sea Island.

Gazing at the lights twinkling along the Saudi Arabian shoreline, Howard was jolted by a sudden banging of the "dolphins" against the tanker's hull. Large cushioned supports mounted along the Sea Island berths, the breasting dolphins supported the lateral force of the ships while being loaded at the terminal. The clanging blows from the dolphins weren't just coming from below, he realized, but echoed all along the terminal. Stepping to the side rail, he leaned his head over and looked down along the loading quay.

Sea Island at night, like the supertankers themselves, was lit up like a Christmas tree. Under the battery of overhead lights, Howard could see that it was the terminal itself that was pulsing back and forth against the sides of the tankers. It didn't make sense, he thought. The terminal was grounded into the seabed.

Any movement ought to come from the ships drifting against the berths. Yet peering down the distant length of the terminal, he could see it waver like a serpent, striking one side of tankers and then the other.

The banging of the bumpers grew louder and louder until they hammered against the ships like thunder.

Howard gripped the rail until his knuckles turned white, not comprehending what was happening. Staring in shock, he watched as one after another of the four twenty-four-inch loading arms broke free of the ship, spewing a river of crude oil in all directions. A nearby shout creased the air as Howard spotted a platform engineer clinging for life aboard the swaying terminal.

As far as the eye could see, the steel terminal rocked and swayed like a giant snake, battering itself against the huge ships. Alarm bells rang out as the oil transfer lines were torn away from the other tankers by the rippling force, bathing the sides of the ships in a flowing sea of black. Farther down the quay, a chorus of unseen voices cried for help. Howard peered down to see a pair of men in yellow hard hats sprinting down the terminal, shouting as they ran. Behind them, the lights of the terminal began disappearing in a slow succession. Howard stood unblinking for a second before realizing with horror that the entire Sea Island terminal was sinking beneath their feet.

The clanging of the terminal against the Marjan intensified, the mooring dolphins physically mashing the side of the tanker. For the first time, Howard noticed a deep rumble that seemed to emanate from far beneath his feet. The rumble grew in intensity, roaring for several seconds before silencing just as quickly.

In its place came the desperate cries of men, running along the terminal.

A tumbling house of cards came to Howard's mind as the footings of the terminal gave way in succession and the mile-long island vanished under the waves in an orderly progression. When he heard the cries of the men in the water, his horror was replaced by a newfound fear for the safety of his ship. Tearing off across the deck, he pulled a handheld radio from his belt and shouted orders to the bridge as he ran.

"Cut the mooring lines! For God's sake, cut the mooring lines," he gasped. A rush of adrenaline surged through his body, the fear pushing him to race across the deck at breakneck speed. He was still a hundred meters from the bridge house when his legs began to throb, but his pace never slowed, even as he hurtled past a river of slippery crude oil that had splashed across the deck.

"Tell ... the chief ... engineer ... we need ... full power ... immediately," he rasped over the radio, his lungs burning for oxygen.

Reaching the tanker's stern superstructure, he headed for the nearest stairwell, bypassing an elevator located a few corridors away. Clambering up the eight levels to the bridge, he was heartened to feel the throb of the ship's engines suddenly vibrate beneath his feet. As he staggered onto the bridge and rushed to the forward window, his worst fears were realized.

In front of the Marjan, eight other supertankers lay in paired tandems, divided minutes before by the Sea Island terminal. But now the terminal was gone, plunging toward the Gulf floor ninety feet beneath the surface. The supertankers' mooring lines were still attached, and the force of the sinking terminal was drawing the paired tankers toward one another. In the midnight darkness, Howard could see the lights on the two tankers in front of him meld together, followed by the screeching cry of metal on metal as the sides of the ships scraped together.

"Emergency full astern," Howard barked at his executive officer. "What's the status of the mooring lines?"

"The stern lines are clear," replied Jensen, looking gaunt. "I'm still awaiting word on the bowlines, but it appears that at least two lines are still secure," he added, gazing through binoculars at a pair of taut ropes that stretched from the starboard bow.

"The Ascona is drawing onto us," the helmsman said, jerking his head to the right.

Howard followed the motion, eyeing the Greek-flagged ship berthed alongside, a black-and-red supertanker that matched the Marjan's length of three hundred thirty-three meters. Originally moored sixty feet apart, the two ships were slowly moving laterally together as if drawn by a magnet.

The men on the Marjan's bridge stood and stared helplessly, Howard's labored breathing matched by the quickened heartbeats of the others. Beneath their feet, the huge propellers finally began clawing the water in a desperate fury as the tanker's engines were rapidly brought up to high revs by the frantic engineer.

The initial movement astern was imperceptible, then, slowly, the huge ship began to creep backward at a sluggish clip. The momentum slowed for a second as the bow mooring line drew taut, then suddenly the line broke free and the ship resumed its rearward crawl. Along her starboard side, the Ascona drew closer. The Korean-built tanker had nearly a full load of crude and rode a dozen feet lower in the water than the Marjan. From Howard's perspective, it looked as if he could step right off the side of his ship and onto the deck of the neighboring tanker.

"Starboard twenty," he ordered the helmsman, trying to angle the bow away from the drifting tanker.

Howard had managed to back the Marjan three hundred feet away from the sunken terminal, but it was not enough to escape the adjacent ship.

The impact was gentler than Howard had expected, not even felt in the wheelhouse. Just an extended low-pitched screech of metal signaled the collision. The Marjan's bow was almost amidships of the Ascona when the two ships met, but the rearward motion of Howard's ship had deflected much of the force at impact. For half a minute, the Marjan's bow scraped along the other tanker's port rail, and then suddenly the two ships were clear.

Howard immediately cut his engines and lowered a pair of lifeboats over the side to search for any dockworkers in the water. Then he gingerly backed his ship another thousand feet away from the melee and watched the carnage.

All ten of the supertankers were damaged. Two of the big ships had locked decks and were so intertwined that it took two days before an army of welders could cut them free. Three of the ships had their double-hulled plates bashed though, leaking thousands of gallons of crude oil freely into the gulf as the ships listed to one side. But the Marjan had escaped with minimal damage, none of her tanks compromised in the collision thanks to Howard's fast action. His relief at saving his ship was short-lived, however, when a series of muffled explosions echoed across the gulf waters.

"Sir, it's the refinery," the helmsman noted, pointing toward the western shoreline. An orange glow appeared on the horizon, which grew like the rising sun as a series of additional explosions rocked across the water. Howard and his crew watched the spectacle for hours as the pyre marched along the shoreline. It wasn't long before thick plumes of black smoke mixed with the odor of burned petroleum wafted over the ship.

"How could they do it?" the executive officer blurted. "How could terrorists have gotten in there with explosives? It's one of the most secure facilities in the world."

Howard shook his head in silence. Jensen was right. A private army guarded the whole complex in a tight web of security. It must have been a masterful infiltration to take out the Sea Island terminal as well, he thought, though there were no apparent offshore explosions. Thankfully, his ship and crew were safe, and he intended to keep it that way. Once the search for survivors in the water was completed, Howard moved the tanker several miles out into the gulf, where he circled the big ship slowly until dawn.

By daylight, the full extent of the damage became apparent as emergency response teams from around the region converged on the scene. The Ras Tanura refinery, one of the largest in the world, was a smoldering ruin, nearly completely destroyed by the raging fires. The Sea Island offshore terminal, capable of feeding eighteen supertankers at a time with raw crude oil, had completely vanished beneath the gulf. The nearby tank farm, providing storage for nearly thirty million barrels of petroleum products, was mired in a waist-deep sea of black ooze from dozens of cracked and fractured tanks. Farther into the desert, countless oil supply pipelines were broken in two like twigs, soaking the surrounding sands black with thick pools of crude oil.

Overnight, nearly a third of Saudi Arabia's oil exporting capability was destroyed. Yet a raft of terrorist suicide bombers was not to blame. Around the world, seismologists had already fingered the cause of the destruction. A massive earthquake, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, had rattled the east coast of Saudi Arabia. Analysts and pundits alike would lament the happenstance of Mother Nature when the quake's epicenter was computed to be just two miles from Ras Tanura. The shock waves caused by striking at such a critical locale would ultimately ripple far beyond the Persian Gulf, shaking the globe for many months to come.

-11-

Hang Zhou drew a last puff from his cheap unfiltered cigarette, then flicked the butt over the rail. He watched in lazy curiosity as the glowing ember flittered to the dirty water below, half expecting the murky surface to ignite in a wall of flames. Heaven knows, there's enough spilled petroleum in the black water to power a small city, he thought as the cigarette fizzled to a harmless demise alongside a belly-up mackerel.

As the dead fish could attest, the dank waters around the Chinese port of Ningbo were anything but hospitable. A flurry of construction activity along the commercial waterfront had helped stir up the polluted waters, already contaminated by the steady stream of leaky containerships, tankers, and tramp freighters that frequented the port. Located in the Yangtze River Delta, not far from Shanghai, Ningbo was rapidly growing into one of China's largest seaports, in part due to its deepwater channel that allowed dockage for giant three-hundred-thousand-ton supertankers.

"Zhou!" barked a Doberman-like voice, whose owner more resembled an overweight bulldog. Zhou turned to see his supervisor, the operations director for Ningbo Container Terminal No. 3, high-stepping down the dock toward him. An unlikable tyrant by the name of Qinglin, he wore a permanent scowl painted on his pudgy face.

"Zhou," he repeated, approaching the longshoreman. "We've had a change in schedule. The Akagisan Maru, bound from Singapore, has been delayed due to engine problems. So we're going to allow the Jasmine Star to take her berth at dock 3-A. She's due in at seven-thirty. Make sure your crew is standing by to receive her."

"I'll pass the word," Zhou said and nodded.

The containership terminal where they worked operated around the clock. In the nearby waters of the East China Sea, a steady stream of transport ships milled about, waiting their turn at the docks. China's abundant labor pool ground out an endless supply of cheap electronics, children's toys, and clothing that were immediately gobbled up by the consumer markets of the industrialized nations. But it was the lumbering containership, the unsung workhorse of commercial trade, which empowered global commerce and allowed the Chinese economy to skyrocket.

"See to it. And keep after the loading crew. I'm getting complaints again about slow turnarounds,"

Qinglin grumbled. He lowered his clipboard and slid a yellow pencil over his right ear, then turned and walked away. But he stopped after two steps and slowly wheeled back around, his eyes widening as he stared at Zhou. Or at least Zhou thought he was staring at him.

"She's on fire," Qinglin muttered.

Zhou realized his supervisor was looking past him and turned to see what he meant.

In the harbor surrounding the terminal, a dozen ships milled about the area, an assorted mix of huge containerships and jumbo supertankers overshadowing a handful of small cargo ships. It was one of the cargo ships that distinguished itself, trailing a heavy plume of black smoke.

Through Zhou's eyes, the ship looked to be a derelict, well overdue for an appointment with the scrapyard. She was at least forty years old, he guessed, with a tired blue hull that in most places had turned scaly brown from the onslaught of rust. Black smoke, growing thicker by the second, billowed from the forward hold like an inverse waterfall, obscuring most of the ship's superstructure. Yellow flames danced out of the hold in random leaps, occasionally bursting twenty feet into the air. Zhou turned his gaze toward the ship's prow, which cut a frothy white wake through the water.

"She's running fast ... and heading toward the commercial terminals," he gasped.

"The fools!" Qinglin cursed. "There's no place to run ashore in this direction." Dropping his clipboard, he took off sprinting down the terminal toward the dock office in hopes of radioing the impaired ship.

Other ships and shore facilities had already witnessed the fire and were filling the airwaves with offers of assistance. But all of the radio calls to the smoking vessel went unanswered.

Zhou stayed perched at the end of the container dock, watching as the burning ship steamed closer to shore. The derelict narrowly skirted between a moored barge and a loaded containership in a deft move that Zhou considered miraculous, given the blanket of smoke engulfing the ship's bridge. For a moment the ship appeared headed for the container terminal adjacent to Zhou's, but then the ship made a sweeping turn to port. As the vessel's path seemed to straighten out, Zhou could see that the ship was now headed toward Ningbo's main crude oil loading facility on Cezi Island.

Oddly, he noted that there were no men on deck fighting the flames. Zhou scanned the length of the ship and even got a glimpse of the bridge through the smoke as the ship turned away from him, but he couldn't catch sight of any crew members aboard. A shiver went down his spine as he silently wondered if it was an unmanned ghost ship.

A pair of deepwater tankers straddled Ningbo's main crude offloading terminal, which had recently been expanded to accommodate four supertankers. The burning derelict took a bead on the leeward tanker, a black-and-white behemoth owned by the Saudi Arabian government. Alerted by the frantic radio traffic, the tanker's executive officer let loose a blast from the ship's deafening air horn. But the burning freighter held steady. The disbelieving exec stood peering at the flaming vessel from his outside bridge wing, powerless to do anything more.

Alerted by the warning blast, the tanker's crewmen scrambled like ants to flee the floating incendiary tank, converging onto the lone gangplank. The exec stood and watched unblinking, now joined by the harried captain, who stared waiting for the rusty ship to slice into them.

But the impact never came. At the last second, the flaming ship wheeled again, its bow swinging sharply to port and just missing the flanks of the supertanker by a few feet. The freighter seemed to straighten, running parallel with the tanker and taking a bead on the adjacent docking terminal. A semifloating ramp built on sectional pylons that ran six hundred feet into the harbor, the terminal carried the pipelines and pumps used to offload the tanker's supply of crude oil.

The rusty derelict now ran as straight as an arrow, the flames from its hold engulfing the entire forward deck. No attempt had been made to slow the vessel, and she, in fact, appeared to have actually gained speed. Striking the end of the terminal, the rusty ship's bow tore through the wooden platform like it was a box of matches, sending splintered pieces of the dock flying in all directions. Pylon after pylon disintegrated under the onslaught, barely slowing the vessel as it plowed forward. A hundred yards ahead, several crewmen who had been fleeing the big tanker froze on the gangplank, unsure of which direction to find safety. The answer was presented a few seconds later when the ship drove through the base of the plank. Hidden by smoke and flames, a jumble of steel, wood, and humanity that was the gangplank surged underwater and was quickly lost beneath the churning propellers of the ship.

The ship continued to drive forward, but, at last, began to stagger as a tangled mass of debris piled up before the bow. Yet the old ship had legs and plowed ahead in the last gasp of its life, fighting to reach shore. Mashing through the final pylon, the spent ship made a final surge onto the shorefront offloading and storage facility. A thunderous crash, accompanied by waves of black smoke, echoed across the island as the mystery ship finally ground to a halt. Those who witnessed the carnage let out a sigh of relief that the worst was apparently over. But then a muffled blast erupted deep in the bowels of the ship, which blew the bow off in a wall of orange fire. In seconds, flames were everywhere, devouring the spilled crude oil that flooded around the ship. The fire raced across the layer of floating oil that reached into the harbor and climbed up to engulf the moored tanker. The entire island was quickly clouded in thick black smoke, which hid the inferno below.

Across the bay, Zhou stood in astonishment as he watched the flames spread across the terminal complex. Staring at the decrepit freighter as it wallowed and rolled onto its side after the fire inside melted its innards, he grasped to comprehend what kind of suicidal maniac would destroy himself in such a rage.

***

A mile away from Zhou's dock, a faded white runabout motored slowly off Cezi Island. Concealed beneath a low-slung canvas tarp, a coffee-skinned man lay on the bow, surveying the burning holocaust ashore through the lens of a small telescope affixed to a laser sight. Appraising the damage with an upturned grin of satisfaction, he disassembled the laser device and accompanying wireless transmitter that minutes before had relayed course directions to the rusty derelict's automatic navigation system. As smoke drifted over the water, the man hoisted a stainless steel suitcase over the gunnel and gently let it slip from his fingers. A few seconds later, the suitcase and its high-tech components found a permanent home under three inches of soft mud in the murky depths of Ningbo Harbor.

The man turned to the boat's pilot, exposing a long scar that ran across the left side of his face.

"To the city marina," he directed in a low voice. "I have a plane to catch."

***

The fires raged for a day and a half before the port fire control authorities extinguished the blaze. A fast acting trio of tugboats saved the oil tanker from destruction, converging on the big ship through flaming waters and shoving the mammoth vessel into the bay, where the shipboard fires were quickly controlled.

The onshore facilities were less fortunate. The Cezi Island terminal was completely destroyed, taking the lives of ten oil workers. An additional half-dozen crewmen from the supertanker were still missing and presumed dead.

When investigators were finally able to board the mystery derelict, they were stumped to find no bodies aboard. The eyewitness accounts were beginning to sound correct. It was a deserted ship that had seemingly sailed itself. Unknown in the local waters, the ship was traced by insurance agents back to a Malaysian ship broker who had sold it at auction to a scrap dealer. The scrap dealer had vanished, and his business turned out to be a shell company with a phony address and no traceable links.

Investigators speculated a disgruntled former crew was to blame, angered with the ship's captain and setting the vessel ablaze in revenge. The "Mystery Fire Ship of Ningbo," as it came to be known locally, had sailed to a fiery demise at the Cezi Island terminal by sheer luck. Hang Zhou suspected otherwise, however, and forever believed that somebody had guided the ship of death to shore.

-12-

"Jan, we're on in ten minutes in the Gold Conference Room. Can I get you a coffee before we start?"

Jan Montague Clayton stared at the coworker standing in her doorway like he'd just landed from Mars.

"Harvey, my urine has turned the color of cappuccino, and there's enough caffeine in my bloodstream to fuel the space shuttle. But thanks anyway. I'll be along in a moment."

"I'll make sure the projection system is set up," Harvey replied sheepishly, then disappeared down the corridor.

Clayton couldn't count the number of coffees she had consumed in the last two days, but knew it had been her primary sustenance. Since the news of the earthquake at Ras Tanura had broken the day before, she had been glued to her desk, developing economic impact assessments while quietly gathering oil company reactions from the slate of industry insiders that filled her Rolodex. Only a brief foray to her stylish apartment in the East Village at two in the morning for a catnap and change of clothes had offered a respite from the state of chaos that surrounded her.

As a senior commodities research analyst for the investment banking firm of Goldman Sachs, Clayton was used to working twelve-hour days. But as a specialist in oil and natural gas futures, she was unprepared for the fallout from Ras Tanura. Every sales associate and fund manager in the firm seemed to be calling her, crying for advice on how to handle their clients' accounts. She finally had to unplug her phone in order to concentrate, while steering well clear of her e-mail account. Taking a last look at some oil export figures, she stood and patted down her beige Kay Unger suit, then picked up a laptop computer and headed for the door. Against her better judgment, she stopped suddenly and wheeled back toward the desk, where she scooped up a ceramic cup half full of coffee.

The conference room was a packed house, the mostly male crowd waiting anxiously for her report. As Harvey opened the meeting with a brief economic overview, Clayton studied the audience. The sprinkling of partners and senior managers was easy to spot, their premature-gray hair and paunch bellies signaling the lifetime of hours spent inside the building's walls. At the other spectrum were the younger sales associates, cutthroat and aggressive in their desire to climb the firm's ladder to the holy land of seniority, where seven-figure year-end bonuses were regularly pocketed. Half of the overpaid and overworked investment professionals didn't care whether Clayton's predictions would be accurate or not so long as they had someone to blame for their trades. Yet those who paid attention quickly learned that Clayton knew her stuff. In the short time she had been with the firm, she had already acquired the reputation as a savvy analyst with an uncanny ability to predict trends in the market.

"And Jan will now discuss the current state of the oil markets," Harvey concluded, passing the stage to Clayton. Plugging her laptop into the projection system, she waited a moment for her PowerPoint presentation to appear on the screen. Harvey walked to the side of the conference room and closed the blinds of a large picture window that offered an impressive view of lower Manhattan from the Broad Street high-rise.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ras Tanura," she began, speaking in a soft but confident voice. A map of Saudi Arabia jumped to the screen, followed by photos of an oil refinery and storage tanks.

"Ras Tanura is Saudi Arabia's largest oil and liquid natural gas export terminal. Or was, rather, until yesterday's massive earthquake. Damage assessments are still under way, but it appears that nearly sixty percent of the refinery was destroyed by fire and that at least half of the storage facilities suffered major structural damage."

"How does that impact oil exports?" interrupted a jug-eared man named Eli, munching on a doughnut as he spoke.

"Hardly at all," Clayton replied, pausing to let Eli take the bait.

"Then why the big oil shock?" he asked, crumbs spraying off his lips.

"Most of the refinery's output is utilized by the Saudis themselves. What will impact oil exports is the damage incurred to the pipelines and shipping terminals." Another image appeared on the screen, showing a dozen supertankers docked at the Sea Island loading terminal.

"Those floating terminals should have been safe from the earthquake at sea," someone commented from the rear of the room.

"Not when the epicenter of the earthquake was less than two miles away," Clayton countered. "And those aren't floating terminals, they are fixed in the seabed. Shifting sediments from the earthquake caused a complete collapse of this offshore terminal, which is known as Sea Island. The Sea Island terminal handles the largest of the supertankers and that capacity has been completely wiped out. Several additional shore-based loading piers were destroyed as well. It appears that over ninety percent of Ras Tanura's export infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed. That is why there has been a 'big oil shock,' " she said, staring at Eli.

A hushed gloom fell over the room. Finally finishing his doughnut, Eli broke the silence.

"Jan, what kind of volume does that translate to?"

"Nearly six million barrels a day of Saudi export oil will immediately be removed from the supply chain."

"Isn't that nearly ten percent of the daily world demand?" a senior associate asked.

"It's closer to seven percent, but you get the picture."

Clayton brought up the next slide, which showed the recent spike in price of a barrel of West Texas intermediate crude oil, as traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

"As you know, the markets have reacted with their usual rabid hysteria, blasting the spot price of crude to over one hundred twenty-five dollars a barrel in the last twenty-four hours. Those of you in equities have already seen the resulting collapse on the Dow," she added, to a chorus of groans and nodding heads.

"But where do we go from here?" Eli asked.

"That's the sixty-four-dollar question, or one-hundred-twenty-five-dollar, rather, in our case. We're dealing in fear at the moment, driven by uncertainty. And fear has a habit of producing irrational behavior that isn't easy to predict." Clayton stopped and took a sip from her coffee. She had her audience hanging on every word. Though her attractive looks always drew attention, it was her knowledge that had the crowd enraptured now. She savored the taste of power for a moment, then continued.

"Make no mistake. The destruction at Ras Tanura is going to leave a devastating mark around the world.

On the home front, there's going to be an immediate whack to the domestic economy that will rival the post 9/11 downturn. When that one-hundred-twenty-five-dollar barrel of oil trickles down to seven dollars for a gallon of gas next week, Joe Consumer is going to park his Hummer and start riding the bus.

Higher prices for everything from diapers to airline tickets will ripple through the economy. No one is prepared for that degree of run-up in price, which will throw a roadblock to consumer purchasing in short order."

"Is there anything the president can do to help?" Eli asked.

"Not much, though there are two things that might soften the blow. Our country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now sitting at full capacity. If the president so elects, he could draw down on the reserves to replace some of the shortages from Saudi Arabia. In addition, the drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge approved by the prior administration has now come on line, so the Alaska Pipeline is now running at full capacity again. That will provide a slight boost to domestic production numbers. Neither item will be sufficient to prevent fuel shortages in some regions of the country, however."

"What can we expect in the long term?" he inquired.

"While we can't forecast the impact that fear will have on the markets, we can predict the dynamics of supply and demand that will ultimately prevail. The spike in price should soften current levels of demand over the next few months, easing the pressure on oil prices. In addition, the other ten OPEC countries will clamor to make up Saudi Arabia's lost exports, though it is unclear whether they have the infrastructure to cover the shortfall."

"But wouldn't OPEC want to keep the price of oil over one hundred dollars?" Eli pestered.

"Sure, if demand stayed constant. But we're going to face a sharp economic contraction as it is. If the price was maintained at one hundred twenty-five dollars arbitrarily, you would see a global economic collapse rivaling the Great Depression."

"You don't think that's in the cards?"

"It's possible. But OPEC doesn't want to see a worldwide economic collapse any more than the industrialized nations do, as that will reduce their revenues. The main concern today is still one of supply.

We witness another supply disruption, then all bets are off."

"So what's the investment play?" Eli asked pointedly.

"Initial estimates from Ras Tanura suggest that the shipping terminals can be repaired or replaced within six to nine months. My trading recommendation would be to short oil positions at the current price, with the expectation that pricing will retreat to more moderate levels within nine to twelve months."

"You're sure of that?" asked Eli with a hint of skepticism.

"Absolutely not," Clayton fired back. "Venezuela could be hit by a meteorite tomorrow. Nigeria could be taken over by a fascist dictator next week. There are a thousand and one political or environmental forces that could disrupt the oil markets in a heartbeat. And that's the unnerving point. Any bit of further bad news may drive us past a recession and into a depression that will take years to recover from. But it seems a bit tenuous to me to assume that another natural disaster will strike soon with the impact of Ras Tanura. Are there any more questions?" Clayton asked, reaching her final slide.

Harvey opened the window shades, letting in a blast of sunlight that made everyone in the room squint for a moment.

"Jan, my desk trades in global equities," stated a short blond woman in a garnet-colored blouse. "Can you tell me which countries are most vulnerable to the reduced Saudi oil exports?"

"Sandra, I can only tell you where the Saudi oil exports are currently going. The U.S., as you know, has been a prime customer of Saudi oil since the 1930s. Washington has long pursued a goal of reducing our reliance on Middle East crude, but Saudi oil still accounts for nearly fifteen percent of our total imported oil."

"How about the European Union?"

"Western Europe obtains most of their oil from the North Sea, but Saudi imports do play a factor. Their proximity to other suppliers should mitigate severe shortages, I believe. No, the hardest-hit countries will be in Asia."

Clayton drained the last of her coffee while she pulled up a file on her computer. She curiously noted that the occupants of the entire room remained seated and listening to her every word.

"Japan will feel a major jolt," she said, scanning the report. "The Japanese import one hundred percent of their oil requirements and were already stung by the recent earthquake in Siberia that took out a section of the Taishet-Nakhodka pipeline. Though not widely publicized, that accident had already pushed the price of oil up three to four dollars a barrel," she noted. "I can tell you that Japan imports twenty-two percent of its oil from Saudi Arabia, so they will feel a significant contraction. However, a temporary boost in Russian oil exports could take away something of the strain once the Siberian pipeline is repaired."

"And China?" an anonymous voice asked. "What about that fire near Shanghai?"

Scanning down the page, Clayton furrowed her brow.

"The Chinese will be facing a similar shock. Nearly twenty percent of China's oil imports come from Saudi Arabia," she said, "all of which arrives by tanker ship. I haven't assessed the impact of the fire at the Ningpo oil terminal, but I can only speculate that combined with the Ras Tanura disaster, the Chinese will be facing a major hurdle in the near term."

"Are alternative sources available to the Chinese?" a voice in the back asked.

"Not readily. Russia would be the obvious source, but they are more inclined to sell their oil to the West and Japan. Kazakhstan might provide some relief, but their pipeline to China is already at capacity. I think there could be a dramatic impact to the Chinese economy, which is already suffering a shortage of energy resources." Clayton made a mental note to review the Chinese situation in more depth when she returned to her office.

"You mentioned domestic fuel shortages earlier," a pasty-faced man in a purple tie asked. "How severe will that be?"

"I would expect only temporary shortages in limited areas, assuming no other market impacts. Again, the main problem we are facing is fear. Fear of another supply disruption, either real or imagined, is the real culprit that could drive us to a complete meltdown."

The meeting wound down as the crowd of financiers glumly scurried back to their gray work cubicles.

Clayton gathered her laptop and headed for the door as a figure drew up alongside her. Turning her head, she gazed with apprehension at the slovenly figure of Eli, a doughnut crumb on his tie.

"Great meeting, Jan." Eli grinned. "Can I buy you a cup of coffee?"

Gritting her teeth, all she could do was smile and nod.

