Blood of the Reich

by William Dietrich

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should we run?”

  Now she pulled to stop him. “No.” She wiped her mouth free of a smear of blood. “He hit me,” she said when his look was questioning. “What happened to your hand?”

  He clenched his half-severed finger. “Raeder cut me. And the recoil from this devil weapon didn’t help, either. Hurts like hell.” He felt dizzy from the craziness of the last hour. “How did the Shambhalans use these things?”

  “Open your hand.”

  Wincing, he did so. She placed it on one of the huge pipes so the damage to his digit was more apparent. It was throbbing and covered with blood.

  “Now, kiss me.”

  “What?” She was looking at him with her great dark eyes, her features fine as polished porphyry, her lips insistent, her hair still short but growing out since leaving Lhasa. She seized his head with one hand, bent him to her, and kissed him fiercely, not like a nun but a lover.

  Then the pain from his hand seemed to explode, and he roared. She’d chopped with another knife and completely severed his finger!

  “God Almighty! What did you do, Keyuri?”

  “I’m sorry, but we’ve got to bind it. Give me your scarf.”

  She took the white silk Reting had given him in Lhasa and ripped off a portion, using it to wrap and gap where his finger had been and cinching down on the dressing.

  “Couldn’t you warn me?” His eyes were watering, it hurt so bad.

  “That would have made it worse.” She inspected her dressing. “We’ve got to get the bleeding to stop or you might faint.”

  He sat down hard against the pipes. “That might happen anyway. I’ve had quite a day.” He couldn’t quite believe where he was. Probably the greatest discovery in his museum’s history, and he’d just deliberately caused a cave-in. Roy Chapman Andrews would have shot his way out by now.

  She knelt beside him. “Me, too.” She picked up the severed finger. “I may use this for a blood lock.”

  “A what?”

  “The locks of this place, like to the door of that main tunnel, can be opened only by the right person’s blood. Raeder said he had the necessary blood from a long-dead German hero.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “He thinks the Germans and Shambhalans are cousins. Aryans.”

  Hood laid his head back. “And to think he and I were partners, once. Scientific colleagues. I sure know how to pick ’em.”

  “He’s still embarrassed you fired him. Ashamed of what he is, but unable to change.” Keyuri looked at him, her own cheeks wet now with tears. “I’m sorry I had to do that to your hand. I’m sorry destiny made you come back here.” She leaned and kissed him again. “I’m sorry you picked me, not just Kurt. But we were meant to be together again, Benjamin.”

  Despite the pain he kissed back, the communion an instinctual antidote to everything that was going on. Her lips were full, ripe, soft, everything that was opposite the machine nightmare that was Shambhala. Pressing against her seemed to lessen the pain, and then she was pressing against him, and he groaned with sudden lust and longing.

  He broke from their kiss, panting. “Keyuri, I’m sorry, I can’t help myself, I know you’ve taken vows . . .”

  “You must have me now.” Her voice was commanding, insistent. “I think we may die in here, and I want you to make love first.”

  “For God’s sake, we’re in a cave running from a lunatic.”

  “The tunnel is sealed. Now, Ben, it’s important! I want to erase the memory of Raeder. Now, now, please!” She was crying. “Please, to undo what he did to me.”

  She was clawing at his clothes, unbuttoning his pants, and to his own surprise he was responding. What was wrong with him? She was a Buddhist nun! This was as crazy as the Nazis, but of course he didn’t care. She pulled him down on top of her, her robes pulled up, knees high, hips lifted, and in seconds they’d fused. She clung and rocked urgently. “Please, we may never have time again.”

  She was impatient. A few thrusts, she bucked, he finished.

  “I’m sorry, you took me by surprise . . .”

  She put her finger to his lips. Rather than be displeased with his speed she seemed fiercely satisfied, pulling him as deep as she could, hips quivering as she gently rocked. “It’s good.”

  At least he’d forgotten about his hand.

  Keyuri let out a loud, shuddering breath, squeezing her eyes shut. Then she reached up to pull him close again and kissed, fiercely, and then just as abruptly pushed him off her. “We must go, but this was my only chance for salvation.”

