by Fritz Galt
“Train!” Matt said, as he squatted beside the driver. “We need to get around it.”
Through the windshield, Jake saw a long line of vehicles backed up by a twenty-car freight train that was stopped on the tracks.
Matt issued directions for the driver to circumvent the traffic jam and circle back through town.
“We’ll find another crossing,” he announced to the passengers.
The kids didn’t seem to mind, and the tuba player was buried in Tolstoy.
Now that Jake thought about it, shielding themselves with schoolchildren was morally and ethically indefensible.
The more pressing question was not a moral one: Where in creation were they going?
Catching the first rays of sunlight, the tops of a giant Ferris wheel and rollercoaster loomed out the window. The amusement park was frozen in the depths of winter.
They eased past the diplomatic compound just as guards opened the front gate, and the waiting contingent of squad cars flooded in.
As the school van drove into town, they left the police behind and plowed into a thick bank of smoke. Groups of pedestrians walked determinedly in the same direction. Soon there were more people on the sidewalks than cars on the street.
“Uh-oh,” Matt said.
“Uh-oh, what?” Jake said.
“Looks like another demonstration.”
On the far corner of a large intersection sat an impressive government building with multiple columns like a European palace. Stretched out before it on an open square, a colorful amalgam of people stood waving signs and chanting. Soldiers ringed the square, letting protestors through but observing their behavior. Mounted on horseback, uniformed men rode among the crowd keeping the emotions in check.
“Is this all about the outbreak?” Nils asked from a back seat.
“It is,” Matt said over his shoulder. “You can see why the police came after you.”
Jake could visualize the dynamics at work. The pressure on the government had led them to try and diminish the problem, make it go away. One way would be to scare away or round up scientists.
The chanting carried far through the crackling cold. It echoed off the smattering of neoclassical structures and glass high-rises. The emotion in their voices carried as well. It was a fearful, angry shriek.
The driver gave up trying to turn at the square and was forced to turn the other way.
“We’ll just make a wider circle around all this,” Matt said. “This’ll take us past the embassy. Last chance to get off.”
It turned out they had chosen a fairly uninspiring direction where apartment buildings stretched out into the smog and Jake could barely make out distant mountains.
People on the sidewalk weren’t so jaded that they didn’t look up to study passersby and take interest in their existence. Women wore black leggings and stylish winter coats that cinched at the waist. Men were dressed for the cold, not for style. They wore casual clothes that leaned toward the urban look with threadbare coats and dirty woolen caps.
Jake tried to read street names in the haze. One of the main streets was called Beijing Street. They turned at an impressive white building behind a black iron fence. An Indian flag flew out front. Those details served to remind Jake that he was in a nation’s capital, the Washington, DC, of Mongolia.
Buildings were either apartments or offices, solidly built and not undesirable. Jake could see how a young person would be proud to own a condo and live in a high rise in the nation’s capital. But the grounds, exterior, and sidewalks were in utter neglect. Perhaps that was a legacy of socialism, where upkeep was everybody’s problem and therefore nobody’s. The lack of trees and urban beautification was striking. It seemed like the city was still fighting nature at that point and wasn’t ready to embrace it.
His overall impression was that of a cheerless, but not drab place. The city wasn’t designed for walking or hanging around outdoors. People were essentially hustling from one indoor location to another and the cold was just a fact of life.
The only real attraction was a frozen stream that was given a wide berth and wound its way southward, taking twists and turns and forming sandbars here and there. It was surrounded by tall grass and snow-covered walkways. As they sat in the traffic-choked street, Jake watched a pair of stray dogs on one bank. They pawed at the ground digging for food. He had no idea how they survived.
The van ventured along the wide drainage ditch of frozen water toward what looked like the city’s outskirts.
“Are we lost?” a young girl asked.
“Just bad traffic,” Matt tried to reassure her.
“I have a Social and Cultural Anthropology assessment starting at eight,” an older kid said.
“There will be time,” Matt said.
Beyond the river, Jake saw a mosaic of rooftops painted bright colors. Each house, together with a round white tent and an outhouse, was protected by a high wooden fence. To Jake, the ramshackle compounds resembled stockyards more than dwellings.
“That’s a ger district,” Matt explained.
Jake thought “district” was a generous term. He would have called it a shantytown.
“After a few bad winters on the steppe,” Matt explained, “families lost their herds and their livelihoods and had to move to the city.”
“‘Ger’ is the Mongolian name for a yurt,” Eve added helpfully.
“So much pollution,” Tracy said.
Jake’s eyes were smarting, and it smelled like burning coal, but also smoldering rubber, wood, and plastic. Indeed, a chimney poked out of every round white ger and let out a thin stream of black smoke.
“Over here’s our embassy,” Matt announced. “Last chance to get out.”
The low-slung American Embassy sat far back from an iron fence, with the tops of three gers and a geodesic dome rising over a solid wall.
Why the police were after the WHO doctor and CDC scientist was still unexplained. Surely, they needed to go about their work without interference. Maybe they could do so in the safety of the embassy.