-13-

It was a stifling day in Beijing. A suffocating conflux of heat, smog, and humidity doused the congested city in a thick soup of misery. Tempers flared on the streets as cars and bicycles jostled for position in the jammed boulevards. Mothers grabbed their children and flocked to the city's numerous lakes in an attempt to seek a reprieve from the heat. Teenage street vendors hawking chilled Coca-Colas made stellar profits quenching the thirst of sweaty tourists and businessmen.

The temperature was little cooler in the large meeting room of the Chinese Communist Party headquarters, situated in a secure compound just west of Beijing's historic Forbidden City. Buried in the basement of an ancient edifice inaptly named the Palace Steeped in Compassion, the windowless conference room was an odd conglomeration of fine carpets and antique tapestries mixed with cheap 1960s office furniture. A half dozen humorless men, comprising the elite Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, the most influential body in China's government, sat at a scarred round table with the general secretary and president of China, Qian Fei.

The stuffy room felt much hotter to the minister of commerce, a balding man with beady eyes named Shinzhe, who stood before the party chiefs with a young female assistant at his side.

"Shinzhe, the State just approved the five-year plan for economic progress last November," President Fei lectured in a belittling tone. "You mean to tell me that a few 'accidents' have rendered our national objectives unfeasible?"

Shinzhe cleared his throat while wiping a damp palm on his pant leg.

"Mr. General Secretary, politburo members," he replied, nodding to the other assembled bureaucrats.

"The energy needs of China have changed tremendously in the last few years. Our rapid and dynamic economic growth has driven a high thirst for energy resources. Just a few short years ago, our country was a net exporter of crude oil. Today, more than half of our consumption is supplied by crude oil imports. It is a regrettable fact due to the size of our economy. Whether we like it or not, we are captive to the economic and political forces surrounding the foreign petroleum market, just as the Americans have been for the last four decades."

"Yes, we are well aware of our growing energy appetite," stated Fei. The recently elected party head was a youthful fifty-year-old who catered to the traditionalists in the bureaucratic system with equal parts charm and wile. He had a reputation for being hot-tempered, Shinzhe knew, but respected the truth.

"How severe is the shock?" another party member asked.

"It is like having two of our limbs cut off. The earthquake in Saudi Arabia will drastically restrict their ability to ship us oil for months to come, though we can develop alternate suppliers over time. The fire at Ningbo Harbor is perhaps more damaging. Nearly a third of our imported oil flows through the port facility there. The infrastructure necessary to receive oil imports by ship is not something that can be quickly replaced. I am afraid to report that we are facing immediate and drastic shortages that cannot be easily remedied."

"I have been told the damage repairs may take as long as a year before the current level of imports can be restored," a white-haired politburo member said.

"I cannot dispute the estimate," Shinzhe said, bowing his head.

Overhead, the room's fluorescent lights suddenly flashed off, while the noisy and mostly ineffective air-conditioning system fell silent. A stillness settled over the darkened room before the lights flickered back on and the cooling system slowly clanged back to life. Along with it came the temper of the president.

"These blackouts must stop!" he cursed. "Half of Shanghai was without power for five days. Our factories are operating limited hours to conserve electricity, while the workers have no power to cook their dinner at night. And now you tell us that we will be short of fuel oil from abroad and our five-year plan is rubbish? I demand to know what is being done to solve these problems," he hissed.

Shinzhe visibly shrunk before the tirade. Glancing around the table, he saw that none of the other committee members were brave enough to reply, so he took a deep breath and began speaking in a quiet tone.

"As you know, additional generators will go on line shortly at the Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric development, while a half dozen new coal-and gas-fired power plants are in various stages of construction. But obtaining sufficient natural gas and fuel oil supplies to operate the non-hydro power plants has been a problem, and is more so now. Our state-sponsored oil companies have stepped up exploration in the South China Sea, despite protests from the Vietnamese government. Furthermore, we continue to broaden supply relationships abroad. The foreign ministry has recently completed successful negotiations to purchase significant quantities of fuel oil from Iran, I might remind the committee. And we are continuing efforts to acquire Western oil companies that own rich stocks of reserves."

"Minister Shinzhe is correct." The gray-haired foreign minister, who sat quietly to the side, coughed.

"These activities address long-term sources of energy, however, and will do nothing to solve the immediate problem."

"Again, I ask, what is being done to address the shortfall?" Fei nearly shrieked, his voice rising an octave.

"In addition to Iran, we have spoken with several Middle Eastern countries about boosting their exports.

We must of course compete with the Western countries on price," Shinzhe said softly. "But the Ningbo Harbor damage physically limits the amount of oil we are able to bring in by sea."

"What about the Russians?"

"They are in love with the Japanese," the foreign minister spat. "Our attempt to jointly develop a pipeline from the western Siberian oil fields was rejected by the Russians in favor of a line to the Pacific that will supply Japan. We can only boost rail shipments of oil from Russia in the short term, which, of course, is not a feasible means to transport any sizeable quantities."

"So there is no real solution," Fei grumbled, his anger still simmering. "Our economic growth will terminate, our gains against the West will cease, and we can all just return to our cooperative farms in the provinces, where we will enjoy continuing blackouts."

The room fell silent again as no one dared even breathe in the face of the general secretary's ire. Only the tinny rattle of the air-conditioning rumbling in the background stirred the heavy morose in the air. Then Shinzhe's assistant, a petite woman named Yee, cleared her throat.

"Excuse me, General Secretary, Minister Shinzhe," she said, nodding to the two men. "The State has just today received a peculiar offer of energy assistance through our ministry. I am sorry I didn't have the opportunity to brief you, Minister," she said to Shinzhe. "I didn't recognize the importance at the time."

"What is the proposal?" Fei asked.

"It is an offer from an entity in Mongolia to supply high-quality crude oil..."

"Mongolia?" Fei interrupted. "There's no oil in Mongolia."

"The offer is to supply one million barrels a day," Yee continued. "Delivery commencing within ninety days."

"That's preposterous," Shinzhe exclaimed, glaring at Yee with irritation for publicly sharing the communiqué.

"Perhaps," Fei replied, a look of intrigue suddenly warming his face. "It is worth investigating. What else does the proposal say?"

"Just the terms they demand in return," Yee replied, suddenly looking nervous. Pausing in hopes the discussion would end there, she sheepishly continued when she saw all eyes were fixed on her. "The price of the oil shall be set at the current market price and locked for a period of three years. In addition, exclusive use of the northeast oil pipeline terminating at the port of Qinhuangdao shall be granted, and, further, the Chinese-controlled lands denoted Inner Mongolia shall be formally ceded back to the ruling government of Mongolia."

The staid audience erupted in an uproar. Cries of outrage rocked through the room at the shocking demand. After minutes of boisterous dissent, Fei pounded an ashtray on the table to regain silence.

"Silence!" the president shouted, immediately quieting the crowd. A pained look crossed his face, then he spoke calmly and quietly. "Find out if the offer is real, if the oil does, in fact, exist. Then we shall worry about negotiating an appropriate price."

"As you wish, General Secretary," Shinzhe bowed.

"Tell me first, though. Who is it that is making this contemptuous demand?"

Shinzhe looked helplessly at Yee. "It is a small entity that is unknown to our ministry," she answered, addressing the president. "They are called the Avarga Oil Consortium."

-14-

They were hopelessly lost. Two weeks after departing Ulan-Ude with instructions to explore the upper Selenga River valley, the five-man seismic exploration team had lost its way. None of the men from the Russian oil company LUKOIL were from the region, which added to their misfortune.

The trouble began when someone spilled a hot coffee on the GPS unit, drowning it in a quick death. It was not enough to halt their progression south, even when they stumbled across the Mongolian border and off the edge of the Siberian maps they carried for insurance. What kept them going was a series of subsurface folds detected from the pounding of the "thumper" truck that indicated possible structural traps. Structural traps in the sediment are natural collection basins where pockets of oil and gas can accumulate. The survey team had meandered southeast while tracking the deep traps that meant possible oil and completely lost track of the river.

"All we have to do is head north and follow our tracks where they're visible," said a short, balding man named Dimitri. The team leader stood peering west, watching the long shadows cast by the trees as sunset approached.

"I knew we should have left a trail of bread crumbs," grinned a young assistant engineer named Vlad.

"I don't think we have enough fuel to reach Kyakhta," replied the thumper's driver. Like the vehicle itself, he was a big, burly man with thick limbs. He climbed into the open driver's door and stretched out on the bench seat for a catnap with his meaty hands tucked behind his head. The big thirty-ton rig carried a steel slab under its belly, which pounded the ground, sending seismic shocks deep into the earth. Small transceivers were placed various distances from the truck, which received the signals as they bounced off the subsurface sediment layers. Computerized processing converted the signals into visual maps and images of the ground below.

A dirty red four-wheel-drive truck pulled alongside and stopped, its two occupants jumping out to join the debate.

"We had no authorization to cross the border, and now we don't even know where the border is,"

complained the support truck's driver.

"The seismic readings justify our continued tracking," Dimitri replied. "Besides, we were ordered to take to the field for two weeks. We'll let the company bureaucrats worry about obtaining permission to drill.

As for the border, we know it is somewhere north of us. Our immediate concern will be to acquire fuel in order to reach the border."

The driver was about to complain when a muffled boom in the distance diverted his attention.

"Up there, on the hill," Vlad said.

Above the rocky hill they stood on rose a small mountain range, which glimmered green from its pine-covered crags. A few miles distant, a puff of gray smoke drifted into the cloudless sky from a thick-wooded ridge. After the blast's echo receded from the hilltops, the sound of heavy machinery rumbled faintly down the slopes.

"What in the name of Mother Russia was that?" grumbled the truck's driver, awakened by the blast.

"An explosion up on the mountain," Dimitri replied. "Probably a mining operation."

"Nice to know we're not the only people in this wilderness," the driver muttered, then returned to his nap.

"Perhaps someone up there can tell us the way home," Vlad ventured.

An answer was short in the waiting. The hum of an engine drew closer until a late-model four-wheel drive appeared in the distance. The vehicle rounded a hill, then barreled across the open flats toward the surveyors. The car hardly slowed until it was nearly upon them, then stopped abruptly in a cloud of dust.

The two occupants sat motionless for a moment, then exited the vehicle cautiously.

The Russians could tell immediately that the men were Mongolian, with their flat noses and high cheekbones. The shorter of the two stepped forward and barked harshly, "What are you doing here?"

"We're a bit off track," replied the unflappable Dimitri. "We somehow lost the road while surveying the valley. We need to get back across the border to Kyakhta, but we're not sure if we have enough fuel.

Can you help us out?"

The Mongol's eyes grew larger at hearing the word "survey," and for the first time he carefully studied the thumper truck parked behind the men.

"You are conducting oil exploration?" he asked in a calmer tone.

The engineer nodded yes.

"There is no oil here," the Mongol barked. Waving his arm around, he said, "You will bivouac here for the night. Stay in this spot. I will bring fuel for your truck in the morning and direct you toward Kyakhta."

Without a farewell or pleasantry, he turned and climbed into the car with his driver and roared back up the mountain.

"Our problems are solved," Dimitri said with satisfaction. "We'll set up camp here and get an early start in the morning. I only hope you have left us some vodka," he said, patting the shoulder of his sleepy truck driver.

***

Darkness fell rapidly once the sun set over the hills, bringing with it a ripe chill to the night air. A fire was built in front of a large canvas tent, which the men crowded around while downing a tasteless dinner of canned stew and rice. It didn't take long for the nightly entertainment of cards and vodka to emerge, with cigarettes and pocket change ruling the pots.

"Three hands straight." Dimitri laughed as he raked in the winnings from a hand of preference, a Russian card game similar to gin rummy. His eyes glistened under heavy lids, and a trickle of vodka dripped from his chin as he gloated to his equally inebriated coworkers.

"Keep it up and you'll have enough for a dacha on the Black Sea," one countered.

"Or a black dachshund on the Caspian Sea," said another and laughed.

"This game is too rich for my blood, I'm afraid," griped Vlad, noting he was down a hundred rubles for the night. "I'm off to my sleeping bag to forget about Dimitri's cheating ways."

The young engineer ignored a slew of derisive remarks from the others as he staggered to his feet.

Eyeing the canvas tent, he instead walked toward the rear of the thumper truck to relieve himself before turning in. In his inebriated state, he tripped and tumbled into a small gully beside the truck, sliding several feet downhill before colliding with a large rock. He lay there for a minute, clutching a wrenched knee and cursing his clumsiness, when he heard the clip-clop sound of horse hooves approaching the camp. Rolling to his hands and knees, he sluggishly crawled to the top of the ravine, where he could peer beneath the thumper truck and see the campfire on the opposite side.

The voices of his comrades fell silent as a small group of horses approached the camp. Vlad rubbed his eyes in disbelief when they came close enough to be illuminated by the fire's light. Six fierce-looking horsemen sat tall in the saddle, looking as if they had just ridden off a medieval tapestry. Each wore a long orange silk tunic, which ran to the knees and covered baggy white pants that were tucked into heavy leather boots. A bright blue sash around their waists held a sword in a scabbard, while over their shoulders they carried a compound bow and a quiver of feathered arrows. Their heads were covered by bowl-shaped metal helmets, which sprouted a tuft of horsehair from a center spike. Adding to their menacing appearance, the men all wore long thin mustaches that draped beneath their chins.

Dimitri raised himself from the fireside with a nearly full bottle of vodka and welcomed the horsemen to join them.

"A drink to your fine mounts, comrades," he slurred, hoisting the bottle into the air.

The offer was met by silence, all six riders staring coldly at the engineer. Then one of the horsemen reached to his side. In a lightning-quick move that Vlad would later replay in his mind a thousand times over, the horseman slammed a bow to his chest, yanked back the bowstring, and let fly a wooden arrow.

Vlad never saw the arrow in flight, only watched as the bottle of vodka suddenly lurched from Dimitri's hand and shattered to the ground in a hundred pieces. A few paces away, Dimitri stood clutching his throat with his other hand, the feathered shaft of an arrow protruding through his fingers. The engineer sank to his knees with a gurgling cry for help, then fell to the ground as a torrent of blood surged down his chest.

The three men around the campfire jumped to their feet in shock, but that was to be the last move they would make. In an instant, a hail of arrows rained down on them like a tempest. The horsemen were killing machines, wielding their bows and firing a half dozen arrows apiece in mere seconds. The drunken surveyors had no chance, the archers finding their targets with ease at such close range. A brief sprinkling of cries echoed through the night and then it was over, each man lying dead with a tombstone of arrows protruding from his lifeless body.

Vlad watched the massacre in wide-eyed terror, nearly crying out in shock when the first arrows took flight. His heart felt like it would beat out of his chest, and then the adrenaline hit, urging his body to get up and flee like the wind. Scrambling down the gully, he started to run, faster than he had ever run in his life before. The pain in his knee, the alcohol in his blood, it all vanished, replaced by the singular sensation of fear. He ran down the sloping foothills, oblivious to any unseen nighttime obstructions, pushed on by sheer panic. Several times he fell, cutting nasty gashes on his legs and arms, but immediately he staggered to his feet and resumed the pace. Over the pounding of his heart and the gasping from his lungs, he listened for the sound of pursuing hoofbeats. But they never came.

For two hours, he ran, staggered, and stumbled until he came to the rushing waters of the Selenga River.

Moving along the riverbank, he came upon two large boulders that offered both shelter and concealment.

Crawling into the crevice beneath the rocks, he quickly fell asleep, not wanting to awake from the living nightmare he had just witnessed.

-15-

The ride, Theresa decided, replicated the jarring discomfort of a Butterfield stagecoach passage across the American Southwest in 1860. Every bump and rut seemed to vibrate directly from the wheels to the bed of the two-ton panel truck, where the energy was transferred up her backside in a force that made her bones rattle. Bound, gagged, and seated on a hardwood bench across from two armed guards did not improve the comfort factor. Only the presence of Roy and Wofford shackled beside her offered a small degree of mental consolation.

Sore, tired, and hungry, she struggled to make sense of the events at Lake Baikal. Tatiana had said very little after waking her in their shared cabin with a cold pistol pressed against her chin. Marched at gunpoint off the Vereshchagin and onto a dinghy, she and the others had been transferred to the black freighter briefly, then pushed ashore and bound into the back of the panel truck. They waited on the dock nearly two hours, hearing gunshots and a commotion on the ship before the truck was started and they were driven away.

She wondered grimly what had become of the Russian scientist Sarghov. He had been roughly pulled away from the group when they first boarded the freighter and herded off to another part of the ship. It hadn't looked good, and she feared for the safety of the jolly scientist. And what of the Vereshchagin? It appeared to be sitting low in the water when they were forced off. Were Al, Dirk, and the rest of the crew in danger as well?

The larger question was why had they been abducted? She feared for her life, but her self-pity quickly vanished when she gazed at Roy and Wofford. The two men were suffering far worse pain. Wofford was nursing a badly injured leg, likely fractured when he was shoved off balance from the black freighter. He held the leg stiffly in front of him, wincing in pain every time the truck lurched.

Gazing at Roy, she saw that he had fallen asleep with a small accretion of dried blood caked to his shirt.

Stopping to help Wofford up from his fall, a spiteful guard had swung his carbine at Roy, cutting a wide gash across his scalp. He was unconscious for several minutes, his limp body having been roughly tossed into the back of the truck.

Theresa's dread was temporarily displaced by another jolt from the truck, and she tried to close her eyes and sleep away the nightmare. The truck bounced along for another five hours, at one point passing through a sizeable city, as judged by its stop-and-go progress and the sounds of other vehicles. The traffic noise soon vanished and the truck again picked up speed, swaying across a winding dirt road for another four hours. Finally, the truck slowed, and from the sudden alertness exhibited by the two guards Theresa knew they were arriving at their destination.

"We might as well have flown, given the amount of time we've been airborne," Wofford grimaced as they all flew off the bench seat from another encounter with a pothole.

Theresa smiled at the brave humor but offered no reply as the truck ground to a halt. The clattery diesel motor was turned off and the back doors of the truck flung open, bathing the bay in a shock of bright sunlight. At the guards' nodding, Theresa and Roy helped Wofford from the truck, then stood absorbing their surroundings.

They stood in the center of a walled compound that encompassed two freestanding buildings. Under a bright blue sky, the temperature was much warmer than at Lake Baikal, despite a light breeze blowing across their faces. Theresa sniffed the air, noting a dry and dusty flavor. A rolling grass valley appeared far below in the distance, while a gray-green mountain peak rose adjacent to the complex. The compound appeared to be dug into the side of the mountain, which she noticed was covered by low shrubs and thick clusters of tall pines.

To their left, half hidden behind a long row of hedges, stood a low-rise brick building, similar to those found in a modern industrial park. Seemingly out of place, there was a horse stable attached to one end of the building. A half dozen stodgy horses milled about a large corral, nibbling remnants of grass that poked through the dust. At the other end of the building was a large steel garage, which housed a fleet of trucks and mechanical equipment. Inside, a handful of workers in black jumpsuits were working on a dusty fleet of earth-moving equipment.

"I thought the Taj Mahal was in India," Roy said.

"Well, maybe we are in India," Wofford replied with a pained smirk.

Theresa turned and studied the other building in the compound. She had to agree with Roy, it did bear a slight resemblance to the Indian landmark, albeit a much smaller version. In contrast to the functional efficiency of the brick industrial building, the structure before her was built with ornate flair and drama.

Thick columns fronted a gleaming white marble edifice that was built low to the ground. At its center, a circular portico enveloped the main entrance. A bulbous white roof capped the entry hall, topped by a golden spire protruding from its peak. The design was, in fact, little removed from the dome of the Taj Mahal. Though elegant, the image looked to Theresa as if a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream had fallen from the heavens.

The landscape in front of the structure was equally palatial. A pair of canals flowed across the compound, feeding a large reflecting pool before disappearing under the front of the building. Theresa could hear the rushing waters of a nearby river, which fed the canals some distance from the compound.

Around the canals and pool stretched a lush green ornamental garden, manicured to a detail that would shame an English nobleman.

Across the lawn, Theresa spied Tatiana and Anatoly conversing with a man who wore a holster on his side. The man nodded, then approached the back of the truck and said, "This way," in a thick accent.

The two guards bunched up behind Roy and Wofford to emphasize the command.

Theresa and Roy each lent an arm to Wofford and followed the squat man as he marched down a walkway toward the opulent building. They approached the portico, where a large carved wooden door led into the premises. Flanked on either side, like doormen at the Savoy Hotel, was a pair of guards dressed in ornately embroidered long silk coats colored orange. Theresa knew they were guards, as they made no move to open the door, instead standing perfectly still, firmly grasping sharp-pointed lances in one hand.

The door opened and they entered the domed foyer, which was filled with aged pastoral paintings of horses in the field. A short housekeeper with a crooked grin slipped from behind the door and nodded for the group to follow. Padding across the polished marble floor, he led them down a side hallway to three interior guest rooms. One by one, Theresa, Roy, and Wofford were escorted into comfortably decorated rooms, then were left facing a closed door that the housekeeper locked and bolted behind him.

Theresa found a side table next to the bed that was set with a bowl of steaming soup and a loaf of bread. Quickly washing the road grime from her face and hands, she sat down and devoured the food in hunger. Exhaustion finally overcoming her fears, she lay on the soft bed and promptly fell asleep.

Three hours later, a hard knock at the door jolted her from a deep sleep.

"This way, please," the little housekeeper said, eyeing Theresa with a hint of lasciviousness.

Roy and Wofford were already waiting in the hallway. Theresa was surprised to see that Wofford's leg had been wrapped and he now sported a wooden cane. Roy's head gash was also bandaged, and he wore a loose cotton pullover in place of his bloodstained shirt.

"Don't you two look the model of health?" she said.

"Sure. Assuming the model is a crash test dummy," Roy replied.

"The hospitality has taken a slight turn for the better," Wofford said, tapping his cane on the floor.

The three were led back to the foyer and down the main hallway to an expansive sitting room. Shelves of leather-bound books lined the walls, punctuated by a fireplace at the far end and a bar along one side.

Theresa looked up nervously at the torso of a black bear that lunged from the wall above her head, its sharpened claws and bared teeth frozen in a permanent display of aggression. Panning the room, she saw it was a taxidermist's heaven. A variety of stuffed deer, bighorn sheep, wolves, and foxes guarded the enclave, all leering viciously at the visitors. Tatiana stood in the middle of the room, next to a man who looked like he could have been mounted on the wall as well.

It was the grin, she decided. When he smiled, a row of sharp pointy teeth flashed like a shark's, seemingly eager to devour some raw flesh. Yet the rest of his appearance was less imposing. He had a slight though muscular build, and wore his jet-black hair brushed back loosely. He was handsome in the classic Mongol sense, with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes that had an odd golden-brown tint.

A sprinkling of wind-and sun-borne wrinkles suggested he had spent his earlier years working outdoors.

However, the mannerisms of the man dressed in the fashionable gray suit suggested that those days were long over.

"It is good of you to join us," Tatiana said in an emotionless tone. "May I present Tolgoi Borjin, president of the Avarga Oil Consortium."

"Pleased to meet you." Wofford hobbled over, and shook the man's hand as if he were an old friend.

"Now, would you mind telling us where we are and why the hell we're here?" he asked, applying a vise grip to his handshake.

Wofford's sudden demand seemed to catch the Mongol off guard and he hesitated before answering, quickly letting go of Wofford's hand.

"You are at my home and enterprise headquarters."

"Mongolia?" Roy asked.

"My regrets for your hasty exit from Siberia," Borjin replied, ignoring Roy's remark. "Tatiana tells me that your lives were in peril."

"Indeed?" Theresa said, casting a wary eye toward her former cabinmate.

"The forced departure at gunpoint was most necessary for your security," she explained. "The environmental radicals of Baikal are very dangerous. They had apparently infiltrated the institute's survey ship and tried to sink it with all hands. I was fortunately able to contact a leased vessel nearby that assisted in our evacuation. It was best that we departed secretly, so as not to call attention to ourselves and risk further attacks."

"I have never heard of the Lake Baikal environmentalist groups acting in such a violent manner," Theresa replied.

"It is a new breed of youthful radicals. With the reduction in state administrative controls in recent years, I am afraid that the rebellious youths have become much more brazen and forceful."

"And what about the scientist, Dr. Sarghov, who was taken off the ship with us?"

"He was insistent on returning to the ship to alert the other institute members. I'm afraid we could no longer vouch for his safety."

"Is he dead? What about the others on the ship?"

"We were forced to evacuate the area for everyone's safety. I have no information on the research ship or Dr. Sarghov."

The color drained from Theresa's face as she contemplated the words.

"So why haul us here?" Roy asked.

"We have abandoned the Lake Baikal project for the time being. Your assistance in evaluating potential oil field sites is still of value to us. You were contracted to work for us for six weeks, so we will honor the contract through another project."

"Has the company been notified?" Theresa asked, realizing her cell phone had been left behind on the Vereshchagin. "I shall need to contact my supervisor to discuss this."

"Regrettably, our microwave phone line is down at the moment. A common problem in remote regions, as you can surely understand. Once the service is restored, you will of course be free to make any calls you like."

"Why are you locking us in our rooms like animals?"

"We have a number of sensitive research projects in development. I'm afraid we can't let outsiders go wandering around the facilities. We can give you a limited tour at the appropriate time."

"And if we wish to leave right now instead?" Theresa probed.

"A driver will take you to Ulaanbaatar, where you can catch a flight to your home." Borjin smiled, his sharp teeth glistening.

Still weary from the trip, Theresa didn't know what to think. Perhaps it was best not to test the waters just yet, she decided. "What is it that you would like us to do?"

Reams of folders were wheeled into the study along with several laptop computers, all chock-full of geological assessments and subsurface seismic profiles. Borjin's request was simple.

"We wish to expand drilling operations into a new geographical region. The ground studies are at your fingertips. Tell us where the optimal drilling locations would be." Saying nothing more, he turned his back and left the room, Tatiana tailing close behind.

"This is a load of bunk," Roy muttered, standing up.

"Actually, this looks like professionally gathered data," Wofford replied, holding up a subsurface isopach map, which portrayed the thickness of various underground sedimentary layers.

"I don't mean the data," Roy said, slamming a file down on the table.

"Easy, big fella," Wofford whispered, tilting his head toward the corner ceiling. "We're on Candid Camera."

Roy looked up and noticed a tiny video camera mounted beside the smiling stuffed head of a reindeer.

"Best we at least pretend to study the files," Wofford continued in a low voice, holding the map in front of his mouth as he spoke.

Roy sat down and pulled one of the laptops close, then slunk down in the chair so that the opened screen blocked his face.

"I don't like the looks of this. These people are warped. And let's not forget we were brought here at gunpoint."

"I agree," Theresa whispered. "The whole story about trying to protect us at Lake Baikal is ludicrous."

"As I recall, Tatiana threatened to blow my left ear off if I didn't leave the Vereshchagin with her,"

Wofford mused, tugging his earlobe. "Not the words of someone who cares about my well-being, I should think."

Theresa unfolded a topographical map of a mountain range and pointed out meaningless features to Wofford as she spoke.

"And what about Dr. Sarghov? He was taken captive with us by accident. I think they may have killed him."

"We don't know that, but it may be true," Roy said. "We have to assume the same outcome awaits us, after we have provided them the information they are looking for."

"It's all so crazy," Theresa said with a slight shake of her head. "But we've got to find a way out of here."

"The garage, next to the industrial building across the lawn. It was full of vehicles," Wofford said. "If we could steal a truck and drive out of here, I'm sure we could find our way to Ulaanbaatar."

"They've got us either locked in our rooms or under surveillance. We'll have to be prepared to make a break for it on short notice."

"Afraid I'm not up for any wind sprints or pole vaults," Wofford said, adjusting his injured leg. "You two will need to try without me."

"I've got an idea," Roy said, eyeing a desk across the room. Making a show of looking for a lost pen among the maps, he stood and walked to the desk, where he grabbed a pencil from a round leather holder. Turning his back to the video camera, he scooped out a silver metal letter opener that was mixed in with the pencils and slid it up his sleeve. Returning to the table, he pretended to write some notes while whispering to Theresa and Wofford.

"Tonight we'll check things out. I'll get Theresa and we'll reconnoiter the area and figure out an escape route. Then tomorrow night, we'll make our break. With the invalid in tow," he added, grinning at Wofford.

