by Fritz Galt
The question of her isolation had never come up.
“I thought the Peace Corps was supposed to deal with people,” he said.
“We do. I have a lovely host town and wonderful students.”
“But I don’t see them,” he said.
“That’s because of the quarantine,” she said. “I was asked to leave the town.”
“Asked by whom?”
“The town.”
He didn’t want to delve any further into her banishment as it might be a sore point.
“And where is this town?”
She pointed to the west at the empty horizon.
“My year started out great,” she said. “My CP, that’s my Mongolian counterpart, got married, and I was invited to her wedding. We had school dances, essay writing contests, health class.”
“Health class?”
“Yeah, I was a bio major. I just graduated from Macalester. This country’s Ministry of Education eliminated their health curriculum years ago, and now it has come back to haunt them.”
“You can’t blame all the sickness on that,” he said.
“No. Of course not. But there are few hygiene standards. There’s drinking, smoking, drugs, and little understanding of STDs and contraceptives.”
“So your job was to bring bad news.”
That brought out a laugh, and frosty vapors escaped her lips. “I started a Zumba class.”
“Zumba? How did that go over?”
“Oh, it was so cute. When I told the faculty that I would hold a Zumba class, I got a shocked response. They said I couldn’t do it. ‘Why not?’ I asked. Because there wasn’t enough room, they said. ‘How about the gym?’ They said it wasn’t big enough. So was I just getting the runaround? It turned out the problem was that everyone in the school wanted to attend.”
He could see that happening to such a healthy and attractive teacher. “Do you know what’s behind this medical crisis?”
She shook her head. “All I know is that with the herds dying, times are tough. I don’t blame the town.”
He could see that it had stung, being cast out like the subject of a Salem witch trial.
“I checked with the Country Director, and he told me to stay put until things got sorted out.”
Jake suspected it would take a lot to dislodge the Peace Corps from a country.
“Everyone’s praying for snow,” she said in conclusion.
He was surprised. “Why snow?”
“So the livestock can drink again.”
“You mean eat the snow?”
She nodded. “Herders stopped using wells to supply water for their livestock.”
He appreciated that people were responding to the crisis, but praying for snow was not what he would have expected. It showed how little he knew.
Then Courtney lifted up the small metal pail that she was holding.
He had seen her come out with it, but didn’t want to ask what it was for.
“Time to milk Nanny,” she said.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope,” she said. “Only female goats can kid.”
He would like to smile, but his face had been cryogenically frozen into the same expression for the past ten minutes.
“Nice talking,” she said. And with that, she left to find the goat that must have wandered off.
He covered his face and ducked inside.
When Jake re-entered the ger, he found Nils Andersson sitting upright and reading from the Mongolia file that Jake had brought from Matt’s house.
“Fascinating reading,” the Swede said.
“Which report is that?” Jake asked.
Nils held a World Bank assessment up to the light that poured in through the hole in the center of the ger.
“Did you know that annual rainfall in the South Gobi is between 115-150 millimeters?”
“Which translates to…?”
“Five to six inches.”
“Is that a lot or a little?” Jake asked.
“Not much. The desert is in the rain shadow of the Tibetan Plateau, which blocks monsoon precipitation coming up from the Indian Ocean. This report covers the groundwater resources for the Gobi. Did you know that more than 70% of groundwater usage goes toward mining?”
“How much groundwater is there?”
“The Gobi will run out in ten years. Nearly all of the groundwater is fossil, meaning it is below impenetrable rock and can’t be recharged. In ten years, water in the aquifer, the water that can be reached, will run dry.”
Jake remembered reading about the electricity needs of the mining industry in Mongolia. “Why do mines need water?”
Nils quoted from the report: “‘Mines use much water, but are able to recycle most of it. Water is mainly used for processing raw material, dust suppression, and power generation.’”
“But the more they dig up, the more water they need,” Jake said. “And who suffers?”
“The livestock, the people, the way of life.”
Jake had never looked at fresh water as a scarce resource before. Now that they were relying on goat milk and praying for snow, he realized that it meant life or death in the Gobi.
Still, he wasn’t convinced that the malady all around them was caused by a lack of water. “People aren’t dying from dehydration,” he said.
At that point, Tracy Woolman stirred under the blanket that she had been sharing with Courtney. “It’s what’s in the water,” she said.
“Exactly,” Nils said. “What I’m saying is that here, water is a shared resource. Everybody drinks from the same source.”
“I need to test the water,” Tracy said.
Up to that point, Eve and Matt had constituted a single lump in bed.
A small voice filtered through their blanket. “Are we going to die?”
Tracy began to put on her clothes.
Jake decided to study the green bottles from which they had drunk the night before.
“Courtney is using bottled mineral water from Russia,” he said.
“Even worse,” Eve said, and rolled over in an angry fit.
While Courtney was out of the ger, Jake decided to fill the group in on what she had said. “Her host town is under quarantine and they have ostracized her.”
