"Truly surprising to find the two of you here," said a voice, and they looked up. Guo Wenxiang.
"What happened?" Alice gasped. There were ugly bruises on the side of Guo’s face, blurring out all around his sunglasses.
"I asked too many questions about history," he said, eyes traveling briefly to Lin.
For a moment she thought he was going to say something about her asking him to look for Meiyan, but he did not.
"Can we do anything for you?" Lin asked, voice low.
"No. Part of my job. Isn’t it so?"
"Do you want to say who they were?" Lin asked.
Guo laughed, long and thin. "I’m not even sure." Then he turned, and wove away from them into the crowd.
Alice and Lin exchanged brief glances. "My God, Lin," she breathed. "Is that going to happen to us next?"
"Oh, no." He touched her knee. "They wouldn’t dare! You are not one of us. You’re an outsider. This is international cooperation. Really, Mo Ai-li, you are safe."
How I wish it, she thought, looking up at him.
11
First they had to cross the Helan Shan. Through most of its length, running north-south parallel to the local flow of the Yellow River, it was a towering escarpment-completely impassable. Its limestone walls rose from four thousand to thirteen thousand feet in less than a mile. So they had to drive around to the south end, where the range crumbled down to brown peaks of dirt and rock and was cut by passes. They rattled up the burning asphalt road. The jeep engine groaned down a gear. Alice laid her head on the seat and watched the gray specter of the Helan Shan’s crest, the wall of rock Teilhard had loved, a million years in the making.
Through the pass itself there was a brief shady forest of cedar and pine. This was not the highest zone: in the upper elevations, to the north, Alice could see the deep green belt of spruce. Higher still, above the tree line, rose the glaciated peaks of bare stone.
This long, thin range divided the two deserts Teilhard had written about, the Tengger and the Ordos. It was the Tengger that spread out in front of them now, as they roared down the Mongolian slope. The road was less steep on this side, winding a little more gently down through the oak brush and rock piles. It settled finally into a long, rocky alluvial apron that landed in a sea of stabilized dunes, shadowed with a thin, patchy cover of brush.
Near the bottom they passed a few dwellings, simple earth boxes with holes cut for their doors and windows. Roofs of mud and straw, held by a jutting row of rafters. These were the only signs of human habitation.
The last half hour into Eren Obo was on a dusty, unpaved road cut with deep ruts and potholes. And then Eren Obo itself: a desert town frozen in time.
To Alice, Eren Obo was another Tonopah, Nevada-the way Tonopah had looked to her when, years before, she’d first driven out west from Texas. Just the sight, now, of these low sand-colored buildings, this contained little grid backed right up to a tributary range of brown desert mountains and the blazing blue sky, brought back the memory of being a college student, on the highway, in an open car, pretending she was flying away from her life as she drove west.
But this was Mongolia. The streets were full of dark, chisel-faced men, laughing over their complicated board games on the sidewalk, piloting pickups through the unpaved streets.
"This is the hotel?" Spencer asked. It was a two-story stucco building with glass doors, linoleum in the lobby. And no other guests besides themselves.
A fuwuyuan took them up to their plain white-walled rooms, each with a narrow bed and toilet dry as bone. And a powdery sink-also never used. There appeared to be no running water. So why had they installed the plumbing? Alice switched the plaintive faucet on and off. There was a TV, though-naturally! She flicked it on. Only one channel, a horse-oriented sporting event in Mongolian.
"Will you be comfortable?" came a voice in Chinese.
She turned. Lin in the doorway. "And where is your room?" she asked.
"Duimian, " Across the hall.
"Amazing. We are near each other."
He inclined his head.
"Do you like that?" she asked boldly.
"Lin Boshi!" They heard from downstairs. Kong’s voice.
"You should come, bring Dr. Spencer," Lin said. "The forestry man’s downstairs."
"Xing."
On the first floor they found a kind-faced, rough-and-ready Mongol in loose clothes. "I am called Kuyuk," he said in heavily accented Chinese. "Is it true you’re looking for the ape-man?"
They walked into a side room off the lobby and eased into upholstered chairs around a low wooden table. "This is what I was told," Kuyuk continued. "But ape-man fossils have never been found here. Never! I am therefore not sure how to help you."
"We’re not looking for a new ape-man site," Spencer explained. "We’re looking for the original cache of Peking Man bones-the artifacts from 1929."
Alice’s translation caught up, and Kuyuk’s sun- and wind-burned face with its towering cheekbones creased in bewilderment. "Peking Man! But why here? We are so remote."
"We think there’s a chance it was hidden near here at the end of the war. We need to determine first if anybody is alive who might know whether a tall, thin Frenchman visited the town in the spring of 1945. Here is his picture." Spencer produced an old photograph and passed it around. Kuyuk studied it seriously, as if Father Teilhard were someone he might have seen recently on the desert-dirt streets.
"We have evidence he was corresponding with someone here at that time. That someone sent him a drawing of your local rock art. Here." Spencer pulled out a sketch of the monkey sun god and showed it to the Mongol. "What if the French priest hid Peking Man near Eren Obo? Somewhere near"-he pointed to the drawing-"one of these? As a forestry manager you know the land. You know where these petroglyphs are. We need you to help us pin down the places he might have put it."
The man stared into space for a moment, rubbing his brown hands, then said: "Yes, of course-I have seen this rock art up in the Helan Shan. But you will have to talk with our Leader. Anyway tonight, at six o’clock, we hold a dinner for you. The Leader will attend. The Leader knows more about past events than anyone else. See you at six."
A silence fell after Kuyuk walked out. "Who’s the Leader?" Alice asked.
"Ah!" Kong smiled. "They used to call the man who controls Alashan Banner the Prince. Now he is simply the Leader." In the last few days Kong had become more relaxed. He had stopped clipping his cell phone to his belt, since they were out of range. There were no lines for his fax. He had changed his suit pants for khakis and his white athletic shoes were streaked with dust.
"Whoever he is," Spencer said, "let’s hope he kept good records."
The Leader waited at the banquet table in the small outbuilding that passed as the guesthouse dining room. Kuyuk sat on his left. A young woman with high, narrow eyes and a wide, composed slash of a mouth was to his right. Other Mongols lounged against the walls.
"Sit!" the Leader barked. He spoke Chinese with an accent. He was in his mid-fifties, vigorous, the black hair racing straight back from his bronzed forehead. He half rose from the round table set with plates and teacups and tiny wine cups. "Tea!" he called. One of the men from the wall sprang up and poured. "You know Kuyuk," he said, and then indicated the woman on his left. "Ssanang. My daughter. Eh, it’s a long time since an outsider came to Eren Obo. The last one was a soil-conservation man from Australia. Let me see-five years ago. Welcome. Trouble you to explain your work."
Spencer fell right into his theory. The Leader listened carefully as the American told how Teilhard got the bones back late in the war. Everyone at the table looked at the drawing of the petroglyph. "So you see, we have to think like Teilhard," Spencer concluded.