23 A Face in the Crowd

THE MONGOLIAN GIRL – CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"For decades the public use of your national hero's name has been banned, so my idea is that if you really want a dramatic change of image, you should call yourselves the Ghengis Khan Party." Enkhbold, Batbold and Olga all stared at Tom as he added," It will signal to the voters that you have broken away from the Soviets and that you are embarking on a new era of Mongolian nationalism."

Olga interpreted Tom's words. Enkhbold and Batbold leaned towards each other and had a quick discussion, after which Enkhbold spoke to Olga.

She smiled at Tom. “Mr Enkhbold thinks your ideas are crazy and dangerous. He wants a new report with some more practical suggestions.”

Tom smiled back at her. “How about you, Olga? Do you think my ideas are crazy?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, but they could be dangerous, especially for people like me.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. He started to ask, “Why?” But he was interrupted by Batbold:

“Thank you. You can go now.”

Tom stood up and went to take his report back from Batbold, who was holding it in his hand.

Batbold looked up at him with a hint of a smile. “No, I want this.”

When Tom reached the end of the corridor, he stopped, listened and looked around. Should he go up the stairs instead of down? He wondered more than ever about what happened on the third floor. What were all those thuds about? But just as he had made his decision and taken his first tentative step up the stairs, he heard voices. Tom stepped back into the corridor and watched two men in black coats hurry up the stairs. Once they’d passed, he headed back down to his office.

When he entered, Shishmishig looked up from his newspaper. “Did Mr Enkhbold like your report?”

“I don’t think so.”

A look of concern spread across Shishmishig’s face “You didn’t mention my name, did you?”

Tom laughed and sat down. “No, I didn’t.”

As he reached down to take his Teach Yourself Mongolian book out of his briefcase he thought to himself, so much for my brilliant idea. He spent the rest of the day studying and practising Mongolian with Shishmishig, who was impressed by the foreigner’s interest in his native language; none of the Russians he had ever known, even those who’d lived in Mongolia for years, had bothered to learn any.

At five o’ clock, Tom followed Shishmishig out of the office door and collected his coat and fur hat from Mrs Jargal. The black Zil limousine was waiting outside with its engine running. The car interior smelled, as usual, of body odour, vodka and cigarettes. As they drove across the city centre, Tom saw that there were more armed soldiers out on the frozen streets.

They followed a truckload of troops into Sukhe Bator Square. The truck stopped in front of the statue of Lenin where the soldiers jumped out and surrounded a group of about two hundred young Mongolians who seemed to be holding some sort of demonstration.

Tom got out of the limousine, but didn’t enter the hotel. Instead he turned towards the crowd. They looked like students. Two of them were holding poles between which stretched a white banner. Tom couldn’t understand everything that was written on it, but he recognized MDP – Mongolian Democratic Party. They were the opposition.

He walked past one of the soldiers to the edge of the crowd. Everybody looked nervous, but Tom didn’t care because in the middle of the crowd was someone in a blue coat he desperately wanted to reach.

He breathed heavily in the cold air. "Hello, Sarantuya," he said as nonchalantly as he could, after pushing through the crowd.

"Hello." She seemed genuinely pleased to see him. He had expected her to be embarrassed.

He wanted to blurt out straight away, "Why didn't you come?" But, he didn’t know enough Mongolian. Then Saran said something to a middle-aged man in gold-rimmed spectacles and a black trilby hat, who was standing next to her. The man turned to Tom and said in almost flawless English, “Can I help you?”

Tom smiled, “Well, yes you can. Do you think there will be any fighting here?”

“It’s possible, but your presence might help. The soldiers probably think you are Russian, and they are on your side, at least for now.”

Tom shivered. It was getting dark and the temperature was dropping fast. “Would you like to walk out of here with me?”

The man spoke to Sarantuya. She nodded. The three of them linked arms and pushed their way out of the crowd. The soldiers looked tense, but let them pass. When they reached the front of the hotel, Tom asked the man, “Could you do me favour?

“Yes. What?”

“Could you interpret for us, please?”

“Certainly.”

Tom looked at Sarantuya, "I waited for you that night."

She glanced up at him from under her grey fur hat. "But didn't you get my message?"

"No. What message?"

To be contd.

NEXT CHAPTER

11 Yellowing Papers and a Whiff of Perfume

THE MONGOLIAN GIRL – CHAPTER ELEVEN

As he felt himself begin to fall, Tom just managed to grab the banister and regained his footing , then turned and hurried back down the stairs to the second floor, where he ran into the corridor and tried the brass handle to the first door he saw. His heart was beating even faster now. He leaned his right shoulder into it, but it was locked. “Damn.”

He almost didn’t want to look back, because if there was somebody there, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to see his face. But, as he ran to the second door on the left, he risked a glance over his shoulder. There was nobody else in the corridor yet. He turned the handle, almost flew into the neon-lit room, closed the door behind him and leaned back against it. In front of him, under the glare of two strip lights, were two tables piled high with stacks of yellowing papers and green cardboard files. Behind them was a row of four grey filing cabinets. At one end of the room was a large notice board, covered with black-and-white passport photos of Mongolians of both sexes and all ages, and at the other end was another door.

He could hear footsteps in the corridor now. Someone was coming. His arms froze in mid-air and he gasped, when the other door opened. As he walked forward, pulled his jacket down and straightened his tie, the door behind him also started to open. Tom’s eyes flashed from one door to the other. He thought about hiding under one of the tables, but he realized it was too late, as Mr Enkhbold had already entered from the door to his right.

