Chapter 9

            Keller and his Industrial Security team arrived by helicopter at the Hima exploration camp. The Aramco helicopter settled down on a salt flat, or sabkha, between two towering sand-dune ranges. The sabkha looked like a vast concrete pool and its only distinguishing feature, apart from a few scraggly salt bushes, was the geologists' camp – three tents, a campfire site and a supply area. When the chopper blades stopped, the only sound was the rhythmic flapping of the tents in the steady wind.

            A search of the camp turned up nothing.

            “Where's the Hummer?” I wondered.

            “Damned if I know,” said Al-Shaikh. “They had a Land Cruiser too. The workers drove it.”

            “Tracks don't last long, with the winds around here. But it's still possible to see where the vehicles took off from.” The Land Cruiser's tracks led over the lower dune range to the south. The wider tracks of the Hummer headed northwest, around the left side of the northern dune.

            Al-Shaikh took one of his men and set out on foot, following the Land Cruiser's tracks. Keller jumped back in the chopper, and instructed the pilot to follow the distinctive tracks of the Hummer.

            Eventually the tracks halted, disappeared. Beyond was a huge circle of swirled sand, about 200 meters across.  It formed a shallow depression. Keller's first thought was there might be a limestone sinkhole beneath the sand, that perhaps Vallentine and Dossary and their vehicle had been sucked in. But that explanation seemed preposterous; he had never heard of such a thing happening. He recalled the quicksand fields of Umm al-Sammim, on the other side of the Rub' al-Khali near Oman – shepherds had lost whole flocks of sheep and camels in those – but the quicksand was created by rainwater runoff from the Omani mountains, and there was no moisture here.

            Keller thought about the anomaly he had seen on the seismic chart in Salazar's office. The inverted pyramid beneath a thousand feet of sand. As the chopper hovered over the circle of sand, Keller took a GPS reading to pinpoint the location. The coordinates were the same. He realized with a chill that the mysterious anomaly was directly below him. He had no doubt whatsoever that the anomaly had something to do with the disappearance of the geologists.

            The whole thing gave Keller the creeps. He was reluctant to have the pilot set down anywhere within or near the circle of sand. Instead they returned directly to the sabkha.

            Al-Shaikh and his men had found the workers' Land Cruiser and had driven it back to the camp. There was still no sign of the Pakistanis. Where could they have gone?

            Back in Dhahran, Keller phoned a friend at the U.S. Consulate General. Annette Braverman was ostensibly a commercial attache, but Keller was fairly certain she was plugged in with the intelligence community in some way. She was a no-nonsense diplomat who seemed to know something about everything.

            “You found what?”

            “It's some kind of anomaly under the sands,” he said, “an object shaped like an inverted pyramid. In our new oil field, Hima. At least some of our geologists think the anomaly may be hollow. I think it's connected with the disappearance of two of our geologists, who vanished into thin air out in the desert yesterday. The object may also be linked to the recent deaths of two of our people in Dhahran. I was just wondering if you had heard anything about this, or if you could help in any way. It's got us pretty stumped here.”

            There was a moment of silence. Then:

            “Let me check it out, Dan, and I'll get back to you.”

            Keller sat back in the old gray wingback chair in his living room and tried to make sense of it all. In the old days, when Jennie was part of his life, he would have discussed the case with her. She'd always had insights he could use. But Jennie had died of melanoma two years earlier. Their daughter and son were grown, married and living their own lives back in the States. Keller glanced around the room. It was a small apartment, done in townhouse fashion, with living room and kitchen down and single bedroom and bath upstairs. When the family had been together in Arabia, they'd had a roomy detached house, three bedrooms and a garage, with a sizable backyard surrounded by a fence. They had even thought about putting in a pool. But that was ancient history, he thought, as he relaxed in his chair and sipped an iced tea. Now he had nothing but work, and the work was gnawing at him, like an old dog worrying a bone. Setting down his drink, he rubbed his eyes. Outside, he could hear a baseball game underway at the field across the street, with parents, coaches, fans and twelve-year-old players screaming their lungs out.

