Murder in Mongolia

by Fritz Galt

  Jake thought about dropping the FBI Director’s name, but opted against it. “It’s just me,” he said. “I make everything high priority.”

  “That’s good. I admire that.”

  Jake took it as the compliment of an equal, rather than the condescending comment of a younger man.

  He whipped out his notebook.

  “What was Bill Frost doing in Mongolia?”

  “I’m told he was working on a new episode of his show,” Truman said.

  Jake wrote it down. “I understand he was an environmentalist.”

  “You don’t know Bill Frost?”

  Was Frost someone Jake was supposed to know?

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  Truman stared. “You really don’t know who Bill Frost is?”

  Jake had a general interest in and fear for the environment, but he didn’t exactly hang out in environmental circles. “Can you fill me in?”

  Truman finished his California roll and wiped his lips. “Bill Frost is a Hunter S. Thompson-style television personality. You know how Anthony Bourdain was a chef who stormed the world? Well, Frost had his own show on National Geographic Channel.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Yeah. He traveled the world and documented environmental abuses, everything from coral reef exploitation to rhino hunting. My favorite was when he exposed the illegal logging industry in Brazil. Boy, were those companies fined!”

  “So he was some kind of jet-setting showman?”

  “Not at all. He had a doctorate in biology from Harvard. He was the real deal.”

  “So why was he on television?”

  “That’s where the big debates take place these days. He stood up for science.”

  “You’re talking climate change?”

  “That, and desertification and biodiversity and food scarcity.”

  “All the buzz words,” Jake observed.

  “All the big issues,” Truman corrected. “Frost took them all on. He clashed with authorities. He filed lawsuits. He raised our consciousness. He even had his own kids science show. I grew up on it.”

  Jake scribbled down notes. He must have grown up in the wrong generation.

  “So how old was Bill Frost?”

  “I’d put him around fifty.”

  “Married?”

  “No family that I know of. His work was his life.”

  And possibly his death, Jake filled in.

  In the end, Jake reflected as he hoofed it past I Street back to Pennsylvania Avenue, Truman had no information on Bill Frost that wasn’t already public knowledge.

  Nor did he have any great insights into Mongolia.

  However, one fact that Jake was able to glean was that Bill Frost was in Mongolia to work on an upcoming episode of his show. As the lunch progressed, Truman had speculated on what Bill Frost was there to cover in Mongolia. The great environmental issue facing the nation was, of all things, air pollution. Ulaanbaatar was not only the coldest capital in the world but also the most polluted. Blessed with abundant coal, they were choking on their own fumes.

  He passed K Street.

  Wait, there was no J Street? The street names had skipped from I to K. There were lots of oddities about DC he had yet to learn. Given that he didn’t even know his home turf, how was he supposed to understand a country on the other side of the world?

  He didn’t know where to start on his journey to investigate the case of the murdered TV celebrity. Under normal circumstances, he would hop into his car and drive to the crime scene. He would take notes, interrogate witnesses, and send evidence to Quantico. He would follow suspects, examine their motives, and generally help prosecutors at the Department of Justice put together a case for a Grand Jury.

  But he had to forget all that.

  He couldn’t just drive to the crime scene. Evidence was days old. There was no FBI Laboratory in Mongolia. He couldn’t conduct face-to-face interviews with people halfway around the world, in a language that even the State Department didn’t speak. And, finally, if the suspect was a foreign citizen, he didn’t know how the Justice Department could indict non-Americans for a crime committed on foreign soil.

  He needed to visit the legal department, the language folks, the forensics team, and if all that didn’t work, the travel office.

  But before he worried about getting a Mongolian visa stamped in his passport, he would go to the National Geographic Society and find out all the features and foibles of their celebrity scientist.

  And for that, he knew just the person to call.

  Mary Talbot, a young family friend, worked for National Geographic at their headquarters on Seventeenth and M. He arrived late that afternoon when she said she would be there. Looking around the high-tech office, he was impressed that a humanities graduate could land such a well-paid job.

