Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [28]
George and I agreed to work together to try to get a modest Ubar expedition off the ground.
In his search for funds, George knocked on the doors of corporations, museums, and foundations. And he got used, if not immune, to a range of not-very-encouraging responses. There was the stuffy "That's not in our prescribed area of interest." There was the kiss-of-death "I'll get back to you." There was the pass-the-buck enthusiasm of "I've got a wonderful idea for you. Why don't you talk to the National Geographic Society?" Traveling to Washington, we did talk to the National Geographic Society. People there were intrigued by the project but ultimately decided it was "too dangerous." They had a point. If luck was with us, we would be the first archaeological team allowed into an area where the locals had for a number of years taken serious issue with the regime of Oman's Sultan Qaboos, expressing their discontent with Chinese-supplied machine guns and rocket launchers.
While in Washington, we rendezvoused with Barry Zorthian, a friend of George's who had once been a key CIA operative in Vietnam and now appeared to be working as a freelancer, though it was hard to tell for who or what (as it should be). Barry was genuinely fascinated by archaeology and thought he might be able to help us, for he had recently done some consulting for clients from the Sultanate of Oman.
Back in California, George's quest for funds produced Count Brando Crespi, scion of the French Vogue magazine empire. Meeting us for lunch at Baci, a suitably trendy restaurant, the Count wore a perfectly tailored off-white linen suit (but no socks) and spoke with an aristocratic lisp.
"I live in Milan, but keep pieds-à-terre in London and L.A.," he noted, then turned to the waiter to discuss the provenance of the porcini mushrooms cited on the menu.
"You hear that, Nick?" George whispered. "Pieds-à-terre here and there. Must have a pretty big foot."
He had long had an interest in archaeology, the count confided— psychic archaeology. He had, in fact, recently underwritten an extensive search for the tomb of Alexander the Great. Psychics in his employ had labored long and hard to visualize the final resting place of the Macedonian conqueror. They finally concluded that he lay buried beneath the Grand Mosque of Alexandria, an opinion shared by (and perhaps derived from) E. M. Forster's excellent 1947 Guidebook to Alexandria.
"But you just don't go into grand mosques and start ripping up the pavement," the Count lamented.
"No, I guess you don't," we sympathized.
The Count and his people had had no choice but to close down their Alexandria operation and go home. But perhaps his people could now help us locate Ubar. Yes? All they would need was a map and perhaps a few hints as to how they might focus their psychic powers.
"As an example, what kind of mosques did they have?" inquired the Count, mosques on his mind.
"They didn't have mosques, actually, back then," George gently explained. "Nick, maybe you could send Count Crespi a map?"
I did. Not just a single map of our search area, but a half-dozen randomly photocopied maps of different areas of Arabia, only one of which included our search area. And we heard nothing further from Count Crespi. At least he picked up the tab for lunch.
Over the course of the project, the Count wasn't the only one to volunteer psychic advice. One fellow placed Ubar on the banks of an antediluvian trans-Arabian canal. Another knew its whereabouts thanks to a direct line to Divine Revelation. And a "dowser into sacred geometry" offered us the services of "Jorsh," his spirit guide.
What more? Revelations from outer space? Actually, yes. Ron Blom called from the Jet Propulsion Lab. A magnetic tape had come in, containing the raw digital data of a Landsat 5 "Thematic Mapper" satellite pass over our search area. If we were lucky,