“I heard that,” came a sharp reply from outside the ger.
Jake realized too late that the walls didn’t block sound.
“…but that they love you!” he concluded.
“Did you ask about Bill?” Matt said from under the blanket.
“Bill who?” came Courtney’s voice, closer.
“Frost,” Jake shouted.
Courtney stuck her head in the doorway. “The National Geographic guy?”
Jake lowered his voice. “Have you seen Bill Frost in the past week?”
“I wish,” she said. “But I don’t have a TV.”
“I mean in person.”
“Here? In Mongolia?”
She bore the look of a real fan, much like Hank Frost back in McLean as he described his uncle.
Then her face fell. “I haven’t seen anybody.”
“Do you follow the news?” Jake said.
She stared at him. “I don’t have much access to news around here.”
“It’s probably for the better,” Nils said.
Was Jake looking at a modern-day Rip Van Winkle? “Exactly what don’t you know?” he asked.
She stared at him. “What kind of a question is that?”
“No offense,” he said quickly. “But do you know what’s happening around Mongolia? Do you know what’s happening between Russia and China? Do you know what’s happening with elections in the United States?”
“No, no, and hell no.”
He couldn’t hold back a smile. This girl was quick.
“Let me fill you in.”
As she set out the cheese and horse meat and put the goat’s milk into a round silver bowl for everyone to share, he reported on Bill Frost, news that seemed irrelevant
in context. He covered the high points: Bill Frost’s trip to Mongolia, his disappearance just outside Ulaanbaatar, Russia’s blaming China, China’s furious response, Bill’s dead driver, his flight south in a Russian van, the abandoned vehicle just a few miles from Courtney’s ger.
When the meal was ready, the group sat around the table and shared the same food they had eaten the night before: hard salty cheese and chewy horse jerky with a touch of putrid-flavored goat’s milk.
Jake had learned to appreciate every drop.
Matt was urging Eve to try the milk, but she refused.
“I can heat up the tea from last night,” Courtney offered.
“That’s okay,” Eve said. “I don’t like that either.”
Jake secretly agreed. The warm, diluted milk with a hint of tea and a spoonful of salt had nearly made him choke.
“It’s an acquired taste,” Courtney said.
Jake could see why the Peace Corps chose her. She was diplomatic.
“Oh, back to Bill Frost,” Courtney said.
The camp had nearly forgotten their reason for being there.
“I don’t know why Bill Frost would be investigating Mongolia,” she said. “It is National Geographic beautiful. These are the last true nomads in the world. There is the tremendous history of Mongols conquering most of the known world. But Bill’s a biologist who investigates environmental crimes. I don’t see where the crime is.”
“Well put,” Nils said.
“That’s the mystery we’re here to solve.”
Courtney sat back, her eyes shining. “Boy, am I privileged.”
Jake was thinking the opposite. They were lucky to have her. “Cheers,” he said, and held up the silver bowl.
“WiFi,” she said, offering an imaginary toast from across the table.
Jake was confused. “Why did you just say WiFi?”
“Oh, that’s what we say in Mongolia when we can’t reach across the table. We say ‘WiFi.’”
That made sense.
“Well, pilgrim.” Matt hitched up his britches and scanned the horizon. “I figure we’ll just have to go out yonder and round up Bill Frost ourselves.”
Jake stood alone with him in front of the ger. He had held high hopes that Courtney knew the lay of the land well enough to help them find Bill Frost. But, through no fault of her own, she was out of touch with her community and world events.
“He had to pass through here,” he said. “Somebody would have seen him.”
While they were making broad pronouncements, they could hear one side of a phone conversation inside the ger.
When she stepped out, Courtney was just putting away her mobile phone. “I called around,” she said. “I think we’ve found Bill Frost.”
That was great news.
But Jake was curious. “Who did you call?”
“I talked with Nicole Fernandez, my fellow volunteer down in Bulgan soum, or county. She said they have someone that matches his description in custody down there.”
“How far is Bulgan soum?” he asked.
“About thirty miles on horseback.”
“And who has him in custody?”
“The town.”
“You mean the police?”
“No. The town. Apparently, they didn’t like his dating a Mongolian princess.”
“I didn’t know that Mongolia had princesses.”
“Well, they used to. But the modern version is a beauty queen.”
“You mean, Bill Frost was dating a beauty queen?”
“Was,” she said. “She’s gone back to UB.”
“But the town is still holding him?”
She nodded, as if she didn’t like to repeat herself.
Jake imagined an angry mob preparing to lynch the gringo.
“We need to break him out of there,” he said.
“I figured,” she said, and kicked a chunk of yellow ice across the frozen ground. “We’ve come up with a plan.”
She seemed to have already talked it over with her fellow Peace Corps volunteer, and included herself in the plan.
“Go ahead,” Jake said.
“My friend seems to think this is a matter of national pride. But it could also be a ransom situation.”
“I’m rooting for a ransom situation,” Matt spoke up. “National pride is nonnegotiable.”
