Blood of the Reich

by William Dietrich

  Madame Chiang was a petite Chinese woman with a large head who was not especially pretty anymore—power had hardened her—but who carried the commanding presence that comes from the blessing of a strong-boned face and incandescent eyes. She had a disconcerting southern accent from Georgia where she was raised, and a smile and animation that beamed with the energy of a lighthouse. China was fighting for survival, and this dynamo who bridged two worlds would do anything it took to save it.

  “Tibet!” she exclaimed after examining the documents of introduction he’d been given by the Americans and British. “Even for us Chinese, that’s the edge of the world, a place of mystery and misunderstanding. And you say Himmler is sending an expedition there?”

  “So I’ve been told. The mission’s leader, Kurt Raeder, is a man who accompanied one of my expeditions several years ago. Moody, but highly competent. And a Nazi. So I’ve been asked to learn what he’s up to, but he has a long head start. Which is why I need to borrow an airplane. Sir Arthur suggested an aviatrix named Beth Calloway.”

  “Sir Arthur would. As would any man, I suppose.” She looked at him slyly. “She’s one of our best pilots, you know.”

  “That’s what I need to fly to the highest country on earth.”

  “I’m actually interested that you prove the feasibility of such flights, Mr. Hood. Aviation is China’s future. It’s the one technology that can stitch a very big, very crowded, very complex nation together. My husband agrees. And because we have no aircraft industry of our own, we must cobble together Soviet, German, American, and British planes to fight the Japanese. In doing so, the invaders are learning we’re not just a nation of ignorant coolies.”

  “The whole world admires your courage.”

  “The whole world knows we’re in retreat. Which is why we can’t risk leaving our backs unguarded. Were the Germans to somehow gain influence in Tibet and turn it against us for their new allies the Japanese, we’d have enemies on two sides. This can’t be tolerated. So yes, I’m going to order Ms. Calloway to fly you to Lhasa. We need to know what Herr Raeder is up to, don’t we? Have you flown in a biplane before?”

  “I was hoping for something more modern.”

  “Anything more modern is fighting the Japanese. Have you met Beth Calloway?”

  “No. Sir Arthur described her in flamboyant terms.”

  “Flamboyant is an interesting choice of word. You’re in for an experience there, as well. I’ll write an order giving you transport in one of our Corsairs. It can just barely clear the Tibetan passes, but it’s durable, repairable, and old enough to be expendable.”

  “You’re so reassuring.”

  “Miss Calloway has ingenuity, I assure you. She’ll get you as close as she can as fast as she can. Dress warmly, and take a gun.”

  “I have several, and fired one at a Japanese fighter.”

  “Splendid. Did you hit him?”

  “I don’t know. At least he went away.”

  She smiled. “I wish I could say the same for the entire Japanese army.”

  “Thank you for your help and advice, Madame Air Secretary.”

  “Thank you for your service, Dr. Hood. I understand you’re a wealthy man and a respected curator. I know you don’t have to do this.”

  “Actually, I’ve thought about it and I do.” He turned to go.

  When he got to the door she called after him. “Oh, and, Dr. Hood?”

  “Yes?”

  “You might want to return through British India. We’re doing our best, but Hankow may have fallen to the Japanese by the time you want to go home. If you’ve survived.”

  Beth Calloway didn’t have a Bowie knife, but she did have cowboy boots, Western jeans, a denim work shirt dirty from engine grease, and a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap with its bill turned backward. A .38 was holstered on one undeniably fetching hip, and her blond hair was cut in a practical bob. She was twisting a wrench with masculine determination on the engine of a mustard-colored two-seater biplane scout. A thatched roof served as a hangar, flies buzzing on black pieces of machinery as if they were carrion. A Santa Claus calendar from 1937 advertised Coca-Cola.

  The plane’s patched wings, nicked propeller, and two bullet holes through its thin metal fuselage didn’t inspire confidence. To Hood, the Corsair looked barely capable of clearing the runway, let alone the Tibetan plateau.

  “So the Wright brothers had a garage sale.”