"I'd be much obliged," Wofford nodded. "Much obliged indeed."

-16-

Roy awoke promptly at two a.m. and dressed quickly. Removing the letter opener from its hiding place under his mattress, he groped his way across the darkened bedroom to the locked door. He felt along the doorframe, finding the raised edges of three metal hinges that protruded on the interior side.

Sliding the letter opener into the top hinge, he carefully pried out a long metal pin that held the interlocking hinge together. Removing the pins from the other two hinges, he gently lifted the door and pulled it into the room laterally as the exterior dead bolt popped out of the opposite doorframe. Roy then crept into the hallway and pulled the door back against the frame, so that upon a casual glance it still appeared closed and locked.

Finding the hallway empty, he tiptoed to Theresa's room next door. Unlocking the latch, he opened the door to find her sitting on the bed, waiting.

"You did it," she whispered, seeing his figure in the light from the hallway.

Roy flashed a thin smile, then nodded for her to follow. They crept into the corridor and moved slowly toward the main foyer. A row of low-wattage footlights provided muted lighting along the hallway, which by all sight and sound appeared completely deserted. Theresa's rubber-soled shoes began squeaking on the polished marble floor, so she stopped and removed them, continuing on in her stocking feet.

The foyer was brightly illuminated by a large crystal chandelier, which prompted Roy and Theresa to hug the walls and approach cautiously. Roy knelt down and scurried over to a narrow window, which fronted the main doorway. Peering outside, he turned to Theresa and shook his head. Despite the late hour, there was still a pair of guards stationed outside the front door. They would have to find another way out.

Standing in the foyer, they found themselves at the base of an inverted T. The guest rooms had been to the left and the occupant's private rooms were presumably to the right. So they crept instead down the wide main corridor that led to the study.

The house remained still but for an old grandfather clock ticking loudly in the hallway. They reached the study and kept moving, tiptoeing past the main dining hall and a pair of small conference rooms, all decorated with an impressive collection of Song and Jin dynasty antiques. Theresa scanned the ceilings searching for additional video camera monitors but saw nothing. A whispering sound played on her ears, and she instinctively clutched at Roy's arm until he winced in pain from her sharp fingernails. They both relaxed when they realized the sound was only the wind blowing outside.

The corridor ended in a large open sitting room with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. Though there was little to be seen at night, Theresa and Roy could still sense the dramatic view offered from the mountain perch, which overlooked the rolling steppes of the valley below. Near the entrance to the room, Roy spied a carpeted stairwell that ran to a lower level. He motioned toward the stairs and Theresa nodded, following him quietly. The thick carpet was a welcome relief to her feet, which were beginning to tire of the hard marble floor. As she reached a turn in the stairwell, she looked up to face a huge portrait of an ancient warrior. The man in the image sat tall on a horse wearing a fur-trimmed coat, orange sash, and the classic Mongol bowl helmet. He stared at her triumphantly through gold-black eyes. His mouth showed a wisp of a grin, exposing sharpened teeth that reminded her of Borjin. The intensity of the image made her shudder and she quickly turned her back on the painting and moved down the next set of steps.

The landing opened onto a single corridor, which ran away from the house a short distance. One side of the corridor was windowed, which looked out upon a large courtyard. Theresa and Roy peered out the nearest window, faintly observing a freestanding structure across the way.

"There must be a door to the courtyard along here," Roy whispered. "If we can get out here, we ought to be able to move around the end of the guest wing and sneak toward the garage."

"It's going to be a long way for Jim to hobble, but at least there don't seem to be any guards around here. Let's find that door."

They moved rapidly to the end of the corridor where they at last found an exit door. Theresa tested the unlocked door, half expecting an alarm to sound when the latch released, but all remained silent.

Together they crept into the open courtyard, which was partially illuminated by a few scattered pathway lamps. Theresa slipped her shoes back on soon after her feet touched the cold ground. The night air was brisk, and she shivered as a chill breeze blew through her light clothes.

They followed a slate pathway that angled across the courtyard toward a stone structure at the rear of the property. It appeared to be a small chapel, though it was circular in shape with a domed roof. Its stone composition differed from the marble used in the main house, and it had a decidedly ancient look to it. As they drew close, Roy bypassed the tunneled entrance and followed its curved walls toward the rear.

"I think I saw a vehicle in back," he whispered to Theresa, who hung tight on his heels.

Reaching the back of the stone building, they found a covered bay enclosed by a low split-rail fence.

Once a corral, the interior was crammed with a half dozen old horse-drawn wagons, their wooden beds stacked with shovels, picks, and empty crates. From beneath a canvas tarp poked the front wheel of a dust-covered motorcycle, while, in the back of the bay, Roy studied the car he had seen across the courtyard. It was a huge old antique, layered with decades of dust and sitting on at least two flat tires.

"Nothing here that's going to get us to Ulaanbaatar," Theresa remarked with disappointment.

Roy nodded. "The garage on the other side of the mansion will have to be our ticket." He froze suddenly as a shrill whine carried near on the breeze.

It was the neighing of a horse, he recognized, not far from the courtyard.

"Behind the wagon," he whispered, pointing to the corral.

Dropping to the ground, they silently crawled through the rail fence and slithered beneath the nearest wagon. Lying behind one of the wagon's old-fashioned wooden wheels, they cautiously peeked through the spokes.

Two men soon appeared on horseback, preceded by the clopping sound of horse hooves on the slate walkway. The horsemen curled around the stone building, then paced alongside the corral and stopped.

Theresa's heart nearly stopped when she caught sight of the men. They were dressed in nearly the same garb as the warrior in the hall painting. Their orange silk tunics reflected gold under the courtyard lights.

Baggy pants, thick-soled boots, and a round metal helmet with horsehair spike completed their warrior appearance. The two men milled about for several minutes, just a few feet from where Theresa and Roy lay hidden. They were so close Theresa could taste the dust kicked up by the horses as they pawed at the ground.

One of the men barked something unintelligible, and then the horses suddenly bolted. In an instant, both horsemen disappeared into the darkness amid a small thunder of hoofbeats.

"The night watchmen," Roy declared as the sound of the horses vanished.

"A little too close for comfort," Theresa said, standing and shaking the dust from her clothes.

"We probably don't have much time before they make another pass. Let's see if we can skirt around the other end of the main house and try for the garage."

"Okay. Let's hurry. I don't want to meet up with those guys again."

They scrambled through the rail fence and headed toward the guest wing of the complex. But midway across the courtyard, they heard a sharp cry and the sudden gallop of horses. Looking back in horror, they saw the horses charging them from just yards away. The two horsemen had quietly backtracked to the stone building and broke when they saw Theresa and Roy sprinting across the courtyard.

They both froze in their tracks, unsure whether to run back to the main house or flee the courtyard. It made no difference, as the horsemen were already at the edge of the courtyard and had them plainly in view. Theresa watched one of the horses rear up in the air as the rider suddenly yanked on the reins, pulling the horse to a standstill. The other rider continued on at a gallop, directing his mount to where Theresa and Roy stood.

Roy saw immediately that the horseman was going to try to bowl them over. A quick glance to Theresa revealed fear and confusion in her eyes, as she stood frozen in place.

"Move!" Roy shouted, grabbing Theresa's arm by the elbow and flinging her out of harm's way. The horseman was nearly upon them, and Roy barely managed to sidestep the charging mount, the rider's stirrup grazing his side. Regaining his balance, Roy did the unthinkable. Rather than looking for cover, he turned and sprinted after the charging horse.

The unsuspecting horseman galloped a few more yards, then slowed the horse and pivoted it to his right, intending to make another charge. As the horse wheeled around, the horseman was shocked to find Roy standing in his path. The seismic engineer reached up and grabbed the loose reins dangling beneath the horse's chin and jerked them sharply downward.

"That's enough horseplay," Roy muttered.

The rider had a blank look on his face as Roy fought to restrain the trained horse, the animal heaving clouds of vapor from its nostrils.

"Nooooo!" The piercing cry came from Theresa's lips, in a volume that could have been heard in Tibet.

Roy glanced at Theresa, who lay sprawled on the ground but appeared in no imminent danger. Then he detected a faint object whisking toward him. A viselike grip suddenly squeezed his chest, while a fiery sensation started to burn from within. He dropped to his knees in a wave of light-headedness as Theresa immediately appeared and cradled his shoulders.

The razor-tipped arrow fired by the second horseman had missed Roy's heart, but just barely. Instead, the projectile penetrated his chest just outside his heart, puncturing the pulmonary artery. The effect was nearly the same, with massive internal bleeding leading to imminent heart failure.

Theresa desperately tried to stem the flow of blood from the arrow's entry point, but there was nothing she could do about the internal damage. She held him tight as the color slowly drained from his face. He gasped for air before his body began to sag. For a moment his eyes turned bright, and Theresa thought he might hang on. He looked at Theresa and painfully gasped the words, "Save yourself." And then his eyes closed and he was gone.

-17-

The Aeroflot Tu-154 passenger jet banked slowly over the city of Ulaanbaatar before turning into the wind and lining up on the main runway of Buyant Ukhaa Airport for its final approach. Under a cloudless sky, Pitt enjoyed an expansive vista of the city and outlying landscape from his cramped passenger's seat window. A large sprinkling of cranes and bulldozers indicated that the capital of Mongolia was a city on the move.

A first impression of Ulaanbaatar is that of an Eastern Bloc metropolis mired in the 1950s. Home to 1.2

million people, the city is mostly built with Soviet-style design, featuring Soviet-style blandness and conformity. Drab gray apartment buildings dot the city by the dozen, offering all the warmth of a prison dormitory. Architectural consciousness was an afterthought for many of the large block government buildings surrounding the city center. Yet recent autonomy, a taste of democratic governing, and a dose of economic growth has added a vibrancy to the city that openly seeks to modernize itself. Colorful shops, upscale restaurants, and booming nightclubs are creeping into the scene of the once-staid city.

At its heart, there is a comfortable blend of old and new. Outlying suburbs are still filled with gers, muffin-shaped tents made of felt that are the traditional homes of the nomadic Mongolian herdsmen and their families. Hundreds of the gray or white tents jam the empty fields around the capital city that comprises the only true metropolis in the country.

In the West, little is known of Mongolia save for Genghis Khan and Mongolian beef. The sparsely populated country wedged between Russia and China occupies an expansive territory just slightly smaller than the state of Alaska. Rugged mountains dot the northern and western fringes of the landscape, while the Gobi Desert claims the south. Across the belt of the country run the venerable steppes, rolling grasslands that produced perhaps the finest horsemen the world has ever known. The glory days of the Mongol Horde are a distant memory, however. Years of Soviet dominion, during which Mongolia became one of the largest communist nations, stifled the country's identity and development. Only in recent years have the Mongolian people begun to find their own voice again.

As Pitt stared down at the mountains ringing Ulaanbaatar, he wondered whether chasing to Mongolia was such a good idea. It was after all a Russian vessel that had nearly been sunk at Lake Baikal, not a NUMA ship. And none of his crew had been harmed. The oil survey team was certainly not his responsibility either, though he was confident they were an innocent party. Still, there was some connection with their survey on the lake that had contributed to the foul play and abductions. Somebody was up to no good and he wanted to know why.

As the jet's tires screeched onto the runway, Pitt jabbed his elbow toward the passenger's seat next to him. Al Giordino had fallen asleep seconds after the plane lifted off from Irkutsk, and he continued to snooze even as the flight attendant spilled coffee on his foot. Prying a heavy eyelid open, he glanced toward the window. Spotting the concrete tarmac, he popped upright in his seat, instantly awake.

"Did I miss anything on the flight down?" he asked, suppressing a yawn.

"The usual. Wide-open landscapes. Some sheep and horses. A couple of nude communes."

"Just my luck," he replied, eyeing a brown stain on his shoe with suspicion.

"Welcome to Mongolia and 'Red Hero,' as Ulaanbaatar is known," Sarghov's jolly voice boomed from across the aisle. He was wedged into a tiny seat, his face wallpapered with bandages, and Giordino wondered how the Russian could be so merry. Eyeing the fat scientist slip a flask of vodka into a valise, he quickly determined the answer.

The trio made their way through immigration, Pitt and Giordino garnering extraordinary scrutiny, before collecting their bags. The airport was small by international standards, and while waiting for a curbside cab Pitt noticed a wiry man in a red shirt studying him from across the concourse. Scanning the terminal, he observed that many of the locals gawked at him, not used to seeing a six-foot-three Westerner every day.

A weathered cab was flagged down, and they quickly motored the short distance into the city.

"Ulaanbaatar—and all of Mongolia, really—has changed a good deal in the past few years," Sarghov said.

"Looks to me like it hasn't changed much in the past few centuries," Giordino said, noting a large neighborhood of felt gers .

"Mongolia somewhat missed the station on the twentieth century," Sarghov nodded, "but they're catching up in the twenty-first. As in Russia, the police state no longer controls daily life and the people are learning to embrace freedom. The city may look grim to you, but it is a much livelier place than a decade ago."

"You have visited often?" Pitt asked.

"I have worked on several projects with the Mongolian Academy of Sciences at Lake Khovsgol."

The taxi careened around a crater-sized pothole then screeched to a stop in front of the Continental Hotel. As Sarghov checked them in Pitt admired a collection of reproduced medieval artwork that decorated the large lobby. Glancing out the front window, he noticed a car pull up to the entrance and a man in a red shirt climb out. The same man he had seen at the airport.

Pitt studied the man as he lingered by the car. His features were Caucasian, which suggested he wasn't with the Mongolian police or immigration authorities. Yet he looked comfortable in his surroundings, earmarked by a toothy grin that habitually flashed from his friendly face. Pitt noticed that he moved with a measured balance, like a cat walking atop a fence. He was no tap dancer, though. In the pit of his back just above the waistline, Pitt saw a slight bulge that could only be a gun holster.

"All set," Sarghov said, handing room keys to Pitt and Giordino. "We're in neighboring rooms on the fourth floor. The bellboys are taking our bags up now. Why don't we grab lunch in the hotel cafe and strategize our plan of inquiry?"

"If there's a prospect of a cold beer in this joint, then I'm already there," Giordino replied.

"I'm still stiff from the plane ride," Pitt said. "Think I'll stretch my legs a bit with a walk around the block first. Order me a tuna sandwich, and I'll join you in a few minutes."

As Pitt exited the hotel, the man in red quickly turned his back and leaned on the car, casually checking his watch. Pitt turned and walked in the other direction, dodging a small group of Japanese tourists checking into the hotel. Walking briskly, he set a fast pace with his long legs and quickly covered two blocks. Turning a corner, he shot a quick glance to his side. As he suspected, the man in the red shirt was tailing him a half block behind.

Pitt had turned down a small side street lined with tiny shops that sold their goods along the sidewalk.

Temporarily out of sight of his pursuer, Pitt started running down the street, sprinting past the first half-dozen shops. Ducking past a newsstand, he slowed in front of an open-air clothing shop. A rack of heavy winter coats jutted from the shop's side wall, offering a perfect concealment spot from someone rushing down the street. Pitt stepped into the shop and around the coatrack, then stood with his back to the wall.

A wrinkled old woman wearing an apron appeared from behind a counter piled with shoes and looked up at Pitt.

"Shhh," Pitt smiled, holding a finger to his lips. The old woman gave him an odd look, then returned to the back of the shop shaking her head.

Pitt had only to wait a few seconds before the man in the red shirt came hurrying along, nervously scanning each shop he came to. The sound of the man's footsteps announced his arrival as he approached and stopped in front of the shop. Pitt stood perfectly still, listening for the sound of heavy leather soles on concrete. When the patter resumed, Pitt sprang from the rack like a coiled spring.

The man in the red shirt had started to jog to the next shop when he detected a movement behind him.

He glanced over his shoulder to find Pitt, towering nearly a foot taller, only a step behind him. Before he could react, he felt Pitt's large hands grasp his shoulders.

Pitt could have tackled the man, or spun him around, or thrown him to the ground. But he wasn't one to fight physics and instead simply used their forward momentum and pushed the smaller man ahead toward a round metal hat rack. The assailant smacked face-first into the rack and fell forward onto his stomach amid a clutter of baseball caps. The fall would have incapacitated most, but Pitt was hardly surprised when the wiry man bounced up immediately and crouched to strike Pitt with his left hand while his right hand reached behind his back.

Pitt took a step back and grinned at the man.

"Looking for this?" he asked. With a slight flick of his wrist, he flashed a Serdyukov SPS automatic pistol, which he leveled at the man's chest. A blank look crossed the man's face as his right hand came up behind his back empty. He coolly looked Pitt in the eye, then smiled broadly.

"Mr. Pitt. You seem to have taken advantage of me," he said in English only slightly tinged with a Russian accent.

"I don't like people crowding my space," Pitt replied, holding the gun steady.

The other man looked up and down the street nervously, then spoke quietly to Pitt. "You need not fear me. I am a friend looking out for you."

"Good. Then you can join me for lunch with some of my friends, who will be interested to meet you."

"To the Continental Hotel." The man smiled, removing a child's hat with the image of a running camel on its crest that had somehow stuck to his head during the scuffle. He slowly sidestepped Pitt and began walking in the direction of the hotel. Pitt followed a few steps behind, concealing the gun in his pocket and wondering what sort of eccentric this was who had been following him.

The Russian made no move to escape, instead marching boldly into the hotel and across the lobby to the main restaurant. To Pitt's surprise, he walked directly up to a large booth where Giordino and Sarghov were sitting, enjoying a drink.

"Alexander, you old goat!" he greeted Sarghov with a laugh.

"Corsov! They haven't run you out of the country yet?" Sarghov replied, standing and giving the smaller man a hug.

"I am an invaluable presence to the state mission," Corsov replied with mock seriousness. Eyeing Sarghov's bruised face, he frowned and said, "You look as if you just escaped from the gulag."

"No, just the inhospitable mongrels I told you about. Forgive me, I have not properly introduced you to my American friends. Dirk, Al, this is Ivan Corsov, special attaché to the Russian embassy here in Ulaanbaatar. Ivan and I worked together years ago. He's agreed to help us with the investigation of Avarga Oil."

"He followed us from the airport," Pitt said to Sarghov with lingering doubt.

"Alexander told me you were coming. I was just making sure that no one else was following you."

"It seems I owe you an apology," Pitt smiled, covertly handing the pistol back to Corsov, and then shaking hands.

"Quite all right," he replied. "Though my wife may not like the looks of my new nose," he added, rubbing a purple welt administered by the hat rack.

"How your wife liked the looks of your old one is a mystery to me," Sarghov laughed.

The four men sat down and ordered lunch, the conversation turning serious.

"Alexander, you told me of the attempted sinking of the Vereshchagin and the abduction of the oil workers, but I didn't know you were seriously injured in the ordeal," Corsov said, nodding at a thick bandage around Sarghov's wrist.

"My injuries would have been a lot worse had my friends not intervened," he replied, tilting a glass of beer toward Pitt and Giordino.

"We weren't too happy about getting our feet wet in the middle of the night, either," Giordino added.

"What makes you think that the captives were brought to Mongolia?"

"We know that the freighter was leased by Avarga Oil, and the survey team was working under contract for them as well. The regional police authorities could find no permanent holdings in all of Siberia for the company, so we naturally assumed they would return to Mongolia. Border security confirmed that a truck caravan matching the description of those seen at Listvyanka had crossed into Mongolia at Naushki."

"Have the appropriate appeals for law enforcement assistance been made?"

"Yes, a formal request was sent to the Mongolian national police, and cooperation is taking place at the lower levels as well. An Irkutsk police official cautioned me that assistance would likely be forthcoming very slowly here."

"It is true. Russian influence in Mongolia is not what it used to be," Corsov said, shaking his head. "And the level of security here is much reduced from the past. These democratic reforms and economic issues have loosened the state's control over its own people," he said, raising his eyebrows at Pitt and Giordino.

"Freedom has its costs, pal, but I wouldn't take it any other way," Giordino replied.

"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 Eroo. 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."

-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 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 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.

"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 jam-packed 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.

"A tunnel-boring machine," he said, rubbing one of the cutter-heads that was worn dull from usage.

"Corsov mentioned the company had some mining interests. I've heard there are some rich copper and coal reserves in the country."

"A rather expensive piece of equipment for a hack oil company."

A shrill whistle suddenly sounded from somewhere across the yard. Pitt and Giordino glanced toward the door and immediately saw that the guard had disappeared.

"Somebody woke up and ordered room service without telling us," Pitt said.

"And I don't have any change for a tip."

"We've seen all there is to see. Let's go meld into the woodwork."

They sprinted to the door, which Pitt opened a crack to peer out. Across the yard, a trio of armed guards was headed toward the warehouse in a jeep. Pitt recognized the man in the backseat rubbing his head as the guard Giordino had clobbered.

Pitt didn't hesitate, throwing open the door and bolting out of the building with Giordino on his heels.

They turned and ran toward the maze of stacked pipes that paralleled the railroad spur. The pursuing guards shouted across the yard, but Pitt and Giordino quickly disappeared behind the first pallet of pipes.

"I hope they don't have dogs," Giordino said as they paused to catch their breath.

"I don't hear any barking." Pitt had instinctively grabbed the sledgehammer on the way out the door and held it up to show Giordino they weren't completely defenseless. He then surveyed the stacks of pipe around them and forged an exit strategy.

"Let's maze our way through the pipes to the rail line. If we can skirt around the loading platform undetected, then we ought to be able to make it back to the gate while they're still sniffing around here."

"I'm right behind you," Giordino replied.

They took off again, skirting in and around the mammoth stacks of pipe that stood twenty feet high. A few yards behind, they heard the shouts of the guards as they fanned out in pursuit. Fording through the dozens of huge pallets was like snaking through a dense sequoia forest. The pursuers were at a decided disadvantage.

Making a beeline as best he could, Pitt steered them in the direction of the railroad tracks, stopping again as they approached the last line of pallets. The rail spur ended just a few feet away, while just beyond was the southern boundary of the compound, marked by a twelve-foot brick wall.

"No chance at scaling that," Pitt whispered. "We'll have to follow the tracks."

They jumped over the railroad tracks and moved toward the loading ramp at a fast walk so as not to attract attention. Ahead of them, the loading of the flatcars continued unimpeded. The workers had stopped briefly when the security alarm sounded, but resumed their loading when they saw the guards driving to the warehouse building.

Pitt and Giordino approached the dock, walking along the backside of the flatcars with their hard hats pulled low over their eyes. They were nearly past the first of the three railcars when a foreman jumped off the flatcar, landing a few steps from Giordino. The workman lost his balance, stumbling into Giordino and bouncing off the stocky Italian like he'd hit a concrete wall.

"Sorry," the man muttered in Mongolian, then looked Giordino in the face. "Who are you?"

Giordino could see the glint of alarm register in the man's face and immediately extinguished it with a right cross to the chin. The man slumped to the ground just as a loud shout erupted in front of them. Standing on the next flatcar, two other workers witnessed Giordino punch out their supervisor and yelled out in bewilderment. The workers turned and yelled across the yard, waving their arms at the security jeep, which was just pulling away from the warehouse.

"So much for a stealthy getaway," Pitt quipped.

"I swear I was just minding my own business," Giordino muttered.

Pitt peered down the rail line toward the gate they had cut through. If they took off at a sprint they had a chance to reach it before the jeep cut them off, but the guards would be right on their tail.

"We need a diversion," Pitt said quickly. "Try to attract the attention of the jeep. I'll work on getting us a lift out of here."

"Attracting attention won't be a problem."

Together they ducked under the railcar and crawled to the other side. Pitt hesitated in the shadows while Giordino jumped into view and started running back toward the stacks of pipes. A second later, several dockworkers came streaking by after him, dust and gravel rising from their feet inches from Pitt's face.

He looked out and saw the security jeep make a sudden turn, its headlights capturing Giordino's image in the distance.

It was Pitt's turn to move now and he jumped from beneath the flatbed and ran toward the next railcar in line. One of the forklifts was setting a pallet of pipe casings on the flatbed when Pitt charged toward the driver's compartment. He still carried the sledgehammer with him and made a flying downward swing as he sprang into the cab. The heavy mallet head struck the foot of the operator before Pitt even landed.

The startled driver stared at Pitt with wide eyes before the pain from two broken toes registered in his brain. Pitt raised the hammer as a first cry of agony trickled from the man's lips.

"Sorry, pal, but I need to borrow your rig," Pitt said.

The stunned operator flew out the opposite side of the open cab as if he had wings, disappearing into the darkness before Pitt could wield another blow. Pitt dropped the hammer and slid into the seat, quickly backing the forklift away from the railcar. He had driven a forklift decades before while working at a car parts distributor in high school and the controls quickly came back to mind. He whipped the forklift around on its lone rear wheel and stomped on the accelerator, aiming the twin prongs in the direction of Giordino.

Pitt's partner had streaked toward the maze of stacked pipes until he saw one of the armed security guards emerge from the nearest piling. The jeep was descending from the center of the yard with the two other guards while a trio of dockworkers was chasing him from behind. Despite the odds, Giordino quickly figured his best chance was against the unarmed workers trailing him. Grinding to a stop in his tracks, he turned and charged directly at the first man in pursuit. The startled worker hesitated in surprise as Giordino suddenly bore into him, driving his shoulder into the man's stomach. It might as well have been a bull charging a rag doll. A gasp of air wheezed from the man's lips, then his face turned blue as he fell limp across Giordino's shoulders. The tough Italian didn't miss a step, bulling forward with the dead weight into the second worker, who was following only a step behind. The three bodies collided with a sickening thud, Giordino using the body over his shoulder to soften the blow from the second man. In a tumble of arms and legs, the three bodies fell to the ground in a heap, Giordino somehow landing on top.

In an instant, he was on his feet, wheeling to face the next pursuer. But the third dockworker, a wiry man with long sideburns, had deftly sidestepped the mass of bodies and whirled behind Giordino. As Giordino rose, sideburns sprang onto his back and cupped an elbow around his throat. A simultaneous fusion of forces converged on him, as the jeep screeched to a halt just inches away while the guard on foot approached yelling with his gun drawn. Realizing he could no longer fight his way out, Giordino relaxed under the grip of the headlock, thinking that this was not quite the end of the diversion that he had in mind.

Staring through the windshield, he noticed the driver of the jeep glare triumphantly as if he had just bagged a trophy caribou. The smug guard, obviously head of the security force, started to climb out of the jeep, then hesitated with a quizzical look on his face. The look turned to horror as he turned toward a bright yellow blur flashing out of the darkness.

Blazing across the yard, Pitt had the forklift floored and aimed for the driver's side of the jeep. A warning cry erupted from the jeep's passenger, who tried to scramble clear, but there was nothing the driver could do. The twin forks sliced into the jeep like it was made of cheese, penetrating just fore and aft of the driver's seat. The nose of the forklift then bashed into the doorsill, mashing the jeep sideways for several feet and sending its occupants airborne out the opposite side. The two guards tumbled to the ground as the jeep skidded to a halt beside them. Pitt quickly jammed the forklift in reverse and backed away from the mangled car.

With the shock of the collision just in front of them, Giordino felt sideburns's grip around his neck loosen a fraction and he reacted immediately. Shoving the man's wrist up, Giordino flung his free elbow into the worker's ribs. It was enough to stun the man and allow Giordino to slip his grasp. Giordino turned and ducked as sideburns threw a roundhouse punch, which he countered with a hard jab below the man's ear. The smaller man quickly dropped to his knees, gazing at Giordino with a dazed look in his eyes.

That still left the security guard on foot. Giordino glanced at the armed man a few feet away and was relieved to see that he was no longer pointing the gun in his direction. The guard had instead turned his attention toward the forklift, which was now racing directly toward him. The guard fired two panicked shots in the general direction of the cab, then leaped out of the path of the charging vehicle. Ducking low in the cab, Pitt heard the shots whistle over his head, then yanked hard on the steering wheel as he passed by the guard. The nimble forklift quickly spun around and in an instant Pitt was back on the heels of the man. The surprised guard stumbled as he now tried to flee the rabid forklift and fell facedown in its oncoming path. Pitt quickly lowered the front prongs and moved in for the kill.