He looked at the Swede and American and the two of them shook their heads. “We aren’t here to be prisoners,” Tracy said.
“Drive on,” Matt told the driver.
They zig-zagged back to Beijing Street, and the name changed to Peace Street. Clearly Ulaanbaatar’s main commercial thoroughfare, it was only four lanes wide, with cars parked every inch of the way.
The little school bus rocked along.
Pedestrians scurried by, mostly mothers dragging their reluctant children to school against the cold morning.
At a slight jog in the road, they drove past a government building. Parked before it were some of the nicest cars in the city.
Eve leaned forward and whispered, “The government’s Anti-Corruption Office.”
It wasn’t hard for Jake to see the connection.
Then he looked at Eve. Why on earth was she in the van? She was taking an extraordinary risk to help them. Unless such was a typical day in the life of a diplomatic spouse.
Matt eventually directed the driver to turn south. The road followed enormous pipes that were mounted just above the ground. The tubes felt like an Orwellian intrusion on the hapless little capital. According to Eve, they carried steam from power plants to the inhabitants of the city.
Only when the school van headed up over a modern bridge did Jake see the reason for Matt’s route. The bridge crossed high over the railroad tracks.
They were above the cloud of pollution. With the sun bright in their eyes, they had a view of mountains in all directions. Below, the city was a hazy field of apartment buildings.
Back on level ground, the school van reached the southern end of town. There they turned southwest toward mountains that suddenly seemed close.
They took a low bridge over a wide, frozen river and entered a new district of swank apartment buildings and the beginning of distant housing compounds.
“For rich guys, ” Eve breathed with awe.
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Suddenly they were on a beautifully paved road that hugged the foot of the mountain. Newly built and smooth, the two-lane had modern, curving guardrails. The driver swayed with the turns as if in a trance.
Jake glanced at the students around him. The young ones had been lulled to sleep. The high schoolers looked absently at the white mountains. Maybe they knew the route.
The road led past a huge compound with nothing but river and nature before it and steep mountains behind.
“Those are the homes of the President, Prime Minister, and Speaker of the Parliament,” Eve explained.
Maybe the group should pull over and appeal to higher powers. But with the Mongolian police out to get them, Jake doubted the powers that be would lend a sympathetic ear.
That got him thinking about Detective Bold. Today’s attempted arrest could be traced back to the detective covering up a murder on Bogd Khan Mountain.
“I’m wondering.” Jake turned to Eve. “Where is Bogd Khan Mountain?”
She glanced out beyond the government leadership’s houses. “This is it.”
He looked closer. “You mean behind the president’s house?”
“This is all one big mountain,” she said. “There is a ski slope on this side and a monastery on the other side.”
If Jake had the chance, he would begin his search for Bill Frost at the monastery.
Since crossing the river, he spotted more of those round white gers. They were spaced randomly over large fields, often with a car out front. He saw no electrical lines, water sources, or roads. Cattle and horses huddled in small herds. Even near the city, people continued their nomadic way of life.
Then the driver turned off the asphalt surface onto a bumpy road of packed snow. They were heading east, with the sunshine full on the windshield. Eventually, Jake wanted to turn south, where Amber was pursuing her scoop, with Cal Frost likely close behind.
But Jake couldn’t just head south. He was part of a larger group. Once they dropped off the increasingly impatient school kids, the five adults should go their separate ways. That would help them fragment the police effort and increase the chances of at least one of them achieving success.
Straight ahead, a modern glass building appeared at a traffic light. On top read, “INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF ULAANBAATAR.”
The kids were already putting on their scarves and mittens.
Matt stepped over the tuba and crouched between the adults. “I know a couple of teachers. I can ask to borrow their cars.”
“One car,” Nils said. “There’s safety in numbers.” Spoken like a true epidemiologist.
Personally, Jake approved. “Especially if only one of us knows the lay of the land.” He looked at Matt.
The police weren’t after diplomats. Matt had a lot to lose.
“We need you to be our guide,” Tracy told Matt.
The young man closed his eyes in thought, and likely prayer. “Okay. We’ll take one car. But where? Russia is a five hour drive away and China is to the distant south.”
“I need to start my search on the back of Bogd Khan Mountain,” Jake said.
“That’s near enough,” Matt said. “Are we all in?”
The van came to a stop in front of the school, and the children spilled out. They ran up the steps and entered an airlock into the brightly lit lobby of their childhood getaway.
Jake wished them all a great day.
“Listen to your teachers,” the professor exhorted.
That left the five adults staring at each other.
“We need to go to the countryside,” Tracy said.
“Bogd Khan Mountain is the countryside,” Matt said.
“Then I’m with Jake,” Tracy said.
Nils nodded in agreement.
Jake looked at Eve.
“I’m with my husband.”
“Then we’re all in,” Matt said.
There were solemn nods all around, as if sealing a secret pact.
Did they really know what they were getting into?
Five minutes later, Matt Justice emerged from the school dangling a set of car keys.
“The biology teacher lent us her Toyota Land Cruiser. Seats eight. Studded tires.”