  She glanced up, squinting across a dust of freckles. Her eyes were sky blue. “Afraid of flying, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Hood.” He strummed a strut. “Afraid of falling. Dr. Hood, actually. Ph.D.”

  She straightened. “You must be the egghead the Chinese warned was coming.”

  “Museum curator.”

  “And expert on aviation.” Calloway let her arm fall with the heavy wrench and Hood stood for inspection. He was taut and tanned in that country club way, with the confidence that comes of breeding, money, and schools with crests on their jackets. He carried a duffel bag on a sling that was nearly as long as he was, and had taken care to be washed, combed, and cocky.

  Beth’s knuckles were scraped, her nails short, and her lips bare and pursed with skepticism. Pretty enough in a wary way, but not as impressed with him as he was used to. In fact, she looked as if she were surprised he’d made it this far.

  “I’m just cautious of machines with holes in them,” he said.

  “This Vought Corsair is only ten years old. Easy to fly and it can be fixed with chewing gum, if you have to. ”

  “Perhaps I should buy stock in Wrigley.” He rapped on the plane and, when she didn’t respond to his wit, decided to be less sarcastic. “Beats walking.”

  “So charmed to meet you.” Her tone made it clear she wasn’t.

  “And you, Beth Calloway. So Madame Chiang did send orders to introduce us? You’ll take me to Tibet?”

  “Dear me. In this? With a woman? Are you sure you want to?”

  “Unfortunately Madame Chiang says this crate, and you, are all that can be spared. Expendable is the word they all keep using.” He looked in one of the cockpits. “Is it any bigger than it looks?”

  “Much smaller, after the first ten hours. Don’t like to fly, Dr. Hood?”

  “Call me Ben. I flew to Hong Kong on the Clipper. We dined with silver cutlery and had a choice of wines.”

  “I dine with a tip cup and boil water before I drink it.” She put down the wrench and ran a wrist on her forehead. Even a grease smudge looked good on her, he decided, but she didn’t flirt. Maybe she didn’t like boys.

  “I guess this will have to do.” He gave her his best smile.

  “Christ. You look like you were sent by Pepsodent.”

  He reddened. “I do brush my teeth.”

  “Iron the ascot, wax the limousine, starch the collar. Yes, I’ll take you to Tibet, Great White Hunter.”

  “You flatter me. I only collect scientific specimens.”

  “Madame Chiang is the one who flatters you, Professor.” She finally held out a greasy hand, palm up. He wasn’t sure if it was a greeting, demand for payment, or a gesture of warning. “She reports you’re a fine shot of rare and defenseless animals, which you stuff and cart back to the States.”

  “And you have a reputation as the best American woman pilot in China. Also, the only American woman pilot in China.” He took her hand and squeezed it. Their fingers slid, not unpleasantly, from the oil. He thought she hesitated just a moment before pulling away, but it was one of those signals best to receive two or three times to confirm. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Calloway. It’s not lucky for a passenger to disparage his aircraft, is it?”

  “Not lucky to do what?”

  “Dis . . . to criticize.”

  “My, my. They did send our best, didn’t they? A real college boy.”

  “I’m a zoologist with the American Museum of Natural History in New York. And I’ve walked to Tibet before. I’m simply in more of a hurry this time.”
<
br />   “I wouldn’t care, except that Madame Chiang does.”

  “I need to confer with authorities in Lhasa.”

  “No one gets to confer with the authorities in Lhasa. It’s forbidden.”

  “I have to un-forbid it.”

  “For your museum?”

  “My present employers require discretion.”

  “Your what requires what?”

  “My new bosses told me to keep my mouth shut.”

  “Well.” She regarded him a long minute, gazing up and down. “How much do you weigh, zoo-owl-o-gist?”

  Without meaning to, he drew himself up. “About one eighty-five.” Maybe one ninety, after those Clipper meals. “Why?”

  “Big words, vague mission, fussy flier. I got a feeling that whatever extra fuel I can squeeze aboard is going to be a lot more useful than you.”

  This one was going to require some charm, he thought.

  Or taming.