The guard should have rolled to the side but instead tried to stand up and run. As he rose, one of the prongs struck him along the backside and rode up his coat. Pitt jammed the lift lever and elevated the twin prongs above the cab, hauling the guard up into the air with them. Kicking and flailing, the guard dropped his gun as he desperately grabbed at the prong to keep from falling to the ground.

"You know, you could hurt someone with this thing, if you're not careful," Giordino said, jumping into the cab and grabbing an overhead roll bar for support.

"Safety first, I always say. Or is it second?" Pitt replied.

He had already spun the forklift around and was accelerating alongside the railroad tracks toward the gate. As he was passing by the loading dock, several workers stepped forward, then jumped back as the forklift raced by, the security guard dangling from the elevated prong and shouting out for help.

Pitt spied a high stack of oil drums ahead and veered the forklift toward the pile.

"End of the line for our first-class passengers," he muttered.

Driving straight for the drums, he slammed on the brakes when just a few yards away. The forklift screeched and skidded, banging to a jolting stop against the lower wall of drums. Dangling from the elevated prong, the sudden stop jerked the security guard forward, sending him flailing like a bird into the upper stack of oil drums. As he backed the forklift away, Pitt heard mumbled curses from the stack that told him the guard was still alive.

Pitt turned the forklift back toward the railroad tracks and mashed the round accelerator to the floorboard. Shouts could be heard from the scene of the wrecked jeep, and Pitt glanced over his shoulder to see that two of the men were on their feet and chasing after them. The popping sound of gunfire echoed from behind, and a few of the rounds found the body of the forklift with a metallic thud.

But the humming electric forklift buzzed quietly along, spreading the distance between itself and the angry pursuers.

Nearing the gate, Pitt inched the forklift closer to the railroad tracks until the right wheel was bouncing over the wooden ties.

"Ramming speed," Giordino said, eyeing Pitt's move and bracing himself for impact.

Pitt steered for the left edge of the gate and gripped the steering wheel tight. The left prong struck the gate support post dead-on, severing through the lower metal hinge, as the right prong sliced through the metal fencing. The nose of the forklift then rammed into the gate with the full force of its momentum. The impact drove the forklift into the air momentarily before it mashed the gate off its hinges and sent it flying off to the side.

Pitt had to fight the controls to keep the forklift from flipping as it burst out of the facility. The battered forklift bounded over the tracks and onto the gravel track that sided the rail line before settling onto its three wheels. Pitt steered down the gravel path, never lifting his foot off the accelerator.

"I hope our taxi driver is early," Pitt yelled.

"He better be. We're not going to outrun anybody much longer." Peering back toward the facility, Giordino spotted the headlights of another vehicle skirting the railroad tracks toward the battered gate.

Pitt muscled the forklift's controls as it bounced wildly over unseen ruts and rocks in the starlit darkness.

Not wanting to give any pursuing shooters an exact target, he had flicked off the headlights when they broke clear of the facility. The darkened shadow of the burned-out bakery atop the hill finally appeared ahead and Pitt skidded the forklift to a stop.

"Everybody off," he said, holding the brake down until they came to a complete stop. Jumping down, he searched the ground around him until finding a large flat rock. Turning the steering wheel of the forklift so it aimed down the gravel track, he dropped the rock on the accelerator and jumped back. The yellow forklift sprung down the path, humming quietly as it disappeared into the night.

"A shame. I was starting to get attached to that machine," Giordino muttered as they quickly scrambled up the hill.

"Hopefully, a camel herder in the Gobi Desert will put it to good use."

Cresting the ravine, they ducked behind a crumbling wall of the bakery and peered around the front lot.

Corsov's car was nowhere to be seen.

"Remind me to bad-mouth the KGB next time we're in public," Giordino said.

A half mile down the road, they suddenly eyed the red flash of a pair of taillights, illuminated from a tap on the brakes.

"Let's hope that's our boy," Pitt said.

The duo took off from the building and ran down the road at a sprint. Approaching the crunching sound of tires on gravel, they jumped to the side of the road and hesitated as a car with its headlights off crept out of the darkness. It was the gray Toyota.

"Good evening, gentlemen," Corsov grinned as Pitt and Giordino climbed into the car. His breath filled the interior with the odor of vodka. "A successful tour?"

"Yes," Pitt replied, "but our hosts wish to follow us home."

Behind the bakery, they could see the flash of a bouncing headlight beam from down the hill. Without a word, Corsov whipped the car around and sped off down the road. In minutes, he was barreling down a mix of back-road city streets before suddenly appearing at the rear of their hotel.

"Good night, gentlemen," Corsov slurred. "We shall reconvene tomorrow, when you can give me a full report."

"Thanks, Ivan," Pitt said. "Drive safe."

"But of course."

As Pitt slammed the door shut, the Toyota burst off down the street disappearing around a corner with its tires squealing. Walking to the hotel, Giordino suddenly stopped and pointed. Across the street, music and laughter wafted from the little cafe, still bustling at the late hour.

Giordino turned to Pitt and smiled. "I believe, boss, that you owe me a diversion."

-19-

Theresa sat in the study, looking through a seismic report with a thousand-mile stare. A melancholy depression, tinged with anger, had gradually replaced her shock at Roy's brutal killing. He had been like a brother to her and his murder the night before was painful to accept. It had been made worse by the appearance of Tatiana in the courtyard shortly after Roy expired. With glaring eyes that spit fire, she'd hissed at Theresa.

"Do not obey and the same fate will befall you!"

The guard who had killed Roy was summoned to crudely drag Theresa back to her room and keep her under armed guard.

Since that moment, she and Wofford had been under constant surveillance. She gazed across the study to the entryway, where two stone-faced guards stood staring back at her. Their brightly colored silk dels, or tunics, softened their appearance, but she knew from the night before that they were highly trained killers.

Alongside her, Wofford sat with his bum leg propped on a chair, deeply engrossed in a geological report. He had been shocked by Roy's death but seemed to have shaken it off quickly. More likely, he was using the task at hand to conceal his emotions, Theresa decided.

"We might as well give them the work they asked for," he had told her. "It might be the only thing that keeps us alive."

Maybe he was right, she thought, trying to regain focus on the report in her hands. It was a geological assessment of a basin area in an unidentified plain. Sandstone and limestone rifts were identified as being overlaid with clay and shale stretched across the basin. It was just the type of stratigraphy that was conducive to subsurface petroleum reserves.

"The geology seems promising, wherever it is," she said to Wofford.

"Take a look at this," he replied, unrolling a computer printout across the table. Known as a seismic section, the printout showed a computer-enhanced image of several layered levels of sediment for a confined location. The chart was created by a seismic survey team that sent man-made shocks into the ground and recorded the sound reflections. Theresa stood up to get a better look, examining the chart with fresh interest. It was unlike any seismic image she had seen before. Most subsurface profiles were opaque and smudgy, resembling a Rorschach inkblot left out in a rainstorm. The profile before her was a crisp image, with clearly delineated subsurface layers.

"Amazing image," she remarked. "Must be made with some cutting-edge technology. I've never seen anything this precise."

"It definitely beats anything we've ever used in the field. But that's not the amazing aspect," he added.

Reaching over, he pointed to a bulbous shape near the bottom of the page that extended off the edge.

Theresa leaned over and studied it carefully.

"That looks like a classic, not to mention nicely sized, anticlinal trap," she said, referring to the dome-shaped layer of sediments. The cusp of a sedimentary dome like the one before her was a flashing red light for geophysicists, as it is a prime spot for petroleum deposits to accumulate.

"Nicely sized, indeed," Wofford replied. Pulling over a stack of similar profiles, he spread several on the table. "That particular trap stretches nearly forty kilometers. There's six other smaller ones I've found in the same region."

"It certainly looks like the right conditions for a deposit."

"You never know until the drill gets wet, but from these images, it looks pretty promising."

"And there's six more? That's a tremendous reserve potential."

"At least six more. I haven't digested all the reports yet, but it is mind-boggling. Taking a stone's throw from the image, there might be two billion barrels potentially sitting in that one trap alone. Add in the others and you could have over ten billion barrels. And that's just for one field. No telling how much is in the entire region."

"Incredible. Where is the field located?"

"That's the hitch. Someone has carefully removed all geographic references from the data. I can only tell that it is subterranean, and that the surface topography is flat with a predominant sandstone base."

"You mean we might be looking at the next North Sea oil fields and you don't know where they are located?"

"I haven't a clue."

***

Sarghov laughed between sips from a cup of tea, his big belly jiggling with each guffaw.

"Charging through the night on a forklift, toting an Avarga security guard through the air," he chuckled.

"You Americans always have such a flair for dramatics."

"It wasn't the understated exit I would have preferred," Pitt replied from across the cafe table, "but Al insisted we ride, not walk."

"And we still nearly missed last call." Giordino smirked before sipping his morning coffee.

"I'm sure management is scratching their heads, wondering why a pair of Westerners were waltzing around their facility. A shame you didn't find any evidence that our oil survey friends had been there."

"No, the only item of interest was the tunnel-boring machine. And it was concealed under a canvas tarp similar to the object that was removed from the freighter at Baikal."

"It is possible the machine was stolen and brought into the country surreptitiously. Mongolia does not have easy access to high technology. Perhaps the company does not want the government to be aware of its technological equipment."

"Yes, that could be true," Pitt replied. "I would still like to know what it was that they hauled away from Baikal under wraps."

"Alexander, have there been any developments in the abduction investigation?" Giordino asked before biting into a buttered roll.

Sarghov looked up to see Corsov enter the busy cafe situated across from Sukhbaatar Square. "I shall let our local expert address that question," he said, standing and greeting his embassy friend. Corsov smiled his toothy grin and pulled a chair up to the table.

"I trust everyone had a comfortable night?" he said to Pitt and Giordino.

"Just until the vodka wore off," Pitt grinned, cognizant that Giordino was nursing a mild hangover.

"Ivan, we were just discussing the investigation. Has there been any news on the official front?" Sarghov asked.

"Nyet," Corsov said, his jovial face turning solemn. "The National Police have still not been assigned the case. The investigative request is being held up in the Justice Ministry. My apologies, I misspoke when I said that Avarga Oil has no influence within the government. It is clear that a bribe is in effect at some level."

"Every hour might count for Theresa and the others," Giordino said.

"Our embassy is doing everything they can through official channels. And I am, of course, pursuing leads through unofficial means. Do not worry, my friend, we will find them."

Sarghov drained the rest of his tea and set down the empty cup. "I'm afraid there is little more that we can ask of Ivan. The Mongol authorities often work on their own time frame. They will ultimately respond to the continued inquisitions from our embassy, despite whatever bribes are impeding the investigation. It may be best if we step back and wait for the bureaucratic hurdles to be cleared before any further action.

As it is, I must return to Irkutsk to file a report on the damage to the Vereshchagin. I have gone ahead and booked airline tickets for the three of us this afternoon."

Pitt and Giordino looked knowingly at Corsov, then turned to Sarghov.

"Actually, we have already made alternate travel plans, Alexander," Pitt said.

"You are returning directly to the United States? I thought perhaps you would return to Siberia and collect your comrade Rudi first."

"No, we're not going to the United States, or Siberia, just yet."

"I don't understand. Where is your intended destination?"

Pitt's green eyes glimmered as he said, "A mystical place called Xanadu."

-20-

Corsov's intelligence network paid off again. Though the central government in Ulaanbaatar had taken a hard turn toward democracy after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a sizeable communist minority opposition in the government ranks, many of whom still harbored pro-Moscow sentiments. It was a low-level analyst in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that had notified Corsov about the pending Chinese state visit. But it was Corsov who had recognized it as a golden opportunity for Pitt and Giordino.

The Chinese minister of commerce was arriving on short notice, ostensibly to tour a new solar energy plant recently opened at the edge of the capital city. Yet the bulk of the minister's time was scheduled for a private visit with the head of the Avarga Oil Consortium, at his secluded residence southeast of Ulaanbaatar.

"I can put you in the motorcade, which will get you past Borjin's front door. The rest will be up to you,"

Corsov had told Pitt and Giordino.

"No offense, but I don't see how anyone is going to buy us being part of the Chinese delegation,"

Giordino said.

"They won't have to, because you'll be part of the Mongolian state escort."

Giordino wrinkled his brow at what seemed to be a small difference.

Corsov explained that a formal reception was planned for the minister's arrival later in the day. A large welcoming escort from the Foreign Affairs Ministry would accompany the Chinese delegation for the evening. But tomorrow, when the delegation toured the solar energy plant and traveled to Avarga headquarters, only a small Mongolian security force had been requested to accompany the minister.

"So we are joining the Mongolian Secret Service?" Pitt asked.

Corsov nodded. "Ordinary officers of the National Police actually fill the roles. It took only a modest enticement to have you inserted as replacement security escorts. You will swap places with the real guards at the solar energy plant and follow the procession to Xanadu. As I told you, I would gladly use my own operatives for the assignment."

"No," Pitt replied, "we'll take the risk from here. You have gone out on a limb for us as it is."

"It is all deniable by me. And I trust you not to reveal your sources," he added with a grin.

"Cross my heart."

"Good. Now just remember to keep a low profile and see if you can prove that your abducted friends are on the premises. We can prompt the Mongolian authorities to action if we have some evidence."

"Will do. What do we owe you for the bribes?"

"That is such an ugly word," Corsov replied, a pained look crossing his face. "I am in the information business. Anything you can share with me about Avarga Oil, Mr. Borjin, and his aspirations will more than repay the pittance spent on the police escort. Which means I expect you back here for borscht tomorrow night."

"Now, there's an enticement," Giordino groaned.

"And just one more thing," Corsov added with a smile. "Try not to forget to keep the Chinese minister alive."

***

Pitt and Giordino took a cab to the solar energy facility, arriving an hour ahead of the Chinese minister's scheduled appearance. Smiling at a sleepy-eyed guard at the gate, they flashed a pair of dummy press credentials provided by Corsov and waltzed right into the facility. It was little more than a ten-acre lot peppered with dozens of flat black solar panels that supplemented the electricity produced by a large adjacent coal-burning power plant. Built by the power company as an experimental test station, it barely provided the power to light a football stadium. With more than two hundred sixty days of sunshine a year, Mongolia was rich in the essential resource needed to generate solar power, though the technology was well beyond affordability at the consumer level.

Steering clear of a hastily assembled greeting platform where a handful of state officials and power plant executives waited nervously, Pitt and Giordino concealed themselves behind a large solar panel near the entrance. Dressed in dark Chinese-tailored sport coats and sunglasses, with black woolen beret-type hats on their heads, they easily passed for local security types to those observing from a distance. They didn't have to wait long before the motorcade rolled through the gates a few minutes early and pulled up to the greeting platform.

Pitt smiled to himself at the unceremonious vehicles that made up the motorcade, a far cry from the ubiquitous black limousines found in Washington. A trio of clean but high-mileage Toyota Land Cruisers chauffeured the Chinese minister and his small cadre of assistants and security guards. The contingent was led by a Mongol security escort driving a yellow UAZ four-door jeep. Another UAZ jeep tailed the delegation, its left front fender battered by a prior traffic accident. The Russian-built UAZs, an offshoot of a military jeep, reminded Pitt of the boxy International Harvester four-wheel drives built in the U.S. back in the late 1960s.

"That's our ride," Pitt said, referring to the battered UAZ at the rear.

"I hope it's got a satellite radio and a nav system," Giordino replied.

"I just hope it's got tires that were manufactured in this century," Pitt muttered.

Pitt watched as the two men in the car casually got out and disappeared into the field of solar panels as the welcoming committee greeted the Chinese minister. With the delegation preoccupied, Pitt and Giordino moved undetected to the car and took the guards' place in the front seats.

"Here's your nav system," Pitt said, grabbing a map from the dashboard and tossing it on Giordino's lap.

He smiled when he noticed that the car didn't even have a radio.

A few yards in front of them, Commerce Minister Shinzhe was making quick order of the welcoming committee. He briskly shook hands with the plant officials, then walked off toward some solar panels to hasten the tour. In less than ten minutes, he was thanking the officials and climbing back into his car.

"He's sure got ants in his pants," Giordino said, surprised at the brevity of the tour.

"Guess he's anxious to get to Xanadu. The tour of the solar energy facility is apparently not the highlight of his visit."

Pitt and Giordino scrunched down in their seats as the motorcade looped around the facility and passed right by them on the way to the gate. Pitt then started the car and quickly caught up to the third Toyota in line.

The caravan rumbled east out of Ulaanbaatar, curving past the Bayanzurkh Nuruu Mountains. Mount Bayanzurkh, one of four holy peaks that surround Ulaanbaatar like points on a compass, capped the range. The scenic mountain peaks gradually gave way to rolling empty grasslands that stretched treeless as far as the eye could see. This was the famous Asian Steppe of historical lore, a swath of rich pasture-lands that spanned central Mongolia like a wide, green belt. Stands of the thick summer grass rippled like waves on the ocean under a stiff breeze that blew across the open range.

The lead vehicle followed an uneven paved road, which eventually turned to dirt, then transgressed into little more than a pair of ruts through the grassland. Driving at the back of the pack, Pitt was forced to navigate through a dirty haze kicked up by the other vehicles and magnified by the dust-laden winds.

The caravan traveled to the southeast, bounding across the grass-covered hills for another three hours before ascending a small cluster of mountains. At a nondescript iron gate, the delegation turned onto another road, which Pitt noted was professionally groomed. The road climbed several miles up the mountain before skirting a ridge and approaching a fast-moving river. An aqueduct had been built off the river and the caravan followed the cement-lined waterway as it twisted around a tight bend and approached a high-walled compound. The aqueduct continued up to the compound, running underneath its facing stone wall near a single-arched entryway. Two guards wearing bright silk dels stood on either side of a massive iron gate blocking the entrance. As the vehicles slowed to a stop in front of the gate, Pitt contemplated their next move.

"You know, we probably don't want to join the party for the grand entrance," he said.

"You never were one to fit in with the crowd," Giordino remarked. "Do you know if the other Mongol escorts are aware that we replaced their pals for the afternoon?

"I don't know. And I guess there is no sense in finding out."

Giordino gazed toward the entrance, then squinted. "Car problems?" he asked.

"I was thinking a flat tire."

"Consider it done."

Slipping out the passenger's door, Giordino crawled beside the front tire and removed the valve stem cap. Jamming a matchstick into the stem, he waited patiently as a rush of air whistled out of the valve. In a few seconds, the tire deflated to the ground and he screwed the cap back on. Just as he climbed back into the jeep, the iron gate was shoved open at the front of the line.

Pitt followed the line of cars as they entered the compound but stopped at the gate as one of the guards gave him a cross look. Pitt pointed toward the flat tire and the guard looked, then nodded. Barking something in Mongolian, he motioned for Pitt to turn right after he entered the compound.

Pitt made a show of limping slowly behind the other cars as he quickly surveyed the complex. The ornate marble residence was directly ahead, fronted by the manicured garden. Pitt had no idea what the real Xanadu looked like centuries ago, but the structure before him was spectacular in its own right.

Plenty of pageantry was on display for the minister as a pair of escorts riding snow white horses led the procession to the front portico. A Chinese flag blew stiffly on a mast adjacent to an arrangement of nine tall wooden poles. Pitt noticed that a chunk of white fur resembling a foxtail dangled from each pole top.

As the procession approached the residence, Pitt strained to identify Borjin among the greeting party on the porch but he was too far away to see any faces.

"Any sign of Tatiana in the welcoming committee?" he asked as he began wheeling the car out of line and toward the building on the right.

"There's at least one woman standing on the porch, but I can't make out if it is her," Giordino said, squinting through the windshield.

Pitt guided the car toward the garage and drove through its open bay doors. The flat tire flopped loudly on the concrete floor as he brought the car to a stop beside a segregated bay flanked with tool chests. A grease-stained mechanic in a red baseball cap came running over, yelling and waving his arms at the jeep's occupants. Pitt ignored the man's ravings and flashed a friendly smile.

"Pfffft," he said, pointing toward the flat tire.

The mechanic walked around the front of the car and examined Giordino's handiwork, then looked through the windshield and nodded. He turned and walked to the end of the bay, returning a moment later with a floor jack.

"Might be a good time to take a walk," Pitt said, climbing out of the car.

Giordino followed him as they walked toward the open garage door, then stopped as if to mill about while waiting for the tire to be repaired. But rather than watch the mechanic, they carefully scrutinized the interior of the garage. Several late-model four-wheel drives were parked in front, while the rest of the building was filled with large trucks and some excavating equipment. Giordino rested his foot on a maintenance cart parked by the door and studied a dusty brown panel truck.

"The enclosed truck," he said quietly. "Looks a lot like the one at Baikal."

"Indeed, it does. How about the flatbed over there?" Pitt said, motioning to a cab and flatbed sitting nearby.

Giordino glanced at the truck and flatbed, which were empty save for some canvas and ropes strewn over one side.

"Our mystery prize?"

"Perhaps," Pitt replied. He peered across the grounds and then at the building next to the garage.

"We probably have some temporary immunity around here," he said, nodding toward the building. "Let's take a walk next door."

Proceeding as if they knew where they were going, they strolled to the brick building next door. They passed a large loading dock and walked through an adjacent glass entry door. Pitt expected to find a reception area, but the entrance led instead into the middle of a large work bay that opened onto the empty dock. Test equipment machines and electronic circuit boards were scattered around several workbenches, being tinkered with by a pair of men in white antistatic lab coats. One of the men, who had small birdlike eyes set behind wire-rimmed glasses, stood and looked at Pitt and Giordino suspiciously.

"Stualét?" he asked, recalling the Russian word for "toilet" that he picked up in Siberia.

The man studied Pitt for a moment, then nodded and pointed down a corridor that ran from the center of the room. "On the right," he said in Russian, then sat down and resumed his tinkering.

Pitt and Giordino walked past the two men and turned down the corridor.

"Impressive language skills," Giordino said quietly.

"Just one of the nearly five words I know in Russian," Pitt boasted. "I just recalled Corsov saying that most Mongolians know a smidgen of Russian."

They moved slowly down the wide tiled corridor, which stretched twenty feet across, and whose ceiling was nearly as high. Skid marks on the floor indicated the movement of large equipment up and down the corridor. The hallway was lined with large plate-glass windows that revealed the interior of the rooms on either side. Small labs, stockpiled with various electronic test and assembly equipment, occupied most of the building space. Only an occasional office and desk, decorated in Spartan blandness, broke up the technical areas. The entire building was strangely cold and silent, in part because only a handful of technicians appeared to work there.

"Looks more like the back of a Radio Shack than an Exxon gas station to me," Giordino said.

"It does give the appearance they are interested in something other than pumping oil out of the ground.

Unfortunately, that may mean that Theresa and the others weren't brought here."

Passing by the restroom, they continued down the corridor until it ended at a thick metal door that closed over a high floor sill. Glancing around the empty hallway, Pitt grabbed the handle and pushed on the heavy door, which opened inward. The thick door swung back slowly, revealing a vast chamber. The room occupied the entire end of the building, with a high ceiling that rose over thirty feet. Row after row of cone-shaped spikes protruded from the walls, ceiling, and even the floor, which lent the appearance of some sort of medieval torture chamber. But there was no danger from the spikes, as Pitt confirmed when he squeezed one of the foam-rubber cone tips between his fingers.

"An anechoic chamber," he said.

"Built to absorb radio-frequency electromagnetic waves," Giordino added. "These babies are usually the property of defense contractors, used for testing sophisticated electronics."

"There's your sophisticated electronics," Pitt said.

He pointed to the center of the room, where a large platform stood on stilts above the foam floor. A dozen large metal cabinets were jammed onto the platform next to several racks of computer equipment.

In the middle of the platform was an open center section, where a torpedo-shaped device hung from a gantry. Pitt and Giordino climbed across a catwalk that led from the door to the platform.

"This ain't the stuff of roughnecks," Pitt said, eyeing the equipment.

The cabinets and racks contained over forty computer-sized modules linked together with several yards of thick black cable. Each rack had a small LED display and several power meters. A large box with dials marked ERWEITERUNG and FREQUENZ sat at the end, next to a monitor and keyboard.

Pitt studied the markings on the equipment and raised a brow in curiosity.

"My high school foreign language skills may be a little rusty, but those dials are marked in German. I believe that last dial translates to 'Frequency' "

"German? I would have thought Chinese or Russian would be more in vogue."

"Most of the electronics equipment looks to be of German manufacture as well."

"There's some serious horsepower involved," Giordino said, counting the array of transmitter cabinets cabled in sequence. "What do you make of it?"

"I can only guess. The large cabinets look like commercial-grade radio transmitters. The racks of computers must be used for performing data processing. Then there's the hanging tripod."

He turned and examined the device dangling from the center of the platform. It consisted of three long tubes fashioned together and standing nearly ten feet high. The lower ends flared near the floor, bound with a thickly matted material. The opposite ends, standing well above Pitt's head, sprouted a thick bundle of cables, which trailed to the computer racks.

"They resemble some sort of amplified transducers, though bigger than I've ever seen. It could be a beefed-up seismic-imaging system, used for oil exploration," he said, studying the tripod-shaped device that hung vertically.

"Looks more advanced than any drill operation I've ever seen."

Pitt glanced at several manuals and notebooks lying beside the equipment. He flipped through them casually, noting that they were all written in German. He opened what appeared to be the key operating manual and tore the first few pages out, stuffing them in his pocket.

"A little light reading material for the ride home?" Giordino said.

"Some practice for my German verb conjugations."

Pitt closed the manual, then they both made their way back across the catwalk and exited the chamber.

Walking down the hallway, they heard a sudden commotion coming from the lab at the far end.

"The rat fink may have called the heat on us," Giordino said.

"A good bet," Pitt said, scanning the hallway. He took a few steps back and opened the chamber door, then returned to Giordino. "Maybe we can try to sneak past them."

They quickly moved up the hallway, then Pitt opened the door to one of the windowed labs and slipped in. Giordino followed behind, then closed the door and turned off the lights. As they stood out of sight from the hall window, they noticed an odd chemical smell permeating the room. Peering across the darkened room, Pitt made out a number of stainless steel vats, along with a table full of small brushes and dental picks.

"I think they're taking the bait," Giordino whispered.

The sound of footsteps echoed down the hallway, drawing close and then passing by. Peeking through the glass, Giordino could see two men in silk uniforms marching toward the chamber door.

"Find me a broom," he whispered to Pitt, then flung the door open.

In a flash, he was running down the hall. But instead of heading for the exit, he ran barreling toward the two men. Like a charging linebacker delivering a blindside hit, he plowed into the backs of both men as they were peeking through the chamber door. The collision reminded Pitt of a bowling ball striking a pair of pins to pick up a spare. The two men went sprawling into the chamber, flying face-first onto the padded floor. Before they knew what hit them, Giordino had popped up from the ground and yanked the chamber door shut behind them. Pitt arrived a second later with a mop he found by the bathroom and broke off a four-foot section of the handle. Giordino rammed the stick through the door handle and wedged it tightly against the side frames.

"That should give us a head start," Giordino said, rubbing his shoulder in pain.

Pitt smiled at hearing shouts from the men, their voices muffled to a whisper by the sound-deadening materials inside the chamber. They began moving down the corridor when Pitt suddenly stopped by the room in which they had hidden.

"Just curious," he said, flicking the lights on and reentering the lab.

"Remember the cat."

Pitt circled the room surveying the steel vats, which were filled with a clear fluid that smelled of formaldehyde. He stopped in front of one of the vats, gazing at a shiny object that lay in a tray at the bottom. Finding a pair of tongs, he pulled out the item and dried it off on a towel.

It was a pendant, made of silver formed in an ornate diamond shape. A falcon or eagle with two heads was engraved on the top edge, above a lustrous red stone that sparkled from the center. A finely detailed inscription in Arabic lettering circled the bottom. It had an ancient and imperial look about it, as if it was commissioned for a woman of high royalty.

"An artifact conservation lab mixed in with an electrical engineering facility?" Pitt asked. "An odd combination."