“Know how to get to the monastery behind the mountain?” Jake asked.
Matt nodded. “I’ve been to Manzushir.”
There was no objection, and the party of five set off.
With Matt as driver and Eve offering color commentary, they headed back along the frozen river. In one shaded and windy fold of the mountain, they passed a ragtag set of teepees with blue plastic scraps that flew in the wind.
“Built by shamans,” Eve said. “This country believes in the blue sky as their god.”
Moments later, they passed what would turn out to be a series of coal-fired power plants, providing both power and heating to the city of over a million people. The gray columns of smoke mingled with the blue sky in a sun-tinted haze that settled in the city’s valley.
Now fully in the shadow of the mountain, they passed a tall gleaming monolith on a hilltop. Matt described it as a Russian tribute to Russian soldiers.
Eve took the opportunity to give it the fist. Perhaps the Chinese had a different interpretation of Russia’s occupation of Mongolia.
They were in a long valley that led out of the city. The high, rounded mountains on both sides were a pleasant combination of dark forests and snowy meadows.
There was a long line of cars slowly creeping out of town. What was the holdup?
Jake looked for a police blockade.
Then he saw workers in hazmat suits stopping every car.
They weren’t police, but the health implications didn’t look good, either.
“PPR?” Nils asked. “Are they spraying for sheep and goat plague?”
Matt wasn’t sure. “Normally they check license plates for cars entering the city from distant aimags, or provinces. Then they spray the wheels of those vehicles. But this team is spraying all vehicles going in both directions.”
Sure enough, when their Land Cruiser pulled up, the workers, entirely hidden by their suits, walked around the car spraying it. But they didn’t just spray the wheels. Even the windows and roof got doused by their hoses.
Nils, a medical doctor, looked appalled, but said nothing. Who knew what they were breathing in?
Soon Matt turned off the main road. The new road crossed open grassland rimmed by round hills. They passed an extensive cemetery on the open land, each tombstone facing the sunny south.
As they rounded Bogd Khan Mountain, suddenly there was no snow at all. Farther mountains faded into the frosty haze.
A pair of police cars sped past, casting sharply etched shadows. But all traffic had to slow down when a cow crossed the road.
“We call cows ‘policemen,’” Eve said. “They slow traffic down.”
Jake was interested in the discarded bottles glittering beside the road.
“This country needs some cleanup,” he remarked.
“Recycling hasn’t hit Mongolia yet,” Matt said. “The real threat is glass bottles. They cause wildfires in the summer.”
In the shadow of mountains and on windy passes, snow lined every ridge, rut, and depression.
Then they were back to green, undulating terrain with a motley patchwork of sheep and horses all facing the same direction, into the sun.
The highway was devoid of signs and billboards, just kilometer markers. Settlements sat scattered along the road for no apparent reason. All Jake saw were rickety fences and the crumbling walls of buildings.
“Here we are,” Matt said.
He turned off onto a smaller road that led up the back side of the mountain.
Jake’s detective skills went on high alert. They were retracing Bill Frost’s footsteps, and he tried to put himself in Bill’s shoes.
It was a Sunday afternoon when Bill and his driver came up there. They passed through a tiny town that had a school and store. The only colorful structu
re was a small temple off the side of the road.
“Buddhists,” Eve said dismissively. “Mongolia has many Buddhists.”
It seemed that her secular, Maoist upbringing was hard to overcome.
“There’s the monastery,” Matt said, and pointed straight ahead.
“All I see is a field of rocks,” Nils said.
“The monastery was first built in the 1730s,” Matt explained. “But 200 years later during Soviet occupation, the army used it for target practice.”
“They have no respect for religion,” Eve said, contradicting her earlier stance on Buddhism. Jake took that to imply her hatred of Russians exceeded her dislike of religion.
“Where would Bill Frost have parked?” he asked.
“This is as far as he could have gone,” Matt said.
There were parking spots, but no cars. A cow stared at them from behind a fence. Clearly, Bill Frost’s car was no longer there.
“I need an hour to comb through the debris,” Jake said. Then he realized that nobody knew the purpose of his visit. “An American was targeted for assassination up here,” he said. “It appears that his driver was killed. However, the Mongolian police don’t want it investigated.”
He turned to Matt.
“Has Chad been up here yet?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
That made Jake the first American to inspect the crime scene.
“I’ll have a look at the cow,” Tracy said.
“Let’s meet back here in an hour,” Matt said.
Jake’s coat wasn’t keeping him warm, so he tried to stay in direct sunlight.
A trail led up along a frozen stream, through trees, over a bridge, then out onto a boulder-strewn meadow. In the silent beauty, he could see why monks had built a monastery there those many centuries ago. Why would the army want to destroy such a peaceful place?
The structures had been pulverized into oblivion by tanks and heavy artillery firing from the bottom of the hill.
Jake stood in the doorway of one structure that had been restored with a shrine inside. Behind him, the car glinted in the sunlight. Above him, further boulders formed an ever-steeper rise up to a stand of trees.
