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

21 The Biggest Mistake of His Life?

THE MONGOLIAN GIRL – CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

As they drove through the city centre, Tom noticed that there were soldiers posted at every corner. The black Zil limousine stopped in front of the House of Friendly Relations and Tom got out. As he entered the door, he practised saying hello in Mongolian: "Sain bain yy." Mrs Jargal didn't reply, but put down her knitting and held her nose when Tom handed her his fur hat and coat. He headed down the corridor to his prison of an office and opened the door to have his senses assaulted by the smell of disinfectant and the glare of the yellow room. Shishmishig was reading a newspaper. The only thing on his desk was a brown paper bag. On Tom's own desk there was something new: a large Russian typewriter.

Tom sat down. The typewriter occupied most of the desk. Shishmishig noticed him looking at it.

"Mr Enkhbold wants you to write your report."

Tom examined the typewriter. It looked like something from the 1950s and had raised circular keys with Cyrillic letters on.

"But, I can't use this. It's Russian."

Shishmishig looked over his newspaper at Tom. "You tell me in English and I'll write it in Mongolian. Mr Enkhbold wants your report today." He put down the newspaper, walked over to Tom's desk, lifted up the heavy black typewriter and carried it back to his own desk.

He sat down and looked at Tom: "So?"

Tom placed his elbows on his desk and interlocked his fingers tightly, so his knuckles touched his mouth and nose, and his thumbs supported his chin. But after a few seconds he let his hands drop, reached down to his right, took a folded paper and his copy of the Modern History of Mongolia out of his briefcase and said, "Right, let's begin." He wondered whether he should put his brilliant idea in the conclusion or leave it as a surprise for the meeting. He decided on the latter.

The sound of Shishmishig's fingers hammering the heavy metal keys filled the room. At one point he stopped, looked at Tom fixedly and said, "Are you sure you want me to include that?"

Tom thought for a moment. His life was in tatters. What did he have to lose?

"Yes, I want you to write that."

Shishmishig resumed tapping the keys. When he'd finished, he sighed, placed the final page on his desk, then opened the brown paper bag and drew out a square parcel wrapped in newspaper. Tom watched as he opened it. It appeared to be a block of feta cheese.

Shishmishig broke a piece off and popped it in his mouth. He chewed it for a while and gulped it down. Then he picked up the block and offered it to Tom: "Aruul?"

Tom walked over, took it and returned to his desk. He examined the hard white object between his thumb and forefinger. It wasn't feta cheese. He placed it in his mouth. It was very dry and tasted sour.

Shishmishig watched his reaction. "Aruul good?"

Tom nodded as he tried to gulp down a chunk of dried curd.

Shishmishig narrowed his eyes slightly. "You seem to know quite a lot about our country and our problems."

Tom smiled.

That afternoon, Batbold appeared at the door. "Report ready?"

Tom walked across to Shishmishig's desk and picked up the three sheets of paper covered with Cyrillic script.

"Yes."

"Good. Follow me."

As they climbed the stairs, Batbold turned to Tom. "You good work did make film. You help me. I help you."

Tom tapped the door before opening it. Enkhbold looked up at them. Tom wrinkled his nose. A thin line of smoke was rising from the big Havana cigar burning in the glass ashtray on the desk. Olga Shevchenko was sitting to Enkhbold's right, with a notepad on her lap. She was wearing a grey skirt, plain black cardigan and a white blouse of which Tom noticed the top two buttons were undone. She looked tense, but smiled genuinely at Tom. He bowed his head towards her and smiled back.

Mr Enkhbold, raised his eyebrows and said something to Olga. She scribbled on her notepad with a green pencil, which Tom could see was chewed at one end.

She looked up. "Good afternoon Tom. Please sit down."

Tom pulled up a chair. Batbold was already seated.

Olga spoke very quietly. "I hope you had a nice weekend." Her musky perfume blended with the cigar smoke.

Enkhbold clenched his fists and he snapped at her again.

"Mr Enkhbold wants your recommendations."

Enkhbold unclenched his fists and spoke again. Olga hesitated for a while before interpreting his words. "He.." She made a slight kissing sound with her lips as she searched for the right word. "He needs your sorcery?"

Tom stood up, placed the three sheets of paper next to the ashtray on the desk, and returned to his seat. Enkhbold picked up the first sheet and started to read.

As he did so, Tom looked up at the framed photograph of Enkhbold shaking the president's hand, and started to feel anxious.

Olga got up and left through the side door. Enkhbold handed the first page to Batbold, and then picked up the second from his desk. They read silently. Tom could here the sound of his own breathing. The cigar smoke was making him feel nauseous. He loosened his collar and glanced up at the picture of Enkhbold and the president again. Had he just made the biggest mistake of his life?

NEXT CHAPTER

16 A Brilliant Idea

THE MONGOLIAN GIRL – CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Daphne noticed Tom half turn to watch the Mongolian girl hurry up the steps and spin through the hotel’s revolving glass door.