"Maybe he just likes to collect coins. How about we get out of here before our friends remember they are carrying guns?"

Pitt slipped the pendant into his pocket, then shut off the light and followed Giordino down the corridor at a fast clip. Reaching the large bay at the end, they zipped through the exit door as the white-coated engineer stared at them in surprise.

"Thanks for the pit stop." Pitt smiled, then disappeared out the door.

Outside, the winds had gradually increased, buffeting the compound with gusting swirls of thick dust. Pitt and Giordino stepped back into the garage, finding the mechanic wrestling some frozen lug nuts to get the front wheel off. Pitt moved to the doorway and looked across the lawn toward the main residence. He could just barely make out the two Mongolian escorts talking casually on the porch. Two other men stood on either side of the doorway that led into the residence.

"If they didn't let our Mongol cohorts in the front door, then I don't think they are going to let us stroll right in," he said.

"We'll have to find another entrance. If Theresa and the others are here, they would have to be somewhere in that building." Giordino said, scanning the grounds around the residence. "We won't have a lot of time to walk around the complex before our chamber maids get loose."

"Who said anything about walking?" Pitt asked.

Returning to the garage, he nodded toward the grounds maintenance cart parked near the doorway and checked to see that the key was in the ignition. When nobody in the garage was looking, he grabbed the steering wheel and pushed the cart toward the open door. Giordino stepped over and helped, practically lifting the cart out the door and around the side wall. Out of view of the garage occupants, Pitt hopped in and started up the gas engine.

Normally utilized by golf course maintenance crews, the green cart had a small flat bed built behind the two front seats. Pitt jammed the accelerator down and the cart burst off across the grounds as the rear tires spit gravel. Glancing to his right, he noticed two men on horseback exiting the stable at the far end of the laboratory building, their shapes temporarily disappearing in a blowing swirl of dust. He quickly spun the steering wheel to the left and drove toward the opposite side of the compound.

The cart zipped past the main entrance as Pitt followed a path around the perimeter wall, the guards outside paying no attention to the green maintenance vehicle whizzing by. Pitt slowed as the gravel path led to a small decorative bridge. Beneath it, the deep aqueduct waters from the nearby river flowed into the numerous canals that crisscrossed the landscaped grounds.

"Nice irrigation system," Giordino remarked as Pitt stopped the cart on top of the bridge. To their left, they could see the top halves of a pair of large pipes that carried the water under the compound wall before being dispersed into the canals. Pitt continued on, following the wall around toward the left edge of the residence. There still appeared to be no access to the building, other than through the main portico where the Mongol escorts and entry guards still stood.

Ahead, the compound wall ended abruptly at a sharp, rocky precipice. On the other side of the wall, an underground pipe spewed the outgoing canal water in a man-made waterfall that tumbled down the mountainside before rejoining the river below. Pitt parked the cart behind a tree and walked to the edge.

An open gap stretched between the wall and the residence, too steep to drive the cart down but not as harrowing as the waterfall drop-off. A small footpath zigzagged down to a narrow plateau that formed the foundation for the hillside residence. Beyond the narrow strip of level ground, the terrain sloped steeply down the mountain for nearly half a mile, eliminating the need for a rear security wall.

"Try the back door?" Giordino asked.

"It's either that, or drive the golf cart through the front door. Let's just hope there is a back door."

They proceeded to hike down the short but steep trail, which they found heavily trodden with hoofprints.

Mist from the adjacent waterfall blew onto them from the strong breeze, sending a damp chill through to their bones. Making their way to the back side of the residence, they found it was built up on a slight berm that rose above them, sided by a rock wall.

"Not a lot of easy ways in and out of this joint, are there?" Giordino asked, eyeing the rock wall that appeared to stretch for the length of the building.

"I guess the fire marshal hasn't paid them a visit yet."

They moved toward the center of the house, hugging the stone wall so as to stay out of view of any windowed rooms above them. The wind was gusting fiercely now, and they shielded their faces with their hats to keep the blowing dust from stinging their eyes.

Reaching the edge of the courtyard, they crept behind a low hedge and surveyed the grounds. They immediately spotted the entry door off the courtyard, which was advertised by the presence of two silk-clad guards standing at either side.

"Do you want to try your language skills with these two?" Giordino asked in seriousness.

Pitt really didn't want to fight his way into the residence, as there was no real proof that Theresa and the others were even there. But they were already facing a tenuous departure after the encounter at the lab, so there was little more to risk anyway. They needed to know one way or the other.

"There's a line of bushes across the interior that runs close to the door," he noted. "If we can get over to that stone building and work our way around the back side, we might be able to creep up and surprise them."

Giordino nodded, looking at the odd stone building across the courtyard. They waited until a thick swirl of dust kicked up, then sprinted toward the round stone structure. Skirting around its back side, they moved toward its entryway. Ducking into the tunnel-like opening, they crouched down and peered at the two guards across the yard. The security men were still standing beside the residence door, cowering slightly in the alcove to escape the bite of the wind. Pitt and Giordino had made it across the courtyard unseen.

Or so they thought.

-21-

After a bouncy four-hour ride across the mountains and steppes of Central Mongolia, traversing a road that barely qualified as a pair of ruts, Commerce Minister Shinzhe was convinced his trek was a wild-goose chase. There was no magic supply of oil hiding in Mongolia. He had seen not a single oil well during the entire trip. It was President Fei's fault, foolishly charging at windmills rather than accepting reality. Only Shinzhe had inherited the Don Quixote outfit.

The commerce minister waited angrily for his driver to pull up to the next ger, half expecting the president of Avarga Oil to welcome him on a broken-down pony. His anger and disgust softened rapidly when the dusty caravan rolled through the iron gates and into the stately compound of Tolgoi Borjin. Arriving at such an outpost in the middle of nowhere suddenly gave a jolt of credence to their journey. And pulling up to the front of the elegant residence, Shinzhe could see that Borjin was no sheepherder.

The host was dressed in a finely cut European suit and bowed deeply as Shinzhe exited the vehicle. A translator at his side relayed his greetings in Mandarin.

"Welcome, Minister Shinzhe. I trust your journey was pleasant?"

"A delight to see the beautiful Mongolian countryside," Shinzhe replied, maintaining his diplomatic form as he rubbed dust from his eyes.

"May I present my sister Tatiana, who is our director of field operations?"

Tatiana bowed gracefully to Shinzhe, who noted she wore the same look of conceit that Borjin carried.

Shinzhe smiled warmly, then dutifully introduced his entourage. He turned and admired a contingent of horsemen in warrior attire that ringed the driveway.

"I have heard much about the Mongol horse," Shinzhe said. "Do you breed horses, Mr. Borjin?"

"Just a small stock for my security detail. I require that all my security employees be proficient in horsemanship and expert marksmen with the bow."

"An interesting testament to the past," Shinzhe said.

"A practical one as well. In these parts, a Mongol horse can go where no vehicle can. And some skills of warfare never lose their value. Modern technology is well and fine, but my ancestors conquered half the world with the horse and bow. I find they are still perfectly useful skills today. Please, let us escape this infernal wind and relax indoors," Borjin said, leading the group through the front door. He then led the group down the main hallway toward the large room at the end. Admiring the array of antiques decorating the corridor, Shinzhe stopped in front of a bronze sculpture of a prancing horse. The patinated green stallion was reflected off a colorful, framed mosaic mounted on the wall.

"A lovely sculpture," Shinzhe said, recognizing the design as Chinese. "Yuan Dynasty?"

"No, the Song Dynasty of slightly earlier," Borjin replied, impressed with the minister's eye. "Most of the antiques in the house date from the early thirteenth century, a time of the greatest conquests in Mongol history. The tile mosaic on the wall is an ancient work from Samarkand, and the carved pedestal on which the sculpture sits is from India, circa 1200 a.d. Are you a collector?"

"Not officially," the minister smiled. "I possess a few modest pieces of porcelain from the Yuan and Ming dynasties, but that is all. I am very impressed with your collection. Objects from that era are not readily marketed."

"I have an antiquities dealer in Hong Kong," Borjin explained with a flat look.

The entourage reached the conference room at the end of the corridor. Its huge floor-to-ceiling windows normally offered an expansive view from the hilltop, but little could be seen beyond the courtyard and sanctuary just below. The strong winds obscured most of the vista with swirling dust, the distant steppes peeking through the haze at only random intervals. Borjin strolled past a sitting area with couches and a bar, leading the group to a formal mahogany table where everyone was seated.

Borjin took a seat at one end, with his back to the wall. Behind him was a wide set of shelves that displayed a medieval arsenal. A collection of ancient spears, lances, and swords lined half the wall, while several handmade composite bows and metal-tipped arrows were hung opposite. Round metal helmets spiked with horsehair plumes lined the top shelf, fronted by several round clay objects that resembled primitive hand grenades. Guarding the entire collection was a huge stuffed falcon, its wings spread ominously at full breadth. The bird's head was tilted upward and its sharp beak pried open, as if it were shrieking a final cry of death.

Shinzhe looked from the weapons to the falcon and then to the man who owned them and felt an involuntary shiver. There was something about the oil executive that was savage like the falcon. The cold eyes seemed to hint at a hidden brutality. Shinzhe imagined that his host could pull one of the spears from the wall and thrust it through a man without a second thought. As a cup of hot tea was placed before him, the commerce minister tried to dispel his feelings and focus on the purpose of his visit.

"My government has received your proposal to supply a significant quantity of crude oil to our country.

The party leadership is grateful for your offer and most intrigued by the bountiful nature of the proposal.

On behalf of the party, I have been asked to confirm the validity of the proposal and discuss the remuneration necessary to conclude an agreement."

Borjin leaned back in his chair and laughed.

"Yes, of course. Why does Mongolia, nemesis to Cathay for a thousand years, suddenly desire to assist our uneasy neighbor to the south? How can a dust-laden receptacle of sand and grass, inhabited by ragtag peasants and sheepherders, suddenly materialize as a major source of natural resources? I will tell you why. It is because you made us prisoners in our own land. You and the Russians have barricaded us from the rest of the world for decades. We have become an isolated wasteland, a landlocked island of a forgotten time and place. Well, I'm afraid those days are over, Minister Shinzhe. You see, Mongolia is a rich land in more ways than one, and you didn't take the time or effort to appreciate that when you had the chance. Only now, Western companies are clamoring to come in and develop our mines and cut timber from our forests. But they are too late for the oil. For when nobody was even interested in prospecting our grounds we made the effort ourselves, and now we shall reap the rewards."

He nodded at Tatiana, who retrieved a map from a side bureau and unrolled it in front of the Chinese minister. She plucked a pair of jade carvings from the center of the table and used them to hold open the scrolled chart.

It was a country map of Mongolia. An irregular red oval was overlaid on a section near the southeastern border, appearing like an amoeba that had drowned in a cheap Merlot. The spot stretched for nearly fifty miles, its lower end rounding alongside the border of Chinese Inner Mongolia.

"The Temujin field. A natural basin that makes your aging Daqing field look like a bowl of spit," Borjin said, referring to China's largest oil field, which was in a state of decline. "Our test wells indicate potential reserves of forty billion barrels of crude oil and fifty trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The million barrels a day we will sell to you will be a pittance."

"Why has such a discovery not been publicized?" Shinzhe asked with a hint of skepticism. "I have heard nothing of such a find so close to our borders."

Borjin smiled, his teeth bared in a sharklike grin. "Few living people outside of this room are aware of the find," he said cryptically. "My own government knows nothing of these reserves. How else do you think I was able to acquire the entire land rights to the region? There have been minor exploratory forays into Mongolia that have touched upon the oil potential, but they have all missed the primary bonanza, if you will. A proprietary technology of ours helped pinpoint the windfall somewhat by accident," he said with a smile. "These are deep reserves, which explains in part why they were overlooked by previous exploration teams. But I need not bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that a number of test wells have provided initial confirmation of the reserve estimates."

Shinzhe sat quietly, the color draining from his face. He had little choice but to acknowledge the reality of the vast oil field. The fact that an arrogant charlatan of questionable morality controlled it made him sick to his stomach. Shinzhe was playing a weak hand and he knew that Borjin controlled the deck.

"Having oil in the ground is one thing, but delivering it within ninety days is quite another," the minister said soberly. "Your offer suggests we could see crude oil flowing within that time frame. I don't see how that is possible."

"It will take some doing on your part, but it is quite feasible," Borjin replied. Turning to Tatiana, he asked for another map from the bureau. She unrolled a second chart, which showed a map of Mongolia and northern China. A spiderweb of red lines crisscrossed the Chinese section of the map.

"The existing oil pipelines of China," Borjin explained. "Take a look at your recently completed northeast pipeline from Daqing to Beijing, with a spur from the port terminal at Qinhuangdao."

Shinzhe studied the map, noting a small X along a barren stretch of pipeline that ran through Inner Mongolia.

"The X is thirty kilometers from the Mongolian border and forty kilometers from a nearly completed pipeline span I am building to the border. You need only extend the pipeline from my termination to that spot on your Daqing line and the oil will begin to flow."

"Forty kilometers of pipeline? That can't be completed in ninety days."

Borjin stood up and paced around the table. "Come now, the Americans laid ten miles of rail track in a day constructing their transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. I have taken the liberty of already surveying the route and have the necessary pipe committed from a supplier. For additional consideration, I can also provide temporary excavation equipment. Surely for the country that has built the Three Gorges Dam, this should be child's play."

"You seem to have considered our needs well," Shinzhe said with veiled contempt.

"As a good business partner should." Borjin smiled. "And, in return, my demands are simple. You will pay a per barrel rate of one hundred forty-six thousand togrog, or one hundred twenty-five dollars U.S.

You will accede the lands of southern Mongolia, or the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, as you inanely refer to the territory. And you will provide me a direct and exclusive pipeline to the port of Qinhuangdao, where you will provide me an offloading port facility where I may export my excess supply of oil."

As Shinzhe gasped at the demand, the Mongol turned and gazed out the window, watching the winds swirl like tongues of fire. A movement caught his eye and he peered down at the courtyard. Two men dressed in dark suits were sprinting across it toward the sanctuary. Borjin watched as the two figures looped around the back side of the structure, then reappeared by the entrance and ducked inside. A tightness gripped his throat as he turned to the minister.

"If you will excuse me for a moment, I must attend to an urgent matter."

Turning his back before the minister could say another word, Borjin strode briskly from the room.

-22-

The winds had died down temporarily, forcing Pitt and Giordino to remain under cover in the stone entryway. Pitt looked up and admired the high archway that led to the main chamber of the stone edifice. Though the construction appeared ancient, it had obviously been rebuilt or refurbished, as evidenced by the smooth and unbroken layer of mortar between the stones. Situated in the center of the courtyard, Pitt realized that the main residence was probably built around the little stone building.

"A Buddhist temple?" Giordino asked, noting the flicker of candlelight down the corridor.

"Most likely," Pitt replied, aware that Buddhism was the predominant religion in Mongolia. Their curiosity piqued while waiting for the winds to resume, the two men moved quietly down the wide corridor and stepped into the main chamber.

Under the glow of a dozen burning torches and candles, Pitt and Giordino were surprised to find the chamber was a mausoleum rather than a temple. Though a small wooden altar was built at the far end, a pair of large marble sarcophaguses occupied either side. The tombs were made of white marble and had a modern look, suggesting the occupants had been interred within the last twenty or thirty years. Though Pitt couldn't read the Cyrillic script carved on the top slabs, he guessed they were the tombs of Borjin's mother and father, based upon Corsov's biography of the oilman.

He could not wager a guess about who lay in the centerpiece of the crypt, however. Standing on a polished marble pedestal was a carved granite sarcophagus that appeared much older. Although not massive in size, the tomb was illustrated with horses and wild animals carved across the top and sides, overlaid with paint. Though the images were clear, the paint had worn thin from aging. At the head of the tomb, nine posts rose into the air, each dangling a shock of white fur, as they had seen at the entrance to the residence.

"Somebody got a nice sendoff to the afterlife," Giordino said, eyeing the tomb.

"The illustrious Mr. Borjin must be something of a blueblood," Pitt replied.

Giordino looked past the sarcophagus and noted an object lying beneath the altar.

"Looks like they're going to need another coffin in here," he said, nodding toward the object.

Overlooked as they entered the chamber, the body both men now saw was stretched out on a bench beneath the altar. Pitt and Giordino walked over and were shocked to recognize the corpse. It was Roy, half covered in a thin blanket, but with the shaft of the arrow still protruding from his chest.

"Theresa and Wofford are here," Giordino said, his voice trailing off.

"Let's hope they haven't suffered the same fate," Pitt said quietly, pulling the blanket up so that it covered Roy's face. As he wondered whether they might be too late, the stillness of the chamber was suddenly broken by the approaching clatter of boots on the stone floor. A second later, the two guards Pitt had spied across the courtyard burst into the mausoleum. Dressed like the guards at the front gate, they didn't appear to be carrying traditional firearms. Instead, each man clutched a wooden spear capped by a razor-sharp metal tip. A short knife in a scarab hung from their waists, while on their backs they carried a small quiver and bow. They were the weapons of war used by the ancient Mongol horse soldiers and were every bit as deadly at short range as a modern handgun or rifle.

The guards slowed as they entered the chamber until spotting Pitt and Giordino at the altar. Regaining their speed, they charged around the central crypt with their spears thrust in front of them. It was a small stroke of luck that the guards did not stop and hurl their pikes at Pitt and Giordino but instead tried to impale them at close range.

Giordino reacted first, grabbing a small wooden bench by the altar and pitching it toward the legs of the charging guards. His aim was true and the wooden seat struck the nearer man's legs hard in the shin, taking his feet out from under him. He stumbled face-first to the floor, his wooden spear rolling harmlessly to the side.

The second guard leaped over the bench like a high hurdler and continued the charge, heading straight for Pitt at full speed. Pitt stood lightly on the balls of his feet, his legs coiled and his eyes glued to the tip of the spear as he waited for the attacker to lunge. Seeming to defy reason, he stood perfectly still, providing a stable target to aim for. The guard assumed Pitt was frozen with fear and would soon be an easy kill. But Pitt waited and watched until the guard was just a step away, drawing back the spear for a lethal forward jab. With a quick thrust of his legs, he sprang to one side while reaching out with his left hand and shoving the shaft of the spear in the other direction. The guard charged past, realizing with a sudden blank look on his face that he was stabbing air. He attempted to twist the spear to the side, but he had already run the spear tip past Pitt's body. Pitt tried unsuccessfully to grab the shaft but lost his grip as the guard barreled by and swung it toward him. The side of the shaft whipped around and jammed Pitt on the shoulder as it slipped through his fingers.

Both men were thrown off balance and staggered in different directions, the guard falling across the altar while Pitt was knocked toward the crypt. Pitt quickly rolled to his feet to face his attacker, then backed up toward the stone tomb that loomed a few inches behind him. The guard was leery of Pitt now, eyeing him for a moment as he regained his balance. Tightening his grip on the spear, he took a deep breath then charged again at Pitt, his eyes locked on his prey to ensure the kill.

Pitt stood unarmed with his back to the crypt, his eyes darting about in search of a weapon. Off to the side, he saw Giordino lunge at the fallen man on the ground. Preoccupied with subduing the first guard, Giordino was in no position to offer immediate help. Then Pitt remembered the fur-tailed poles.

The nine tall wooden poles stood in individual marble base plates at the head of the tomb. Pitt quickly backed over to the poles and reached around with his right hand, covertly gripping one of the poles behind his back. The guard thought nothing of the movement, simply adjusting his angle toward Pitt as he accelerated his charge. Pitt hesitated until the guard was a dozen steps away, then quickly yanked the upright pole toward the ground in front of him. At eight feet in length, the pole easily outstretched the guard's spear. With a stunned look, the guard helplessly tried to slow his charge as he realized Pitt was lunging at him with the huge rod. Too late, the blunt end of the pole struck in his stomach, driven forward by Pitt with all his might. The shocked guard was driven off his feet before falling to one knee, gasping for air as the wind was knocked out of him. The blow pried the spear from his clawlike grip, the lance rattling across the polished floor. Ignoring Pitt, he desperately crawled toward the weapon before looking up in horror. The wooden pole had been flipped around and now the marble base was hurdling toward him like a wrecking ball. Attempting to duck, the guard was struck on the top of his skull, dropping him flat to the floor in total unconsciousness.

"No respect for a man's furnishings," Giordino's voice grumbled as the pole and marble base crashed to the floor. Pitt looked over and saw Giordino rubbing the back of his fist as he stood over the unconscious body of the first guard.

"You okay?"

"Much better than my friend here. What do you say we get out of this box before any more Royal Lancers show up?"

"Agreed."

The two men hustled out of the chamber, Pitt scooping up one of the loose spears on their way out. The wind whistled through the archway as they reached the entryway and peeked cautiously into the compound. The sight was not encouraging.

Two horsemen, clad in bright silk tunics and round metal helmets, sat on their mounts near the residence door, replacing the foot guards. Nearby, another guard on horseback was combing the courtyard for signs of Pitt and Giordino. Knowing nothing good would come by hanging around, the two men ducked out the opposite side of the archway under a dirty gust of wind and crept around the back side of the stone mausoleum. As they moved toward the rear of the stone structure, they could see down the right wing of the residence. Curling around the far edge of the building, they spotted a half dozen horsemen in brightly colored garb riding in their direction. Unlike the guards they had encountered so far, these men appeared to have rifles slung over their shoulders.

"Fine time for the cavalry to appear," Giordino said.

"Just makes our exit route a little clearer," Pitt replied, knowing they would have to quickly cross the courtyard and backtrack the way they came in order to avoid the patrol.

Reaching the covered corral at the rear of the crypt, they ducked in to cut to the other side. Winding through a maze of crates and equipment, Pitt briefly eyed the large dust-covered antique car parked in back, surprised to identify it as an early 1920s Rolls-Royce. He started to take a step over the opposite rail when a whistling sound ripped past his ear, followed by a sharp twang. He glanced to his side to see an arrow fluttering out the side of a wooden crate just inches from Giordino's head.

"Incoming," he yelled, ducking as another arrow whistled by.

Giordino was already crouching behind a wooden barrel when the arrow slammed into a support post.

"A fourth horseman," Giordino said, peering over the top of the barrel.

Pitt looked into the courtyard and saw the horseman beside a hedge, pulling on a bowstring to fire a third arrow. Pitt was the intended target this time and he just barely slipped behind a cart before the arrow zinged by. It no sooner struck the cart then Pitt jumped to his feet and turned toward the guard. It was his turn to retaliate now. As the horseman reached over his back to draw an arrow, Pitt let fly the spear he'd carried from the crypt.

The horseman was nearly fifty feet away, but Pitt's throw held true as the lance soared toward the man in the saddle. Only a quick turn saved the guard from being impaled, but the sharpened spear still pierced flesh, striking the man's right arm above the elbow. His bow fell to the ground as he clasped the wound with his left hand to stop the flow of blood.

Pitt and Giordino's respite from attack was short-lived, however. The other three horsemen quickly closed ranks with their wounded partner and resumed the aerial barrage. On the opposite side of the corral, the galloping hoofbeats of the other patrol echoed above the shrieking wind as they too raced to the scene. Within minutes, the air in the corral was filled with a flying maelstrom of razor-tipped arrows, bursting into the wooden crates and carts with deadly force. The archers were highly skilled at their lethal talent, their arrows following Pitt and Giordino's every movement like a magnet. If not for the gusting winds, the two men would have been killed quickly. But the swirling gusts hampered the horsemen's vision, as well as deflected the flight of their arrows. For their part, Pitt and Giordino kept the attackers from approaching too closely.

Though weaponless, the two men improvised a defense as best they could. They found the wagons to be full of tools and field implements, which they turned into makeshift projectiles. Giordino was particularly proficient at heaving double-pronged picks, managing to impale one guard in the thigh with a throw while knocking another from his horse with a swirling toss. The flying picks and shovels temporarily kept the riders at bay, but the horsemen knew that they had the men trapped.

Amid the battle, the dusty winds had served as an ally to Pitt and Giordino, providing intermittent clouds of cover while distorting the archers' fire. But as if the atmospheric gods decided to take a respite to inhale, the blowing winds suddenly fell for a moment. As the dust settled and the howling ceased, the sudden calm spelled doom for the two trapped men. Readily visible in the middle of the corral, the men now had arrows flying at them in a relentless fury. Standing to fight would mean instant death and the two men dropped their tools and dove for cover. They both rolled under a large wagon, finding minimal protection behind the large-spoked wheels. A half dozen arrows buried their razor tips into the sides of the wagon just inches above their heads. From the opposite side of the corral, gunfire now erupted, as the second patrol abandoned their bows and sought to end the siege with rifle fire.

"I can do without the Custer scene," Giordino muttered, a trickle of blood running down his cheek where a splintered arrow shaft had ricocheted. "You don't suppose they would bite at a white handkerchief?"

"Not likely," Pitt replied, thinking of Roy. An arrow smashed into the wagon wheel beside him and he instinctively rolled away from the impact. A thin knobby protrusion struck him in the back, halting his turn. He twisted his head to find an object covered in a dirty canvas tarp sitting next to the wagon.

Another wave of arrows came flying in, forcing him to crouch to the ground alongside Giordino.

"The next cloud of dust, what do you say we rush one of the horsemen on the fringe?" Giordino asked.

"You grab the reins, I'll grab the rider, and we've got ourselves a mount. Only way I can see us getting out of here is to make a play for one of the horses."

"Risky," Pitt replied, "but likely our best chance." Rolling onto his side to survey the perimeter, he accidentally kicked off a section of the tarp covering the object by the wagon. Giordino noticed a sudden glint sparkle in Pitt's eyes as he peeked under the tarp.

"A change of plans?" he asked.

"No," Pitt replied. "We'll just try riding out of here on a horse of a different color."

-23-

The wall-mounted radio popped with the receipt of a signal, followed by the caller's voice.

The blowing wind created a background static that muffled the gravelly voice, though the proximity of the transmission made for a strong signal.

"We have them surrounded behind the sanctuary. They arrived with the Chinese delegation as Mongolian state security escorts, but are apparently imposters. My guards who were locked in the test chamber claim they are not Chinese but appear Russian."

"I see," Borjin replied, speaking into the handset in an irritated voice. "Government agents or, more likely, spies from a Russian oil company. See that they don't leave the compound alive, but hold the gunfire until the delegation has departed. I will expect a full report from security as to why they were not monitored at their arrival."

Borjin replaced the handset, then closed a cherrywood cabinet that concealed the two-way radio transmitter. Exiting the small anteroom, he walked down the hall and returned to the formal conference room. The Chinese minister stood at the window staring into the dust storm outside with his own sense of swirling obfuscation.

"Excuse the interruption," Borjin said, taking a seat with a grim smile. "A slight mishap has occurred with two of your state escorts. I'm afraid they won't be able to join you on your return trip. I will, of course, provide replacement escorts, if you desire."

Shinzhe nodded vaguely. "The gunshots we are hearing from the outside?" he asked.

"A training exercise by my security guards. No reason to be alarmed."

The minister stared blankly out the window, his mind clearly elsewhere. As if slowed by age, he sluggishly turned and sat down across from Borjin. "Your offer is akin to blackmail and your demands are preposterous," he said, his anger finally surfacing.

"My demands are nonnegotiable. And perhaps they are not so preposterous for a country facing an economic meltdown," Borjin hissed.

Shinzhe stared at his host with contempt. He had disliked the arrogant and demanding magnate from the moment they met. Though perfunctorily gracious, he obviously had no respect at all for China or its leadership position in the world. It pained Shinzhe even to attempt to negotiate, but he knew the state leaders, and the president in particular, were expecting a deal for the oil. With reason, he feared his country's leadership would accept the abominable proposal out of desperation. If only there was another way.

"Minister Shinzhe, you must view it as a mutually beneficial transaction," Borjin continued, regaining his composure. "China gets the oil it needs to keep its economy running, I get a long-term commitment as a major supplier, and the Mongolian Autonomous Republic rejoins its rightful place as part of greater Mongolia."

"Acceding sovereign territory is not an act taken lightly."

