Chapter Twenty-Four
Northern France
It was late in the day and the light was starting to fade.
After searching Richter’s office, the two had decided that they wanted to put at least a country or two between themselves and the events in Germany, so they’d checked out of their hotel and left immediately, heading back to London.
Wally felt safer there, in control of the situation in his flat where he stored multiple firearms, against British law.
There was also the fact that they had broken into the house and office of a dead man, and they had no desire to hang around and become suspects in a murder investigation.
Nate still had access to many open-source programs and he searched them to query A.
Metry of the European Union. He found Anastasia Metry fairly quickly and was able to determine that she was an Egyptian who worked for the EU, which he found unusual considering she wasn’t originally an EU citizen.
Digging deeper he discovered that she worked for the European Environment Agency based out of Copenhagen, which provided new threads for him to pull on.
There were no photos, but there was a short bio of the credentials of each member of the agency.
It was when he found out that she specialized in hydrology that he started to get excited.
She might very well be able to shed some light on this mysterious report that was worth killing for.
Still, it was strange. Richter had been working with her father, not her.
So what did her father do? It took a little more effort to locate him, but Nate discovered that he worked in Bahrain for the United Nations Environment Programme.
There was an obvious connection there, but Nate didn’t know enough to make it, so he kept digging until he found the website for the office.
He briefly checked the time before figuring it was nearing the end of the workday, but someone might still be in the office.
He pulled out his cell phone and placed a call. After several rings, someone answered.
“Hello, United Nations Bahrain. How may I be of service?”
“Hello,” Nate said. “I’m looking for a Mr. Youssef Metry.”
“Oh.” There was hesitation on the other end of the line. “Please hold.” Nate was on hold for several minutes. Wally glanced over and Nate shrugged. Finally, a new voice spoke.
“Hello, this is Pierre Dufort of the United Nations Environment Programme, Middle East office. May I ask who is calling?” The voice on the phone spoke English, laced with a heavy French accent.
Nate thought about it for a second, but didn’t want to give his real name. There was something strange going on, and the less he expressed his intentions, the better.
“Yes, hello. My name is Professor Melvin Bradley of Harvard University.” The name of his most hated professor was the first that came to mind, and he hoped the tag of Harvard would grant him some credibility. It did.
“Good evening, Professor. I understand you are calling for Mr. Metry?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, I am sorry to say, we have not seen him for several days. In fact, his daughter was here recently and we told her we had filed a missing persons report with the authorities.”
Nate swore under his breath. There was no more room for coincidence.
Metry was tied to Richter, who was tied to himself.
One was missing, one was dead, and one had been assaulted.
Something bigger was going on, and Nate got the distinct feeling that he was wrapped up in a larger plot, the magnitude of which he could not yet grasp.
“This is in reference to the geological study?” Dufort asked, interrupting his thoughts.
“I’m sorry?” Nate replied, momentarily caught off guard.
“The hydrological study. In Arabia. Your university conducted it and shared it with Mr. Metry, no?”
“Yes,” Nate recovered quickly. “That is the reason for my call.”
“Of course. Unfortunately, I do not know what use Mr. Metry was able to make out of your study. He vanished before we had a chance to discuss it, and he did not share a copy with the office.”
“I see,” Nate said. “His daughter, is she still there?”
“No. She was here but left yesterday, I’m afraid. She came to talk to the authorities about her father, poor thing. She is a delightful young woman.”
“I-I’m sorry,” Nate stammered as he sorted the information in his mind and how it related to what was happening. “You mentioned the hydrological report that Mr. Metry had received. Did he mention what the study was for?”
“Of course,” Dufort replied. “He was expecting to lead an expedition to Saudi Arabia to chart underground water sources. The funding had fallen through, but a private donor had offered to cover the expense at the last moment. It was really quite fortuitous.”
Metry’s daughter was Anastasia, who had been emailed by Richter. Or perhaps by someone else. But she was also a hydrologist. It was probable that the man would have consulted his daughter on his work, as she was experienced in that particular field.
