Chapter Twenty-Three
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Major Ahmed Malik sat at his computer, drumming his fingers on the desk. He had a dilemma he was attempting to work out in his mind. The truth was, he already knew what he was going to do, and was just building up the courage to do it.
He was sitting in his office in the General Intelligence Presidency building.
The GIP was Saudi Arabia’s premier intelligence organization charged with maintaining security both inside and outside the kingdom.
Ahmed was on a liaison assignment here after making the rank of major, which he had obtained by no small measure of help from the man who had emailed him last week asking for his assistance.
Being a career special forces officer, Ahmed knew how to get around the internet firewalls that the kingdom put up, and he used a VPN to check his Proton Mail, a secure email service protected by Swiss privacy laws.
He used the account to maintain communication with friends outside Saudi Arabia, including Nate Wilde, the source of his current predicament.
Ahmed owed much to Nate. Not only had the man’s work in counterterrorism helped Ahmed rise within his own ranks, but Nate had saved his life years ago by taking a full terrorist assault on the encampment in Yemen head-on. It was a debt Ahmed felt he could never repay but he knew he had to try.
So when Nate emailed him asking for his assistance, he felt obliged to help.
His friend had asked for two things: satellite imagery of camel trails and a permit for an archaeological expedition.
The imagery was fairly straightforward. They were technically classified documents, but they had also been originally provided by the Americans in the first place, and Nate had been the one to give them to him.
However, now that Nate was out of the military and no longer had clearance, it was illegal to provide those same images to him.
The whole affair was ridiculous, and Ahmed saw no reason why he should not provide the images. He knew Nate wanted to use them for academic research. He was not giving them to terrorists who intended to harm the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The second request was more difficult. Things were tense in the country at present.
The proxy war with the Iranians was gaining steam and the conflict in Yemen was regularly spilling over the border.
Rockets fired from the south occasionally landed in the Arabian Desert and sometimes even made their way as far north as Riyadh.
It was not a good time for such a request. Ahmed had asked anyway and, as expected, had been denied by the Ministry of Culture’s Heritage Commission.
It troubled Ahmed that he was not able to help in that regard. Perhaps in a few years, when things calmed down, Nate would have the opportunity to launch his expedition. On that day, Ahmed thought, he would gladly join his friend in searching for the lost city of his ancestors.
Making up his mind, Ahmed hit print, ensuring that the grid coordinates were displayed.
Nate would be able to superimpose the trails onto a new map given a few known points.
Ahmed knew this, as he had seen him work his magic before.
He walked over to the printer and scooped up the papers, shoving them in a folder.
When he left for the day, Ahmed made his way to a café that provided Wi-Fi access, where he used his laptop to log back into his Proton Mail.
There were no new messages. He composed a letter to Nate, telling him that he would provide what he asked.
He would be able to travel locally in the coming days and could meet him in Oman, Egypt, or Jordan, and asked which would work best. When he was finished, he logged off and headed home.
He owed this man a great debt, and he hoped that this would be the beginning of his repayment.