  “Hi, Jake,” she said as he walked into her cubicle. “Sorry about the late hour.”

  “In and out a lot?” he asked.

  “No. I’m on the four-to-midnight shift,” she said. “Pull up a seat.”

  Jake looked around the cubicle and took the only seat.

  A flat-screen television sat on her desk beside her computer. “What exactly is your job?”

  “I’m a quality control engineer.”

  “Whoa, I didn’t know you were an engineer.” He took a moment to appraise the blue hair dye, bangles, and pierced nose. They sure built engineers different lately.

  “Not a computer engineer,” she said with minor irritation. “Focus on the ‘quality control’ part of the job title. Just before airing a show, I’m the last eyes on the screen. I check for video quality, color balance and brightness, and subtitle spelling and timing. I also check sound levels, syncing, and quality.”

  “So you’re basically a visual proofreader.”

  “There’s some content as well,” she said defensively. “The FCC doesn’t have jurisdiction over cable TV, but we abide by their censorship rules. We don’t allow profanity, adult content, or full body nudity, for instance.”

  Which was exactly why Jake had sought out National Geographic magazines as a kid.

  “I saw Bill Frost’s memorial downstairs,” he said. In the marble lobby was a large photo of Frost draped in black cloth.

  “Yeah,” she said wistfully. “He was a true icon.”

  “I didn’t know about him.”

  “Don’t you watch National Geographic Channel?”

  “I just moved to DC. I don’t have cable.” Actually, he was stretching the truth. He prided himself on not watching cable at all. He caught cable news in passing at hotels and bars and all he saw was normal people wearing Hollywood makeup sitting side-by-side behind cardboard desks talking off the top of their heads, saying things like “razor focus” and “putting our shoulders together.”

  “Frankly,” he said, “what passes as news these days is a national disgrace.”

  “You know, there’s more to TV than news.”

  “I know that. Just call me jaded.”

  “You have to think about ratings,” she said. “Bill Frost was our top-rated show. Believe me, I had to up my game before releasing his episodes.”

  “How many people watched his show?”

  “This is National Geographic, you have to remember. It isn’t CBS. For us, a good program draws around 800,000 views.”

  “So his death will greatly affect the bottom line.”

  Mary was thoughtful. “Of course, it’s about more than money. Bill Frost was a cause.”

  “Can you tell me what he was doing in Mongolia?”

  She pointed to the program she was monitoring. “Do you mind if I work while we talk?”

  It was an agricultural show about beekeeping.

  “Go right ahead,” he said.

  “What was Bill Frost doing in Mongolia?” she repeated the question, her back turned. “He was a very secretive journalist. Nobody knew what he was working on until the show came out. Rumors around here say he was resear
ching an episode on the effects of climate change on marginal ecosystems.”

  “So his show was only about plants and animals?”

  “More than that. His show had a political edge.”

  “Enough to get him killed?”

  Mary looked over her shoulder at him.

  He was worried that she might miss a rude beekeeper.

  “What makes you think he was killed?” she asked. “I read that it was an accident. One of those risks of working in rugged conditions.”

  “It’s true that Mongolian authorities hold that he was killed in a rockslide.”

  The beekeeper was approaching the honeycomb with bare hands. There was a flicker on her television monitor.

  “You’d better watch your show.”

  “Oh, crap. Back to the video engineers with this one. Time code 00:26:12:14.”

  She marked it down on a form and continued watching, this time more closely.

  “So why are you asking about him?” she wondered. “Are you saying it wasn’t an accident?”

  He decided not to tell her that the embassy reported it was something other than a rockslide.

  Which reminded him, he needed to track down why Mongolian authorities had lied to the press.

  “Can you call me if you learn more about what subject he was covering in Ulaanbaatar?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The capital of Mongolia.”