  15

  Cascade River Road, United States

  September 4, Present Day

  The mountains rose higher and drew tighter as Rominy and Jake drove up the Skagit, the twists in the highway giving an occasional glimpse of ramparts of snow. At Marblemount the valley broadened briefly into pasture, modest homes perched above the steep riverbank, the Skagit muscular as a snake. Then they turned to cross the river on a steel two-lane bridge and headed up the side valley of the Cascade River. This tributary poured from a forested canyon onto a pan of gravel bars. Ahead were hills steep as sugarloaves, rocky crags somewhere above. The new river was translucent as a jewel, the rocks of its bed bright coins.

  Their banker had found an old Christmas cookie tin in the branch lunchroom, tapped out dry crumbs, and put Hood’s safety deposit box curiosities in it for Rominy to take with her. There was an old Army Colt .45 that Barrow suggested she take for “home protection.” The fact that the journalist was willing to arm her, even with a presumably unloaded pistol, reassured her. The weapon was as heavy as a brick, however, and she’d never fired a gun in her life. More intriguingly, there were three gold coins with some kind of curious Asian design embossed in the metal. A white silk scarf. A dented compass, black with a silver arrow. A brass key, apparently to a padlock left by authorities to secure Hood’s cabin, Dunnigan had told her. And, dramatically, the mummified finger of her great-grandfather, shrunken and slightly bent. Was it a last defiant digit upraised against the unfairness of the world?

  “We don’t know if any of these has meaning,” Dunnigan had said as Rominy laid the articles out on the counter in the safety deposit room, the bank of stainless steel drawers glowing green in the weird light. “Beyond meaning to your great-grandfather. The gold could fetch a couple of thousand dollars at today’s prices, and the gun may have antique value, I don’t know. The real money is the interest from the old savings account. Mr. Hood left a hefty deposit to rent the safety deposit box before he died.”

  The cash they’d requested was hypnotizing. Rominy settled for $28,500, since Dunnigan said the bank couldn’t come up with more on such short notice. It was in twenties, fifties, and hundreds, the thousand-dollar packets wrapped with white paper bands. She’d never seen so much cash in her life. Jake fetched a daypack from his pickup, stuffed the money inside, and handed it to her. “Yours.”

  “How did he die?” Rominy asked the banker of her great-grandfather. Given the suspicious demise of her other relatives, at least according to Jake Barrow, she half expected something truly exotic, like snakebite or Ninja throwing star.

  “Natural causes, the papers said. A coroner’s guess. Someone found the body up at his cabin in the spring, and he’d passed some months before. Wouldn’t have liked to have walked in on that. There wasn’t much left, I suppose. Anyway, most important was his will in the box here, leaving any possessions to unspecified heirs. Which apparently means you, since you’re the last one.”

  “So I get this key to his cabin?”

  “You get his cabin. Don’t expect much. Taxes have been minimal due to the low assessment, and there’s been little maintenance.”

  “I didn’t expect anything at all a few hours ago.”

  “It’s astonishing how fortune can turn, isn’t it? And all thanks to Mr. Barrow.” Dunnigan had beamed at him, and he’d done his best to look modest.

  So now they were deeper in the woods than ever, the vine maple already turning scarlet and the fir that leaned over the road as high as a skyscraper. Creeks cut down from the mountain above, turning white when they flashed from the underbrush and tumbled over boulders into culverts.

  Jake eventually turned left onto a dirt driveway, a tunnel in the brush. A piece of weathered-gray plywood with crudely painted house numbers was the only thing marking their exit. They traversed up the flank of a mountain above Cascade River Road, the pickup bouncing in the ruts.

  “You can bet I had a hard time finding this one,” Jake said, “and then Ma Barker greeted me with the muzzle of her shotgun. That’s called an upriver hello.”

  “I’m a long way from the cops, aren’t I?”

  He glanced at her. “But not from friends.”