Tom smiled wanly: “Sorry, got a bit lost, looking for Miss Shevchenko.” Mr Enkhbold, who didn’t understand a word the foreigner was saying, shouted something in Mongolian, and then Tom heard the door behind him flung wide open. He swung round and bumped into a startled Olga Shevchenko. For a brief moment, her breasts touched his ribs, her bobbed black hair brushed his chin and he breathed a whiff of her surprisingly decadent, musky perfume, a gift from Batbold, which she'd dabbed on as an afterthought at her small apartment on Marx Avenue earlier that morning.

They bent down and almost bumped heads as they started to collect the file full of papers she’d been carrying, which now lay scattered across the floor. Mr Enkhbold approached. For some reason, at that moment, he reminded Tom of the Chinese funeral director who’d been called in after the tragic death of his younger brother Christopher. He half-expected to see a coffin behind him.

Enkhbold stopped, clasped his small hands in front of him, almost as if he were praying, looked down at Tom and Olga, with his yellowing eyes, and spoke again in Mongolian, this time more quietly. His smelled of cigar smoke and hair oil.

Tom stood up and handed Olga the papers he’d collected. As she carefully placed them back in the green file, Tom, who’d already registered that they had photos, like the ones on the wall, attached to them with paper clips, now noticed that one of them was his! How on earth did they get that? He wondered. He'd only submitted colour photos to the Mongolian embassy in London.

As Olga started to interpret what Enkhbold had said, Tom’s eyes were drawn first to the cameo brooch that pinned the neck of her cream satin blouse, then to those sad, soulful eyes.

Her eyes flickered. She was beginning to feel some sympathy for this innocent-looking foreigner, especially as from her ten years working at the House of Friendly Relations she had some idea of what lay ahead of him. “Mr Enkhbold wants to know what you are doing here?” She didn’t add that he’d also reprimanded her for leaving the door unlocked.

"Well, actually," Tom replied, gaining in confidence, "I was looking for you."

"Me? She raised here neatly-shaped eyebrows, "Why?"

NEXT CHAPTER

9 A Difficult Question

THE MONGOLIAN GIRL - CHAPTER NINE

“Welcome to the House of Friendly Relations, Mr Rawlinson.” The young man in the ill-fitting black suit, yellow polyester tie and dark brown plastic shoes, thrust out his hand. Tom grabbed it. It was, like his own, icy cold. A shiver passed through them.

"Nice to meet you again. Thank you so much for helping me at Irkutsk Airport. If it weren’t for you, I might still be in Siberia now.” He attempted to smile through the cold.

“My name is Shishmishig. We’ll be working together on this important project and I am honoured to be your assistant.” His cheeks were even rosier than they had been when Tom first met him in the immigration queue in Irkutsk.

As Mrs Jargal, the Heroine of the State, scowled at him and took his beige Burberry raincoat, Tom made a mental note: Thingamajig could be a friend. He also noted that he had the same dark rings under his eyes, unusual for someone his age, as Olga Shevchenko, the interpreter. They must work very long hours here, he thought.

Shishmishig, battling with a hacking smoker’s cough aggravated by the sub-zero temperatures, led him through a dark corridor with peeling yellow paint to their new office, on the ground floor, behind the cloakroom. It too had yellow paint, was small, windowless, and smelled of disinfectant. There were two poorly varnished, dark brown desks, one big; one small, and two orange-painted chairs. In one corner, next to an old, cream-painted radiator, was a red plastic bucket.

The only decoration was a framed photo of an unsmiling, slightly-balding Mongolian man, with a chest full of medals, hanging slightly askew on one of the yellow walls. Such an unpleasant yellow, Tom thought. “Our president”, Shishmishig added helpfully.

Tom waited, just to be sure, until Shishmishig seated himself behind the smaller of the two desks, before placing his expensive, brown, Italian leather briefcase (a birthday present from Jane) on the biggest desk, and sat down.

“Perhaps you could tell me a bit more about what our job is here?”

Shishmishig half-smiled, in an embarrassed way, “Sorry?”

“Well what have Enkhbold and Batbold told you about our, our, errm, project?”

“Mr Enkhbold and Mr Batbold," he added pointedly, "have told me that I am your assistant, Mr Rawlinson.”

The silence was deafening. No thudding noises or screams here Tom noted with cold comfort as the yellow room, with its overpowering smell of disinfectant, seemed to close in on him inch by inch.

“Scrape, scrape.” Shishmishig had taken out a blue pencil and placed it in the heavy metal sharpener which was screwed to one corner of his desk. He brushed the shavings onto the bare concrete floor with a sweep of his left hand. As he did so, Tom heard the scrape of the ring on his wedding finger.

“Are you married?”

“No. Are you, Mr Rawlinson?”

This, for Tom, was a difficult question. His answer might affect how he was expected to behave for the rest of his time in Mongolia.

He picked up the red pencil that had been lying across the blank sheet of paper on his desk, looked directly into his new assistant’s narrow eyes, and said rather too rapidly:

“No, I’m not either.”

Shishmishig, who at the age of twenty-four already had a wife and two children, but who had been instructed by Batbold not to tell the foreigner the truth about ANYTHING, gave Tom a deliberate grin to cover up the slight look of disapproval that had started to appear on his face.

Tom, sensing that he was already in danger of losing any authority he had over his ‘assistant’, stood up, took two paces across the claustrophobic room, placed the red pencil in the sharpener, and started to grind. Their eyes locked, but they were both momentarily distracted when a large bubble inside the radiator burst with a metallic ‘clunk’. The room was just beginning to heat up.

NEXT CHAPTER