The most amazing thing about the tiny settlement of Talgoy was the presence of a Wild West saloon, straight out of Hollywood movies.    Judging by the satellite dish on the roof of City Hall, civilization had reached even Talgoy. Still, this 30-house village in the Altai mountains, sandwiched between Siberia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, could’ve done better with a bar, or at least a Russian bistro. The saloon, replete with a wooden sign that said “The White Buffalo,” looked as out of place here as a kvass stand would look in the heart of Wyoming.    Naturally, Severtsev had to visit the place. He hadn’t had a hot meal in two days, and he was itching to find out how a staple of American culture had found its way to this little place 25 miles from the Mongolian border.    Severtsev had just arrived from Aktash. Before that, he’d spent two weeks in Gorny-Altaisk. He’d been bumming around Altai for three months now, looking for traces of treasure supposedly left here by Alexander the Great – or rather by one of his generals, who got lost in the Altai Mountains during the Indian campaign.    He’d first heard about the treasure from an archeologist friend of his, who specialized in the burial mounds of Altai. The archeologist seemed convinced that an ancient race of “white prophets,” descended from Hyperboreans. He’d dug up two dozen burial mounds, but found no evidence of the treasure. Yet he still believed that the fortune plundered by Alexander’s army in the Near East had to be here somewhere, and launched into an impassioned lecture on the subject at the tiniest prompt.    Some of the graves seemed to contain the remains of Alexander’s soldiers. His friend had told Severtsev about Macedonian weapons and Persian coins he’d found on some of the bodies. The legend of the treasure was well known among the people living near the burial sites, and as the archeologist had said categorically after a few drinks, legends didn’t just spring up out of nothing.    Severtsev had found himself fascinated by the half-drunken ramblings of his friend. Since nothing held him in Moscow, he had packed his few belongings into his bag and went in search of Alexander’s treasure.