Much of it had been extremely fascinating, but none of it had been particularly enlightening for the purposes of Nate’s investigation. He was halfway through the eighth box and had yet to come across anything useful for helping him find Ubar. There were merely notes relating to things he already knew. The latitude and longitude of where Thomas was standing when his guide pointed out the road to Ubar was18° 45' N, 52° 30' E, at an azimuth of 325° for a journey of several days. Of course, the guide was referring to ancient camel trails, the same ones Nate had seen using the LIDAR satellite imagery a few years ago in Yemen.
The problem was that even using the best commercial imagery, the trails appeared to vanish as they moved north. This made them impossible to follow and gave him no more of a starting point than he’d had before. It was, however, encouraging to see the raw notes about the explorer’s travels. His guides believed with absolute faith in the “Atlantis of the Sands” and had made Thomas a believer as well. He wrote in detail about his frustration with his inability to continue searching for the city, with low water supplies being his primary concern.
Just as Nate was beginning to fear that the trip had been a complete waste, a page caught his eye. It looked like an entry that, like many others, had fallen out of a journal as the book had become unbound with time. Upon closer inspection he realized he was wrong and was surprised to see that it was a letter addressed to T. E. Lawrence. Nate noted that it was directed atT.E.S., which he knew stood for Thomas Edward Shaw, the name Lawrence legally adopted in 1927 to escape thepublic eye after the fame brought by his experiences in WWI and the subsequent publication ofSeven Pillars of Wisdom.
It must have been a letter that was never sent, though it was known that Thomas shared details relating to the legend of the city with Lawrence and inspired the man’s desire to search for the city himself. It seemed to detail an encounter Thomas and his team had with a local Bedouin tribe that regularly transited the area:
T.E.S.,
I have scrawled my thoughts down on paper about a magnificent encounter, one that has intrigued me, and I feel is sure to intrigue you as well. It had been only a journey of a day and a half when we encountered a group of local tribesmen, and with them their wives and children. I had been warned that the further north we traveled the increased likelihood there existed for banditry. Naturally I was cautious, however Salim appeared unconcerned. He made contact with the group and we identified them as being friendly. We sat down for a meal and to discuss the issue of items for trade (water was too scarce a commodity) and I noticed the most peculiar thing. The Arabs of this tribe had pottery shards to offer that appeared to my keen eye to be ancient in their nature. What’s more, they had in their possession trinkets of gold! Rings and necklaces, some inlaid with precious gemstones. I asked to hold them in my hands, but they were readily standoffish and had no interest in trading or even allowing me to examine their treasures, and I was only able to view them from afar but not allowed to touch. It did not make sense that people so poor would come to possess such items of wealth. I asked immediately where they had acquired the items, and they replied to me that they discover the items in this region from time to time. Often a trinketwould reveal itself in a bucket when retrieving water from a well. Other times one might be lying in the sand, exposed by the wind. They were emphatic that the treasures came from the ancient lost city of Iram! I asked if they ever dug for these and they cautioned that they did not as the area was protected by Djinn. They simply accepted what was given to them by the desert as they crossed the region and retained them for luck and safe passage.
Of course, this was of no great help to me. The area they spoke of was far too large to narrow down where such a lost city might lay. If the city had disappeared in the center of the Rub’ al Khali, we were still several days’ march from it. The scope of open desert between our position and where the Arabs had said the roads led was enormous. Although, it had occurred to me that if the legends are true and the lost city truly resides underground, having befallen some circumstance of calamity, perhaps these treasures may have traveled underground, or maybe were tossed by the sands a great distance over a thousand years. In fact, they described a well several days due west where items often washed up in buckets, though the distance was more than 30 leagues from where we sat, and the validity of their stories uncertain. But if true, does it imply a lost city? Impossible to tell for sure, yet supremely intriguing! Still, to proceed on such a reckless course of exploration would have been suicide at best, water being scarce as it was.
Hopefully the opportunity will present itself to explore this further. It will not be on this expedition, but perhaps in the years to come.
Nate held the paper in his hands and stared at it without really seeing it. His mind was thousands of miles away in the deserts of Arabia. He exhaled slowly, realizing he had been holding his breath the entiretime he had been reading. This was what he had been looking for. There were rumors of Bedouin tribes with treasures recovered from the area, but never any direct evidence. Here in his hands Nate held the words of the famous British explorer Bertram Thomas, writing his firsthand account about witnessing the treasures of Ubar, to T. E. Lawrence. He saw the items with his own eyes and talked to those who had found them, and the Bedouins had distinctly mentioned Ubar, which they referred to as Iram, as the source.
It was an amazing find, though it was still circumstantial at best. But it lent credence to Nate’s theory and explained why Lawrence had sought an expedition to find the city. Thomas may not have ever sent this letter, for reasons unknown, but certainly he relayed the information to Lawrence at some point. It also bolstered the oral histories of Ahmed’s tribe, who for all Nate knew were the same people Thomas had encountered. Ahmed had a treasure, just as these people did; a direct correlation bridged across time over nearly one hundred years.
But there was something else of interest. A meticulous man, Thomas had notes that recorded his bearings, estimated distances, and notable features, including his approximate location when he had encountered the Bedouins. He speculated that the city was indeed underground and that the items found must have traveled a great distance. That meant the original stories were wrong and that the city, if it existed, was much farther south. Or the items were making their way from much farther north to the south, a distance of probably at least a hundred miles. Either way, it was an additional data point, and Nate recorded the location.
