language.
At one stop, Sam showed Nurin his international driver’s license and his California license. Nurin was curious to look at them, but, no, he wanted to continue to do all the driving himself.
On the first night away from Almaty, Nurin stopped at a small Western-style inn, but he refused to go inside with Sam and Remi. Instead he slept in his car.
“Why do you suppose he wants to do that?” Remi asked.
“I think he’s afraid somebody will steal his tires or something,” Sam said.
They slept well in their room upstairs, and Nurin appeared rested and ready when they awoke the next morning and came outside. During the second day, Nurin took advantage of the flatness of the country to increase his speed. He drove hard until late afternoon, when the sun was low in the west and driving became difficult. And then they were passing larger rows of houses than they had in the little towns along the way, and soon there were streets with curbs and sidewalks. Finally there was a sign that said “Tapa3” and they knew they were in the city.
Nurin drove them up to the Zhambyl Hotel on Tole Bi Street. It was a four-story building that looked a bit like an American high school, but when they went inside they found it was very pretty and well decorated, with patterned marble floors and blue-and-gold Kazakh rugs. There was a clerk at the desk who spoke French and told them there was a pool, a restaurant, a bar, a beauty salon, and a laundry.
Sam rented a room for Nurin as well as one of their own. He asked the clerk to explain to Nurin, in Kazakh, that he was allowed to sign for his meals and any services he needed while the Fargos finished their business. He also asked if there was a secure parking place for Nurin’s car.
The transaction made Nurin happy. He hugged Sam and bowed deeply to Remi, then went outside to drive his car around to the gated lot in back of the building. The clerk announced that Sam and Remi’s equipment had arrived and was being moved to their room.
It was five, still early enough to be sure of three hours of light, so Sam and Remi asked the clerk if he could direct them to the green market, or
Remi said, “Sam, do you believe this is the site of the old fort?”
“I doubt it. The ground is too low. If you build a fort, you want to use everything that gives you an advantage—altitude, steep approaches, water. I believe the archaeologists in the thirties found something here, but not a fort.”
“That’s what I think,” Remi said. “We’d better call Albrecht and Selma.”
They kept walking at the same pace, gradually making their way around the market to where they’d started. They kept scanning from behind their sunglasses, and then Remi said, “Bad news at two o’clock.”
Sam looked in that direction and saw four men, wearing khaki pants, work shirts, boots, and baseball caps, sitting at an outdoor table, nursing tall drinks. They looked like oil riggers or heavy-equipment operators. “Who are they?”
“Some of Poliakoff’s security guys. The short one with the blond hair is one of the four people who took me to Nizhny in a barrel. He and another man helped the two women. The really tall one I saw the night we escaped from the place.”
“I suppose it was inevitable that they’d get here first,” said Sam. “Did they see us?”
“I doubt it. They didn’t show any sign, and none of them struck me as the type who would pretend not to see us. They’d be more likely to chase us.”
They took a roundabout route to their hotel, stopping now and then to see if they were followed. When they reached their room, they opened the package with Remi’s new cell phone, plugged it in to charge, waited, then called La Jolla.
A voice they hadn’t been expecting said, “Hello?”
“Hi, Albrecht. It’s us.”
“Are you at your hotel in Taraz?”
“Yes. We hired a driver who got us here, but he speaks no English.”
“What does he speak?”
“Kazakh, and a little Russian.”
“Sounds adequate. Tell me what’s happening.”
“We just came from the green market that historians think is the site of ancient Taraz. We spotted four of Poliakoff’s thugs at a cafe. We don’t think they saw us. We also don’t think the market looks right. It’s too low to be a fort. It’s also not on the river. Maybe there are springs or wells in town, but we haven’t seen them.”
They heard Albrecht typing on a computer keyboard. “Give me a moment to get a better perspective on this computer map. There. No, I think you’re right. The old Chinese sources say that five hundred men worked two years to build the fort. They were in the middle of the Sino-Xiongnu War. Xiongnu was the Chinese name for the Huns. Zhizhi, leader of the Huns, was expecting a Han army of up to three hundred thousand men to arrive at some point, so the fort would have had to be strong. It would be built in the heights, and it would need a water supply. We know it was high-walled because when the Chinese did come, the only way they could storm it was by piling dirt up beside it until it was even with the wall. The fight was furious, and even Zhizhi’s wives shot arrows from the battlements. The Chinese overwhelmed them and won. I don’t think the fort was at the modern marketplace. The ruins under the market are more likely to be either a habitation or a cemetery.”
“What will Mundzuk’s grave consist of?” asked Remi. “What do we look for?”
“I’m sending you pictures of the known burials of the earliest Huns in Mongolia. They were buried under mounds. There’s a burial chamber made of stone, and then over it are layers of stone, soil, and logs of Siberian larch.”
“That’s close to the sort of thing we found in France. It had been made of logs plastered with mortar.”
“Look for any natural feature that could have been a mound. Most likely, it was leveled intentionally or by time, the wind, and the river. But Mundzuk would never have been in the fort, which was destroyed three hundred years earlier with Zhizhi’s defeat. It was a ruin long before Mundzuk’s time. Remember, we’re looking for a king who died just during the migration to Europe. If the market is over a burial complex, Mundzuk’s grave would be one of the last.”
Remi said, “Is there any way to know how his father’s death affected Attila?”
“We know quite a few facts,” said Albrecht. “Mundzuk was buried in 418. Attila was born in 406, so he was twelve when his father died and his uncle Ruga became King. I’ve sometimes thought that even in that generation there might have been dual kings—that Mundzuk and Ruga might have shared the throne the way Bleda and Attila did later. At the time of Mundzuk’s death, the Huns were making a big leap historically. The great migration, their conquest of much of Asia and Europe, was already well under way. We know that they were in contact with the Romans near the Danube around the year 370, so it’s almost certain Mundzuk’s body was brought back to the eastern homeland for burial only. Attila would have stayed for it and then returned west. In those days, young princes from all over the Roman Empire and beyond were kept in Rome for a few years at a time to encourage their families to keep their treaties with Rome, and Romans were sent as hostages to neighboring kingdoms. Once Attila’s father was dead, Attila became a convenient choice as a hostage. He was sent to Rome.”
“That must have been quite an experience for a twelve-year-old,” Remi said.
“Yes, I’m sure it was. Either before or during the trip, he learned Latin, which the Huns and others considered a soldier’s language, something likely to be useful to members of a ruling family. Later, Latin would help him communicate with allies and subjects from hundreds of tribes and with emissaries of the Empire. Attila met lots of aristocratic Romans, saw how the Romans governed, and certainly came away with lots of information about the Roman armies.” Albrecht paused. “But I’m going on, aren’t I? What we need to do is find the tomb of Mundzuk. Do you have any ideas yet on how you’ll proceed?”
“Cautiously,” said Sam. “We’re in a town where we don’t speak the language and just a few speak ours. We know there are anti-American groups operating here. We’ve just been to the supposed site, which is a central market in a big city, so there’s barely space to stand on, let alone to perform an excavation. The problem is that by the time we get it done, the treasure will be gone, split among Poliakoff and his friends, and the gold melted down
