Blood of the Reich

by William Dietrich

  “Jake. That’s because it’s the victors who write history.”

  Holy-moley, Sam thought. Was this guy a Holocaust denier? Wouldn’t that be fun to prattle on about for the next three weeks? “So why didn’t Hitler stop with the Volkswagen?” Sam asked in his most carefully calibrated neutral guide voice. “What was his thing with the Jews?”

  “Psychologists have had a field day,” Jake said matter-of-factly. “Hitler the prude: a grandfather who had some illicit affair with a Jew. Hitler the mama’s boy: the doctor who cared for his mother when she died of cancer was Jewish. There are rumors young Adolf contracted syphilis from a Jewish prostitute. That he was insulted by a relative of the Jewish writer Kafka when he was down and out in Vienna. That he was in love with his niece and got twisted over her suicide or murder. That he only had one testicle, and some Freudian thing was going on.”

  “I go with the niece theory. Nazis just weren’t good with girls, were they?”

  “Actually, most were happily married. If anything, they were socially conservative, family-values types. Hitler didn’t marry because he thought bachelorhood made him more politically appealing.”

  “The messiah.”

  “There were more than a few Germans who thought that. Not that they’d admit it afterward.”

  “You, too?”

  ”Of course not. I just study the period. Rominy puts up with it.”

  “Jake calls it open-minded,” she said from the back.

  “And what do you call it?” Sam asked.

  “Nutty.” She flipped a page, and Jake laughed. “You’ll be sorry you got him started, Sam.”

  “I admit it,” Barrow said. “I like to argue.”

  Sam didn’t like Jake’s casual confidence because he was jealous of it. The other thing about the tourists he guided was that they were usually paired, like Jake or Rominy, or bonded in some mountaineering fellowship. They always belonged—either to each other, like the Three Musketeers, or to some place Back There, where they’d come from and where they’d return to. They were anchored. They had careers, money or the expectation of it, maybe family, at least friends, Facebook . . . something. And Sam, the drifter, the broken home kid, the college dropout, stung from one too many dumpings by indifferent ratty-haired girlfriends, and one too many lazy betrayals by self-centered traveling mates, and with one too many fuckups from one too many drinks or joints or dumb-ass decisions . . . had only secretly sensitive Sam for company. His very own self, indivisible, with liberty and restlessness for all. Reduced to accompanying people he didn’t know and sometimes didn’t like, for a fee, like a Craigslist whore. What the hell was he doing with his life, driving to Outer Bumfuck and trying to make conversation about Nazis? Driving belongers around. Barrow, he thought, gave all the signs of being in some kind of tight fraternity. A let-me-challenge-political-correctness nerd who Sam decided was annoying as hell.

  Rominy, he liked.

  “But Adolf can’t get over his own private frustration?” Sam challenged. “So he kills six million Jews, and six million more besides? Poles, Russians, gypsies, retarded people, homosexuals, Freemasons . . . I mean, come on.”

  “Let’s assume he did,” Barrow said mildly. “Some people think he was possessed by the devil. Hitler’s own explanation is simpler. He was gassed during World War I and said he had a vision while in the hospital of saving Germany. He thought Jewish financiers and leaders had cost Germany the war.”

  “You defend this guy?”

  “I try to explain him. Unlike most people, I’ve actually studied him. If we could understand Hitler, maybe we could understand anyone. Even ourselves.”

  “Good luck with that.” Yep, Barrow was a smug little prick. Or maybe Jake was just fascinated with the Third Reich, like any number of people who pause to look at accidents, tour torture museums, and walk the gravel of old concentration camps.

  “You know what’s funny?” Sam asked. “He goes after the Jews and gets Israel. Be careful what you wish for. That’s why I’m laid back, man. Why the Tibetans are laid back. Mind your own business and look after your own soul—if everyone did that, the world would be happier, right? That’s what Jesus said. That’s what John Lennon said.”

  “One crucified, the other shot.”

  “That doesn’t make them wrong.”