“Someone you know?”

Tom’s face reddened with cold and embarrassment. “No, not really.”

A gust of cold wind blew across the square, picking up flurries of freshly-fallen snow. Tom shivered, turned up his coat collar, and followed Daphne to the embassy Range Rover.

They turned out of the square to find the road ahead blocked by a slow-moving military convoy. Daphne pulled over and waited for it to pass. Tom counted six T-72 tanks, with the long barrels of their guns pointing towards the city centre. Some of the soldiers in the long line of vehicles whistled and shouted when they spotted Daphne.

Tom turned to her. “So, what’s the situation in Mongolia?”

She laughed. “Well, you’re working for the MPRP, so you should know.”

“I’ve only just got here and I don’t even know what the MPRP is.”

“The Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party – the communists.”

Was she accusing him of being some sort of traitor? “I was recruited by the Foreign Office. So, how does that add up?”

“I’m not sure that I can answer that.” She smiled as she put the car into first gear. The convoy had passed. “But, in answer to your first question, the situation here is volatile. The regime here is teetering on the verge of collapse. The opposition is disorganised and lives in the shadows.” She shrugged her shoulders as she gripped the steering wheel, “So who knows?”

They reached a no man’s land between the brick and concrete buildings of the inner city and the yurt suburbs. Daphne turned off the highway onto a dirt track and after a few hundred metres, stopped in front of an English-style house, with whitewashed walls and a sloping orange-tiled roof. All of the lights were on and smoke was spiralling skyward from the brick chimney.

Registering Tom’s surprise, Daphne said, “Yes, it is small, isn’t it? They wouldn’t let us build anything bigger. In fact, I believe it’s the smallest British embassy in the world.” As they got out of the car, she added, “But we should consider ourselves lucky, as they wouldn’t let the Americans build anything at all.”

She opened the garden gate. “Let’s go inside. Everybody’s waiting to meet you.”

Tom followed Daphne through the front door, along a corridor in which hung a portrait of the Queen, then into the kitchen, where he noticed the reassuring domestic details of a packet of Weetabix and two cans of baked beans standing in front of an impressive Royal Doulton dinner service.

Daphne opened the back door and led Tom out of the house. He could see their breath form clouds as they crunched across the frozen lawn to what looked like a large wooden shed at the bottom of the garden. Voices were coming from inside. Above the doorway was a hand-painted sign: “Steppe Inn.” A drop of white paint had run down the letter ‘S’ making it look like a dollar sign.

Daphne swung open the door. “We have a new customer.” Tom felt a blast of heat, smelled a mixture of wood varnish, paint, whisky and beer and saw six pairs of eyes staring at him.

Tom and Daphne added their coats to a pile on a table just inside the door and stamped the ice off their shoes.

“Let me introduce you to everyone.” She raised her voice: “This is Tom Rawlinson , a young British entrepreneur, who we hope will be one of the first of many to come out here and do business with the Mongolians.”

There were some raised glasses and nods. Daphne turned to Tom, “So what would you like to drink?”

“A beer would be fine.”

Daphne called to a tall man, in a yellow cardigan and green corduroy slacks, who was standing behind the bar, “David dear, a pint for Tom and a glass of red wine for me.”

The interior of the Steppe Inn was like a miniature English pub, but Tom found it incongruous to see someone who looked remarkably like Prince Philip, serving behind the bar.

Bar stools, with red plastic seats which matched the colour of the carpet, lined both sides of the room. Deirdre held out her arm towards a young couple sitting on the nearest two and said, “Jim and Jenny Lockey – the other half of our embassy team.” They stood up. Jim shook Tom’s hand vigorously and said with a strong Geordie accent, “Welcome to U.B.”

“You’re from the North-East?”

“Yes, we’re both from South Shields,” Jenny replied chirpily.

Jim let go of Tom’s hand and stood rigidly as if waiting for the order, “At ease.” He had soldier written all over him. His honed body spoke of years of physical training and there was a hint of aggression in his eyes. His upright stance and neatly-trimmed dark brown short-back-and-sides contrasted sharply with Jenny’s stooping round shoulders and slightly dishevelled blonde hair. With her heavy mascara, pink lipstick, low-cut blouse and tight black skirt, Tom thought she probably felt even more out of place than he did in an embassy garden in Central Asia.

Next to them was the one person Tom knew: Gerald. They exchanged stiff greetings:

“Tom.”

“Gerald.”

Daphne then led Tom across the room to a small, balding man, with brown metal-framed spectacles“. Meet the new Japanese ambassador, Mr. Itou.” Tom bowed his head slightly as they shook hands.

Then she added, “Mr Itou has just arrived in Mongolia. A big Japanese expedition is coming out here soon. It’s one of the most exciting things for years. They’re going to look for the tomb of Ghengis Khan.”

Tom’s face lit up. He clenched both fists and almost punched the air. He had just had a brilliant idea.

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.

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