Blood of the Reich

by William Dietrich

  “What is this place?” he asked.

  “Old gold mine. Probably didn’t produce much more than cheap copper. Nobody’s going to work it in today’s economy, so it’s a good hidey-hole.”

  Cautiously, he entered. “Hello?”

  There was no answer.

  He turned. “I’m warning you, Miss Calloway, my superiors know exactly where I am. If this is any kind of an ambush, the entire weight of the United States government will come down on you like a ton of bricks.”

  She looked around. “Yeah, I can see ’em.”

  He hesitated.

  She smiled, an effort. “Go on, city boy. I’ll show you what you came for.”

  They walked back into the shaft for a hundred yards. There was an oasis of light ahead, coming from some kind of hole above. Except for a couple of rusting tools and a pool of drip water under the vertical shaft, the mine was empty.

  “Where’s Hood?”

  She gestured with her head. “There.” A satchel dangled from one of the old mining timbers, wrapped tight in oilskins to keep out water and animals.

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “You ever wonder what we are, Mr. Hale?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The meaning of life, and all that.”

  He grunted. “The meaning is to win instead of lose. We learned that in the war.”

  “The Tibetans believe it’s divine thinking that created us. That when you kill something—kill anything—that thinks, you’re killing something divine. Don’t you wish the Nazis believed that before they started the last six years of insanity?”

  “What’s your point? Hood’s dead?”

  “If Benjamin was really just a thought, a divine thought, he’s still a thought, I figure. I mean, if I write down his thoughts, write down what little I understand about what he found, then he’s still here. There. In that satchel. That’s all we remember, and if you can makes sense of it you’re smarter than me. But it’s all inside there: Shambhala.”

  “Then he did find it.”

  “He sure as hell found something.”

  “But he didn’t come back?”

  She pointed at the satchel. “I just told you he did.”

  The slightest glint of greed crossed his eyes. Then, his face more masklike, he took down the satchel and put its strap over his shoulder. “By the fact that Hood was on a government-sanctioned mission, this satchel is the rightful property of the U.S. government.”

  “An heir might dispute that.”

  “So sue me.”

  “Not me.”

  “That kid of yours?”

  “I have to get back to Sadie.”

  “Your child should be downriver, enrolled in a proper school. She’s going to grow up like an animal out here.”

  “I think I’ll take your advice.” Beth pointed to the mine entrance. “Lead on, Agent Hale.”

  “This is it? We’re done?”

  “Yeah. We’re done.”

  He looked down the long, dark length of the mine and shook his head. “Ladies first.”

  It was an ambush all right, Hale thought, but not hers. Regrettable, but if Hood was dead it wasn’t smart to leave Calloway alive either. Too much loose antigovernment crap about confiscatory federal agents. And she could still sell stories to the Commies. So as she started walking for the mine entrance, silhouetted against the circle of light, his hand felt for the little pistol to plug her. Loose end. First this pilot, then the little girl. He’d had to do much worse in the war.

  But at a spot she’d picked, where just enough light came from the entrance to give her aim without being blinded, she suddenly stopped, unslung her knapsack, and knelt on one knee. “I need a drink of water,” she said, reaching inside.

  He watched her like a predator.

  Her hand closed around the .45.

  The bitch was trying something. He yanked out his pistol.

  As he did so, she shot him through her knapsack, the bark of the report opening a neat little hole in the fabric. An instant later his own gun went off.

  The reports boomed and echoed in the mine as one.

  They both hit each other’s stomachs.

  Slow wounds, a terrible way to die.

  Beth’s caliber was heavier and Hale was kicked backward, grunting in surprise that the woman had beaten him. He fell on his back, his pistol flying wide before he could think to hold on to it. Damn.

  She simply sat back, stunned that it had finally happened, and clenched her muscles against the pain. She hadn’t expected it would hurt so much. It was hard to breathe. She imagined she could feel the bullet in there, eating, and a wash of nausea almost made her faint.

  Steady, Beth. Not until you’ve taken care of Sadie.

