Murder in Mongolia Read online

  When he finally returned to his office mid-morning after three consecutive hours of meetings, he saw an email pop up on his screen. It was the video sent by Amber.

  He couldn’t wait to get his first look at the people and locations involved.

  But alas, for security reasons, FBI computers didn’t allow employees to open email attachments.

  He grabbed his desk phone and called tech support.

  After some pleading and wrangling, he got them to agree to extract the video and scan it for viruses and malware.

  “We’ll send you a link.”

  When it came to physical evidence, Jake was old school. “Mind putting it on a disc?”

  “You have a disc drive?”

  He dusted off the black box. “Sure do.”

  “We’ll have a disc ready to pick up in two hours,” the techie said.

  Jake was desperate to make progress on his case. “Can you hand-deliver it to my office?”

  The guy consented, and a small battle had been won.

  Now Jake had to fight off two hours of anticipation.

  He concentrated on the fact that he had never seen Bill Frost in action and didn’t know what he was like as a person. Who was this television personality anyway?

  He pulled up the National Geographic website. He could stream sample programs such as Michael Palin in North Korea and veterinarians in Alaska. National Geographic seemed to be on a cold, remote theme. Maybe that was how they got their audience prepared for winter.

  Bill Frost was also featured on the website and there were a few early episodes that Jake could watch.

  He turned off the lights in his workspace, closed the door, and began to play the first show. Leaning back in his chair, he put his hands behind his head and tried to imagine he was a typical viewer, happy to hear the intro music, see the snappy titles that featured cute creatures and deplorable wastelands, and hear the low, rumbling basso profundo of the host’s voice.

  Bill Frost was not a handsome man. In fact, his bald scalp, pug nose, and pugnacious snarl all contributed to the opposite effect. He wasn’t there to win a beauty contest. He was there to take on the big guys. Apparently, that was why people loved him. And potentially other people wanted him dead.

  The aggressive, high-testosterone approach might have won him adoring fans that were otherwise uninterested in science or the environment, but it served to turn Jake off. He was a run-of-the-mill special agent with firearm and close quarter combat skills that would be the envy of most American males.

  Something else about the guy rubbed him the wrong way. He tried to analyze what it was. Here Frost was rescuing a duck from an oil slick off the Louisiana coast. All the while, he spoke like someone who wanted to wring its neck.

  Maybe Frost just wanted to establish his character in that pilot show. Jake forced himself to watch another episode and give the guy a chance to get his feet under him.

  It got even worse. Frost began the second episode by reading off fan mail that poured in after his first show. Clearly a smart man, his attempts to connect with everyday viewers came across as condescending in the extreme. Jake wasn’t the normal viewer, but he would have predicted the series would bomb long before it finished its first season.

  He rolled his eyes, but waded through the second episode, this time scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef. Frost’s hefty physique was on prominent display. And his gruff voiceover while he delicately pointed out bleaching and the death of coral with pudgy fingers was a total mismatch.

  After enduring the first two episodes, Jake leaned forward and killed the program. Now he knew why he didn’t subscribe to cable television. And why he couldn’t wait to see the video of Bill Frost’s death.

  As if on cue, there was a knock on his door, which he opened at once.

  “Sitting here in the dark?” the employee with the yellow ID said.

  It was the techie bringing the disc with the video clip.

  “Just doing research,” Jake explained.

  “You know, we look for adult-oriented content,” the guy said.

  “It wasn’t that.”

  “Uh-huh. Sure it wasn’t.”

  “Don’t give me that. What if I was trying to catch a child pornography ring?”

  “I’m just saying you shouldn’t be sitting in the dark with your door closed.”

  “Give me a break,” Jake said, and took the disc.

  “We can tell your boss,” the techie warned.

  Jake had to bite his tongue. All he needed was to give Whitney Baker more ammunition to use against him.

  He shut the door on the guy and shoved the disc into the external drive.

  The AP story from Mongolia came on the screen at once. As it turned out, it wasn’t a story at all, just raw footage. There was a vaguely foreign-looking ambulance with a high-low siren in a frosty neighborhood of shabby-looking apartment buildings. There was a closeup of the emergency entrance to a modern hospital. And lastly, the camera sat on a tripod at a stilted press conference. Several policemen stood behind a uniformed official who had a big frame, pale skin, and heavy eyebrows. The official was reading off a statement in a language that Jake could only assume was Mongolian. However, it didn’t have the sotto voce sound of the two Mongolian food service workers at Sizzler Express. Instead the words were trumpeted out in dramatic fashion. It sounded like the reenactment of an historical speech.

  Unfortunately, there were no subtitles to tell Jake what the man was saying. Only when he heard the name “Bill Frost” pronounced, did he know that Amber had sent the right tape.

  Disappointed, he ejected the disc and threw it onto his desk.

  It was his first peek at Mongolia and, from the looks of it, it seemed somewhat East European in the cold, drab streets, but Asian in the features of the people. If he had to merge the two civilizations into one, that would be as good an approximation as any.