  “That’s some salvation.” He looked at her in wonder. “What about your vows?”

  “He already raped me again.”

  “Raeder? Did the other krauts know?”

  “Yes and no. I don’t know. What does it matter?” There was sorrow there, a profound sense of loss and doom. “I just didn’t want him to be my last. Now, tend to your clothes. We have to hurry to find the second door.”

  “I thought you said you sealed the Germans off? Seems to me we have eternity.” He looked down the tunnel into the dark.

  “To Westerners, everything is a line. To us, all is circular. Look down the tunnel. How far can you see?”

  “It’s dim . . .”

  “The pipe doesn’t extend forever, it disappears, like a ship going over the horizon. This tunnel gently curves.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The tunnel is a circle. If you walk far enough from this end of the machine you will come to the other, like walking around the world. The beginning is the end, and the end the beginning. These pipes stretch to infinity, they never end. And yet they go nowhere at all.”

  “Is that some kind of Tibetan riddle?”

  “Whatever is in these pipes, it’s meant to come back to where it started,” she said. “That’s not a riddle, it’s a mandala, a map of the universe.”

  He stood. “But if this tunnel leads back to the machine . . .”

  “Yes. They can come at us from the other end. We have to hope it will take them a while to figure that out.”

  “Maybe they’ve given up. And we’ve got this crazy staff.”

  “Raeder would give you up. Even give me up. But not the staff.”

  Hood took a breath, furious at Raeder for Keyuri all over again, but also oddly renewed. She hadn’t depleted him, she’d tapped new strength. She’d recharged him, like the machine apparently had done to the magic wand here. By blazes, was she in love with him still? Was he in love with her, as Reting and Beth believed? What happened to the three of them if they got out of this nightmare?

  But Keyuri, he sensed, didn’t expect to.

  “Okay,” he said. “Listen for Nazis coming the other way. The light from this staff keeps getting weaker, and I’ve got a feeling there’s not much pop left. I think it’s low on ammo. Give me back my pistol.”

  “You can’t carry it in your injured hand and I told you, it doesn’t work.”

  He grimaced. “We need to find that second door. Then we can destroy the tunnel in the other direction and escape.”

  The rock tunnel they were fleeing down had no decoration on its sides, and no doors. It just ran on and on, mile after mile, a tube in solid rock. The pipes were mute beside it. They ran, then jogged, then trotted, wheezing from exertion. Mile followed mile. Hood left bright drops of blood on the floor like a spoor trail.

  “How long is this tunnel?”

  “Not long enough,” said Keyuri.

  And then there was a burst of machine-gun fire.

  Bullets whined and pinged as they bounced down the curving tunnel. It was a German coming from the other side. They were trapped.

  Hood clenched the staff. “Better to go down fighting,” he said. “I can try to blast with this, or maybe hide in the dark behind the big pipe and clobber them. You’ve got your knife . . . Keyuri?”

  He turned. She’d fallen down.

  “Keyuri!”
/>   Blood was pooling out beneath her onto the smooth rock floor.

  One of the Germans, not Raeder, shouted. “Give it up, Hood! I have a machine gun! Surrender the staff and I let you live!”

  The Nazi wasn’t coming close, however. He’d seen the explosion at the other end of the tunnel and was keeping a wary distance.

  Hood knelt near the nun and gently turned her over. The front of her coat was sticky with blood and she was wheezing. It looked like she’d been hit in the lower lung. Not instantly fatal, but not good.

  “Keyuri, I’m going to drag you between the pipes and the far wall. At least it will protect you from a stray bullet.”

  She moaned. “Maybe he’ll go past us,” she whispered.

  “No, he’ll see the light of the staff. How do we turn it off?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The beam of a flashlight stabbed toward them. The German kept a cautious fifty yards away, too far for accurate submachine-gun fire but also far enough to be out of easy range of their thunder stick.

  “Hood, I know you’re there! Come out with your hands up if you want to live!” he called in English. “Come out, and we spare the nun!”