Picking up speed, Nate searched through the remainder of the box and found hand-drawn sketches of the route Thomas had taken through the Saudi desert. They seemed to match what he had seen previously, but he set them aside anyhow. He returned to the letterand reread it several times, took pictures of all the pages with his phone, made a few copies, and then reread the letter again. It definitely supported Ahmed’s story, but it also widened the search area. Of course, Bertram Thomas never actually pursued the lost city, and never made it to the Wabar craters. But St. John Philby did. Nate began packing up the boxes. With any luck, Philby’s notes would hold another clue that would bring him one step closer to solving the mystery.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Aleksandr Novikov lit a Kent cigarette outside Dubai International Airport. Looking down at his two-toned Oyster Perpetual Submariner Date Rolex, he noted that he still had plenty of time to make his flight. He didn’t anticipate any issues with security as he regularly traveled internationally on the fake passport that had a name printed on it that was not his own, yet matched his biometrics provided by the Russian government. He had driven in a few days earlier from Qatar where, according to international travel records, he had been for the last two weeks.
In reality, he had crossed the gulf to Bahrain, entered the country undetected, and brutally murdered a U.N. worker and hotel security guard before leaving in the same manner. The person who had carried out those actions looked different than he did and carried different credentials. The cover mechanisms were airtight, and he felt confident in the operation’s security. He had destroyed that persona, never to be used again, and assumed one of his many aliases to once again travel freely throughout the region.
His only concern had been where to go next. Novikov had gained access to Metry’s laptop by cracking the weak security encryption and discovered that the dead man had corresponded with two individuals regarding his findings. The first was a U.N. scientist in Germany named Gilbert Richter, who had in turn been working with a colleague at a university in the United States. Western Michigan University had been looked into, and it was determined that they conducted so much research that the documents they possessed would likely be catalogued and go unused by anyone. Novikov might someday make his way to the United States to destroy those records, along with anyone who was perceived as a threat, but that was only if he was paid for it.
Richter in Germany was a different story. He was absolutely a threat, as he worked directly for the United Nations. He would need to die, and so that was where Novikov would go first. He would take a flight to Frankfurt and then make his way up to Bonn. He knew where Richter worked and would utilize that as a starting point. Once he positively identified the man, he would follow him to locate his home, as well as any other pattern-of-life information he was able to glean. He would then select the best place to strike that would allow him the greatest chance of success with the least amount of risk to himself. It would be a straightforward job.
Metry’s daughter was the other loose end, and she was more of a conundrum. She had been sent the data to review, though Novikov doubted she realized the significance of what she had. Additionally, she was so concerned about her missing father that she had hopped a flight to Bahrain to search for him, information that was fed to Novikov by his handlers. Although he didn’t know exactly where the information came from, he assumed from previous experience that there was a network of analysts out there churning through data, and more than likely others like him out there as well, all working for the same people.
Metry and Richter had inadvertently stumbled onto something much bigger than themselves. Years ago Novikov would not have been privy to what was at stake. But after years of serving his masters, he was entrusted with more information. Something had been discovered out in the Arabian Desert, something that was of great value to his employers. And the detection of the underground water sources put it all at risk. Billions were on the line, which is why Novikov was being paid such a high price to kill anyone with significant knowledge of the hydrology report. First Metry, and now Richter.
However, the girl’s actions put Novikov in a tough situation. She was certainly more vulnerable in Bahrain than in Denmark, but he was uncomfortable risking another operation in the country so soon. And if the daughter disappeared in the same place days after the father, it would give cause for the authorities to open an investigation.No, he thought,better to let her search. She wouldn’t find anything.
Instead, Novikov would arrange for some type of communication to be sent to the daughter. Perhaps a fake letter from her father, drawing her to a place where she would feel more comfortable, yet in reality be more vulnerable. He would look into it as soon as he was finished with the task at hand.
The killer looked down at his expensive watch again, a symbol of his rising status in life. It was time to get moving. He took one last puff of the cigarette, watching the paper burn down to the filter, before tossing it in an ashtray. Then he gathered up his bags and entered the airport. Within the next few days Gilbert Richter would be dead, and Novikov would be one million dollars richer.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
London, England
It had taken roughly two hours for Nate to drive from Cambridge to London, the sun setting below the horizon as he traveled. He rolled down the windows and enjoyed the fresh air as he drove, basking in his small measure of success. The letter to T. E. Lawrence was enough proof to convince him that he was on the right track, and that pursuing the lost city of Ubar wasn’t some fool’s errand. Tomorrow he’d go to the Royal Geographical Society, and with any luck he would be even more successful in finding answers.
But first he had a night to kill in London and he needed to unwind a bit, so he called his old friend Benjamin Walton before leaving Cambridge to inform him that he was in town. The plan was for Nate to get a hotel and then meet up for dinner, but Wally had vehemently refused, insisting that Nate stay with him and save his money. Nate didn’t exactly have a disposable income, and so he navigated his way to South Kensington where Wally was renting a flat.
“Well, well,” Wally said as Nate approached his front door. “Look at this poor sod.”
“It’s good to see you, Wally,” Nate said as the two men shook hands and briefly hugged.
“You too, mate. Is that Bergen all you’ve got, then? Let’s throw it inside, then go grab a pint or two.”