  It was a country caught between two seemingly irreconcilable cultures. The tension was almost palpable to Jake. And it made him uneasy.

  Impressions, impressions.

  Jake Maguire was used to cold bodies. The smell of gun smoke. The weight of thick stacks of cash.

  His only sensory experience of the victim and crime in Mongolia were videos of the guy alive and AP footage of a police spokesman at a televised press conference.

  If he was going to find the killers, he needed police reports, eyewitnesses, and evidence. And he wasn’t going to get that sitting in the dark watching TV.

  The biggest question was the discrepancy between the embassy’s depiction of an explosion and the Mongolian police’s statement describing it as a rockslide. Why did the press go along with the police and characterize it as an accident? Who had actually investigated the incident? What became of the remains? He needed to talk to the embassy and the Mongolian police.

  He checked his watch. It was noon in DC, which meant midnight in Ulaanbaatar. How soon could he call the embassy and conduct interviews? He would have to call after 8:00 p.m. at the earliest. There went his date with Amber.

  Until then, what could he accomplish in Washington?

  First, he needed to know where the remains were stored. Judging from the transcript of the phone call between the local security officer and the Ops Center in Washington, the body had been strewn all over the hillside. What had the police been able to recover? Were the remains being shipped home?

  For that most basic information, he called his buddy at State.

  Truman answered on the first ring.

  “Listen,” Jake said. “I need to know the whereabouts of the body and any physical evidence that the Mongolian police might have collected.”

  Truman didn’t have any answers off hand, so he gave Jake the number of Consular Affairs.

  “Thanks, buddy,” Jake said. “We’ll find out exactly what went down with your television hero.”

  He hung up shaking his head. He still couldn’t imagine the bald giant entertaining kids. Maybe kids these da
ys didn’t need the sugar coating that he had grown up with.

  The call to Consular Affairs bounced around from office to office until it landed on the desk of an older woman who handled American deaths at the Office of Overseas Citizens Services.

  “The name of the deceased?” she asked in a mechanical way. Maybe that was how she dealt with grief.

  “Bill Frost, the National Geographic star who died in Mongolia.”

  “Would that be William Frost?”

  “I imagine. There can’t be many Frosts lying in the State Department’s morgue.”

  Her flat response reflected the lack of a sense of humor. “I have a George William Frost.”

  “That sounds close enough. Where are his remains?”

  “According to my records, George William Frost’s next of kin have been notified, but his body has not been shipped to the United States pending his family paying to repatriate the remains.”

  “Who sends the remains?”

  “The State Department arranges the final disposition of the body and the shipment of the loved one in accordance with the family’s wishes.”

  “Do you mean he might already be cremated?”

  “According to our records, that determination has yet to be made.”

  “Well, the FBI needs you to put a hold on cremation. We need to examine the body to determine the exact cause of death.”

  “It says right here in our records that his death was accidental, caused by injuries sustained in a rockslide.”

  Jake didn’t want to tell her that he had a contradicting report from the embassy security officer. But who had deemed it an accidental death while entering the record into the database at Consular Affairs?

  “Just hold up any cremation until I get a team to examine the body.”

  “I’ll make a note of that,” she said, and he heard her typing.

  “I’ll also need contact information for the next of kin,” Jake said. “I intend to interview them.”

  “Normally we don’t give out personal information,” she said.

  “Hey, I’m not the press. This is a federal investigation.”

  “I understand that, but we have procedures…”

  “This is a time-sensitive criminal investigation. We need people to interview and a body for forensic examination.”

  “I’ll make an exception in this case and email you the contact information for the next of kin.”

  “Thank you. And the body?”

  “Forensic examination usually takes place in the United States. If there’s an investigation, say for disease, we ship the body at government expense and allow the next of kin to determine how to handle the remains only after the examination is complete.”

  “I guess we’ll have to do it that way.”

  “Are you saying there was a disease?”

  “No. But this is an open investigation.”

  “Are you authorizing us to ship the body home?”

  “Er, yes.”

  “Then your department will have to send our executive office the fiscal data.”

  “You mean that State doesn’t have money to ship dead citizens home?”

  “It isn’t in our budget. The FBI will have to pay for it.”

  He was getting too bogged down in details. He gave the lady his email address so she could send him the next-of-kin information, thanked her, and immediately called the FBI’s finance division to explain the problem.

  Fortunately, there was money to ship the body to the United States in the budget of the Bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division.

  “Hallelujah,” Jake said when the request was finally on paper, grudgingly authorized by Whitney Baker, and heading upstairs.

  It would be a miracle if they ever got the remains back.

  Next he checked his email. Fortunately, secure servers could send information between the Department of State and the Department of Justice, which seemed like another small miracle. He found himself staring at an email marked Personally Identifiable Information and showing a list of George William Frost’s next of kin. Poor people, being related to that guy.