  He and Keyuri stayed silent, hiding behind a pipe.

  “You can’t escape, you blocked your own retreat. Come out, American, and we negotiate, eh? Do you want the girl hurt?”

  Hood squeezed the shaft with his left hand, feeling the familiar jolt of power. His only hope was that he got a shot at the German before the German saw him.

  Then the Nazi flashlight went out.

  The staff glowed brighter. Amber illumination peeked from under the piping.

  “Ah, there you are. You ran with the wrong man, Keyuri. He led you into a trap.”

  Why not at least save her? She wasn’t dead yet. “I’m going to surrender in return for your life,” he whispered. “Raeder still wants you in his own twisted way. He may still spare you.”

  She shook her head. “If he does, it will be to destroy me slowly. He needs to destroy people, Ben. You know that.”

  They heard footsteps, a heavy tread, coming toward them. Slowly, cautiously, inexorably. “Don’t make me kill you!” the German called.

  “Let him come closer,” she whispered. “Then erase him.”

  Feisty for a Buddhist nun. Hood rose and braced, dreading to have to fire the painful thunder stick again. Would it bring everything down on top of them? Then the flashlight came on, blinding. Its cone of illumination fell directly on him, and then played over the pool of Keyuri’s blood.

  “I see you! Stand, stand!” The stubby snout of the machine gun gleamed, dark and oily in the gloom. The German was nervous but excited. “Come out, come out, it’s your only chance! Come out or I machine-gun the girl!”

  Slowly Hood put down the staff.

  “No!” Keyuri groaned.

  He didn’t care. The German was too far away. A thunderbolt could bring the whole tunnel down on them. He had to save her.

  “Raise your hands! Climb over the pipes!”

  He began to do so.

  The German raised the submachine gun. “Now. We finish this and get out of here.” He nodded and aimed.

  And then there was the crack of a pistol. Several shots rang out and the German jerked, a hole appearing in the middle of his forehead, and he slowly toppled backward. A tendril of blood ran down his face. His torso was punctured, too. His submachine gun fell with a clatter. He sat down with a woof, looking at where a new light blazed from the ceiling. His mouth opened, as if seeing an apparition.

  And now a new voice came down, as if from heaven.

  “This way, college boy. And bring baldy there with you.”

  33

  Eldorado Peak, Cascade Mountains

  September 6, Present Day

  You can’t arrest us, Mrs. Clarkson,” Jake said patiently, eyeing the muzzles of Delphina’s double-barreled shotgun. “You’re not a police officer. And we’re not terrorists.”

  “Which is just what Osama bin-Lunatic would say, I figure. This is a citizen’s arrest of two highly suspicious young people who seem to be mixed up with bombs and banks and who knows what all, and by the Grace of the Lord, my dogs could smell the evil on you when you came up that driveway! Now march, before my finger gets tired and sits down on this trigger.”

  “But they bombed me,” Rominy exclaimed. “We’re the victims. We’re escaping from the terrorists, if that’s what they are. You have to help us, Mrs. Clarkson.”

  “I’m helping you into a holding cell where you can sing your story to great big guys with buzz cuts and badges. Move, woman!”

  Rominy was in shock. First the cave-in, and now this? She’d never touched a gun except for her great-grandfather’s old pistol, and now one was being pointed at her. The twin muzzles looked as big as manholes. Jake handed back her pack but kept the satchel and the backpack with the money on his own shoulders. Then he winked, as if this were all part of some game, part of his mysterious, irritating, admirable, enviable self-confidence. Was that supposed to reassure her? He could dig through bones and wink at a loaded gun? Who was this guy? Rominy led the way, the dogs flanking her, with Jake behind and Delphina Clarkson’s shotgun behind him.

  “I’ll bet you Seattle people figured I wouldn’t have TV way up here on the Cascade River, didn’t ya?” their captor said as they retraced their route to the trail. “You think I never go into Marblemount for a buffalo burger and a beer? Oh yes, the Safeway bombing is all over the news, and Miss Rominy Pickett’s picture is getting more airtime than a politician with his pants down.”