  Because it hasn’t ended yet.

  Wincing, she stood up, her gun out of the pack now and steady. Hale was lying on his back, his arms and legs making swimming motions as he tried to move. He was looking at her in fear.

  She walked past him and scooped up his gun, pocketing it, and then quickly patted him down for another. He groaned as she pressed his sides. Then she stepped back.

  “You don’t deserve a finishing shot.”

  “Don’t leave me,” he begged.

  She walked back to her pack. “You weren’t going to let me live, were you, Hale? Because if there was anything really valuable in that satchel, anything really top secret, you couldn’t risk having me run around with it in my head. You didn’t even ask if I was a patriot, or if I’d help. Because you didn’t want help. You wanted possession.” She started to work, pulling sticks of dynamite out of her pack.

  His mouth bubbled. “Hood?”

  “The funny thing is that you got what you came for. Ben is in that bag, and all the strange and wondrous things you hoped for are in there, too. I’ve no doubt you’d find someone smart enough to figure them out. Maybe some of those Nazi scientists you boys have been capturing. So now we’re both dying, and that’s the best outcome of all. Because you know what, Mr. Hale? You don’t really want to find Shambhala. You don’t want to find what Ben found.”

  “Hood?” It was a gasp.

  She unreeled fuse toward the mine entrance. “Good-bye, Duncan.”

  The explosion sent an arc of rock flying out toward Eldorado. As the fragments bounced and ricocheted off the talus slope below, there was a roar of collapse and a cloud of smoke and dust rolled out of the mine. Beth waited for the air to clear and then checked to make sure the cave was completely plugged. Yep. A solid wall of rock entombed Hale. Then she ripped off the bottom half of her shirt, bandaged herself as best she could, using the pain to keep her focus, and painfully climbed to the top of the cliff where the mine’s vertical airshaft was. She’d prepared this cover long before. Wincing as she felt her gut leak into itself, she dragged the logs and brush over the hole and kicked on some dirt. Erosion and growth would seal the shaft for decades to come.

  Agent Duncan Hale would bleed to death in the dark.

  Then a stagger down to the cabin, forced smiles to a confused Sadie, and quick delivery to a frightened Margaret. The effort had just about killed her, but not quite.

  Too bad, because what was coming up the road next would kill her. She’d die all right, but in the most horrible way possible, and not before she told them everything she knew.

  One side would bring the other like flies to rot, she’d long figured.

  So she lay on the bed, unarmed, dizzy, and resigned, curious about this other man to come. She prepared by putting on male boots and jacket, the latter with the fake credentials for Ben she’d had made in China and then used at the bank. It might help confuse things until the right descendant came along. The calendar pages were taped shut by the Tibetan stamp. She didn’t think the county coroner would look too hard at a hermit’s leavings. And after that? Would any of it ever matter?

  She just had to hope the right blood lock heir would survive.

  When dusk fell, headlights swung
up the old access road: two or three vehicles, at least. Doors slammed and she heard the heavy tread of big men getting out.

  She pulled off the rest of her bandage and peered at the puckered and swollen bullet hole, her stomach a mottle of purple and yellow bruising. Pain came in pulses. She didn’t know you could hurt so much!

  They were gathering outside. She could hear the muttered German.

  So she plunged her forefinger into the bullet hole, screaming as she did so.

  They froze, uncertain. Then there was a command, and they broke through the door.

  Beth yanked her finger out. It was like taking a finger out of a dike. Blood spurted in a rush, a fountain of mortality, and her vision blurred.

  As she faded into unconsciousness and death, she got a last glimpse of the man who’d first burst inside.

  Oh, my God! He looked wild with disappointment.

  And far, far worse than she did.