"There is nothing of significance that China must accede. We both know the region is little more than a rural dust bowl that is largely occupied by Mongol herders. My interest in reunifying the region is born of a cultural desire to restore the lands that once belonged to our nation."

"You may be correct that the region represents little of value. Still, it is most unusual for a private entity to be interfering in territorial exchanges."

"This is true. In fact, my government knows nothing of our accord. They will find it a quite pleasing political gift, one that will be most favored by the masses."

"And you will benefit handsomely, no doubt?"

"As broker, I have assigned a portion of the land rights to my company, but it represents only a small percentage of the total," he smiled devilishly. He handed a thick leather binder to Shinzhe. "I have already worked up the necessary agreements for state representatives of both countries to sign. It would please me to receive acknowledgment of your country's acceptance at the earliest opportunity."

"I will be reporting to the general secretary's council tomorrow afternoon. A decision will be forthcoming. Your fixed position on the terms may negate an agreement, I must warn."

"So be it. Those are my terms." Borjin rose to his feet. "I look forward to a long and fruitful relationship, Minister Shinzhe." Borjin bowed graciously, if insincerely.

Shinzhe rose and bowed stiffly in return, then left the room with his entourage. Borjin and Tatiana followed the Chinese delegation to the door and watched as they staggered through the howling dust storm to their cars. As the taillights blinked past the guard gate, Borjin closed the door and turned to Tatiana.

"The plum is ours for the taking," he said, walking back down the corridor.

"Yes, but the risks are many. They will not find it easy to give up the lands of Inner Mongolia. Perhaps they will begin to suspect something."

"Nonsense. The Chinese can appreciate the cultural desire of Mongolia to seek unification with its prior territory. A perfect cover story. And a rich irony, that they will give us the lands that we will in turn exploit to sell them oil."

"They will not be happy once they learn the truth. They might nullify the agreement, or worse. And they won't want to pay prices above the market rate."

"The latter point is a simple matter. With our newfound technology, we can keep the entire market unstable for years and profit richly. We have already proven that in the Persian Gulf, and will do so again."

They reached the conference room and stepped inside, moving to the small bar that was surrounded by dozens of shelved liquor bottles. Borjin reached for a bottle of cognac and poured two glasses.

"My dear sister, we have already won. Once the oil starts flowing, we will have the Chinese by the throat and they dare not renege. Should they have a change of heart, we simply accelerate the pipeline to Siberia and link up with the connection to Nakhodka. Then we will be able to sell our oil to Japan and the rest of the world and laugh in their face."

"Yes, thanks to our brother's fire ship incident at Ningbo the Chinese are in a desperate bind."

"Temuge has been working miracles, hasn't he?"

"I need not remind you that he nearly caused my death in Baikal," she said irritably.

"An unforeseen side effect, the large wave. But no matter, you are here safe now," he said with a slightly patronizing tone. "You must admit, he has been most effective. Coordinating the pipeline destruction in Siberia, then setting fire to the Chinese port when a suitable fault line could not be found. And the Persian Gulf team he assembled has been most effective. After the next demonstration in the Middle East, the Chinese will be crawling to us on their knees."

"And Temuge is proceeding across the Pacific to North America for the final strike?"

"They are already at sea. The Baikal equipment arrived in Seoul two days ago, and they departed shortly thereafter. I sent the Khentii excavation team with Temuge, since we had to cease operations after the incident with the Russian survey team."

"Their search efforts have produced nothing anyway. It is apparent from the empty crypt we found near Genghis that the other tomb was ransacked or else never interred. It is a mystery why the associated riches have never come to light."

"No matter, as the Chinese will soon provide us a healthy cash flow. We'll have to wait a week or two for the next oil shock," he said and smiled, "then they will be agreeably inclined."

Stepping out of the conference room, he walked to the adjacent staircase, his sister following close behind. Stopping at the head of the stairs, he raised his glass to the huge portrait of the ancient Mongol warrior that hung on the facing wall.

"The first step is complete. We are well on our way now to restoring the riches and glory of the Golden Clan."

"Our father would be proud," Tatiana said. "He has made it possible."

"To father and to our lord, Chinggis," he said, swallowing a gulp of the cognac. "May the conquests begin again."

-24-

Behind the residence, the head of security refastened a handheld radio to his belt. A bear-sized man by the name of Batbold, he had just received word that the Chinese delegation had left the compound. If the two marauders were still alive in the corral, they could be finished off with the rifles now.

The swirling dust obscured the interior of the corral, but the earlier rain of lead and arrows must have taken the two spies down. There was no longer the futile attempt to fling field implements at the surrounding forces. And, in fact, there had been no sight of either man for several minutes. They were surely dead by now, he surmised. Just to be sure, he ordered three more volleys of rifle fire into the center of the corral, then halted the shooting.

Removing a short sword he carried at his waist, Batbold dismounted and led three other men on foot toward the corral to examine the bodies. They marched to within ten feet of the wooden fence when they heard the sound of a wooden crate being smashed inside. As Batbold and his men froze in their steps, a new sound emerged, that of a metallic whirring that slowly died away. The security head took a tentative step forward, finally seeing movement behind one of the wagons as the whirring noise repeated itself again and again.

"There!" he shouted, pointing toward the wagon. "Aim and fire."

The three guards raised their carbines to their shoulders as a loud pop reverberated from inside. As the gunmen tried to take aim, a wall of boxes suddenly erupted from the side of the corral, knocking out a section of the wooden fence. An instant later, a low-slung object came bursting toward them accompanied by a screeching din.

Batbold stared wide-eyed as he watched a faded red motorcycle with attached sidecar racing straight toward him. The motorcycle appeared riderless, with a wooden crate propped on the seat, next to another crate atop the sidecar. Sidestepping its path, Batbold realized his eyes were deceiving him and quickly hoisted his sword in defense of the approaching machine. But it was too late.

As the motorcycle brushed by, Al Giordino popped through the crate on the sidecar like a crazed jack-in-the-box. In his hands he gripped a square-bladed shovel, which he swung at Batbold. The blunt face of the blade struck the security chief on the side of his jaw with a hard smacking sound. Batbold quickly melted to the ground, a look of stunned confusion frozen on his face.

The motorcycle charged toward the three guards behind Batbold, who scattered in panic without firing a shot. One man slipped and fell, his legs run over by the sidecar's wheels. The second man dove to safety, while the third got whacked in the back of the head by Giordino's shovel, sending him sprawling.

Peeking through a slot in the wooden crate draped over his shoulders, Pitt gunned the motorcycle away from the mounted riflemen and steered toward the group of archers. Picking a gap in the horses, he blasted toward the hole to break through the siege line.

"Keep down, the heat's about to turn up," he shouted to Giordino.

An instant later, a flurry of arrows began pinging into the sidecar and ripping into their makeshift wooden armor. Pitt felt a stinging in his left thigh from an arrow nick, and would have noticed a trickle of warm blood running down his leg had his senses not been focused elsewhere.

The aged motorcycle ripped toward the line of horsemen, trailing a cloud of black smoke from its overrich carburetion. As Pitt had hoped, the riflemen behind him had held their fire for fear of shooting the archers. But the archers themselves had no such qualms and let loose with a flurry of flying arrows.

Pitt decided to lessen the fire and drove directly toward one of the horses. The startled beast reared on its hind legs and spun to the side to let the noisy contraption pass, leaving its rider hanging on for dear life.

Pitt saw the flash of a lance go soaring by inches in front of his face, piercing the ground nearby. Then he was past the rearing horse and the line of archers, speeding away from the courtyard.

Giordino spun backward in the sidecar and peeked over the edge of his protective crate. The horsemen had quickly regrouped and began chasing after the motorcycle.

"Still on our heels," he shouted. "I'm going to play toss with these guys. Let me know when we get to the ski jump."

"Coming up," Pitt replied.

Before climbing aboard the motorcycle, Giordino had noticed a gunnysack full of horseshoes hanging from the wagon. He had judiciously tossed the bag into the sidecar and now used the metal shoes as projectiles. Popping out of the crate, he began hurling horseshoes at the nearest rider's head. The loopy hunks of metal were awkward to throw, but Giordino quickly took note of their aerodynamic qualities and began zeroing in on his targets. He quickly dazed two of the riders and disrupted the bow fire of several others, forcing the pursuers to keep their distance.

In the driver's seat, Pitt raced the motorcycle across the edge of the courtyard while holding the throttle at full. When he rolled against the Czechoslovakian motorcycle in the corral, he figured the 1950s-era bike was a metal corpse. But the 1953 Czech JAWA 500 OHC still had air in its tires, a couple of gallons of stale gas in its tank, and its engine turned over freely. On the seventh kick of its manual starter, the old twin-cylinder motor coughed to life, giving Pitt and Giordino a slim chance at freedom.

With the help of Giordino's horseshoe toss, they had opened up a comfortable lead over the pursuing horsemen. Pitt suddenly swung the handlebars to one side and aimed for the rear edge of the property.

"Fasten your seat belt, we're ready for takeoff," he yelled to Giordino.

Giordino ducked back into the sidecar and grabbed a handrail that ran across the front of the compartment. In his other hand, he gripped the last of the horseshoes he was preparing to toss.

"For luck," he muttered, and wedged the horseshoe into the cowling of the sidecar.

There was no wall at the back of the estate, as the edge of the yard dropped down a steep precipice.

Pitt knew it might be suicidal to make the attempt, but there was no other avenue for escape. Blasting toward the edge of the yard, he braked slightly then guided the motorcycle over the brink.

Pitt could feel his stomach drop as the ground disappeared from beneath their wheels and the motorcycle thrust forward. The first thirty feet were nearly a vertical drop and they plunged through the air before the front wheel kissed the ground. The rest of the motorcycle struck hard, jarring the wooden crates off the driver and passenger. The wooden shields, stitched with arrows, crashed to the ground beside them. Pitt was thankful to be free of the clumsy obstacle, though he knew the boxes had probably saved their lives. His focus quickly diverted to keeping the motorcycle balanced.

With the uneven weight of the sidecar, the motorcycle by all rights should have flipped when they struck the ground. But Pitt kept a firm hand on the handlebars and deftly adjusted the front wheel to compensate for the uneven landing. Fighting the natural instinct to pull away, he kept the motorcycle aimed straight down the mountain. The forward momentum stabilized the bike and sidecar, though they now tore down the slope at breakneck speed. Giordino's horseshoe seemed to bring them luck, as they faced no large rocks or major obstacles in their path down the steep face. Flecks of gravel occasionally spewed off the ground in front of them and Pitt realized they were being shot at from the ledge above.

The roar of the motorcycle and the howl of the wind easily obscured the sound of the gunshots. A swirl of dust blew over them, providing temporary cover from the peppering gunfire. But the winds also blinded Pitt. He held the handlebars rigid and just hoped they wouldn't fatally collide with a rock or tree.

Up on the ledge, several guards stood and fired at the fleeing motorcycle with their carbines, cursing as it disappeared into a blowing cloud of dust. A half dozen other horsemen continued the chase, leading their mounts down the steep incline. It was a slow decent for the horses, but once past the initial drop, the guards continued the pursuit with speed.

On the motorcycle, Pitt and Giordino hung on for dear life as the machine barreled down the mountain at nearly eighty miles per hour. Pitt finally released the rear brake, which he had instinctively held locked up since they went over the edge, realizing it was doing little to slow their decent.

After several seconds of a near-vertical plunge, the incline gradually eased. The slope still fell away sharply, but they no longer had the feeling of free falling. Pitt began to twist the handlebars slightly to avoid shrubs and rocks that dotted the hillside, regaining a minor control over the bike. Bounding over a sharp rut, both men flew out of their seats but were able to recover before the next dip. Pitt felt like his kidneys were being crushed with each bump, the stiff springs and hard leather seat offering little in the way of comfort.

Several times the motorcycle careened to one side or another, teetering on the brink of flipping over.

Each time, Pitt nudged the front wheel just enough to keep them upright, while Giordino would shift to aid balance. Pitt couldn't avoid every obstacle and several times the sidecar crashed over small boulders.

The streamlined nose of the sidecar soon looked like it had been battered with a sledgehammer.

Gradually the steep incline abated and the rocks, shrubs, and scattered trees gave way to dry grass. Pitt soon found himself feathering the throttle to maintain speed as the terrain softened. The wind was as harsh as ever and seemed to blow directly into Pitt's face. The swirling dust was thick and constant, limiting visibility to a few dozen feet.

"We still have a tail?" Pitt shouted.

Giordino nodded yes. He had stolen glances behind them every few seconds and had observed the initial contingent of horsemen start their ascent down the mountain. Though the pursuers were well behind now and long since obscured by the blowing blankets of dust, Giordino knew the chase was just beginning.

Pitt knew it as well. As long as the old motorcycle surged on, they would remain well ahead of the pursuing horses. But it might be a contest of elusion, and Pitt could only hope that their tracks would be obscured by the windstorm. The fact remained that their lives were pinned on an aged motorcycle with limited gas.

Pitt inquisitively reflected on the Czech motorcycle. The JAWA originated before the war, growing out of a factory that produced hand grenades and other armaments. Known for their lightweight but powerful engines, the postwar JAWAs were fast and technically innovative bikes with a reputation for durability, at least until the factory was nationalized. Despite gulping on a tank of flat gas, the old motorcycle purred along with barely a sputter. I'll take what you give me, Pitt thought, realizing that the more distance he put between himself and the horsemen, the better. Gritting his teeth, his squinted into the blowing dust and squeezed the throttle harder, holding tight as the old motorcycle roared into the swirling gloom.

-25-

Darkness settled quickly over the broad, rolling steppes. High clouds floating above the blowing dust blotted out the moon and stars, pitching the grasslands into an inky black. Only a tiny pinprick of light poked sporadically through the dry ground storm. Then the shaft of light would disappear, devoured by a blowing blanket of dust. In its wake was left the accompanying roar from a two-cylinder, four-stroke motor, whose constant rumble throbbed on without missing a beat.

The Czech motorcycle and sidecar bounded over the sea of grass like a Jet Ski hopping the waves. The aged bike groaned over every bump and rut but charged steadily across the hills. Pitt's hand ached from holding the throttle at full, but he was driven to coax every ounce of horsepower out of the old motorcycle. Despite the lack of a road and the wallowing sidecar, the old cycle charged across the empty grasslands at almost fifty miles per hour. At their sustained speed, they were widening the gap between their pursuers with every mile. But at the moment, it was an inconsequential point. The motorcycle's tires left an indelible track in the summer grass, which offered a conspicuous trail to their whereabouts.

Pitt had hoped to discover a crossroad that he could use to obscure their tracks, but all he found was an occasional horse path, too narrow to hide their tire marks. Once, he saw a light in the distance and attempted to steer toward it. But the brief ray vanished under a dust cloud, and they were left running across the darkened void. Though no roads appeared under the dim glow of the headlamp, Pitt could see that the landscape was gradually changing. The rolling hills had softened, while the grassland underfoot had thinned. The terrain must have moderated, Pitt noted wryly, as it had been awhile since he had heard Giordino curse from the jolts. Soon the hills disappeared altogether and the thick grassland turned to short turf, which eventually gave way to a hard gravel surface dotted with scrub brush.

They had entered the northern edge of the Gobi Desert, a vast former inland sea that covers the lower third of Mongolia. More stony plain than billowy sand dune, the arid landscape supports a rich population of gazelles, hawks, and other wildlife, which thrive in a region once swarming with dinosaurs.

None of that was visible to Pitt and Giordino, who could just barely make out rising granite uplifts among the sand and gravel washes. Pitt leaned hard on the handlebars, steering around a jagged stone outcropping before following a seam through giant boulders that eventually opened into a wide flat valley.

The motorcycle picked up a burst of speed as its tires met firmer ground. Pitt was blasted by thicker swirls of dust, though, which made the visibility worse than before. The three-wheeled machine charged across the desert for another hour, smacking shrubs and small rocks with a regular battering. At last the engine began to hiccup, then gradually stuttered and coughed. Pitt coaxed the bike another mile before the fuel tank finally ran as dry as the surrounding desert and the engine wheezed to a final stop.

They coasted to a stop along a flat sandy wash, the silence of the desert enveloping them. Only the gusting winds whistling through the low brush and the blowing sand skittering over the ground tested their hearing, blown raw by the motorcycle's loud exhaust. The skies above them began to clear and the winds settled down to just sporadic bursts. A sprinkling of stars peeked through the dusty curtain overhead, offering a snippet of light across the empty desert.

Pitt turned to the sidecar and found Giordino sitting there caked in grit. Under the twilight, Pitt could see his friend's hair, face, and clothes saturated with a fine layer of khaki dust. To his utter disbelief, Giordino had actually fallen asleep in the sidecar, his hands still tightly gripping the handrail. The cessation of the engine's blare and the nonstop swaying eventually stirred Giordino. Blinking open his eyes, he peered at the dark, empty wasteland surrounding them.

"I hope you didn't bring me here to watch the submarine races," he said.

"No," Pitt replied. "I think it's a horse race that is on tonight's billing."

Giordino hopped out of the sidecar and stretched while Pitt examined the wound to his shin. The arrow had just nicked the front of his shin before embedding itself in a cooling fin on the motor. The wound had stopped bleeding some time ago, but a splatter of red-based dust ran down to his foot like a layer of cherry frosting.

"Leg okay?" Giordino asked, noticing the wound.

"A near miss. Almost nailed me to the bike," Pitt said, pulling the broken arrow shaft from the engine.

Giordino turned and gazed in the direction they had traveled. "How far behind do you suppose they are?"

Pitt mentally computed the time and approximate speed they traveled since leaving Xanadu. "Depends on their pace. I'd guess we have at least a twenty-mile buffer. They couldn't run the horses faster than a trot for any sustained amount of time."

"Guess there wasn't a short road down the back of that mountain or they would have sent some vehicles after us."

"I was worried about a helicopter, but they couldn't have flown in that dust storm anyway."

"Hopefully, they got saddlesore and threw in the towel. Or at least stopped until morning, which would give us a little more time to thumb a ride out of here."

"I'm afraid there doesn't appear to be a truck stop in the vicinity," Pitt replied. He stood and turned the motorcycle handlebars in an arc, shining the headlight across the desert. A high, rocky uplift stretched along their left flank, but the terrain was empty and as flat as a billiard table in the other three directions.

"Personally speaking," Giordino said, "after that marble-in-a-washing-machine ride down the mountain, a small stretch of the legs sounds glorious. Do you want to keep marching into the wind?" he asked, pointing along the motorcycle's path, which led into the face of the breeze.

"We have a magician's trick to perform first," Pitt said.

"What trick is that?"

"Why," Pitt said with a sly smile, "how to make a motorcycle disappear in the desert."

***

The six horsemen had quickly given up any effort to keep pace with the faster motorcycle and settled their mounts into a less taxing gait, which they could maintain for hours on end. The Mongol horse was an extremely hardy animal, bred over centuries for durability.

Descendants of the stock that conquered all of Asia, the Mongol horse was nail tough. The animals were renowned for being able to survive on scant rations yet still gallop across the steppes all day. Short, sturdy, and, on the whole, mangy in appearance, their toughness was unmatched by any Western thoroughbred.

The tight group of horses reached the base of the mountain, where the lead horseman suddenly held up the pack. The dour-faced patrol leader peered at the ground though the heavy eyelids of a bullfrog.

Shining a flashlight, he aimed the beam at a pair of deep ruts cut through the grass, studying them carefully. Satisfied, he stowed the light and spurred his mount to a trot along the trail of ruts as the other horsemen fell in behind.

The commander figured that the old motorcycle could travel no more than another thirty miles. Ahead of them, there was nothing but open steppe and desert, offering few places to hide for over a hundred miles.

Conserving the horses, they would track the fugitives down in less than eight hours, he estimated. There was certainly no need to call in mechanized four-wheel drive reinforcements from the compound. It would be a meager challenge for his fellow horsemen. They all grew up learning to ride before they could walk and had the bowlegs to prove it. There would be no escape for the fugitives. A few more hours and the two men who had embarrassed the guards at Xanadu would be as good as dead.

Through the black night they forged on, riding into the blustery winds while tracking the linear trail left by the motorcycle's tires. At first, the taunting sound of the motorcycle's throbbing engine beckoned on an occasional gust of the rustling winds. But the sound soon evaporated over the distant hills, and the riders were left to their own quiet thoughts. They rode for five hours, stopping only once they reached the gravely plain of the desert.

The motorcycle's tracks were more difficult to follow over the hardened desert surface. The riders frequently lost the trail in the dark, halting their progress until the tire marks could be located under the glow of a flashlight. As dawn broke, the buffeting winds that had blinded them with sand the entire journey finally began to diminish. With the morning light, the trail became more visible, and the horsemen hastened their pace. The patrol leader sent a scout ahead, to alert the others in advance if the trail was lost over particularly hard stretches of ground.

The horsemen followed the trail through a sandy wash sided by a rocky bluff. Ahead, the terrain opened into a broad level plain. The motorcycle tracks snaked through the wash then stretched into the distance, clearly rutting the hard, flat surface. The riders began picking up speed again when the commander noticed his scout perched at a stop a few dozen yards ahead. At his horse's approach, the scout turned to him with a blank look on his face.

"Why have you stopped?" the patrol leader barked.

"The tracks ... have disappeared," the scout stammered.

"Then move ahead and find out where they resume."

"There is no continuation of the tracks. The sand ... it should show the tracks, but they just end here,"

the scout replied, pointing to the ground.

"Fool," the patrol leader muttered, then spurred his horse and wheeled to the right. Riding in a huge arc, he circled around the front of his stationary troupe, finally looping his way back to where they stood waiting. Now he was the one with a confused look on his face.

Climbing off his horse, he walked beside the motorcycle's tracks. The heels of his boots pushed easily into a light layer of sand that coated the hard plain. Following the twin trails of cycle and sidecar, he studied the ground until the tracks came to an abrupt end. Scanning the area, he saw that the soft layer of sand covered the ground in all directions. Yet the only visible markings were those made by the guards'

horses. There was no continuation of the motorcycle tracks, no human footprints, and no sign of the motorcycle itself.

It was as if the motorcycle and its riders had been plucked off the ground and vanished into thin air.

-26-

Perched like eagles high in a nest, Pitt and Giordino peered down at the proceedings from sixty feet above the desert floor. Cautiously scaling the nearby rocky edifice in the dark, they had discovered a high indented ledge that was perfectly concealed from the ground below. Stretched flat in the hollowed stone bowl, the two had slept intermittently until the horsemen arrived shortly after dawn.

Lying to the east of the horsemen, the morning sun aided their stealth, casting their pursuers in a bright glow while they remained nestled in the ridgetop's shadow.

Pitt and Giordino grinned as they watched the horsemen mope in utter confusion around the abrupt end of the motorcycle trail. But they were far from out of the woods yet. They watched with interest as two riders took off ahead, while the other four horsemen split up and searched along either side. As Pitt had hoped, the horsemen focused their search forward of the trail's end, not considering that the two fugitives had backed down the trail before taking to the rocks.

"You realize, Houdini, that you are just going to make them mad at us," Giordino whispered.

"That's all right. If they're mad, then maybe they will be less observant."

They watched and waited for an hour as the horsemen scoured the grounds ahead before regrouping at the trail's end. At the patrol leader's command, the riders spread out along the trail and retraced their original steps backward. Again, a pair of horsemen rode off to either side, with two of the riders approaching the edge of the rock ridge.

"Time to lay low," Pitt whispered as he and Giordino hunkered down into the hollow. They listened as the clip-clop of horse hooves drew closer. The hidden men froze as the sound paused directly beneath them. They had done their best to brush away their tracks before climbing the rock, but it had been done in darkness. And they weren't the only things at risk of exposure.

Pitt's heart beat a tick faster as he heard the riders converse for a moment. Then one of the horsemen dismounted and started climbing up the rocks. The man moved slowly, but Pitt could tell he was moving closer by the sound of his leather boots scuffing against the sandstone boulders. Pitt glanced at Giordino, who had reached over and clasped a baseball-sized stone near his leg.

"Nothing," the man shouted, standing just a few feet beneath the concealed ledge. Giordino flexed his rock-holding arm, but Pitt reached over and grabbed his wrist. A second later, the mounted horseman shouted up something to the rock climber. By his tone, Pitt guessed he was telling the man to get moving.

The scuffle of hard leather on soft rock began to move away, until the man reached the ground a few minutes later and remounted his horse. The clopping hooves echoed again, then gradually faded into the distance.

"That was close," Giordino said.

"Lucky thing our climber had a change of heart. That knuckleball of yours would have left a sting," Pitt replied, nodding toward the rock in Giordino's hand.

"Fastball. My best stuff is a fastball," he corrected.

Gazing off toward the trail of dust kicked up by the horsemen, he asked, "We stay put?"

"Yes. My money says they'll be back for another visit."

Pitt thought back to what he had read about the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century. A feigned retreat was the favorite battlefield tactic of Genghis Khan when facing a powerful opponent. His army often orchestrated elaborate staged retreats, some lasting several days. The unsuspecting enemy would be drawn to a defenseless position, where a punishing counterattack would destroy them. Pitt knew that taking to the desert on foot would place them at a similarly deadly risk against the mobile horsemen. He wasn't going to take that chance until he was sure they were gone for good.

Crouched in their stone lair, the two men rested from their night adventure while patiently waiting for danger to dissipate on the horizon. An hour later, a sudden rumble shook them awake. The noise sounded like faint thunder, but the sky was clear. Scanning to the north, they saw a high cloud of dust trailing the six horsemen. The horses were galloping at top speed, pounding down the path of the original trail like it was the home stretch at Santa Anita. In seconds, the pack raced past Pitt and Giordino's position until they reached the end of the motorcycle trail. Slowing their pace and splitting up, the horsemen fanned out and searched the area in all directions. The horsemen all rode with their heads hung down, scanning the ground for prints or other clues to Pitt and Giordino's disappearance. They searched for nearly an hour, again coming up empty. Then almost as suddenly as they appeared, the horsemen regrouped and headed back north along the trail, moving at a canter.

"A nice encore," Giordino said as the horses finally disappeared over the horizon.

"I think the party is finally over," Pitt replied. "Time for us to hit the highway and find a burger stand."

The men hadn't eaten since the day before and their stomachs rumbled together in empty harmony.

Climbing down the rock ridge, they moved toward the trail, stopping at a clump of tamarisk shrubs growing in thick concentration. Pitt grinned as he eyed the center branch, which was sprouting from the buried shell of the sidecar. A haphazard ring of rocks circled the partially exposed portions of the vehicle, obscuring its sides from the casual observer.

"Not bad for a nighttime camouflage job," Pitt said.

"I think we were a little lucky, too," Giordino added. He patted his coat pocket, which held the horseshoe he had removed from the sidecar's cowling.

Pitt's scheme to make the motorcycle disappear had worked better than he'd expected. After running out of gas, he knew it was just a matter of concealment. Backtracking along their trail on foot, he'd found a hardened gravel gully a few hundred feet behind, then returned to the motorcycle, brushing away the original tire tracks along the way with a thick strand of scrub brush. Then he and Giordino had pushed the motorcycle and sidecar backward along the same path to the gully, stopping periodically to brush away their footprints under the beam of the headlight. To the pursuers following the tracks, there was no way of telling that the motorcycle had actually moved backward from its last marks.

Pitt and Giordino had pushed the motorcycle and sidecar down the gully as far as they could, then set about burying it. Giordino had found a small tool kit beneath the seat of the sidecar. Working under the light of the headlamp, they disassembled the sidecar from the motorcycle. Laying it flat in a nearby hollow, they were able to bury the motorcycle under a few inches of sand. The task was made easier once Pitt fashioned a shovel blade from the seat back. The lightly blowing sand, cursed till now, aided their cause by covering their interment project in a light layer of dust.

The sidecar proved more troublesome to hide once they discovered a hard layer of bedrock lying six inches beneath the surface. Realizing they would never get the sidecar buried without a shovel and pickax, they dragged it to a cluster of tamarisk bushes and buried what they could in the center of the thicket. Giordino stacked rocks around the perimeter while Pitt dug up a thick shrub and planted it on the seat, its droopy branches covering the sides. Though far from invisible, the ad hoc camouflage had done the trick, as evidenced by a set of hoofprints that scratched the sand just a few feet away.

