Treasure of Khan (Dirk Pitt 19)

"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."