            Keller tried to make sense of the anomaly in the Hima field and discern a connection with the two deaths in Dhahran and the disappearances in the desert. Could there be a national security angle? Could the inverted pyramid shape beneath the dunes have something to do with governments, national interests, perhaps even terrorism? So far the Saudis weren't saying anything. Neither were the Americans. Could he be imagining all this?
(Next)
(Beginning)

Research Note

Mythology researcher T. Peter Park explored the possibility that UFO aliens could be jinn in a discussion in an online discussion group called “Mythfolk” in 1999. It started off with comments on the “Men in Black” urban legend. Park noted that Thomas E. Bullard, a folklorist specializing in UFO-related beliefs, had placed the “Men in Black” in a broader and older tradition of “mysterious visitants.”

            “Almost a sense of familiarity attaches to the Men in Black,” Bullard was quoted as saying. “They step into the shoes vacated by angels and demons to serve as modernized versions of otherworldly messengers, modified to reflect extraterrestrial rather than supernatural employment but clearly functionaries in the same mold…. In classical belief demons populated the earth in great number, as did fairies in Celtic folklore, and like fairies these demons [of Greek and Roman mythology and folklore, e.g., Socrates’ ‘daimon’ – TPP] worked to help or harm mortals.

“In Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian and Islamic beliefs these beings lost some of their choice of action as they divided into two distinct camps, one loyal to God and the other [serving as] henchmen to the devil…. Devils and demonic beings enjoy broader license for mischief as they cause harm by whatever means their evil imaginations can devise.... The primary activity of demons is to tempt humans into sin. For this purpose demons often disguise themselves by transformation and a common motif in folklore leaves an imperfection in the disguise, often the cloven hoofs of the devil going unchanged. Strange feet and an ‘artificial’ or doll-like look are common traits of Men in Black as well.”

Park pointed out that John A. Keel repeatedly mentioned in his writings that UFO aliens, “Bigfoot” type creatures, and entities like the 1966-1967 West Virginia “Mothman” often seem to have no feet, while frequently stressing the “artificial” or “robot-like” look of many Men in Black.

            Park observed that the similarity of modern, UFO-related Men in Black to traditional folkloric demons and fairies, as described by Bullard, was first popularized by John Keel in the mid- and late 1960’s. In the 1950’s and early 1960’s version of the MIB mythos spread by Albert K. Bender and Gray Barker, the Men in Black had been pictured either as U.S. government agents or as man-like “straight” extraterrestrial humanoids, with no ghostly, supernatural, demonic or faerie qualities.

            Keel himself initially suggested an Earthly human origin for both the Men in Black and the UFO aliens themselves in his April 1968 article in Fate magazine on the “The Sinister Men in Black,” where he argued that the Ufonauts and Men in Black might be “a subversive group who, like the Gypsies, are able to live among us unnoticed and isolated from our general society.” By 1970, however, in his books Strange Creatures From Time and Space and UFO's: Operation Trojan Horse, Keel theorized instead that Ufonauts, Men in Black, and other Mystery Creatures were probably trickster-like quasi-demonic “Ultraterrestrials” from another dimension.
(Next)

Chapter 8

Of all the daughters of Sheba, Najran is the fairest.... [N]ever shall I forget the vista of that charming valley wreathed in the morning mists.... Day by day ... I feasted my eyes on the great valley trending through the mountains to the sea of sands, the Empty Quarter.

                                                                        – Harry St. J. Philby, 1939

            Frank Devereaux, Bill Semple and I arrived in Najran about 18 hours later. Najran, home of the ancient tribe of Yam, was South Arabia's first Christian city. It also once had a substantial Jewish community, historically linked with the Jews of neighboring Yemen. Both the Christians and the Jews were gone now. In the seventh century, Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Muslim caliph after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, had the Christians of Najran deported to Mesopotamia, on the grounds that no non-Muslims – not even People of the Book, like Christians and Jews – should live in the Arabian heartland. Somehow the Jewish community managed to keep their heads down and remained in Najran until the 1930s, when Saudi forces captured Najran. The few hundred remaining Jews then fled to Aden, and eventually found their way to Israel.

