CHAPTER 14
Mongolia
MICHAEL AND JIANJUN fled the nightmare of murder and destruction at Bayan Ölgiy, and made a frenzied cross-country drive to Ulaanbaatar in Batbaatar's jeep, stopping only for gas. Once there, Jianjun went off to find a way for them to leave the country without attracting unwanted attention.
Michael hadn’t slept since Bayan Ölgiy. When he shut his eyes, he saw the corpses of the men who had worked for him, who had trusted him. He’d failed those he should have protected. Again.
He was a child the first time it happened. Only ten years old. People around him, and later psychiatrists and psychologists, told him a child couldn’t be expected to take care of his mother, couldn’t stop an adult from doing as she pleased. Couldn’t stop her from taking her own life. But he had been there, and no one else was.
His father never forgave him. And he never forgave himself.
His older brother ignored him more than ever.
Only one person ever looked at him with understanding, forgiveness, and love. And then she, too, walked out of his life. He’d gotten over it eventually. But now, memories of the past rushed back.
He might not have slept on the trip across Mongolia, but he had thought a great deal.
He believed some secret arm of the government or shadow government had taken Lady Hsieh's coffin, and suspected that may have been why, after months of being told ‘no,’ he had suddenly been granted access to the dig site.
A team of soldiers or mercenaries would have been needed to remove the sand from the dig site and then steal the coffins. And clearly they had been ordered to not only remove the site’s contents, but to eliminate everyone who knew of its existence. If Michael and Jianjun hadn't left the ger, they would be dead as well. Lady Hsieh, he was sure, had saved them. Somehow, he must save her.
He hurried across Ulaanbaatar.
The city reflected its tenure under the Soviet Union's bleak rule. Old city walls had been pulled down so only fragments remained. Large open streets for trucks and soldiers ran where bazaars once stood. Colorful homes, shops, and temples had been replaced with grim quadrilateral Communist buildings. Now, with the Soviets gone, a gloomy dust hung over everything.
Gandan, short for the Gandanlegchinlen Monastery, was the only place in Ulaanbaatar he genuinely liked. It had Tibetan style gold and crimson pagodas with pavilion roofs, a cloistered Buddhist university, and the Migjid Janraisig Süm temple, which held a one-hundred-foot, gold leaf-covered Buddha. Under communist rule, many of the Buddhist monks had been slaughtered, and religion prohibited, including ''ongoing reincarnations.” All were back now.
Just beyond the monastery grounds, he saw the Natural History Museum. Four stories high and lining several blocks, it housed Mongolia's enormous collection of dinosaur fossils and more dinosaur eggs than any other place in the world.
Bitterly, he realized his find would have changed all that. How could dinosaur eggs compare to a perfectly preserved human?
It was the only place in Mongolia with a climate-controlled environment and instrumentation. If the government was involved, they should have taken her there. In a half hour it would close for the night.
As he made his way through the building, he became surer than ever that she had been brought here. She deserved better than to be shut up like some bizarre feat of early science to be studied, bits of her carved and diced and placed under a microscope. He wandered the halls and displays along with the few other tourists, but spent more time checking the museum's security than its dinosaur eggs. He found a stairwell and when no one watched, ran down it to the basement where the laboratories were. He looked around until he found an exit, knowing that at some point he might need to make a quick escape.
Nearby he found a large, unlocked closet, and snuck inside. There, in total darkness, he waited for the buzzer to sound indicating the museum had closed for the day. He continued to wait for thirty minutes after that.
Ancient Echoes
Joanne Pence's books
- A Brand New Ending
- A Cast of Killers
- A Change of Heart
- A Christmas Bride
- A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
- A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked
- A Delicate Truth A Novel
- A Different Blue
- A Firing Offense
- A Killing in China Basin
- A Killing in the Hills
- A Matter of Trust
- A Murder at Rosamund's Gate
- A Nearly Perfect Copy
- A Novel Way to Die
- A Perfect Christmas
- A Perfect Square
- A Pound of Flesh
- A Red Sun Also Rises
- A Rural Affair
- A Spear of Summer Grass
- A Story of God and All of Us
- A Summer to Remember
- A Thousand Pardons
- A Time to Heal
- A Toast to the Good Times
- A Touch Mortal
- A Trick I Learned from Dead Men
- A Vision of Loveliness
- A Whisper of Peace
- A Winter Dream
- Abdication A Novel
- Abigail's New Hope
- Above World
- Accidents Happen A Novel
- Ad Nauseam
- Adrenaline
- Aerogrammes and Other Stories
- Aftershock
- Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can)
- All in Good Time (The Gilded Legacy)
- All the Things You Never Knew
- All You Could Ask For A Novel
- Almost Never A Novel
- Already Gone
- American Elsewhere
- American Tropic
- An Order of Coffee and Tears
- Angels at the Table_ A Shirley, Goodness
- Alien Cradle
- All That Is
- Angora Alibi A Seaside Knitters Mystery
- Arcadia's Gift
- Are You Mine
- Armageddon
- As Sweet as Honey
- As the Pig Turns
- Ascendants of Ancients Sovereign
- Ash Return of the Beast
- Away
- $200 and a Cadillac
- Back to Blood
- Back To U
- Bad Games
- Balancing Act
- Bare It All
- Beach Lane
- Because of You
- Before I Met You
- Before the Scarlet Dawn
- Before You Go
- Being Henry David
- Bella Summer Takes a Chance
- Beneath a Midnight Moon
- Beside Two Rivers
- Best Kept Secret
- Betrayal of the Dove
- Betrayed
- Between Friends
- Between the Land and the Sea
- Binding Agreement
- Bite Me, Your Grace
- Black Flagged Apex
- Black Flagged Redux
- Black Oil, Red Blood
- Blackberry Winter
- Blackjack
- Blackmail Earth
- Blackmailed by the Italian Billionaire
- Blackout
- Blind Man's Bluff
- Blindside
- Blood & Beauty The Borgias
- Blood Gorgons
- Blood of the Assassin
- Blood Prophecy
- Blood Twist (The Erris Coven Series)
- Blood, Ash, and Bone
- Bolted (Promise Harbor Wedding)
- Bonnie of Evidence