“Agreed,” Courtney said.
Jake looked at her with increasing respect. In addition to her diplomatic nature, she had the instincts of a hostage negotiator.
The town located in Bulgan soum was exactly where Courtney had said it was. And nowhere near where they thought they were.
“Congratulations,” Jake told Matt as they pulled out of the desert into the small town. “Yesterday when you drove off-road, you drove us fifty miles due south. Not north.”
The disoriented driver shrugged it off. “No wonder Courtney hadn’t seen Bill Frost. His van was nowhere near her ger.”
“It’s pure luck that we found him.”
“Haven’t found him yet,” Nils chimed in.
From all three rows of seats, the group looked out the dusty windows of the Land Cruiser.
“This valley is named after its seventy springs,” Courtney said. “This town is known throughout the aimag of Omnogovi as the Melon Capital of Mongolia.”
Considering the bone-dry soil, Jake couldn’t fathom how melons grew there. It certainly wasn’t an oasis.
What he did see was a wide spot in a dirt track. There was a one-room café, a power relay station, and hungry dogs sniffing around a utility pole. A solid row of stores with small windows and tightly shut doors lined the far side of the wide street. One nicely maintained, two-story building behind a decorative archway and fence was apparently the school, with the letters ABC written on its side.
“Stop here,” Courtney said. “We’ll pick up Nicole.”
Jake had forgotten what day of the week it was. He hadn’t focused on it being a school day.
“Come with me,” she told him. “Let’s get her.”
He hadn’t counted on being the Peace Corps teacher’s excuse for skipping school, but was happy to help.
Two teenage boys, tubby and bared to the waist, were wrestling in the courtyard. Younger children silently looked on. The whole scene made Jake even colder.
The intense scuffle produced the sounds of heavy breathing and boots scraping the rocky soil. The boys circled each other, heads down, arms locking with intricate handholds and then disengaging. To Jake, it looked more like a ritualized form of rutting than a sport.
He had to direct his attention away from the wrestlers in order to find Nicole Fernandez. And he spotted her easily.
Short and muscular with dark hair flowing out behind her knitted cap, she had the only Hispanic face among the faculty and schoolchildren.
Courtney waved at her, and Nicole excused herself to a man who looked on. He could hardly be bothered.
As they led her out of the courtyard, Nicole kept looking back.
“What’s happening here?” Jake asked.
“It’s gym class.”
They reached the car, having successfully sprung the pint-sized volunteer. When she looked in and saw the others, her eyes grew large. “I haven’t seen this many foreigners in a year.”
“Ta-da,” Matt said. “Here we are.”
Courtney helped her smaller friend into the center row and everyone settled in and closed the doors.
Matt started the car and turned the heater on full blast.
“Did you see Bill Frost get captured?” Jake asked Nicole, getting down to business.
“No. And I didn’t know it was Bill Frost. I didn’t even know it was an American. I just heard that four days ago, a couple of men recognized his girlfriend and went berserk. The town is keeping him locked up for his own good.”
“And where is he being held?” Jake asked.
She pointed to the far end of town. “He’s there in the last building on the left. But I don’t wan
t to play any part in this.”
They weren’t forcing her, but they had probably broken several Peace Corps rules already.
“This will help avert an international crisis,” he said.
“So I was told. But I can’t take sides.”
He could appreciate her position. Taking part in freeing Bill Frost could jeopardize her unique station in the community. And as he could plainly see, these weren’t people to mess with.
“Are they willing to bargain?” he asked.
“I think so.”
Good. “So this isn’t a matter of national pride?”
“I think it was initially. But that’s probably over. At this point, he’s just a burden.”
“Then can you be our mediator?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a motorbike enter town. Two boys were riding in on a cloud of dust.
“Hey!” Nicole opened her door and screamed at them.
She ran into the street and chewed them out in Mongolian. Her knotted eyebrows and her hands-on-hips assertiveness drove home her point.
The boys lowered their helmet visors and goosed the throttle, then drove off toward school.
She came back and jumped in the car. “Late as always.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “You’ll be our mediator.”
“Pull up to the tire repair shop,” she said.
Matt rolled across the hard-packed dirt and circled back to the first structure to greet visitors. Above the single window of the pink mud-walled building was the drawing of an automobile tire.
“Why are we here?” Jake asked.
“It’s where we’ll find someone.”
Given the silence in town, they’d be lucky to find anyone.
Courtney and Nicole slipped out of the car and entered the shop.
Jake jumped out, too, but felt it prudent not to enter the building.
He heard Nicole talking in a calm voice. She kept on talking. It turned into a speech.
Finally she stopped and there was silence.
Jake rubbed his gloved hands together. He was chilled to the bone, but had another reason to keep his fingers ready.
That reason was sitting in his shoulder holster.
He couldn’t see into the dark one-room building. He could only wait for results.
Nicole resumed talking, her words articulate and guttural at the same time.