  46

  The Nunnery of the Closed Door, Tibet

  September 20, Present Day

  Since Sam wasn’t critically hurt, the nuns didn’t have to lug him. Wheezing and constantly cursing (until he remembered the company he was with, but then the soreness would make him forget again), he staggered step by step under his own power. He was bleeding, but the wound was a surface cut where the shattered iPhone had bruised and scraped his chest. Once at the iron door, Jake Barrow’s theft of the keys delayed the party only fifteen minutes. After pounding, Amrita shouted directions to a spare set she kept hidden in her cell, and more nuns scurried to fetch them.

  “It helps that Mr. Barrow has to think everyone else a fool,” she told them. “If he didn’t think that, his philosophy would collapse against commonsense reason.”

  When the Americans were released into the yellow glow of the nunnery temple, Rominy felt a rush of relief. Escape was like being raised from the dead. She knelt and touched her forehead to the base of the Buddha as the nuns looked on in sympathy. She could swear electricity coursed through her when she touched the relic, restoring her spirit and strength. Did God have many faces?

  “Come on! Let’s go after him,” Sam said. He coughed and winced.

  “How?” said Amrita. “He’s taken your vehicle and by now is many miles from here. Which isn’t such a bad place for him to be.”

  “But he’ll get away!”

  “Always you Americans are in such a hurry. You’ve just opened a secret that has been waiting for more than seventy years. No time has been lost. The world had to wait until this moment for the Closed Door to be relevant. And no time will be lost because you must first understand what it is you must do.”

  “Why is it relevant now?”

  Rominy stood up from her prayer. “Because of atoms,” she said.

  Sam squinted. “Care to translate, Dharma?”

  “Jake talked about how Shambhala may have had an ancient atom smasher. He thinks that staff is a wizard staff that can somehow play strings smaller than atoms. Scientists are learning new things that convinced Jake he can finally make the staff work. That’s why he came after me now, after all this time. He thinks he can harness the new power source called Vril.”

  “This is the guy you picked as your boyfriend?”

  “I didn’t know this at first. And yes, I’ll be kicking myself the rest of my life. Which might be a short life, if any more Nazis are around.”

  Sam nodded soberly. “How about it, Amrita? You spot anyone else skulking?”

  She shook her head. “I suspect Mr. Barrow has not fully convinced his superiors, whoever they might be. They left him to succeed or fail on his own. Recovery of that staff may prove him to the others.”

  “And if anyone else had come with him, I wouldn’t have trusted Jake,” Rominy said. “Or at least I hope not.”

  “We can’t catch that misguided man now,” Amrita said. “So let’s bind our wounds, give you butter tea, and let you sleep a little. Then, before you decide what to do next, I have something important to show you.”

  They met later in Amrita’s cell. The floor was packed earth, the bed little more than a plank, and yet the nun seemed more content than any woman Rominy had ever met. What was the secret of satisfaction? Was letting go of desire liberation, or lobotomy?

  “This letter was sent from America, sealed, and with instructions to give it only to the heir who could open the Closed Door,” Amrita said. “That would be you, Rominy.”

  The envelope crackled with age, its airmail stamp and border dating from long, long ago. To the Last Shambhalan, it read. She shivered, Sam watching her closely. Then she opened it.

  The writing was in English as she expected, the script a feminine hand similar to the other notes she’d retrieved. The paper was yellow and the ink slightly faded, but still quite legible. The penmanship was of a quality never taught anymore.

  “Read it aloud, Rominy,” Sam said. She did so.

  Dear Descendant,

  If you are reading this you’ve used the essence of your veins to open the last blood lock of the drowned city of Shambhala, or at least that is how I think of that odd, troubling place. My companion, who made more study than I ever will, doubts this is the Shambhala of legend at all; that it was a tragic experiment that delved too deep into the mysteries of creation and tapped what shouldn’t be tapped. I don’t know. Those of us who escaped did so in panic and confusion, and there was no time to really understand. If you’ve refound the door that we shut, it’s possible you know far more than we do. Nonetheless, there may be some confusion. Let me share what I can.

