Desert Heist

Prologue

Al Hadidah, The Empty Quarter

Harry St. John Philby pulled his keffiyeh up to shield his face as a strong wind kicked up, blowing sand in his direction.

It hardly mattered, the British explorer told himself.

His mustache and beard were already caked with sand.

Philby’s eyes were deeply set in his weathered face, which was hardened like leather from the accumulation of long weeks spent in the desert under the harsh sun.

His hair was long and ragged, ungentlemanly so, and crusted over with the same dirt and sand that afflicted the rest of his body.

A fine layer of crystallized salt encouraged the dust to stick as an endless cycle of sweat seeped from his pores and dried overnight, the process repeating once again the next day.

Philby was perched atop a large sand dune with the vastness of the desert stretched out before him.

The sky was bright blue and clear without a cloud in sight.

The view was both intimidating and yet serenely beautiful.

As a former British officer, a convert to Islam, and Arabist, Philby had a special appreciation for the land he believed both the locals and those from the West often missed.

It appeared, however, that the land he so cared for did not love him back at this particular moment in time.

With a sigh he stood and sauntered down the dune toward camp, which consisted of a ring of camels with small tents perched in the center.

The expedition had been a complete and utter failure up to this point.

A month ago, he had set out from civilization with thirty-two camels and fifteen Arab tribesmen in search of the lost city of Ubar.

He now possessed less than half those numbers, with many of his Bedouin guides having turned back, taking their camels with them.

Conditions had been harsh, to be certain, but still he resented their lack of fortitude.

Philby had not only weathered the harsh terrain alongside them, but carried a deeper lamentation as well.

Originally seeking to be the first explorer to cross the Rub’ al Khali, or Empty Quarter, Philby’s efforts were delayed while awaiting permission from the king.

Instead, his close friend and former subordinate Bertram Thomas had undertaken the journey the year prior, traveling from the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman to Qatar.

It was a crushing blow to Philby, not only because the distinction of being the first to make the epic journey had been ripped away from him when he was so close to launching his own expedition, but because it was done so by a close friend and colleague.

He recalled the words of an unknown Arab poet:

’Twas I that learn’d him in the archer’s art; At me, his hand grown strong, he launched his dart.

The words perfectly mirrored his sorrow at the betrayal.

And yet, he rallied. Nearly fifteen years ago when he was still a young officer, a Bedouin guide by the name of Jabir Ibn Farraj had regaled Philby with stories of the lost city of Ubar, a city on the ancient frankincense trade routes that had grown so immensely wealthy and powerful that it was said to be filled with golden palaces overflowing with decadent treasures.

The ruler, Shaddad, had built such a magnificent metropolis that the people of ‘Ad who resided within had become wicked in their ways from greed.

Thusly, Allah smote the city from the land, burying it in the sands of Arabia forever.

The tales had left a marked impression on him, and Philby had been obsessed with finding the location of the lost city ever since.

The story of Ubar was fantastic enough, and drew parallels to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah from the Old Testament.

But the locals believed in the existence of the city with such fervor that Philby’s faith never wavered.

And while holding the distinction of being the first to cross the Empty Quarter had been taken from him, the opportunity to find the buried city was well within reach.

Philby had spent most of his adult life in the Middle East, working in the British army against the Ottomans during the Great War, serving as an intelligence officer, and more recently as a partner in a successful trading business.

He was also a close advisor to Ibn Saud, the king of Arabia.

And while these were accomplishments that most men would be happy to leave behind as a legacy, Philby was not most men; he wanted more.

So, he had been determined that he would find the lost city, and the glory that had been robbed from him last season would finally be his.

But those had been the musings of a different man, well over a month ago.

Today, things appeared dramatically different.

The expedition had arrived four days prior to discover not a fabled city, but the remnants of a series of ancient volcanic eruptions.

Philby knew not whether he should laugh or cry, so he had occupied his time the last few days by charting the craters the eruptions had left behind.

There were several in the area, and they indicated the existence of a volcano in this region several millennia ago.

It was a fascinating discovery to be sure, but a far cry from the one he had hoped to make.

However, the locals with him were convinced that what they saw were the remains of the fabled city.

They pointed to the craters and spoke in excited voices of walls and castles and the riches that were certainly hidden beneath the sands.

The steep crater walls made of black glass may have resembled castle walls to the uneducated tribesmen, but Philby knew better.

This was nothing more than a naturally occurring geological feature. There was no lost city here.

Regardless, Philby had allowed himself a small measure of hope.

Many years ago, Farraj had also said that the location of the city was marked by a lump of iron as big as a camel’s hump.

But days of searching had failed to reveal the marker, with the only iron deposits present being smaller in size than Philby’s fist.