  “So I’m missing, right? That’s what the reward is for.”

  “And you know what? Not one newscaster has said anything about some heir of Benjamin Hood. Not one newscaster talked about pretty-boy newspaper reporters, or musty old mysteries. You know what? I don’t think that’s your cabin at all.”

  “So at least I won’t be scooped,” Jake murmured.

  “What’s that?”

  “I said I’m glad you’re a vigorous news consumer, Mrs. Clarkson.”

  “Shut up with your fancy talk.”

  They hit the trail again and started down it. No amount of reasoning seemed capable of getting the crazy old woman to lower her gun. The only good news was that she seemed to have no curiosity about what they’d found down in the mine or what might be in the decaying old satchel. She couldn’t think past the possibility of a payday. Rominy tried to calm down. Once they were in the hands of the police, they’d be safe, wouldn’t they?

  Just get dotty Delphina to swing the muzzle away or take her finger off the trigger. How could she connect with her?

  “Mrs. Clarkson, I’m impressed your dogs could track us.”

  “My dogs could sniff out a Brussels sprout in a meatpacking plant.”

  And then there was a hiss of something slicing through the air, a lethal whisper, and a soft thud as it hit. Damnation, one of Clarkson’s dogs, gave a sudden jerk, squealed, and flipped over. The shaft of an arrow jutted from his flank. Where it met flesh, the dog’s chest rose and fell, pumping blood.

  Rominy whirled. There was a man in the forest who was dressed in camouflage and drawing back a bow. His head was shaved with a strip on top, like a Mohawk Indian.

  It was the same guy she’d thought she’d seen in the cabin window. Another arrow loosed, and then both shotgun barrels went off with a roar next to her ear.

  “Run!” Jake raced past and jerked Rominy like a rag doll, leaping off the switchbacking trail and straight down the forested mountainside, crashing into brush. With his hand on her arm they half ran, half plunged down the precipitous slope. There was a frantic yelping and cries of outrage behind. Rominy tensed for the sting of another shotgun blast but none came. The gun had swung at the skinhead, and then they were far enough downhill that the woods gave them screening.

  “That crazy bitch is too old to follow us this way! Run, run, run!”

  She leaped like a gazelle,
heedless of obstacles, bounding over logs she’d hardly dare crawl over in normal times. A single misstep and she’d break a leg and yet their flight seemed charmed, magical, even exhilarating as they fell through the forest. They came to the trail again, which zigzagged the other way, but simply leaped it and continued straight downhill in a barely controlled plunge.

  There was another gun blast, but far up the mountain. Faint shouts, too.

  Step, leap, step, leap, as trees flashed past. She was not so much out of breath as breathless, stunned, afraid, excited.

  They hit the switchbacking trail again and Jake pulled up, gasping. He was grinning, too, the bastard. “Geez, Rominy, what was that?”

  “It was that man.”

  “What man?”

  “The man I saw in the window.”

  That sobered him. “It’s them. Skinheads. Come on.”

  “I thought you said he was a raccoon.”

  “I thought wrong.”

  They ran again, but down the trail now, Jake sometimes drawing ahead but then slowing so she could catch up. Her legs were jelly, her feet ached, but she dared not rest. What if shotgun lady was chasing them? What if Mohawk man was doing the same? For the thousandth time, what was going on?

  “Jake, why do skinheads care about my great-grandfather?”

  “Nazis. They were in a race with Hood for something important, and these neo-Nazis know more than I thought. They tracked us here, which means they know about the cabin.”

  Her eyes darted as they ran. Every tree seemed to hide an archer or street tough with a swastika tattoo. The towering fir and hemlock blocked out the sun, casting their escape in shadow. The world had become nothing but menace.

  “Let’s cut through here,” he said. “I don’t want to run into a bad guy waiting at the trailhead.” They left the path again, skidding down through sword fern and salal toward a growing light: the road. There was a final embankment she almost pitched over but instead slid on her butt, hitting the road shoulder in a shower of dirt and gravel. Her bare legs were a mottle of scratches and dirt. Jake was already crouched, peering up and down the lane.