  She turned to look at him.

  Wasn’t that common knowledge? Asking Mary to look into Bill Frost’s intentions carried some risk. It might prove difficult to keep the investigation under wraps.

  “Sure.” She turned back to the screen. “I’ll let you know if I find anything out.”

  Then she wrote down another glitch that Jake had failed to notice.

  Amber was spending her first night in her new apartment, and Jake had offered to cook her dinner.

  So on his bus ride home from work, he stopped off at the local food market.

  Hardly worthy of the name, Glover Park Market was a glorified liquor store consisting of two long aisles of soda and beer. It was obvious they had no fresh food. So he settled for two Stouffer’s frozen dinners enhanced by a bottle of Merlot.

  It was already dark as he walked the last few blocks to his rowhouse. The 1930s development named after the wealthy philanthropist Charles Glover featured rowhouses where owners left their porchlights on in a neighborly way. Built up and down hills, each adjoining house featured its own front steps and bush or tree, with a garage, parking spot, or patio on the back alley. Each street had a different style of architecture, lending a nicely haphazard look to the neighborhood. But the environmentally conscious Charles Glover had left behind one odious legacy.

  Along the way, Jake had to fight back a gag reflex and avoid stepping on fleshy yellow seeds that littered the sidewalks.

  It was autumn and Jake had learned all too late that his neighborhood was festooned with female ginkgo trees. The vomit smell of the fallen seeds made any trip outside highly unpleasant. As he scrupulously avoided stepping on the barf pellets, he increasingly regretted his choice of neighborhood.

  With care and agility, he managed to reach home unscathed. There, he checked his mailbox and found several letters addressed to Amber Jones.

  She had come and gone earlier in the week bringing boxes and furniture. But receiving mail made her move official.

  Inside the house, he kicked off his shoes and sniffed the soles. Luckily, he had avoided bringing in the offensive odor.

  “Amber?” He knocked on the door that led down to her apartment.

  “Hey, Jake,” he heard her call from below.

  “Dinner in ten minutes,” he called.

  “You must be the five-minute chef.”

  Maybe he could get the food out of the microwave before she noticed that it was a TV dinner.

  A few minutes later, he had just managed to throw the original boxes away when the door swung open and there stood Amber, deeply bronze with loose, curly black hair, holding his cat.

  “You stole my cat,” he said.

  “She likes me better,” she said with a smile.

  It felt like home already.

  “You open that bottle of wine,” he said, “and I’ll serve the food.”

  Tall and shapely, Amber eased into the kitchen. Passing through, she glanced at his clean range and what he was carrying.

  “Is that Stouffer’s?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Really? I move all the way to the nation’s capital and this is the kind of welcome dinner I get?”

  He glanced at the plastic trays in his hands.

  “Is the government shut down or something? No? I mean, Stouffer’s Salisbury steak TV dinners? Are you kidding me? Do not smile at me.”

  “I’m not smiling.”

  “Look. Here’s a suggestion. Why don’t you put on your jacket and shoes. And go wade through that…that ocean of smelly crap on your street up to Wisconsin Avenue and bring us back a real dinner?”

  “I'm on it,” he said.

  It took only half an hour to place an order online and have a decent meal delivered.

  By then, they had polished off half the bottle of Merlot.

  “Amber,” he said, once they were eating Weiner schnitzel and potato pancakes from Old Europe. “Your job is far more exciting than you give it credit.”

  She looked at him tiredly. “I know my job, and it is not exciting.”

  “Couldn’t be worse than what I saw today…”

  She gave him one of her trademark, hands-on-hips “Prove it” poses.

  “How would you like to watch TV all day looking for static?” he asked.

  “Hmm. When you put it that way…”

  “Trust me. Fact-checking requires far more brainpower.”

  Then it occurred to him. “Did you work on a story about Bill Frost?”

  He wondered if she would even recognize the name. “He died in Siberia.”