“Did his daughter mention anything about it?”
“No, she was concerned with her father’s whereabouts, less about his work.” There was a pause. “Although now that I think about it, I believe Youssef did mention sending a report he had received to his daughter for her opinion.”
That was a good sign. It seemed that a university had conducted a geological survey of some type in the Arabian Desert and that Richter had been the one to commission it.
He then sent it to Metry, who forwarded it to his daughter.
Nate had tried to obtain a copy from Richter, but he was dead, and his computer contained no traces of the survey or emails back and forth.
Metry had received it, but he was missing.
“Did she by chance say where she was staying?” If she was still in town, maybe he could make contact with her, warn her about the potential threat facing her in Cairo, and most importantly, get a copy of the report.
“The Crowne Plaza, I believe,” Dufort answered.
“Thank you.”
There were too many universities to go through one by one hoping to get a straight answer, so that would have to be a last-ditch effort.
Anastasia was the best hope, as she had received the report from her father and, as of yesterday, wasn’t dead or missing.
But if someone else had emailed her to meet in Cairo in a few days, he very much doubted she would stay that way.
After thanking Monsieur Dufort and hanging up, Nate called the Crowne Plaza and asked for Anastasia Metry. Unfortunately, they informed him that she had checked out. Nate swore. Another dead end.
He spent the rest of the car ride relaying the phone call to Wally and detailing his thoughts on just what it was that they found themselves wrapped up in. They bounced several ideas off each other, further refining their theory.
“So Richter is dead, Metry is missing, and you got rumbled, yeah?” Wally asked.
“Pretty much,” Nate responded.
“Who do you think this private donor of Metry’s was? Seems odd that he would get funding from some eccentric rich geezer and then fall off the grid.”
“You’re right, it does.” Nate thought on it for a while. “You think he’s dead?”
“Stands to reason.”
“And if he and Richter are dead for sharing that report, and someone tried to kill me just for asking about it…”
“Then the girl is next,” Wally said, completing his thought.
“Which means someone else sent that email from Richter’s computer. They’re luring her into a trap.” Nate swore. “We’ve got to get to her first.”
“No doubt,” Wally agreed, “but what the hell is in that report to make it worth killing people all over the world?”
It was a great question, and Nate had no idea.
The fact that there were underground water sources in Saudi Arabia was well-known, and the kingdom had already tapped several of them for agriculture.
He couldn’t see the downside to having more, which meant there was an angle they weren’t seeing. As usual, they needed more information.
When they finally arrived in London, Nate went to work.
After a significant amount of digging, he was able to locate several of the Metrys’ relatives, giving them more starting points in addition to the planned meeting in the souk.
He and Wally would have to make their way to Cairo and work it out from there.
And as long as they were doing so, he would have time to put together the other pieces of the puzzle that would lead him to Ubar.
Wally ordered a pizza and bought a case of Fuller’s London Pride ale and Nate set about working through the night.
When he got ahold of something, he found it difficult to sleep until he accomplished whatever the goal was.
Right now he needed to get all the information he had acquired on Ubar straight, and he started by gathering his materials together in one place.
He had a student account for ArcGIS, an interactive software analysis tool that, among many other functions, allowed him to apply graphic layers over imagery.
He had the initial routes he had plotted for the Philby and Thomas expeditions, but turned off those layers to reapply them, painstakingly drawing them using the maps he had made copies of in Cambridge and the Royal Geographical Society.
They were similar, but slightly off. Erring on the side of caution, Nate chose to use the hand-drawn maps from the men’s notes as the true paths and would adjust on the ground if needed.
He once again entered the coordinates that Bertram Thomas had been standing at when he was given an azimuth of 325 degrees and a distance of several days’ journey.
All of this he plotted against the known locations of the Wabar craters and Philby’s campsite.
Then he added in the approximate area of the well with the strong current that the explorer had written about, and the rough location where Thomas’s Bedouins had claimed to have retrieved their treasure.
All that was missing were the ancient camel trails and the underground water sources.