The Bedouins set about picking up small shiny black pellets they found dispersed along the ground, believing them to be pearls.

In his frustration Philby attempted to explain that these were not pearls but rather glass caused by the heat of the eruption, and that the walls of the craters were not ruins of city walls and bastions, but simply scorched sand.

They did not know what a volcano was and so he had tried to elaborate in detailed Arabic about fire rising from the earth. It had fallen on deaf ears.

“No,” one of his guides, Ali Jahman, had responded with deep conviction. “This is the city of Ubar.”

It was hopeless, and Philby once again felt the bitter sting of defeat.

He may have discovered unique geological features out here in the desert, but it was certainly not what he intended.

To make matters worse, they were low on food, and water had been extremely scarce.

The camels had been ten days without watering, and he was not sure they would be able to press on any further, much less make it back across the desert to civilization.

He had relied on Jahman and Salim Ibn Suwailim, his other Bedouin guide, to locate ancient wells throughout their route.

They had ridden northeast past the al Faraja Well, which proved to be dried out, but eventually found a source of water at the Ibrahima Well.

The expedition had then returned to the area, where Philby had effectively enticed his Arab entourage to compete in searching for the treasured “camel’s hump” by offering a financial reward.

The deposit of iron supposedly resembled its namesake and should have been relatively easy to identify.

Salim claimed to have found it years ago and, as long as it was not buried by the sands, was properly incentivized to do so again.

In the meantime, Philby had sent Jahman to search for a well closer to the campsite so that they need not travel so far out of the way again and could focus on exploring the area.

Philby sat down in his Arab garb and quietly prayed to Allah for guidance.

When he was finished, he opened his notebook and set about improving his sketches of the craters.

He would be damned if what he charted here would be anything but painstakingly accurate.

He was a professional after all, despite his disappointment in not locating a historical city that would eclipse the discovery of Petra, the ancient Nabatean city of the Transjordan Emirate discovered by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt over a century prior.

As he drew with his pencil, Philby studied the pattern laid out by the craters.

There were two large craters, with a smaller one nearby.

Philby was not a geologist and so he could not determine if this was a strange or normal occurrence for an eruption.

Instead, he focused on accurately capturing the pattern of the area so that men who were educated in the field would be able to make sense of them.

In the recesses of his mind, he still held out hope, straining to envisage how the area could contain a city. He willed it to be so but alas, it did not appear to him. After several minutes of quiet contemplation, he was once again forced to accept that the expedition had so far been a failure.

Yet there were still more regions to explore.

He was not a man to accept failure easily, and he was not about to begin now.

Philby intended to chart the entire border that the Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd shared with the Yemeni Frontier, a survey that would be of great interest to the king, as no one had done so previously.

Perhaps he would find further evidence of Ubar as they traveled.

More and more he was feeling that the lost city was not here.

If it existed, it must be farther south near the Hadhramaut area of eastern Yemen.

It would have been extremely difficult for a civilization to flourish in the wasteland of the Empty Quarter, and this expedition was proving that.

What the locals thought were signs of a city were really naturally occurring geological features.

There was not even evidence of water close by that could have fed life into such a place, and that would have been a requirement for such a city to exist, let alone prosper.

He closed the book and once again peered up at the blue sky, the bright sun beating down upon his tanned face and yellowing eyes.

His head rested against a sack of dates, and he pulled one out to eat, savoring the sweet flavor and the drops of moisture that came with it.

None of this would matter soon enough. He would be forced to move on with the expedition, having felt that he satisfactorily solved the mystery of the Wabar area.

It was a volcano in the desert, nothing more.

If younger men wanted to spend their time searching for evidence of a lost city in the desert, then that was their prerogative.

He had done his part blazing the path, and he was weary.

“Ya, Sayyidi,” he heard shouted from the north. He turned to see Jahman and another of the Arab tribesmen. He hoped that they brought news of a well. It was very likely they would be moving on regardless, but he would prefer to do so with both men and beasts properly watered.

Jahman was in the lead and walked up with a large grin on his face. He was repeatedly tossing one of the little black pieces of glass up into the air and catching it, and the movement caught the British man’s eye.

“Have you had any success?” Philby asked in frustration. Jahman’s casual attitude was in stark contrast to the stress the Englishman felt, and it irritated him.

“Na’am,” Jahman said, the smile on his face growing. With a flare of showmanship, the Arab guide stepped aside, holding his hands out as if introducing an onstage performer.

The tribesman who had been accompanying Jahman walked up to the two men. Philby’s view had been blocked by his guide, and he had been unable to get a clear line of sight on the man. As the small Arab walked up, Philby’s eyes widened in absolute bewilderment.

“I don’t understand,” he stammered to Jahman. “How is such a thing possible?”