more game stuff

For a while, I've really wanted to run a game set around 1920-26, where the player characters are involved with "Arkansas" Andrews' expeditions in the Gobi desert, and run into the apparent return of Baron Ungern-Sternberg. Soviet agents, Japanese imperialists, White renegades, unhinged Tibetan mystics, and Chinese warlords would all become involved with the players' attempts to dig up ceratopsians and ship them back to the USA.

This connects up to other ideas I've had, where the players investigate the Voynich Manuscript, track it back to its Albigensian roots in southern France, run into Otto Rahn, and find themselves facing deadly members of the Thule Society. Given the Society's interest in Tibet, it wouldn't be very hard to connect them to material recently unearthed in Mongolia - and it'd so happen a scientific expedition would be headed there.

With the combination of 1920s, early human/prehuman civilizations, sorcery, and encoded languages, all of this would be a pretty good match for Call of Cthulhu. But what I actually want is a lot more pulp action than CoC offers; yeah, your character is a medieval historian, but that doesn't mean he won't get into fistfights with the Tcho-Tchos on top of a moving railway train. Plus, if you say Call of Cthulhu to players, typically they'll assume their characters are inevitably bound for insanity and death, and they'll hate the idea. (Unlike me. If you say Call of Cthulhu to me, typically I'll assume my character is inevitably bound for insanity and death, and I'll spend the entire game hoping to get in a decent half-crazed rant.)

So; what game system would work for pulp action while still having a focus on academic skills and problem solving? (Not GURPS, please.)