MONGOL MASHStanding on the platform, last stop before the border, FBI Special Agent Dawna Shepherd focused on her surveillance target, but not so intently that she ignored her other traveling companions. Two men had tracked her every move during the thirty-seven hours since she’d boarded the Trans-Mongolian railway. A comparatively affluent Western woman who was not part of a tour group, Dawna knew she appeared to them to be their perfect victim. And now she felt them closing in.
Protectively, she patted the left front pocket of her fisherman’s vest and edged to the front of the passengers gathered on the broad pavement separating the tracks from the Russian border outpost and station buildings. Beyond the crowd, the fenced pavement gave way to a parched and unpeopled plain that stretched