  They were listed as a brother and a nephew. There was no wife or children. And luckily for Jake, they both lived in nearby McLean, Virginia.

  He could do much of his work by phone or email, but some things just had to be done in person. He would check out an agency vehicle and track them down.

  But first, he would ask Joyce Fleming to make the trip with him.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the business card of the FBI victim specialist.

  Jake noticed that Joyce had changed from official Washington attire to slacks and a green cable-knit sweater. The resulting transformation, combined with her abundant light-brown hair, gave her the warm appearance of an emotional support worker, an important aspect of her job as a victim specialist.

  With Joyce riding shotgun, Jake donned his aviator sunglasses and pulled out of downtown DC in an official unmarked sedan.

  They headed west through Georgetown on the way to Virginia.

  “What’s the case?” Joyce asked.

  “Murdered American TV star named Bill Frost. He was working on an environmental documentary in Mongolia when he died.”

  “Bill Frost? Never heard of him.”

  “I’m surprised. Apparently, he’s big with the young crowd. I missed the whole environmental thing growing up.”

  “You’re still young, Jake,” she said consolingly.

  “Not that young. He had a regular show on National Geographic Channel.”

  Joyce was nodding, though seemed unimpressed. “Has his family been officially notified?” she asked.

  “Only by State. I’m here to say that we’re opening an investigation into his death and to find out what they know.”

  The shops of Georgetown behind them, Jake drove along the heavily forested C&O Canal. The two rode in silence, inspired by the varicolored foliage. Then he steered onto Chain Bridge, high over a swollen Potomac.

  “River looks high,” he commented.

  “Way too much rain this year,” she concurred.

  That spring and summer had been exceptionally wet, with buildings along Washington’s waterfront putting up their “water gates” to prevent flooding.

  Getting to McLean required Jake to drive up through Langley and past the George Bush Center for Intelligence, otherwise known as CIA Headquarters. Like the toney mansions along the way, CIA buildings were set back from the road and, if he weren’t a native of the area, he could have easily passed the nation’s spy hub without noticing it.

  “Who are the next of kin?” Joyce asked.

  “A brother and a nephew who live in McLean. I asked the office to phone ahead to make sure they were home. I’m sure they’re confused about why the FBI is paying them a visit. Even in the State Department’s database, the death was ruled an accident.”

  He looked across the car to see how Joyce reacted, but she seemed relaxed. She encountered that kind of situation every day.

  Jake pulled off the road and drove down a long driveway. At the end was a Tudor-inspired mansion with two men standing out front.

  He got out of the car and took off his sunglasses.

  “Cal and Hank?” he asked.

  The two men were a generation apart, but seemed made from the same solid and hardy mold as the deceased.

  Usually citizens tensed up when approached by the Feds, but these two seemed strangely at ease.

  Jake introduced himself and Joyce.

  “Hi,” she said, and shook hands in a friendly way. “I want to express my condolences. I’m from the Victims Services Division at the FBI.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Cal, the older of the two. He was graying at the temples, with an otherwise full head of hair unlike his bald brother, the environmentalist. “But we know why you’re really here.”

  Jake was surprised. “Why’s that?”

  “We know Bill didn’t die of an accident in the wild. He wa
s far too savvy to let that happen to him. He was at home in the wilderness since childhood.”

  “So I understand,” Jake said, shivering slightly. “This may take some time to discuss. May we come in?”

  The younger man, Hank, grudgingly opened the door for them.

  Settled around four cups of steaming hot coffee, Jake waited while Joyce explained the Victim Identification System. Bill Frost had been assigned a number that they could use to track his case and keep abreast of all legal proceedings. As they were immediate members of his family, she gave them unique computer access codes to protect the deceased’s privacy.

  Meanwhile, Jake observed the interior of the house. It was hunting décor from floor to ceiling. A taxidermist’s showcase, Cal’s collection of trophies ranged from curved cape buffalo horns to a mounted zebra head complete with staring eyeballs. To underscore the safari theme, a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt hung over the mantel and the tabletops were covered in leather.

  Then he checked out the photographs on the surfaces and walls. Notably there were no women in the pictures. Jake wondered why, and thought he would ask.

  When Joyce finished her spiel, Jake inquired, “Cal, are you married?”

  Cal looked uncomfortably at his son. “Estranged.”

  “And was Bill ever married?”

  Here Cal smirked. “Bill had a girl in every port.”

  That explained Bill, but didn’t answer the question.

  “Did he leave a wife behind?”

  “Not that we know of,” Cal said. “As far as we know, he never married.”

  Jake had taken out his notebook and jotted down the responses. As long as they were in a conversational mood, he’d press on with a few more questions before they turned the tables and interrogated him on what he knew.

  “Next, I need to ask where Bill lived. Do you have his address?”

  “That’s a good question,” Cal said, and exchanged glances with his son. “He floated around. Last address we had for him was a townhouse in Ballston, ten years ago. Don’t know if he still lived there.”