  “No. It was Mongolia.” She was either a fan of Frost’s, or one terrific fact-checker. “Mongolia is on the Great Steppe of Central Asia. Siberia is the taiga forest and tundra of Eastern Russia.”

  “I stand corrected. I was just testing you.”

  She gave him a disbelieving twist of the lips.

  “Have more wine.”

  “Why do you ask about Bill Frost?” she said, accepting a refill.

  “Did you hear about how he died?”

  “I worked on the story,” she confirmed. “Reports say it was a rockslide.”

  “Who reported on it?”

  “It came over the wires. It was the Associated Press. They have a stringer in Mongolia who reported on the air pollution last winter.”

  “Doesn’t AP have a photo service these days?”

  “And video. NPR subscribes to all that.”

  “Did you get any footage of the Frost incident?”

  She took a long sip and swallowed, then shook her head. “Not that I saw.”

  “But you did work on the story?”

  “Are you questioning my thoroughness?”

  “Did you call Mongolia?”

  “I thought about it, but it’s twelve time zones away.”

  She took her job seriously, but wouldn’t stay up that late to check the facts.

  “Could you find out if there’s any footage?”

  She stared sloppily into his eyes, but not so sloppily that there wasn’t serious interest. “Why are you asking?”

  “Honey,” he said, and sat back forcing a smile. “I hope this doesn’t lead to any competition between us. But it looks like we’re working on the very same story.”

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday

  It turned out that Jake was wrong about Amber spending her first night in her new apartment.

  And the next morning when he found her toothbrush in his bathroom, he got a sense of how the arrangement was going to work.

  As much as he enjoyed the larger space tha
t his new house afforded him, sounds echoed around emptily, and he could use the company.

  Shaving, he reviewed all that he had accomplished the day before, and began to work out a plan of action for the day ahead.

  He had found and interviewed Truman Christopher and Mary Talbot who knew all about the American victim, but mainly because he was a celebrity. What he needed to find out were the specifics of the man and the murder. Today he would concentrate on just that.

  Unfortunately, he had missed the work day in Mongolia. The time he could have used phoning the embassy in Ulaanbaatar, he had been getting reacquainted with Amber.

  The setting was new for her, and he had wanted to make her feel welcome. Now her dark, naked presence lent a pleasant warmth to the house.

  She was just stirring when he slipped out of the en suite bathroom and began tiptoeing for the staircase.

  “Mr. Maguire?” she said. “Aren’t you going to give me a kiss?”

  He bent over the dark form, and she tugged on his necktie. Soon they were locked in an embrace that could get dangerously out of control if he didn’t keep a cool head.

  “Can you email me that video from Ulaanbaatar?” he asked, drawing away.

  “Aw, Jeez,” she said. “This is already so much like work. You just want me for my brains.”

  “That’s wrong,” he said, straightening his tie. “I just want you for your… Er, I go for the whole package.”

  “I like your package, too,” she teased.

  Oh, man. He didn’t mind waking up with her, but he had to leave before the morning got away from him.

  “Let’s go out to dinner,” he said. “There are lots of great local restaurants and pubs.”

  “I am living on a fact-checker’s budget, you know.”

  “We’ll keep it simple. How about we meet at Town Hall?”

  “Dinner and a marriage certificate?” She sounded horrified. “You want to get hitched?”

  Then he realized the misunderstanding. “Not City Hall,” he hurriedly said. “‘Town Hall.’ That’s the name of a restaurant on Wisconsin.”

  “Okay, you hunk. It’s a date.”

  He cleared his throat and walked away before she could lure him back into bed.

  The most frustrating part of his new job at headquarters was all the administrative meetings. If Jake didn’t scale back his commitments to others, he’d never get his own work done. Meetings on hiring. Meetings on policy. Meetings on relocating the office. That meeting was actually interesting, and he paid close attention. Having just moved to the District, he didn’t want to move again.