Chapter Fifteen #2
“This is the key,” Nate mumbled to himself.
He did not yet have the imagery of the camel trails, but they told part of the story.
The location where the Bedouins that Bertram Thomas had spoken to had acquired their treasures was another.
But the water source discovered by St. John Philby and his expedition was quite possibly the biggest piece of the puzzle yet.
And the last was going to be how it all related to the impacts in the charted Wabar craters area.
But that was something that would only be solved on the ground. Or rather, in the air.
Nate needed to focus on the water for now and hope that the rest came together later.
He had the coordinates for the well, which had to be part of a larger water system.
Certainly there were organizations that were looking at this very issue, probably the United Nations or some other nongovernmental organization.
He needed to find out who they were, get in touch with them, and acquire the information that would lay out where these underground waterways originated and where they flowed to.
He took a deep breath. In reality, the first thing he needed to do was go through the rest of these files and make sure there were no more items of significance that would impact his investigation.
He was more excited now than he had been at any other time during his research, oddly enough feeling the opposite emotions that Philby had while discovering Wabar.
Then again, Philby hadn’t known everything that Nate did.
As he started to rummage through the rest of the notes, Nate remembered a line that Philby had written in The Empty Quarter:
I could now honourably bequeath the task to my successors—to younger men or women who may not be deterred by my barren search for the fabled ruins from embarking upon similar enterprises in the great sand of Arabia.
It was the well-wishing of an old explorer from beyond the grave, encouraging future generations to succeed where he had failed. And Nate intended to do just that.
“So it all comes down to water, then?” Wally asked, slightly confused.
“More or less,” Nate answered, distracted.
The two were seated at a table by the window in Tattersalls Tavern, a pub close to Hyde Park and the Royal Geographical Society.
Wally would have vetoed the place, feeling it too close to the tourist area due to its proximity to Harrods, among other things.
But he wasn’t given a say in the matter.
Nate had come straight here after he finished reviewing the records and was already seated by the time Wally called.
He wasn’t ignoring his friend, but he was still in research mode.
Nate had his Microsoft Surface Laptop open and was recording information as well as scouring leads across the internet.
First, he had plotted the location of Philby’s well, which was nineteen miles northwest of the Wabar craters, seemingly in the middle of the desert.
He then plotted the new routes he had obtained from the expeditions of both explorers, noticing the deviations from their proposed routes.
Philby’s passed through the Wabar craters and his referenced well, as was to be expected.
Nate noted the grid where Bertram Thomas was located when his guide provided him directions to Ubar, and added in where he had encountered the Bedouins with their treasures.
While it didn’t provide him much context now, with the exception of where not to look, he knew that information provided by both explorers would likely become more relevant when he had more information about the subterranean water tables.
Nate had been looking at who the best people were to reach out to for the information he needed.
As expected, there were several entities that looked at the issue of water in Saudi Arabia.
Groundwater made up ninety-eight percent of naturally occurring fresh water in the country and unfortunately, it was running out.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia doubled the world average for water consumption, using nearly as much as the United States and Canada.
Unfortunately, they had some of the world’s largest oil reserves, not water reserves, and a crisis was looming.
Several institutions took an interest in this problem.
There were numerous nonprofits, several universities, and of course the United Nations, which was all over the issue.
Nate had spent the last two hours researching these entities, listing them on a spreadsheet, and sending them emails explaining a basic interest in the problem and asking for research and possibly a meeting.
He referred to himself only as a doctoral student from Harvard and explained that he was currently in London conducting research.
He was concerned that any mention of his archaeological investigation into the lost city of Ubar might dissuade cooperation from some of these “harder sciences” personnel, and he needed to get his hands on that data.
More specifically, he needed hydrological tables that had been charted of the Rub’ al Khali, specifically pertaining to underground water sources and not just dry streambeds on the surface.
Nate used roughly the same template for all his emails, tweaking each slightly to align with the ethos of the given organization, and blasted them out.
He wasn’t sure how long it would take to get a response, and decided that he would remain in London in a holding pattern to see who responded.
He wanted to be agile, and if someone on this side of the world got back to him, he didn’t want to have to cross the Atlantic again for a meeting.
And truthfully, he wasn’t sure his bank account could handle it.
“So are you going to eat that, then?” Wally asked, pointing to his steak and ale pie.
“All yours,” Nate said. He hadn’t touched his food, though he had drunk a few beers over the last couple of hours. He was too focused on making sure he covered all his bases, sending out emails to anybody he thought might be able to help.
“Nah, mate, you gotta eat. Keep your strength up.”
Wally pushed the plate toward him and slowly closed the laptop.
Nate was left sitting at the table, staring blankly at the top of his computer.
He looked up at Wally and then around at the pub, which was starting to fill with people.
Finally, he glanced down at his meal and realized that he was, in fact, hungry.
He unrolled his silverware, placed the napkin on his lap, and started digging in.
As he broke the crust of the pie, steam rose from within, and he was happy to see that it had stayed warm for so long.
“So what’s the plan, then?” Wally asked after his friend had taken a few bites.
“Plan?”
“Right. From here. What’s the plan?”
“Well,” Nate thought about it, “I guess we just wait to see who gets back to us. Someone out there must have a thorough geographic survey of underground waterways in Saudi Arabia.”
“I’m surprised you can’t just find that on the internet.”