  In 1938, I was a pilot flying scouting and transport missions for the Chinese air force. At the order of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, I flew an American museum curator named Dr. Benjamin Hood from Hankow to Tibet. He was in pursuit of a German mission to that same mysterious nation. The Nazi goal was secret, and our own pursuit was secret as well. The world was slipping toward war, and great issues were at stake.

  In due time, we were sent by the Reting Rinpoche to follow Germans led by a man named Kurt Raeder. The Nazis were going to the place in the Kunlun Mountains where you presumably are now. Hood parachuted into a remote valley that appeared to contain the ruins of Shambhala, the legendary city that was supposed to be a paradise and redeem the world. Instead, my companion related, they found a dead city full of bones, as if some terrible calamity had struck. I meanwhile landed my plane, made my way to this nearby nunnery, and convinced the nuns to show me a back way into the mountain and city. I found Ben, but could not convince him to flee with us. He was determined to stop Raeder. Shortly afterward, huge explosions rocked the Kunlun Mountains and a canyon caved in on itself, damming the city’s river. Shambhala, or whatever name it once really went by, was flooded. Ben and Raeder were gone.

  This puzzled Rominy. Hadn’t her great-grandfather gone back to America? She looked at the envelope. It was postmarked CONCRETE.

  I can’t explain precisely what caused that catastrophe, but I can explain a little of what happened afterward. If you’ve come this far, on the clues I left, you’re worthy of your ancestors. But no doubt you’ve wondered at your origins and how I came—too briefly, I predict—to be a guardian.

  Guardian?

  Hood had saved a Tibetan nun named Keyuri Lin from the Nazis. Keyuri was wounded in the fighting, and after that terrible night in Shambhala, neither Keyuri nor I was in a condition to go anywhere. The nuns healed wounds both physical and spiritual. And then came the pregnancy. We should have been grateful, but instead were apprehensive. What if the Nazis came back? We wrote down what we remembered, but it was like reconstructing a dream. Keyuri was crushed by the entire experience, and I feared for her sanity. My duty was to return to the Chinese front, but I dared not leave.

  The birth was a difficult one and Keyuri became even more depressed. Acquiescence and acceptance had failed her, she said. Her Buddhist faith had been shattered. I hoped the child would give her hope, but the memories were too painful. There were always fears the Germ
ans were coming; always rumors of the very worst things.

  I think the force in Shambhala had made her go mad. So a year after the discovery of the city, at a time when Hitler was marching into Poland, I decided during a sleepless night to ask her to come home with me to America where we might seek a cure.

  But she wasn’t in her cell, which was very unusual.

  It was a cold, windy night, the moon giving the mountains a ghostly glow, and I was about to give up and return to bed when I realized the baby was missing as well.

  Dread overwhelmed me.

  I ran out the courtyard and up along the ridge crest, calling. I saw her at a cliff edge, silhouetted against the distant snow, and shouted.

  She looked at me once, sadly, and then stepped.

  I leaped and clutched as she was about to go over.

  I couldn’t save her, but I saved your ancestor. I was sprawled at the lip, my arms outstretched, the baby no bigger than a ball. And I watched Keyuri’s robes flapping as she fell far, far away into a chasm, finally at peace.

  When I stretched out my arms and rescued that bloodline, I made a choice. I could leave the artifact locked away forever as Keyuri urged, a forgotten power buried. Or I could preserve the chance it might someday be harnessed for good, but only by the right person. If you’re reading this, you’ve followed clues I left behind. I hope you’re that person.

  Then it was time to go home to America.

  As I write this, the United States has plunged into war. The stakes are enormous, and the effort vast. We are experiencing defeat after defeat, and the world grows ever darker. Because of this, whole armies would be traded for what we glimpsed at Shambhala. So if you find the staff we hid, you must safeguard it. It must only be shared with the right people, at the right time, when we’ve gained wisdom to use it. If you lose it, you absolutely must get it back.

  Maybe our species is too young to cope with such responsibilities. Someday, millennia from now, when our wisdom has caught up with our ingenuity, maybe it will be time to finally go back to that lost, dark city. In the meantime, you’ve found all that is left.