  They drove a hundred yards up the dirt lane, a strip of grass in the middle and salmonberry scratching the pickup’s sides. Then they came to a clearing. There was a lichen-spotted singlewide mobile home, the color of its paint having turned indeterminate at least a decade before. The flat roof had a crew cut of moss. Smoke drifted from a pipe chimney elbowing out of the trailer, and all the curtains were drawn. Then there were the requisite junk cars being subsumed by blackberries, an old chicken coop, a weathered barn leaning like a drunk, and a scattering of rusted and plastic junk in unmown weeds. Two hounds came racing out from under a rotting deck, barking as if the place were Stalag 17. They put their muzzles up to the pickup door windows and bayed. Rominy instinctively shrank against Jake, who viewed the animals as calmly as if they’d stumbled on a petting zoo. After a minute or two, the hounds seemed to realize nothing was happening, or they ran out of breath. They quieted, pacing up and down the side of the pickup, snorting and slavering. Then an old woman appeared on the sagging porch and the dogs started up again.

  “Thunder! Damnation! Shut up!” She waved a stick for emphasis. No, it wasn’t a stick, it was a gun. Good lord.

  Rominy turned to Jake. “Dogpatch is where my great-grandfather lived?”

  “Up the road farther, but we have to tell Mrs. Crockett—er, Clarkson—what we’re up to or she’s likely to have half the neighborhood using us for target practice. Mostly Tar Heels up here, out from the Carolinas to log the woods.”

  Delphina Clarkson fit every stereotype. Wild gray hair, Carhartt overalls, rubber gardening boots, a double-barrel that dated to cowboy days, and a smile that hadn’t seen a dental hygienist for just as long. The dogs raced around howling as she strode up, doing their best to earn their supper by being obnoxious.

  “Down, you two! Thunder, quiet! Dammit, Damnation . . .” She rapped on Jake’s window with the barrel of her gun and Barrow cranked it a hand’s width down.

  “Hello, Mrs. Clarkson. Remember me?”

  “I told you to git!”

  “And I told you I was trying to find the rightful owner of the old Hood place, to which this road is legal access. You know as well as I do that the deeds grant a right-of-way. The heiress is going up to view her property.”

  “Heiress?” She squinted at Rominy. “Her? That’s a city girl.”

  “It surely is.” He’d summoned a cornpone accent.

  The dogs started barking again and Mrs. Clarkson started whacking them with the butt of her gun, swearing like a sailor. “Damnation, you stupid . . .”

  “The name of your dog is Damnation?” Rominy asked, surprised she could find her voice.

  “Hell, yes. Named for Damnation Crick, and for what I said when this pup ran loose up that rat hole of a waterway. I had to chase him through devil’s club and deadfall. He’s lived up to his name ever since.” She seeme
d slightly less hostile talking about her dogs.

  “Mrs. Clarkson, this is Rominy . . . Hood,” Barlow said. “The great-granddaughter of Benjamin Hood. I tracked her down like I said I would and she is now your new neighbor. We’ve got a key to the cabin, and we’ll be up there for tonight, at least.”

  “You two together?”

  The idea startled Rominy. She realized it was almost evening but she hadn’t thought ahead to where she might be sleeping. And it certainly wasn’t going to be with Mr. Jake Barrow, no matter how cute he was. And yet here she was in a pickup cab she couldn’t get out of without his help, her MINI Cooper reduced to shredded aluminum foil, her apartment two hundred miles away. Nor did she want to curl up with Calamity Jane here, along with Thunder and Damnation. And the river road was not the easiest place to hitch a ride. They hadn’t passed another car in ten miles.

  “We’re business partners only,” Barrow said briskly. “You can rest assured that Ms. Hood has displayed every capability of resisting my charm.”

  “Girl has some sense, then.”

  “But we’ll both be in the cabin since we’ve nowhere else to go. I’d appreciate if you kept the hounds on your own property and don’t call the sheriff when you see lights in the old cabin.”

  “Call the sheriff? I could raise eight children in the time it would take a deputy to get up here.” She squinted at the journalist. “But you treat this young lady with respect or I will set the dogs on you, Mr. Business Partner. You hear?”

  He smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She looked at Rominy. “Watch yourself around men. That’s my advice.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She frowned, considering. “You comin’ up here all the time now?”

  “That’s up to Rominy, but I don’t think so,” Barrow said. “We’re just trying to learn about the past.”

  “Hmph. What’s past is past, and that’s the best place for it, is what I’ve learned.” She looked at Rominy. “You want to sell the place, you let me know first.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”