"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 trans
lates 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.
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