Once he had those, he would plot them on the imagery and analyze how they overlapped.
Nate hoped the water sources would line up with the wells and that the camel trails would lead to the correct area, which would also need to sit near those underground rivers.
Together, it should give an approximate location that they could travel to, and then use drones as the eye in the sky to see what man could not on the ground and what machine could not from space.
He just needed the last bits of information.
Hopefully Anastasia would provide one, and his Saudi friend the other.
Reflexively Nate clicked over and checked his email.
There was a message waiting from Ahmed. Excitedly he opened it and read quickly.
Ahmed would give him the satellite photos, but they would be hard copies and he had to hand-carry them.
This was great news. Even hard copies could be superimposed onto an electronic system, provided there were enough reference points and an accurate map scale.
He continued reading. Ahmed said nothing about having obtained a permit from the Ministry of Culture, which Nate took to be a bad sign.
“Damn,” he swore to himself. He knew Ahmed would do everything he could, but he wasn’t holding his breath and would need to come up with an alternate plan.
He emailed Ahmed back, thanked the Saudi officer for all his help, and asked if he would be willing to meet in Cairo the day before Anastasia was set to meet with her unknown emailer.
Nate figured he would be in Egypt anyway, and knew it was an easy trip from Saudi Arabia.
Hopefully, he thought, his old friend would bring more good news with him.
After a few hours of sleep, Nate woke to the sound of Wally making tea.
He yawned, threw on a Boston University T-shirt, and joined his friend at the table.
There was some fruit and a few pastries that had been purchased from the shop downstairs, and they munched and drank their tea while BBC News played in the background.
Nate’s brain was fried. He had spent most of the night doing research.
“I found her,” Wally said.
“Who?”
“Anastasia Metry.” He handed Nate an iPad.
It was open to an article detailing a local beauty competition in Lebanon.
There was a photo of a very attractive Arab woman in an evening gown with her name captioned below.
The article mentioned that she was a geology student at the American University of Beirut.
The photo took him by surprise when he saw it.
He had not expected her to be so beautiful.
“A looker that one, yeah?”
Nate didn’t disagree. He sat silently for a minute before finally speaking.
“I’m going” was all he said.
“Brilliant,” Wally replied. “Going where?”
“To the Rub’ al Khali. The Empty Quarter.” Wally waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.
“You heard from Ahmed, then? You got the permit?”
Nate shook his head. “No word yet. But I’m going, regardless.”
“Alright,” Wally said. “So that’s bonkers, then.”
“How do you figure?”
“How do I figure? How do you not?” Wally was once again incredulous.
“Who dares wins, right?” It was the motto of the British Special Air Service.
Wally groaned. “Yeah, who dares, mate. Not who commits suicide. For starters, how do you get into the bloody country if they don’t want you there?”
“How would you?” Nate asked as he sipped his tea. Wally thought it over.
“Well, Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE are nonstarters. Too much border security to cross illegally. Maybe Oman, although the oil refineries out that way means they actually patrol that part of the border, plus the increased security what with the war in…” He stopped and looked up at his exhausted friend. “Oh, fuck off. You’re taking the piss!”
Nate smiled and took another sip of his tea.
“How the hell would you even pull it off?”
“Kinda curious now, aren’t you?” Nate took a bite out of a Danish.
“Alright,” Wally continued. “Needs to be close enough to Oman to be away from the main conflict yet also close to where you’re going. Maybe somewhere you know…” He thought about it. “Ghaydah?”
“Bingo.”
“You really want to go back to that fucking place?”
“No, not really. But it’s the logical choice.
If you’re going to enter Saudi Arabia without going through customs, Yemen is the way to go.
Al Ghaydah is a great port of entry, for all the reasons you just listed.
Then it’s a straight shot of a mere four hundred miles through some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet. Easy.”
“Never gonna make it,” Wally said, shaking his head.
“Maybe not alone.” Nate blew on his tea as he looked intently at his friend.
“Mmmm,” Wally grunted. “Who else did you have in mind?”