At dawn the phone rang, and Dan Keller
listened to the duty officer tell him about another unexplained death in
Dhahran main camp, residential community for the world's largest oil company.
Keller swung his feet out of bed and sat on the edge, massaging the sleep from
his long face and asking pointed questions. Then he stood up and stretched and
hung up the phone.
Two
weeks ago, a Scottish seismic engineer had been found dead in his bathtub, his
lungs filled with bath water. The middle-aged man was face down, his legs
tucked under him like a Muslim at prayer, his face below the soapy water.
Aramco Industrial Security had notified the local Saudi police, who ruled the
death a suicide. He’d inhaled the water like air, the coroner said.
Keller
showered and shaved, dressed in khakis and a yellow polo shirt, and drove to
457 Willow Lane in his six-year-old Nissan Patrol. Aramco’s main camp was lush
with greenery, neatly trimmed lawns, semi-tropical flowers and palm trees, its
neighborhoods studded with ranch houses topped with faux terracotta roofs.
Sixty years ago the oil company had been founded by Standard Oil of California,
and in time evolved into a consortium that included Exxon, Mobil and Texaco.
Now it was Saudi-owned, but Aramco still employed thousands of expatriate
professionals, and their sprawling residential community in Dhahran retained a
1960’s West Coast flavor.
Two
red-and-white Industrial Security cars were parked in front of 457 Willow. The
Saudi police had not yet arrived. A small, dark Indian gardener in green
coveralls, oblivious to the incident, was watering hibiscus bushes in the front
yard. The front door was open. Keller climbed out of his car and went inside.
“His name
is Buffling, Anthony Buffling,” said Muhammad Al-Shaikh, the top security man
on the scene, who met Keller in the hall and accompanied him into the living
room. Two other brown-uniformed security men were standing there, on either
side of the stepladder that dominated the middle of the room. Buffling was
hanging by a rope, his body stretched along the steps, face up, his eyes and
mouth open, his face frozen in an expression of utter surprise. He appeared to be
of average height and weight. The victim’s legs were spread wide on either side
of the ladder, the soles of his shoes partly visible. His backside rested on
one of the steps. He was wearing tan Dockers and a Fuddrucker’s T-shirt. There
was no blood, no bruises on his arms or face. Simply a thick rope knotted
tightly around his throat, and at the top of the ladder. It wasn’t taut.
“Don’t
touch him,” Keller said. “Don’t touch anything.”
“He was in
Exploration R&D,” Al-Shaikh said. “I spoke with his supervisor. He just got
back from the Rub’ al-Khali. Doing seismic research.” The Rub’ was the Empty
Quarter, the great, uninhabited sand desert that swallowed up the southern
third of the country. “He was off work today, and was due to go into his office
at the EXPEC Building tomorrow.” EXPEC: the Exploration and Petroleum
Engineering Center, heart of Aramco’s oil and gas search effort.
“Where in
the Rub’?” Keller asked.
“Sorry?”
“Where
exactly in the Rub’ al-Khali was he working?”
“Oh,”
Al-Shaikh said. “Hima – a new wildcat area northeast of Najran, on the western
edge of the great desert. That other guy, the Scotsman, was working that field
too. Small world, eh?”
Keller
shook his head slowly. “Damn,” he muttered. “Muhammad, we’ve got a problem.”
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