            Najran nevertheless was still a diverse city. All its inhabitants were now professed Muslims, but the population was a mix of three versions of the faith; a plurality were your run-of-the-mill Shiites, the next largest community was Sunni (of various schools) and the third group were Zaidi Shiites (a Yemeni persuasion). I tried to ignore the religious hodge-podge in Najran, but sometimes this was hard to do.

            A Saudi Arabian Government Hummer picked us up at the airport. We headed west, up the wadi, or dry river valley, into the city proper. Before too long we were unloading our bags in our rooms at what could only be described as a prince's palace. High tan walls surrounded a veritable jungle of towering date and Washingtonia palms, dreamy acacias and a wealth of other arid-zone foliage. Impressive fountains sprayed water into the air at various strategic spots in the compound. At the very middle was a gleaming white mansion, complete with house servants and other attendants.

            Within an hour, we had cleaned ourselves up and rendezvoused in the sitting room, where several American embassy personnel and a handful of unidentified Arabs awaited us. A black abaya, or women's outer robe, had been discreetly left on my bed, in the hope I would choose to make things easy for the authorities and cover myself up. I had ignored the robe and dressed in jeans and a work shirt. No one commented as I entered the sitting room. We had some serious work ahead of us, and I wasn't in the mood to play dress-up to assuage traditional Saudi sensitivities. 

            An embassy attaché made the introductions, and then Frank gave them some background on me. He made it clear without saying so explicitly that everyone should cooperate with me 100 percent. It was at that meeting that I met Mubarak Awda, the guide who was to take us to the caves where the jinn photo had supposedly been taken.\

            Awda was a serious young man, who had a vaguely familiar look about him, though there was no way I could have ever met him before. His eyes seemed extremely black and yet almost glowing; it gave him a kind of charisma that was striking.

            We drank traditional Arabian coffee in tiny cups. I was happy to be once again sipping that lightly roasted, unsweetened brew and savoring its cardamom tang – so different from the intense, sweet, high-octane flavor of Turkish coffee that I knew from Beirut and Cairo.

            The American embassy offered us logistical support for our trek into the caves. They didn't seem to know what we were looking for, but were happy to assist. I'm sure the Secretary of State had put in a good word for us.

            We agreed to set out for the cave network after lunch. The drive would only be an hour or so. We could spend five or six hours in the caves, then call it a day. (Famous last words?)

            I was glad to be back in Najran; it was a colorful city, and I liked the people. It was a fairly diverse metropolis by Saudi standards, perched as it was on the edge of Yemen, close to the mountains and on the brink of the great sand sea. But some less pleasant memories of my years in Arabia kept trying to surface. I repressed them relentlessly.

           

            When I got back to my room, jet lag caught up with me, and I crashed for two-hour nap. When I could sleep no longer, I went back downstairs to the sitting room. Bill Semple was the only one there, sitting in an overstuffed easy chair. I sat down on a couch opposite him.

            “Emily,” he said, “I can sense you think I'm a bit of a kook.... No, no, that's OK.... I get that from a lot of people. I've been working with victims of alien encounters for years, and it's not something most people can take seriously. Initially I was practicing conventional psychotherapy, but everything changed when my wife experienced an abduction episode. Sandy was staying alone at our cabin in the Adirondacks; I had some important work to do in Manhattan at the time.”

            He seemed to be reliving the experience as he spoke. His eyes became moist, and it was hard to doubt his sincerity. He went on:

            “Sandy is a very level-headed person. She is an architect, and she doesn't go in for sci-fi or fantasy. That's why it was so hard for me to understand when she phoned me in the middle of the night and told me what had happened to her.

            “She was reading in bed, at about one in the morning, when the entire cabin was bathed in a purple light. She got out of bed and went out to the living room. Suddenly the light disappeared and all outside the windows was pitch black. When she returned to the bedroom, there seemed to be someone standing there by the bed. It was a black shadow, humanoid in shape, and it was moving somewhat nervously.

            “Sandy said she closed her eyes and then opened them again, sure that the shadow figure would be gone. But it was still there, facing her. It reached out and touched her face, and she lost consciousness. When she awoke, she was naked, and was lying in a kind of bathtub, filled with some kind of thick, green liquid. The walls of the room were like glass or transparent plastic. Beyond the walls was a workroom or lab of some sort, and about a dozen creatures were moving about, doing various tasks. She had trouble seeing them clearly. They were humanoid in shape, but smallish, somewhat silvery and definitely out of focus.