As the midday sun beat down on them, sending a battery of heat waves shimmering off the desert floor, the two men looked nostalgically at the half-buried sidecar.

"Didn't think I'd miss riding in that contraption," Giordino said.

"Not so bad, given the alternative," Pitt replied, scanning the horizon for signs of life. A barren emptiness stretched in all directions, punctuated by an eerie silence.

Pitt brought his left arm up in front of his face, positioning his wrist so that his Doxa watch was flat at eye level. Then he pivoted his body around toward the sun, turning his body until the bright yellow orb was aligned with the hour hand on his watch, which read two o'clock. An old survival trick, he knew that south must be halfway between the hour hand and twelve o'clock if he was standing in the Northern Hemisphere. Peering over his watch at the terrain, he visually lined up one as south, seven as north, and west was between the two at four o'clock.

"We go west," Pitt said, pointing toward some red-hued hills that ambled across the horizon.

"Somewhere in that direction is the Trans-Mongolian railway, which runs from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar. If we head west, we'll have to run into it eventually."

"Eventually," Giordino repeated slowly. "Why does that sound like we don't have a clue how far that could be?"

"Because we don't." Pitt shrugged, then turned toward the hills and started walking.

-27-

The Gobi desert hosts some of the most hostile temperature extremes in the world. Blistering summertime temperatures of over 110 degrees plummet to minus 40 degrees in the winter months. Even in a single day, temperature swings of 60 degrees are not uncommon. Taken from the Mongolian word meaning "waterless place," the Gobi rates as the world's fifth-largest desert. The arid lands were once an inland sea, and, in later eons, a swampy stomping ground for dinosaurs. The Southwest Gobi still rates as a favorite destination for globe-trotting paleontologists in search of pristine fossils.

To Pitt and Giordino, the vacant undulating plains resembled an ocean, though one made of sand, gravel, and stone. Pink sandstone bluffs and craggy red-rock outcroppings bounded a gravel plain blanketed with brown, gray, and ebony pebbles. Framed against a crisp blue sky, the barren land teemed with its own brand of wasteland beauty. For the two men trekking across the desolate mantle, the scenic environs were a calming diversion to the fact they were in a potential death zone.

The afternoon temperature bounded over the 100-degree mark as the sun seared the rocky ground. The winds had dwindled to a slight breeze, offering all the cooling power of a blowtorch. The two men didn't dare shorten their sleeves or long pants, knowing the ultraviolet ray protection was more important than a slight improvement in comfort. They reluctantly kept their coats as well, tying them around their waists for the chilly night ahead. Tearing a section of the jacket lining out, they fashioned silk bandannas on their heads, which made them look like a pair of wayward pirates.

But there was nothing humorous about the task at hand. On their second day without food or water, crossing a baking desert by day while facing near-freezing temperatures at night, they faced the double dangers of dehydration and hypothermia. Strangely, their hunger pangs had gone away, replaced by an unrelenting and unquenchable thirst. The pounds of dust swallowed during the motorcycle ride had hardly improved matters, adding to their dry, constricting throats.

To survive the desert heat, Pitt knew that conserving their strength was critical. They could survive three days without water, but over-expending themselves in the heat of the day could cut that time in half. Since they were well rested from their morning concealment, they could push their pace for a short while before stopping, Pitt decided. They still had to find civilization in order to survive.

Pitt picked out a physical landmark in the distance, then began walking at a measured pace. Every half hour or so, they would seek out a rock formation that offered shade and rest in the shadows, allowing their bodies to cool. The pattern was repeated until the sun finally dipped toward the horizon and the ovenlike temperatures fell from high to medium.

The Gobi is a large desert and sparsely populated. But it isn't entirely a void. Tiny villages pepper the regions where shallow wells can be dug, while nomadic herders roam the fringes where scrub grass grows. If the men kept moving, they were bound to run into somebody. And Pitt was right. Somewhere to the west was the railroad line from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar and a dusty road that ran parallel to the tracks. But how far was it?

Pitt kept them trudging on a westerly tack, checking their heading with the sun and his watch. As they marched across the flats, they came to a set of ruts running perpendicular to their path.

"Hallelujah, a sign of life on this alien planet," Giordino said.

Pitt bent down and studied the tracks. They were clearly made by a jeep or truck, but the edges of the ruts were dull and caked with a light layer of sand.

"They didn't drive by yesterday," Pitt said.

"Not worth the detour?"

"These tracks could be five days old or five months old," Pitt said, shaking his head. Resisting the temptation to see where they led, the two men ignored the tracks and continued on their heading to the west. They would cross a few more tire tracks that trailed off in different directions to places unseen.

Like most of Mongolia, there were few formal roads in the desert. Traveling to a destination was simply a matter of point and go. If a satellite in space ever mapped the myriad of lone tracks and trails across Mongolia, it would resemble a plate of spaghetti dropped on the floor.

As the sun dipped beneath the horizon, the desert air began to cool. Zapped by the heat and lack of fluids, the weakened men were invigorated by the cool air and they gradually picked up their pace across the gravel. Pitt had aimed them toward a rocky three-peaked spire he used as a compass landmark, which they reached shortly after midnight. A clear sky with a bright half-moon had helped illuminate the way under darkness.

They stopped and rested on a smooth slab of sandstone, laying down and studying the stars overhead.

"The Big Dipper is over there," Giordino said, pointing to the easily identifiable part of the constellation Ursa Major. "And the Little Dipper is visible just above it."

"Which gives us Polaris, or the North Star, at the end of its handle."

Pitt rose to his feet and faced toward the North Star, then raised his left arm out from his side.

"West," he said, his fingers pointing to a dark ridge a few miles away.

"Let's get there before it closes," Giordino replied, grunting slightly as he stood up. The horseshoe in his coat pocket jabbed his side as he rose and he subconsciously patted the pocket with a knowing smile.

With a new compass bearing on the horizon, they set off again. Pitt checked the sky every few minutes, making sure the North Star remained to the right of them. The lack of food and water began to show on the two men, as their pace slowed and casual conversation fell silent. The wound in Pitt's leg began to let itself be known, firing a sharp throb with every step of his left foot. The cool night air soon turned chilly, and the men slipped into the coats they had toted around their waists. Walking kept them warm but consumed crucial body energy that was not being replenished.

"You promised me no more deserts after Mali," Giordino said, harking back to the time they nearly perished in the Sahara Desert while tracing a discharge of radioactive pollutants.

"I believe I said no more sub-Saharan deserts," Pitt replied.

"A technicality. So at what point can we hope that Rudi calls in the Coast Guard?"

"I told him to assemble our remaining equipment off the Vereshchagin and, if he could commandeer a truck, then meet us in Ulaanbaatar at the end of the week. I'm afraid our mother hen won't miss us for another three days."

"By which time we will have walked to Ulaanbaatar."

Pitt grinned at the notion. Given a supply of water, he had no doubt the tough little Italian could walk to Ulaanbaatar carrying Pitt on his back. But without a source of water—and soon—all bets were off.

A cold breeze nipped at them from the north as the night temperature continued to plummet. Moving became an incentive to keep warm, though they took satisfaction in knowing the summer nights had a short duration. Pitt kept them heading toward the ridge to the west, though for a time it seemed as if they weren't moving any closer. After two hours of trudging through a valley of loose gravel, they began climbing a series of low rolling hills. The hills gradually grew in size and height until they crested a high bluff, which abutted the base of the target ridge. After a brief rest, they assaulted the ridge, hiking most of the way up before they were forced to crawl on their hands and knees across a rugged section of boulders near the peak. The climb exhausted the men, and they both stopped and gasped for air when they finally reached the top.

A slow-moving cloud blotted the moonlight for several minutes, pitching the ridge top into an oily blackness. Pitt sat down on a mushroom-shaped rock to rest his legs, while Giordino hunched over to catch his breath. While still tough as nails, neither man was the spry stallion of a decade earlier. Each silently coped with a litany of aches and pains that wracked their legs and body.

"My kingdom for a satellite phone," Giordino rasped.

"I'd even consider the horse," Pitt replied.

As they rested, the silvery half-moon slid from behind the cloud, casting their surroundings in a misty blue glow. Pitt stood and stretched, then gazed down the other side of the ridge. A steep incline sloped into some craggy low bluffs that overlooked a bowl-shaped valley. Pitt studied the small basin, detecting what appeared to be several dark round shapes sprinkled across the central valley floor.

"Al. Check my mirage down the way," he said, pointing to the valley floor. "Tell me if it matches yours."

"If it includes a beer and a submarine sandwich, I can already tell you the answer is yes," Giordino replied, standing upright and walking over to Pitt. He took a long patient look down the slope, eventually confirming that he saw nearly two dozen black dots spread about the valley floor.

"It ain't Manhattan, but civilization it appears."

"The dark spots look to be shaped like gers . A small settlement, or a group of nomadic herders, perhaps," Pitt speculated.

"Big enough that somebody's got to have a coffeepot," Giordino replied, rubbing his hands together to keep warm.

"I'd bank on tea, if I were you."

"If it's hot, I'll drink it."

Pitt glanced at his watch, seeing it was nearly three A.M. "If we get going now, we'll be there by sunup."

"Just in time for breakfast."

The two men took off for the dark camp, working their way cautiously down the short ravine, then snaking their way through the rock-strewn hills. They traveled with a renewed sense of vigor, confident the worst of their ordeal was behind them. Food and water awaited them in the village below, which was now in sight.

Their progress slowed as they wound around several vertical uplifts that were too steep to traverse. The jagged rocks gave way to smaller stands of sandstone that the men could climb over and through. Hiking around a blunt mesa, they stopped and rested at the edge of a short plateau. Beneath them, the black-shadowed encampment sat less than a mile away.

The first strands of daylight began lightening the eastern sky, but it was still too early to offer much illumination. The main structures of the encampment were clearly visible, dark gray shapes against the light-colored desert floor. Pitt counted twenty-two of the round tents he knew to be Mongolian gers. In the distance, they appeared larger than the ones they had seen in Ulaanbaatar and around the countryside. Oddly, there were no lights, lanterns, or fires to be seen. The camp was pitch-black.

Scattered around the encampment, Pitt and Giordino could make out the dark shadows of animals, denizens of the local herd. They were too far away to tell whether the animals were horses or camels. A fenced corral held some of the herd close to theirs, while others roamed freely around the area.

"I believe you asked for a horse?" Giordino said.

"Let's hope they're not camels."

The two men moved easily across the last stretch of ground. They approached within a hundred yards of the camp when Pitt suddenly froze. Giordino caught Pitt's abrupt halt and followed suit. He strained his eyes and ears to detect a danger, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. The night was perfectly still.

Not a sound could be heard but for the occasional gust of wind, and he saw no movement around the camp.

"What gives?" he finally whispered to Pitt.

"The herd," Pitt replied quietly. "They're not moving."

Giordino peered at the host of animals scattered about the darkness, looking for signs of movement. A few yards away, he spotted a trio of fuzzy brown camels standing together, their heads raised in the air.

He stared at them for a minute, but they didn't move a muscle.

"Maybe they're asleep," he offered.

"No," Pitt replied. "There is no odor either."

Pitt had visited enough farms and ranches to know that the smell of manure was never far from a herd of livestock. He took a few steps forward, creeping up slowly until he stood alongside the three animals.

The creatures showed no fear, remaining still even as Pitt swatted one on its furry rump. Giordino looked on in shock as Pitt then grabbed one of the animals around the neck and shoved. The camel didn't resist at all but keeled stiffly over onto its side. Giordino ran over and stared at the animal, which lay motionless on its back with its legs in the air. Only they weren't legs sticking up but pieces of two-by-fours.

The fallen camel, like the rest of the herd, was made of wood.

-28-

Disappeared? What do you mean they disappeared?" As Borjin's anger rose, a vein in the shape of an earthworm protruded from the side of his neck. "Your men tracked them into the desert!"

Though he physically towered over Borjin, the gruff head of security wilted like a shrinking violet under his boss's tirade.

"Their tracks simply vanished into the sand, sir. There was no indication they were picked up by another vehicle. They were fifty kilometers from the nearest village, which was to the east as they were traveling south. Their prospects for survival in the Gobi are nonexistent," Batbold said quietly.

Tatiana stood listening at the bar in the corner of the study, mixing a pair of vodka martinis. Handing a glass to her brother, she took a sip from her own drink, then asked, "Were they spies for the Chinese?"

"No," Batbold replied. "I don't believe so. The two men apparently bribed their way onto the Mongolian state security escort. The Chinese delegation seemed not to notice their absence from the motorcade when they departed. It is noteworthy that they also match the description of the two men who broke into our storage facility in Ulaanbaatar two nights ago."

"The Chinese would not have been so clumsy," Borjin commented.

"The men were not Chinese. I saw them myself. They looked Russian. Though Dr. Gantumur at the laboratory claimed they spoke to him in English with an American accent."

Tatiana suddenly choked on her drink, setting the glass down and coughing to clear her throat.

"Americans?" she stammered. "What did they look like?"

"From what I saw out the window, one was tall and lean with black hair while the other was short and robust with dark curly hair," Borjin said.

Batbold nodded. "Yes, that is an accurate description," he mumbled, neglecting to relay how close he was to the two men when he got clobbered by the shovel.

"Those sound like the men from NUMA," Tatiana gasped. "Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino. They were the ones who rescued us from the fishing boat on Baikal. The same men who came aboard the Primoski and captured the Russian scientist shortly before we departed Siberia."

"How did they track you here?" Borjin asked sternly.

"I do not know. Perhaps through the lease of the Primoski."

"They have stuck their noses where they don't belong. Where did they go in the compound?" he asked, turning to Batbold.

"They drove into the garage with a flat tire, then entered the research facility. Dr. Gantumur phoned security immediately, so they were only in the lab a few minutes. They somehow eluded the responding guards, and were probably examining the residence when you spotted them entering the sanctuary."

Borjin's face flushed with anger, the vein on his neck rising to new heights.

"They are hunting for the oil company employees, I am certain," Tatiana said. "They know nothing of our work. Do not worry, my brother."

"You should have never brought those people here in the first place," he hissed.

"It is your fault," Tatiana roared back. "If you hadn't killed the Germans before they fully assessed the field data, we would not have needed further assistance."

Borjin glared at his sister, refusing to admit the truth of her words. "Then these oil people must be eliminated, too. Have them accelerate the analysis, I wish them gone by the end of the week," he said, his eyes raging with fire.

"Do not worry. The Americans know nothing of our work. And they will not survive to talk anyway."

"Perhaps you are right," he replied, his temper cooling. "These men of the sea are a long ways from the water now. But just to be sure they stay that way, send the monk down there immediately for insurance,"

he added, speaking to Batbold.

"A prudent decision, brother."

"To their dry and dusty demise," he mused now, raising his glass and sipping the martini.

Tatiana swallowed the rest of her drink but silently wondered if the demise of the Americans would come as predicted. They were determined men, she had come to realize, who would not face death easily.

***

It felt as though they were walking through the back-lot set of a Hollywood western, only they were surrounded by camels instead of cattle. Climbing through a fenced corral, Pitt and Giordino were amused to see a large trough to water the wooden livestock. The early-morning sun cast long shadows from the large immobile herd that was strategically placed around the village. Pitt gave up counting when he reached a hundred head of the prop camels.

"Reminds me of that guy in Texas who has all those Cadillacs half buried in his yard," Giordino said.

"I don't think these were put out here for art, if that's what you call it."

They made their way to the nearest ger, which was more than double the standard size. The circular felt tent was nearly a hundred feet across and stood over ten feet tall. Pitt found a white-painted entry door, which on all Mongol gers faced south. Rapping his knuckles on the doorframe, he shouted a cheery

"Hello." The thin doorframe didn't flex at all under his knocking, which echoed with a deep resonance.

Pitt placed his hand against the felt wall and pushed. Rather than simply a forgiving layer of canvas over felt, the wall was backed by something hard and solid.

"The big bad wolf couldn't blow this thing down," he said.

Grabbing an edge of the canvas covering, he ripped a small section off the wall. Beneath was a thin layer of felt, which he also tore away. Under the layer of felt he exposed a cold metal surface painted white.

"It's a storage tank," Pitt said, touching the metal side.

"Water?"

"Or oil," Pitt replied, stepping back and eyeing the other phony gers dotting the encampment.

"They may be large by nomadic-tent standards, but they are still relatively small for oil tanks," Giordino remarked.

"I bet we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. These things might be buried thirty or forty feet down, and we're only seeing the tops."

Giordino scuffed the ground and loosened a small rock, which he picked up and rapped against the tank. A deep empty echo reverberated through the tank.

"She's empty." He took a half step, then lobbed the rock at the next closest ger. The stone bounced off the side, producing a similar pinging sound.

"Empty as well," he said.

"So much for your pot of coffee," Pitt replied.

"Why would some empty oil tanks in the middle of nowhere be disguised as a fake village?"

"We may not be far from the Chinese border," Pitt said. "Maybe someone is concerned about the Chinese stealing their oil? I'd guess the target audience is an aerial survey or satellite imaging, at which heights this place would look pretty authentic."

"The wells must not have panned out if these tanks are all dry."

Wandering around the phony village, the men realized there was no food or water to be found and the mystery lost its allure. They worked their way through the string of fakers, hoping to find some emergency supplies or something more than an empty oil tank. But all the tents were the same, masking large metal tanks half buried in the sand. Only at the very last tent did they find that the door actually opened, revealing a pumping station dug twenty feet into the ground. A maze of pipes led to the other storage tanks, fed from a single four-foot-diameter inlet pipe that protruded from beneath the desert floor.

"An underground oil pipeline," Pitt observed.

"Dug and placed with the help of a tunnel-boring machine?" Giordino posed. "Now, let's see, where have I seen one of those lately?"

"It's quite possible that our friends at Avarga Oil have struck again. May have something to do with the deal they are cooking up with the Chinese, but for what purpose I can only guess."

The two men fell silent again, fatigue and disappointment damping their spirits. Overhead, the rising sun was beginning to bake the sand-and-gravel floor around the mock village. Tired from their all-night trek and weak from lack of food and water, the men wisely decided to rest. Ripping sections of the felt covering from one of the tanks, they bundled a pair of crude mattresses together and lay down in the shade of the pumping house. The homemade beds felt like a cloud to their tired bones and they quickly drifted off to sleep.

The sun was dropping toward the western horizon like a fluorescent billiard ball when the two men finally roused themselves. The sleep break did little to restore their energy levels, however, and they departed the village in a lethargic state. They began hiking with noticeable effort, yet moved at a snail's pace, as if each man had aged forty years in his sleep. Pitt took another bearing with his watch against the sun's rays and led them in a westerly direction again, foregoing any thoughts of trying to trace the underground pipeline. They moved in unspoken unison, willing their bodies forward with each step, as the first hints of delirium began to fog their minds.

The winds gradually began to kick up again, jabbing and swirling in sporadic gusts as a prelude to the force that was to come. The northerly wind brought with it a cold chill. Both men had carried a thin section of felt from the storage tank and wrapped their heads and torsos in the fabric like a poncho. Pitt targeted a distant S-shaped ridge for a bearing as the sun slid away, focusing his efforts on maintaining a straight course. As the winds picked up, he knew his North Star compass would be obscured, and the last thing they needed in their state was to be wandering around in circles.

An annoying mantra, "move or die," began to repeat endlessly in his head, urging him forward. Pitt could feel the swelling in the back of his parched throat and tried to put the unyielding thirst out of his mind. He glanced at Giordino, who bulled ahead with listless eyes. Both their energies and exhausted mental capacities were concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

Time seemed to fade away for Pitt, and consciousness nearly as well. He drifted along, then felt his eyes pop open, not sure if he had fallen asleep on his feet. How long he was out, he had no idea, but at least Giordino was still there, trudging along beside him. His mind began to wander, thinking of his wife, Loren, who served in Congress back in Washington. Though lovers for many years, they had only just recently married, Pitt reasoning that his days of globe-trotting adventure were behind him. She'd known the wanderlust would never leave his blood, even if he didn't. Within months of his ascension to the head of NUMA, he grew restless with managing the agency from its Washington headquarters. It was Loren who urged him to take to the field, knowing he was happiest when working with his first love, the sea. Time apart would make their love stronger, she told him, though he doubted she meant it. Yet he wouldn't interfere with her career on the Hill, so he followed her words. Now he wondered if doing so would end up making her a widow.

It was an hour later, maybe two, when the winds decided to make an appearance in earnest, blowing hard from the northwest. The stars above quickly melted away in the dust, obscuring their only source of light. As the blowing dust settled over them in a cottony haze, Pitt's landmark ridge disappeared from view. It was no matter, though, as Pitt stared down at his feet with numb fatigue.

They moved like zombies, lifeless in appearance but unwilling to stop walking. Giordino moved methodically forward alongside Pitt, as if an invisible tether kept the two men linked together. The winds grew intense, stinging their face and eyes with blasting sand that made it painful to see. Still they trudged ahead, though well off their westerly track. The exhausted men began zigzagging to the south, in a subconscious effort to flee the biting wind.

They staggered on in a timeless whirl until Pitt detected Giordino trip over some rocks and fall down next to him. Pitt stopped and reached out to help his friend up. A burly hand rose up and grabbed Pitt's, then yanked hard in the other direction. Pitt sprawled toward Giordino, tripping over him and falling into a bed of soft sand. Lying there dazed, he noticed the blasting sand was no longer peppering his body.

Unseen in the turbulent night, Giordino had tripped over a rock piling, behind which lay an indented cove protected from the howling winds. Pitt reached out and touched the rock wall with one hand as he felt Giordino crawl alongside and collapse. With a last ounce of energy, Pitt unwrapped his felt cloth and draped it over both their heads for warmth, then lay back on the soft sand and closed his eyes.

Beneath the screeching desert sandstorm, both men fell unconscious.

-29-

Giordino was dreaming. He dreamed that he was floating in a still pond of tropical water.

The warm liquid was unusually dense, like syrup, making his movements a slow and laborious effort. The water suddenly lapped at his face in a series of small hot waves. He jerked his head to escape the surf, but the warm moisture followed his motion. Then something about the dream became overly vivid. It was an odor, a very unpleasant one at that. A smell too powerful to reside in a dream. The repulsive aroma finally spurred him awake and he forcefully cocked open a heavy eyelid.

Bright sunshine stung at his eyes, but he could squint enough to see there was no aqua blue water lapping at his body. Instead, a giant pink swab descended on him with a hot wipe across one cheek. Jerking his head away, he saw the pink swab roll behind a picket fence of large yellow teeth housed in a snout that appeared a mile long. The beast exhaled a breath that bathed Giordino's face in a putrid cloud of onion, garlic, and Limburger cheese.

Popping open both eyes and shaking off the cobwebs, he stared past the expansive snout into two chocolate-brown eyes shrouded behind long eyelashes. The camel blinked curiously at Giordino, then let out a short bellow before stepping back to nibble at a fringe of felt protruding from the sand.

Giordino struggled to sit up, realizing the syrupy water in his dream was a layer of sun-warmed sand. A drift of sand nearly a foot thick had piled up in the little cove during the sandstorm the night before.

Weakly pulling his arms out of the morass, Giordino nudged the figure next to him similarly buried under felt and sand, then scooped away handfuls of the brown silica. The felt rustled a bit then was thrown back, exposing the drawn and haggard face of Pitt. His face was sunburned, his lips bloated and chapped. Yet the sunken green eyes sparkled at seeing his friend alive.

"Another day in paradise," he rasped through a parched mouth, taking in their surroundings. The overnight sandstorm had blown itself out, leaving them bathed in sunshine under a clear blue sky.

They heaved their bodies upright, the sand falling off them in rivulets. Giordino sneaked a hand into his pocket and nodded slightly in reassurance, finding the horseshoe still there.

"We've got company," he wheezed, his voice sounding like steel wool on sandpaper.

Pitt crawled weakly from under the blanket of sand and peered at the beast of burden standing a few feet away. It was a Bactrian camel, as evidenced by the two humps on his back that sagged slightly to one side. The animal's matted fur was a rich mocha brown, which darkened around its flanks. The camel returned Pitt's stare for a few seconds, then resumed its nibbling on the blanket.

"The ship of the desert," Pitt said.

"Looks more like a tugboat. Do we eat him or ride him?"

Pitt was contemplating whether they had the strength to do either when a shrill whistle blared from behind a dune. A small boy bobbed over the sand, riding a dappled tan horse. He wore a green del, and his short black hair was hidden under a faded baseball cap. The boy rode up to the camel, calling it by name as he approached. When the camel popped his head up, the boy quickly looped a pole-mounted lasso around the animal's neck and pulled the rope tight. Only then did he glance down and notice Pitt and Giordino lying on the ground. The startled boy stared wide-eyed at the two haggard men who resembled ghosts in the sand.

"Hello." Pitt smiled warmly at the boy. He climbed unsteadily to his feet as a pool of sand slid off his clothes. "Can you help us?"

"You ... talk English," the boy stammered.

"Yes. You can understand me?"

"I learn English at monastery," he replied proudly, enunciating each syllable.

"We are lost," Giordino said hoarsely. "Can you share food or water?"

The boy slipped off his wooden saddle and produced a goatskin canteen filled with water. Pitt and Giordino took turns attacking the water, taking small sips at first then working up to large gulps. As they drank, the boy pulled a scarf out of his pocket, which was wrapped around a block of sun-dried curds.

Cutting it into small pieces, he offered it to the men, who gratefully split the rubbery milk residue and washed it down with the last of the water.

"My name is Noyon," the boy said. "What is yours?"

"I am Dirk and this is Al. We are very happy to meet you, Noyon."

"You are fools, Dirk and Al, to be in the Gobi without water and a mount," he said sternly. His youthful face softened with a smile, and he added, "You come with me to my home, where you will be welcomed by my family. It is less than a kilometer from here. A short ride for you."

The boy slipped off his horse and removed the small wooden saddle, then prodded Pitt and Giordino to climb aboard. The Mongol pony was not tall, and Pitt easily pulled himself onto its back, then helped hoist Giordino on behind him. Noyon grabbed the reins and led them north across the desert, the roped camel following behind.

They traveled just a short distance before Noyon led them around a thick sandstone ridge. On the opposite side, a large herd of camels were scattered about a shallow plain, foraging for scrub grass that sprouted through the stony ground. In the center of the field stood a lone ger, shrouded in dirty white canvas, its southerly door painted a weathered orange. Two poles with a rope tied across acted as an adjacent corral, securing several stout brown horses. A rugged, cleanshaven man with penetrating dark eyes was saddling one of the horses when the small caravan rode up.

"Father, I have found these men lost in the desert," the boy said in his native tongue. "They are from America."

The man took one look at the bedraggled figures of Pitt and Giordino and knew they had flirted with Erleg Khan, the Mongolian lord of the lower world. He quickly helped them down off the horse, returning the feeble shake of the hand offered by each exhausted man.

"Secure the horse," he barked at his son, then led the two men into his home.

Ducking and entering the ger, Pitt and Giordino were amazed at the warm decor of the interior, which was in stark contrast to the tent's drab exterior. Brightly patterned carpets covered every square inch of the dirt floor, melding with vibrant floral weavings that covered the tent's lattice-framed walls. Cabinets and tables were painted cheerful hues of red, orange, and blue, while the ceiling support frames were painted lemon yellow.

The interior was configured in a traditional ger layout, symbolic of the role superstition plays in daily nomadic life. To the left of the entrance was a rack and cabinet for the man's saddle and other belongings. The right section of the ger, the "female" side, held the cooking implements. A hearth and cooking stove was situated in the center, attached to a metal stovepipe that rose through an opening in the tent's ceiling. Three low beds were positioned around the perimeter walls, while the back wall was reserved for the family altar.

