Bat Gan Temujin: “Business Deal Gone Bad”

 

Bat Gan Temujin: “Business Deal Gone Bad”

The client was a Canadian mining engineer named Cole who had flown into Ulaanbaatar with a signed memorandum and left with a bruised face and no memorandum. The deal: a minority stake in a copper prospect west of the Gobi. The other party: a local consortium fronted by a man called Erdene who smiled with too many teeth.

Cole wanted the papers back and an explanation that would survive a board meeting in Vancouver.

Temujin started where the deal had actually died: a ger camp two hours off the paved road, where the consortium had hosted the signing dinner. The ground still held the tracks. Three vehicles had arrived. Two had left in the usual way. The third had sat for forty minutes after the others departed, engine idling, then driven north on a track that was not on any map Cole had been shown.

Temujin walked the track at first light. The vehicle had stopped twice. At the second stop someone had got out, walked twelve paces into the scrub, and buried a USB drive wrapped in a plastic bag. Temujin dug it up with a knife and did not plug it into anything until he was back in the city with a machine that was not connected to anything else.

The drive held the real assay numbers and a second set of numbers that made the deposit look twice as rich. Erdene’s people had planned to use the inflated figures to flip the stake to a Chinese buyer before Cole’s company discovered the fraud. Cole had asked one too many questions at dinner. That was when the memorandum disappeared and Cole acquired the bruise.

Temujin did not go back to the ger camp. He went to the Chinese buyer’s local representative, a man who drank tea and did not pretend to be surprised. Temujin laid the real numbers on the table and the buried drive beside them.

“Your partners lied to you as well,” he said. “You can still walk. Or you can pay the Canadian what the real deposit is worth and keep the ground. Choose before the police in two countries start asking why a USB was buried in the dark.”

The representative chose the second option. Papers were re-signed in a glass office that smelled of new carpet. Cole got his minority stake at a price that would not embarrass Vancouver. Erdene’s consortium lost the Chinese money and gained a reputation that would follow them to the next prospect.

Temujin took his fee in cash and a promise that Cole would not come back without better maps. He drove out of the city at dusk and did not look at the Gobi in the rear-view. The ground out there kept what it was given. So did he.