            “There were strange noises in the room where she lay, various beeps and tones, in sequences. She had no idea what their purpose was. She tried to climb out of the green liquid, but she was held there somehow. Sandy lost consciousness again, and when she awoke, she was back home in her bed in the cabin – though still naked: apparently they had kept her night clothes.

            “For days afterwards, she could still hear those beeps and tones. She is fine now, but her experience made me want to learn more. I began treating victims of alien abductions. I eventually became something of an expert on the subject and wrote a few books. And so I showed up on the radar screen of the White House.”

            I was stunned by Bill's account, for reasons I could not really fathom. Perhaps what seemed strangest to me was that I could picture myself in Sandy's place. I could see the workroom, the tub, everything so very clearly. It was almost as if it had happened to me.

            The U.S. Embassy provided us with a black Suburban SUV, which carried us up into the mountains. The cave entrance was hidden from the road. We had to hike up a crumbled bluff in a particularly trackless part of the chain north of the city. The opening was small, concealed behind a granite boulder. We pulled our gear from the vehicle and prepared to enter the cave. We were dressed in caving coveralls and helmets.

            The team consisted of Frank Devereaux, Bill Semple, Mubarak Awda and me, plus two cavers from the Saudi Geological Society. The SGS members were Jim Lasser, a world-class caver/geologist from the U.K., and Mahmoud Bakhashaf, an expert on the cave systems of southwest Arabia.

            Devereaux took Semple, Adwa and me aside. “We're fairly certain this is the cave where the photo was taken. No point in sharing any of the background with the geologists at this point. Let's just see what we can find.”

            We walked over to Bakhashaf and Lasser, who were readying the gear.

            “I don't know this cave,” Bakhashaf said. “I'm sure it's like others to the west of here, though.”

            Lasser nodded. “It has to be. There's not much geological variety in this area.”

            “All the same,” Bakhashaf said, looking at us three amateurs, “I want you to be very careful. Stay behind us, and whatever you do, don't get separated from us. These cave networks can get pretty complicated, and it's easy to get lost.”

            We nodded gravely. No way we were going let these two guys out of our sight!

            Our guides hoisted their packs, slung static rope loops over their heads, and taking the lead, they entered the cave mouth. We four followed, ducking down as we passed into the darkness. Our Petzl helmets were mounted with headlamps and their beams crisscrossed in the murk as we made our way into the passage. Once inside, the head room improved and we were able to stand. The tunnel had a diameter of about three meters. We were in what Lasser told us was a horizontal lava tube of great antiquity that extended deep into the mountainside. We headed east.

            The cave began a downward tilt about 100 yards in, and while the downhill trek was a piece of cake, we all thought about how it would be tougher going when we headed back. We soon came to our first fork, as the passage split into two tunnels.

            “Take the right one,” Devereaux said. “Whenever we come to a split, take the tunnel to the right.” He offered no explanation.

            We took the right fork and trudged on. The surface warmth had dissipated and the cave became cool, even downright chilly. I was glad to be wearing an undersuit and coveralls. I had plenty of time to reflect on our situation, on my situation, as we trekked through the tunnel network. I had my doubts about where the White House was taking us on this one, but I tried not to second-guess them. I just focused on my own situation, and how bizarre it was that I was back in Arabia and playing spelunker. While my mind wandered, my eyes caught a shape in the shadows ahead of us.

            “Look!” I cried out. “There's someone down there!”

            The black, human-like shape shimmered and then disappeared beyond a bend in the cave. My skin crawled. Yes, I shivered, and not from the cold. I was like a kid, creeped out by the thought of the boogeyman in the closet. What's the matter with you, Goddard? Pull yourself together!

            Devereaux looked at the cavers: “Did you see that? Is someone else in here with us?”

            “I doubt it,” said Lasser, but his face showed confusion.

            “Wait here,” Bakhashaf said, and sprinted down the tunnel. He vanished around the bend. There was a rushing sound, like a cold wind, then silence.