Noyon's father led Pitt and Giordino around the left side of the ger to some stools near the hearth. A slight woman with long black hair and cheerful eyes tending a battered teapot smiled at the men. Seeing their exhausted state, she brought damp towels to wash their face and hands, then set some strips of mutton to boil in a pot of water. Noticing the bloody bandage on Pitt's leg, she cleaned the dressing as the men downed cup after cup of watery black tea. When the mutton was cooked, she proudly served up a giant portion to each man, accompanied by a tray of dried cheeses. To the famished men, the flavor-challenged meal tasted like French haute cuisine. After devouring the mutton and cheese, the man brought over a leather bag filled with the home-fermented mare's milk, called airag, and filled three cups.

Noyon entered the ger and sat down behind the men to act as interpreter for his parents, who did not speak English. His father spoke quietly in a deep tone, looking Pitt and Giordino in the eye.

"My father, Tsengel, and my mother, Ariunaa, welcome you to their home," the boy said.

"We thank you for your hospitality. You have truly saved our lives," Pitt said, sampling the airag with a toast. He decided the brew tasted like warm beer mixed with buttermilk.

"Tell me, what are you doing in the Gobi without provisions?" Tsengel asked through his son.

"We became separated from our tour group during a brief visit into the desert," Giordino fibbed. "We retraced our steps but got lost when the sandstorm struck last night."

"You were lucky my son found you. There are few settlements in this region of the desert."

"How far are we from the nearest village?" Pitt asked.

"There is a small settlement about twenty kilometers from here. But enough questions for now," Tsengel said, seeing the weary look in both men's eyes. "You must rest after your meal. We will talk again later."

Noyon led the men to two of the small beds, then followed his father outside to tend the herd. Pitt lay back on the cushioned bed and admired the bright yellow roof supports overhead before falling into a deep, heavy sleep.

He and Giordino woke before dusk to the recurring smell of mutton boiling on the hearth. They stretched their legs outside the ger, walking amid the docile herd of camels that roamed freely about. Tsengel and Noyon soon came galloping up, having spent the afternoon rounding up strays.

"You are looking fit now," Tsengel said through his son.

"Feeling fit as well," Pitt replied. The food, liquids, and rest had quickly revitalized the two men and they felt surprisingly refreshed.

"My wife's cooking. It is an elixir," the man grinned. Tying their horses to the hitching rope then washing at a bucket of soapy water, he led them back into the ger. Another meal of mutton and dried cheese awaited them, accompanied by cooked noodles. This time, Pitt and Giordino consumed the meal with much less relish. The airag was produced earlier and poured in larger quantities, consumed out of small ceramic bowls that never seemed to empty.

"You have an impressive herd," Giordino remarked, complimenting his host. "How many head?"

"We own one hundred thirty camels and five horses," Tsengel replied. "A satisfactory herd, yet it is a quarter the size of what we once owned on the other side of the border."

"In Chinese Inner Mongolia?"

"Yes, the so-called autonomous region, which has become little more than another Chinese province."

Tsengel looked into the fire with a glint of anger in his eyes.

"Why did you leave?"

Tsengel nodded toward a faded black-and-white photograph on the altar, which showed a boy on a horse and an older man holding the reins. The penetrating eyes of the boy revealed it was a young Tsengel, alongside his own father.

"At least five generations of my ancestors have herded on the eastern fields of the Gobi. My father owned a herd of over two thousand camels at one time. But those days have vanished in the winds.

There is no place for a simple herder in those lands anymore. The Chinese bureaucrats keep commandeering the land without regard to its natural balance. Time and again, we have been pushed out of our ancestral grazing lands and forced to drive our herds to the harshest portions of the desert.

Meanwhile, they suck the water out wherever they can, for the noble cause of industrializing the state. As a result, the grasslands are disappearing right under their noses. The desert is growing day by day, but it is a dead desert. The fools will not see it until the sands begin to consume their capital of Beijing, by which time it will be too late. For my family's sake, I had no choice but to cross the border. The grazing conditions are sparse, but at least the herder is still respected here," he said proudly.

Pitt took another sip of the bitter-tasting airag as he studied the old photograph.

"It is always a crime to take away a man's livelihood," he said.

His gaze drifted over to a framed print mounted at the back of the altar. The portrait of a rotund man with a stringy goatee peered back, drawn in an ancient stylized hand.

"Tsengel, who is that on the altar?"

"The Yuan emperor, Kublai. Most powerful ruler of the world, yet benevolent friend of the common man," Tsengel replied, as if the emperor were still alive.

"Kublai Khan?" Giordino asked.

Tsengel nodded. "It was a far better time when the Mongol ruled China," he added wistfully.

"It is a much different world today, I'm afraid," Pitt said.

The airag was taking its toll on Tsengel, who had consumed several bowls of the potent brew. His eyes grew glassy and his emotions more visceral as the mare's milk disappeared down his throat. Finding the geopolitical conversation becoming a little too sensitive for the man, Pitt tried to change the subject.

"Tsengel, we stumbled upon a strange sight in the desert before the sandstorm struck. It was an artificial village surrounded by wooden camels. Do you know the place?"

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."

-30-

Despite Tsengel'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."

-31-

The Fokker F.VIIb 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 ATTENTION: 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."

"Not a problem. A supply truck from U.B. will be at the monastery tomorrow. If you don't mind spending the night with a cadre of high-rolling monks, then you can hitch a ride on the truck in the morning."

"That would be fine with us," Pitt said as the bus lurched over a rut. He watched in amusement as the dachshund flew into the air, then landed back on the seat, without raising an eyelid.

"If you don't mind me asking, what are you doing out here in these parts?" Giordino asked.

"Oh, I'm helping a private archaeological foundation from the States that is helping rebuild the Buddhist monasteries. Prior to the communist takeover of Mongolia in 1921, there were over seven hundred monasteries in the country. Nearly all of them were ransacked and burned in the 1930s during a devastating purge by the government. Thousands of monks disappeared in the annihilation, either executed on the spot or shipped off to Siberian work camps to die in captivity. Those not murdered were forced to renounce their religion, though many continued to worship in secrecy."

"Must be difficult for them to start anew with their church relics and holy scripts long since destroyed."

"A surprising number of ancient texts and monastery artifacts were buried by alert monks in advance of the purge. Important relics are turning up every day as some of the old monasteries reopen. The locals are finally becoming comfortable that the government abuses of the past are not going to recur."

"How did you get from laying bricks to driving a school bus?" Giordino asked.

"You have to wear a lot of hats out in the boondocks," the driver laughed. "The group I'm helping with isn't simply a bunch of archaeologists but also includes carpenters, educators, and historians. Part of our agreement with rebuilding the monasteries is that we also establish schoolrooms for the local children.

The structured education available to children of the nomadic herders is pretty spotty, as you can imagine. We're teaching reading, writing, math, and languages, in hopes of giving these rural kids a chance at a better life. Your friend Noyon, for example, speaks three languages and is a whiz at math. If we can offer him accessible schooling for the rest of his childhood, and keep a PlayStation from falling into his hands, he'll probably grow up to be a fine engineer or doctor. That's what we are hoping to offer all of these kids."

The bus crested a blunt ridge, exposing a narrow valley on the other side. At its midpoint, a splash of thick grass dotted with purple shrubs added a sparkle of color to the otherwise monotonous desert. Pitt noticed a cluster of small stone buildings built in the thicket, sided by a handful of white gers. A small herd of camels and goats were corralled nearby, while several small SUVs were positioned at the southern end.

"Bulangiin Monastery," the driver announced. "Home to twelve monks, one lama, seventeen camels, and an occasional hungry volunteer or two from the U.S. of A." He threaded his way down some coarse tire tracks, then pulled the bus to a stop in front of one of the gers.

"School's in," the driver said to Pitt and Giordino as the kids clamored off the bus. Noyon burst by, waving at the two men, before hopping off the bus.

"Afraid I need to go teach a geography lesson," the driver said after all the children had departed. "If you boys head to the large building with a dragon on its eave, you'll find Lama Santanai. He speaks English, and will be glad to look after you for the night."

"Will we be seeing you later?"

"Probably not. After I take the kids home, I promised an overnight stopover at one of the villages to give a talk on western democracy. Was nice chatting with you, though. Enjoy your visit."

"Many thanks for the lift, and for the information," Pitt replied.

The driver scooped up the sleeping dachshund and grabbed a book of world geography from under his seat, then waltzed toward the waiting classroom inside the ger.

"Nice fellow," Giordino said as he stood up and then stepped off the bus. Pitt followed, noticing a placard above the driver's visor that read, WELCOME, YOUR DRIVER'S NAME IS CLIVE CUSSLER.

"Yes," Pitt agreed with a searching nod. "But he drives like Mario Andretti."

They made their way across the compound toward three pagoda-shaped buildings whose upturned roofs were layered in an aged blue ceramic tile. The central and largest of the three buildings was the main temple, flanked by a shrine hall and a storeroom. Pitt and Giordino walked up a short flight of steps leading into the main temple, admiring a pair of curvaceous stone dragons that were mounted on the corner eaves, their long tails curving up the steeply angled roof. The two men mindfully entered the temple through an immense open door, where a chorus of low chants greeted them.

As their eyes adjusted to the dim illumination provided only by candlelight, they saw two broad benches that ran lengthwise across the temple, ending near a small altar. A half dozen elderly monks sat on each bench, facing one another across the center aisle. The monks sat cross-legged, dressed in bright saffron robes, their shaved heads held perfectly still as they chanted. Pitt and Giordino tiptoed clockwise around the temple, taking a seat along the back wall and watching the remainder of the mantra.

Tibetan Lamaism is the practiced form of Buddhism in Mongolia, the religious ties between the two countries forged centuries ago. Prior to the government purge, nearly a third of Mongolian males were practicing lamas, living an ascetic existence in one of the many unadorned monasteries scattered around the country. Buddhism nearly vanished during the communist reign, and a whole generation of Mongolians is just now being reacquainted with the spirituality of their ancestors.

Pitt and Giordino could not help but feel the mystique inside the temple as they observed the ceremony, which differed little than that practiced by lamas hundreds of years before. The scent of burning incense enchanted their noses with an exotic aroma. The interior of the ancient temple exuded a warm glow from the candlelight, which flickered off the red-painted ceiling and the bright crimson banners that hung from the walls. Tarnished statues of Buddha in various incarnates dabbled the nooks and altar. Then there was the haunting sound from the lips of the noble lamas.

The craggy-faced monks repeated in unison a line from their prayer books, which lie open in front of them. The mantra slowly grew louder and louder, the voices rising in intensity, until an elderly lama with thick glasses suddenly rapped at a goatskin drum. The other monks joined in the crescendo by ringing tiny brass bells or blowing into large white conch shells until the walls of the temple shook. Then, as if an invisible hand suddenly turned down the volume, the crescendo slowly fell away to complete silence, the monks meditating in quiet for a moment before rising from their benches.

The lama with the thick glasses set down his drum and approached Pitt and Giordino. He was nearly eighty-five yet moved with the strength and grace of a much younger man. His deep brown eyes shined with warmth and intelligence.

"The Americans who wander the desert," he said in heavily accented English. "I am Santanai. Welcome to our temple. We have included a prayer for your safe travels in our worship today."

"Please excuse our intrusion," Pitt said, startled at the lama's knowledge of their arrival.

"The path to enlightenment is open to all," the lama smiled. "Come, let me show you our home." The old lama proceeded to guide Pitt and Giordino around the temple, then led them outside for a walk around the grounds.

"The original monastery dates to the 1820s," he explained. "The occupants were more fortunate than most during the great purge. Government agents destroyed the living quarters and the food stores, then drove away the faithful. For reasons unknown, the temple was left untouched, abandoned to stand empty for many decades. The sacred texts and other articles of worship were secured by a local herdsman and buried in the sands nearby. When the ways of tolerance were resumed by the government, we reopened the temple as the centerpiece of our monastery."

"The buildings look hardly the worse for wear after all those years," Giordino noted.

"Local herdsmen and underground monks secretly maintained the temple during the years of repression.

The remote location helped keep the site out of the prying eyes of the most troublesome government atheists. But we have much work yet to do to restore the compound," he said, motioning toward a stack of lumber and building materials. "We live in the gers now, but will someday have a permanent residence structure."

"You and a dozen disciples?"

"Yes, there are twelve monks here plus a visiting aspirant. But we hope to provide housing for an additional ten young men before long."

The lama led Pitt and Giordino to one of the smaller buildings beside the main temple. "I can offer you accommodations in our storeroom. The Western archaeological team visiting us is working at a nearby site for several weeks. They have left behind several cots that you may use. You wish to catch a ride on the supply truck tomorrow?"

"Yes," Pitt replied. "We are anxious to return to Ulaanbaatar."

"It shall be arranged. I must return to the temple for a tutoring session. Please make yourself comfortable, then join us for our evening meal at sunset."

The lama quietly turned and strode to the temple, his loose red robe flapping in the breeze. Pitt and Giordino climbed a short flight of steps and entered the storeroom, which was a narrow windowless structure with a high ceiling. They had to step around a giant iron bell just inside the doorway, a weathered relic in need of a bell tower. Past the bell, they found flour, noodles, tea, and other foodstuffs stacked along one wall. On the opposite side were bins of blankets and furs, stored for the frigid winter months ahead. In the back, they found several canvas cots beneath a painted image of Sakyamuni, the Buddha sitting cross-legged on a lotus-flower throne.

"Odd, that he knew we were in the neighborhood," Pitt said.

"It's a small desert," Giordino replied. "Look on the bright side. We don't have to sleep on the ground and we have plenty of time to relax until our ride shows up. As a matter of fact, I think I'd like to test out our new accommodations straightaway," he said, stretching out on one of the cots.

"I've got some reading to do first," Pitt replied, making his way toward the door before the snoring began.

Taking a seat on the front steps of the storeroom, he gazed in thought at the ancient temple and the dust-strewn valley stretching beyond. Then he pulled open the rucksack and began reading the diary of Dr. Leigh Hunt.

-32-

Good-bye, Dirk. And good-bye to your friend Al."

Noyon bounded up the steps and bowed. Pitt stood up and shook the boy's hand, marveling at the maturity of the ten-year-old.

"So long, my friend," Pitt replied. "I hope that we shall meet again."

"Yes. Next time, you ride the camels," the boy grinned, then ran down the path toward the waiting school bus at the edge of the monastery. The doors closed behind him and the old bus roared off up the ridge toward the setting sun.

The rumble woke Giordino from his nap and he padded onto the porch, stretching his arms to awaken.

"Noyon and the kids headed home from school?" he asked, catching a glimpse of the bus before it disappeared over the hill.

"He just came by and said farewell. Wanted me to tell you that his best camel is available for riding excursions at any time." Pitt stuck his nose back into Hunt's diary with a mesmerized look on his face.

"How's the kiss-and-tell saga of our petrified archaeologist?"

"One that you won't believe," Pitt said.

Giordino saw the serious look in Pitt's eyes and took a seat on the steps.

"What did you find?"

"Dr. Hunt, his Mongolian assistant, and a team of Chinese laborers were excavating the remains of a vanished city in northern China named Shang-tu."

"Never heard of it."

"You might know it by its more romanticized Western name ... Xanadu."

"Not another one," Giordino said, shaking his head. "Did it really exist?"

"Most definitely. It was the summer palace of Kublai Khan. He built the joint about one hundred twenty miles northwest of Beijing to get out of the summer heat. It was surrounded by a walled hunting ground and an adjacent village of upwards of one hundred thousand people. By the time Hunt came along, it was no more than a pile of rock and dust on an empty plain."

"So the artifacts on the plane date from Kublai Khan's reign? They must be worth a small fortune. That is, the few items not broken into a thousand pieces during the plane crash."

"Quite possibly. Though Hunt himself was disappointed with the haul. He writes that there was really nothing of significance uncovered until the very last day of the excavation. That's when your wooden box and the cheetah skin were dug up."

Pitt had the open wooden box sitting on the porch, the cheetah skin and bronze tube sitting inside. He pulled out the animal skin first.

"Hunt made little mention of the cheetah skin, but look at this," he said, laying out the fur, then flipping it over. On the skinned side was a series of eight small paintings in separate boxed panels. The first image showed a large Chinese junk sailing down a river trailed by two smaller vessels. The subsequent paintings showed the ships at sea, then anchoring in a small bay. The final panel showed the large ship on fire in the bay. A rippled banner of a blue dog fluttered in flames from the ship's foremast. On the shore, some boxes were stacked near the ship, but they, too, were surrounded by fire. Flames and smoke consumed the land all around the bay.

"Seems to relay a voyage that ended in a firestorm," Giordino said. "Perhaps they ran into some adversaries who were skilled with Greek Fire. Or it looks like they might have moored close to a forest fire ashore and were caught by blowing embers. There was no interpretation by the British archaeologist?"

"None. I wonder if he even examined the back side of the skin before he died."

"Any significance to the box?"

"It wasn't the box that was noteworthy but the bronze tube. Or, rather, something that was inside the bronze tube. A silk scroll of some sort was apparently rolled up inside. Painted on it was a treasure map to an unbelievable find."

"The canister was empty when we found it. Do you suppose it's still with Hunt on the plane?"

"Here, read Hunt's last entries," Pitt said, passing the diary to Giordino. Three brief passages were written on the last page of text.

August 5, 1937. En route to Ulaanbaatar by aircraft. With a heavy heart, I must write of a dreadful discovery. Tsendyn, my loyal associate, partner, and friend, has betrayed me in the end. The silk scroll is gone, stolen from its canister, which I carefully guarded since its excavation. Tsendyn was the only person who could have removed it, striking a dagger in my back before the plane left the ground. With it, the trail to G.K. is lost. I shall endeavor to recall the clues and reconstruct the map by memory. Then I will outfit a small party in U.B. and make the search attempt. Perhaps if nothing else, I will run into Tsendyn on the slopes of Burkhan Khaldun and obtain fair retribution. My only hope The entry ended midsentence, resumed later in a shaky hand. Giordino noted that the dusty page was stained with drops of blood.

Date unknown. We have crashed in the desert, shot down by a Japanese warplane. Both pilots dead. I fear my back and legs are broken. Am unable to move. Waiting for help. I pray we will be discovered soon. Pain is unbearable.

Then later, in a crude scribble:

Last entry. All hope is gone. My sincere regrets to Leeds at the British Museum, and my love to my dear wife, Emily. God save our souls.

"Poor bugger," Giordino said. "That explains why he was lying atop the debris in the plane. He must have lay there several days before dying."

"His pain must have been all the worse, knowing what he lost."

"So what was the treasure on the silk map? Who or what is G.K.?"

"Hunt describes the silk scroll in an earlier entry, after its discovery. He was convinced, as was his aid Tsendyn, that it depicted the map to a lost tomb. The location in the Khentii Mountains of Mongolia, the royal markings, even a legend about a weeping camel all fit the historical records. The silk map indicated the final burial place of Genghis Khan."

Giordino let out a low whistle, then shook his head. "Genghis Khan, eh? Must have been sold a phony map. Old Genghis has yet to be found. His grave still rates as one of the biggest archaeological mysteries on the planet."

Pitt gazed at a swirling cloud of dust on the horizon, a thousand images running through his mind. Then it was his turn to shake his head.

"On the contrary. His tomb has indeed been found," he said quietly.

Giordino stared at him with a blank look on his face but knew better than to question Pitt's assertion. Pitt flipped through the diary to a page near the beginning and held the passage open for Giordino to see.

"Hunt's assistant from Mongolia, Tsendyn. His last name is Borjin."

"It can't be. His father?"

"If I'm not mistaken, we recently visited the marble tomb of the late Tsendyn Borjin."

"If that was Borjin's father in the stone chapel, then the sarcophagus in the center of the chamber ..."

"That's right," Pitt said ruefully. "The tomb of Genghis Khan is sitting in Tolgoi Borjin's backyard."

***

They joined the lama and monks at sunset for dinner in one of the gers. Like all their meals of late, it was a simple affair, consisting of a vegetable broth with noodles, washed down with some earthy black tea.

The monks ate in silent reverence, nodding only in reply to the lama's occasional spoken word. Pitt casually studied the faces of the wizened monks who moved with stoic grace. Most were older than sixty, their studious brown eyes peering from crevice-lined faces. All wore their hair shaved close to the head but for one younger man with a thick build. He quickly gulped down his meal, then turned and grinned incessantly at Pitt until the others were finished.

After the meal, Pitt and Giordino observed an evening prayer in the temple, then retired to the storeroom.

The revelation about Genghis Khan in Hunt's diary consumed Pitt's thoughts, and he was more anxious than ever to return to Ulaanbaatar. As they prepared to turn in, he dragged one of the cots over near the entryway.

"Can't sleep under a closed roof anymore?" Giordino chided.

"No," Pitt replied. "Something's bothering me."

"The lack of a decent meal in nearly a week is bothering me," Giordino said, crawling under a blanket.

Pitt pulled down an open box from the shelf that contained incense, beads, and other accoutrements of Buddhist prayer. After rummaging around a few minutes, he turned out the kerosene lamp and joined Giordino in counting sheep.

***

The prowler came after midnight, silently opening the storeroom door just enough to let himself and a sliver of moonlight through the crack. Hesitating a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dark interior, he moved slowly toward the cot near the entry. Stepping toward the bed, his foot grazed a small prayer bell left on the floor. As the soft metallic ring echoed through the still room, the intruder froze, halting even his breathing. As the seconds ticked away, his ears strained to detect movement or stirring in the room, but all remained quiet.

Steady on his feet, the man knelt to the floor, locating the bell with a soft hand and gently sliding it out of his path. His knuckles grazed a second bell, which he cautiously moved before inching closer to the cot.

He could just make out the sleeping body that lay still under a blanket. Standing above it, he raised a glistening double-edged sword toward the rafters with both hands, then swung the blade down in a lethal slash. The razor-sharp blade struck just below the pillow, where the sleeper's neck would be.

But something was wrong. There was no knotty resistance of the blade cutting through bone, no splash of blood or gasp of breath from the dying victim. The sword instead cut through without resistance down to the cot, the blade driving deep into the wooden frame. A startled confusion came over the would-be assassin before the sudden realization that he'd been had. But by then it was too late.

Pitt was already charging from his cot at the back of the room. The sliver of light creeping through the open door perfectly backlit the would-be killer hunched over the entryway cot, giving Pitt a clear target.

In his hands, Pitt carried a wooden-handled shovel that he had borrowed from the excavation area and stashed under his bed. A step away from the cot that was stuffed with pillows, he pulled the shovel over his shoulder and swung at the black silhouette.

The intruder did his best to recover. Hearing Pitt's footsteps approach, he pulled the sword out from the cot and wielded it over his head. Feeling rather than seeing Pitt draw near in the dark, he thrust the sword toward him in a wide arc.

But Pitt's movements were already ahead of him. The blade of the shovel materialized out of the darkness and smashed into the intruder's hand as he started his downswing. The crunching sound of knuckles mashed on metal was quickly followed by a bloodcurdling cry of agony that echoed across the compound.

The sword flew out of the assassin's hand and clattered across the hardwood floor. Not interested in a duel, he grasped his mangled hand and staggered back toward the doorway. Pitt made another swing with the shovel from his left side but the intruder lurched out of harm's way. The cot was situated between the two men and Pitt made one more lunge across the empty bed. He swung hard and low as he saw the intruder turn toward the door. The shovel head clipped the back of the man's leg just below the calf.

Another shot of pain seared through the assassin's body as he lost all balance and tumbled hard to the floor. Still clutching his mashed hand, he failed to brace himself as he fell. Unseen in the dark, the heavy iron bell clipped him at the hairline as he went down. Pitt heard a cracking sound like a shattering baseball bat, followed by the secondary thud of the man's body hitting the floor.

Giordino materialized at Pitt's side, then stepped around the cot and kicked the door fully open. Under the full glow of the moon, they could see the intruder's lifeless body lying on its side, the head tilted at an unnatural angle.

"Snapped his neck," Giordino said, bending over the still form.

"A kinder treatment than he had in mind for us," Pitt said, leaning his shovel against the wall and picking up the sword.

Lights appeared on the porch, then the lama and two monks entered the room, each carrying a kerosene lantern.

"We heard a scream," the lama said, then looked down at the body near his feet. The bright red robe worn by the victim shined brightly under the lanterns. Even Giordino was startled by seeing that the intruder was dressed in attire associated with the nonviolent Buddhist monks. The lama looked at the short black hair and youthful face with immediate recognition.

"Zenoui," the lama said without emotion. "He's dead."

"He tried to kill us," Pitt said, holding up the sword and displaying the sliced blankets on the cot. "I tripped him with the shovel, and he fell on the bell and broke his neck. I suspect you will find additional weapons on his body."

The lama turned to one of the monks and spoke in Mongolian. The underling knelt down and patted the robes on the corpse. Lifting a section of red cloth, he revealed a belt that held a dagger and a small automatic pistol.

"This is not the way of the dharma," the lama said with shock.

"How long has he been at the monastery?" Pitt asked.

"He arrived just the day before you. He said he hailed from the northern state of Orhon but that he was crossing the Gobi in search of inner tranquility."

"He's found it now," Giordino said with a smirk.

The lama contemplated an earlier conversation, then gazed suspiciously at Pitt and Giordino. "He asked about two foreigners crossing the desert when he arrived. I told him we knew nothing of you but that there was a good chance you might appear here, as the weekly supply truck is the most reliable means to Ulaanbaatar in the vicinity. After telling him this, he expressed the desire to prolong his stay."

"That explains your knowledge of our arrival," Pitt said.

"But why the attempt on your lives?"

Pitt briefly explained their visit and escape from Borjin's compound while in search of the missing oil survey team. "This man was likely an employee of Borjin."

"Then he is not a monk?"

"I would say that was not his primary calling."

"He was indeed ignorant of many of our customs," the lama said. His face burrowing, he added, "A killing at the monastery, I fear, may cause us great trouble with the state authorities."

"His death was in fact an accident. Report it as such."

"We can certainly do without a state inquisition," Giordino muttered.

"Yes," the lama agreed, "if that is the truth, then it will be reported as an accident. After you have departed." The lama had the other two monks wrap the body in a blanket and move it to the temple.

"I regret your lives were placed in peril while visiting our enclave," he said.

"We regret attracting such trouble to your monastery," Pitt replied.

"May the rest of your stay be enjoyed in peace," the lama said, then he drifted off to the temple, where a brief prayer was held for the dead intruder.

"Nice bit of detective work," Giordino said, closing the door and bracing the damaged cot behind it.

"How did you know there was a phony monk in the deck?"

"Just a hunch. He didn't seem to have the ascetic air of the other devout monks, plus he kept looking us over at dinner like he knew who we were. It didn't seem a stretch that Borjin would still have someone on the prowl for us, even someone disguised as a monk."

"I hope he didn't bring any friends with him. I guess that means I owe you now," Giordino said.

"Owe me what?"

"Shovel duty for the rest of the night," he said, sliding the dented spade under his cot before burrowing under the covers.

***

The supply truck arrived late the next morning, offloading several crates of vegetables and dry goods into the storeroom. After helping unload the truck, the monks congregated in the temple for a period of meditation. The lama lagged behind, chatting with the truck driver as Pitt and Giordino prepared to depart.

"The driver welcomes your company in the cab. He says it will be a five-hour trip to Ulaanbaatar."

"Our sincere thanks for your hospitality," Pitt said. He gazed toward the temple, where the wrapped body of the assassin lay on a bench. "Has anyone come looking for your other visitor?"

"No," the lama said, shaking his head. "He will be cremated in four days, but his ashes will not remain in the compound. He did not carry the spirit of Sakyamuni in his heart," he said, referring to the historical Buddha. The old lama turned back toward Pitt and Giordino. "My heart tells me that you are men of honor. Travel in wisdom and strength of spirit and you shall find what you seek."

The lama bowed deeply, and Pitt and Giordino returned the gesture before climbing into the truck. The driver, an old Mongolian with several missing front teeth, smiled broadly, then started the truck and drove slowly out of the compound. The lama stood motionless, his head down, until the truck was out of sight, its settled trail of dust coating the old man's robe and sandals.

Pitt and Giordino sat silently as the truck bounced over the desert, both reflecting the parting words of the lama. It seemed as if the wizened old man knew what they were after, and had given them the green light.

"We have to go back," Pitt finally muttered.

"To Xanadu?" Giordino asked.

"To Xanadu."