            We stood there staring at each other.

            “I'll go,” said Adwa. He strode briskly down the tunnel and was gone.

            About a minute later, he returned, supporting Bakhashaf, who staggered and shook his head. “What happened?” Bakhashaf muttered. “What happened?”

            We gathered round him. His face was pale as a sheet.

            “I was chasing the shadow,” he said. “Then it was gone, and I was in this vortex... the floor had dropped out from under me, and I was spinning like crazy. Then suddenly I was back in the tunnel, and everything was normal again.”

            I looked at Awda. “What did you see?” I asked him.

            “Nothing odd. Except Mahmoud. He looked dizzy as hell, and had his arms stretched out like this.” He demonstrated with a crucifixion pose.
(Next)
(Beginning)

Chapter 7

            “Amazing!” Keller said. “Simply amazing....”

            Salazar turned the large multicolored seismic printout on the table before them, to give Keller a better view. The printout was the result of 3-D seismic imaging, created by measuring and analyzing the echoes of sounds transmitted into the earth and recaptured as bounces.

            “It looks like a pyramid,” Salazar said. “An inverted pyramid.”

            The anomaly began about 1,100 feet down, according to the printout. A great square base at the top, diminishing to a tiny point some 1,000 feet below that. A gigantic structure of unknown substance, looking like nothing so much as the Great Pyramid of Cheops – upside down.

            “What's inside it?” Keller asked.

            “We have no idea. It appears to be partly hollow, but there are ghosts of shapes inside, structures that could be most anything. Damnedest thing is, the shapes appear to be artificial.”

            “Artificial?”

            “Not natural, I mean. Like someone constructed them. Well, look at the entire anomaly! Pyramids aren't natural!”

            Keller stepped back from the table and rubbed his temples. He felt a whopper of a headache coming on.

            “Did you try to drill into it?”

            “Haven't had a chance. What with Vallentine and all.”

            Salazar walked Keller out into the corridor. When they reached the elevators, Keller turned to him and said: “I need to go down there – to Hima. I need to see the site for myself.”

            Salazar stared at him for a moment, then said: “I'll arrange a flight.”

            Keller headed back to his office. Muhammad Al-Shaikh was waiting for him. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand. Al-Shaikh laid the papers on Keller's desk.

            “The coroner's report,” he said.

            “Quicker than I expected,” Keller said as he went over the papers.

            “Bottom line: Buffling was not hanged. His breathing stopped, but it wasn't the rope. It was like someone put a pillow over his face. He suffocated, but he didn't hang from that rope. It was just for show.”

            “So someone killed him, put a hangman's noose around his neck and posed him on a ladder? What the hell is going on here?”

            “Pretty damned strange, if you ask me, boss,” Muhammad said.

            Shaking his head, Keller put the coroner's papers in a manila folder, walked out of his office and headed for a coffee station. As he walked he tried to make sense of what was happening. The common thread, of course, was the Hima field. So far two people involved in exploring that field had been murdered. Two other workers out at the site itself had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. And they too might be dead. Keller was sure he wouldn't get very far with his investigation until he got out to Hima. As he approached the coffee wagon, his cell phone chirped.

            “Keller,” he said.

            It was the watch supervisor, Mazin Dabbagh. “Bad news, Dan,” he said. “No sign of Vallentine and Dossary. Their vehicle is missing as well. The camp is still there, but no sign of life. I told the chopper pilot to head back to Abqaiq. I heard you're planning to head down there, so I thought it best that we keep the camp site undisturbed until you arrive.”

            “Good call, thanks,” said Keller, as he signaled the coffee man for his usual. “I expect to get down there first thing in the morning. I presume we've had no communications from the team.”

            “Nothing at all,” said Dabbagh. “Nothing on satellite phone or emergency shortwave. It's total silence from Hima.”

            “Who else was down there, besides Vallentine and Dossary?”

            “A couple of laborers and a cook. All Pakistanis, I think. No sign of them either.”

            “Great,” said Keller. He wrapped up the phone call and took a sip of scalding hot coffee. He didn't think he'd be getting much sleep that night.

(Next)
(Beginning)