  “No, but their world would be medieval.”

  “John Lennon’s world would be medieval?”

  “Their laid-back world, I suspect, would have no Land Cruisers,” Barrow trumped.

  “We wouldn’t miss Land Cruisers if we didn’t have them,” Sam said doggedly.

  “It’s a long walk to the Kunlun Mountains.”

  “We wouldn’t miss the Kunlun Mountains.”

  “Look,” said Jake, “I’ve studied Hitler because where we’re going is where the Germans went in 1938. I’m curious what they found. Curious what they were looking for. Rominy here is an heir to someone who got wrapped up in it all, an American explorer. So the more I understand about the Nazis, the more idea I have of where they might have gone.”

  “The Kunlun? They went to Nowhere Central, man. They went to where there’s no there there.” He glanced at Barrow. “You really got the hots for Hitler, don’t you?”

  “I just think he was complicated, like everyone, and interesting, like everyone.”

  “Complicated? That’s an interesting way to put it.”

  “What if he was an idealist in his own way, driven into wars he didn’t want?”

  “That’s not how I heard it went down, bro.”

  “Yes, get real, Jake,” Rominy chimed in. “Don’t be provocative just to be provocative.”

  “A lot of people followed him for some reason.” Barrow sounded defensive. “I’m just saying, if you want to make sense of history, let’s understand what it was, not parrot cowboy-and-Indian dogma about who was right and who was wrong.”

  “Sorry, amigo, I saw the movie. The Nazis were wrong.”

  “That’s my point. All you’ve seen is the movie.”

  Holy-moley. “Hey, you want a picture of some yaks?” Sam pointed. Time to change the subject before he got too steamed.

  Rominy was in the backseat, trying to ignore the debate of the men while sifting through the satchel documents again. The more she read them, the more she came to believe that Benjamin Hood hadn’t written them. The script was in a feminine hand, and the maps and diagrams had a vagueness that might come from someone getting the information secondhand, from memory. There were no measurements or dimensions, no logical depiction of a machine with interlocking parts. The entire packet was impressionistic.

  Could that mean it was myth, that they were chasing a fairy tale?

  Or did it mean that someone like the woman pilot in the picture had befriended Ben and taken his dictation or descriptions? Beth Calloway, 1938. A good deal of the journal seemed incoherent, more a collection of notes than a narrative or diary. There were names: Kurt, Keyuri, Beth, Ben. Was her great-grandmother’s name Beth? Rominy considered. Maybe Calloway and Hood pursued the Nazis together, Beth flying a plane. So they get back to the Cascade Mountains, and Beth tries to make sense of it all. Maybe Hood was disabled. But the journal was riddled with question marks, arrows, and blanks, as if it were a jigsaw puzzle only half put together.

  Maybe Rominy could put it together here in Tibet.

  Maybe she was supposed to finish what her great-grandmother started.

  Maybe the journal would make sense in Shambhala.

  40

  Concrete, United States

  September 7, 1945

  So this is where the elusive Benjamin Hood has gone to ground, thought Duncan Hale, special agent of the Office of Strategic Services. His agency had been created in the cauldron of the recently concluded World War II and had absorbed his old Army Corps of Intelligence Police.

  I’ve arrived, Hale thought. Backwater, USA.

  It wasn’t until the end of the war that Hale had realized the necessity t
o start tracking the man he’d sent to Tibet eight years before. Rumors of Hood’s discoveries had been fantastical, and his disappearance perplexing. The millionaire had gone mad, most thought, and withdrawn like a hermit crab somewhere into the American wilderness.

  Then, with the wartime explosion of science, the fantastic had become commonplace. The German V2s. Jet fighters. The atomic bomb. And suddenly an anonymous letter had arrived that made the strange rumors more compelling. Just what had Benjamin Hood discovered in the nether reaches of Tibet? And would any of it be of use in this new, uneasy embrace with the bearlike Soviet Union?

  With the help of the FBI, banking records had led Hale to this tiny burg at the edge of the known universe, the aptly named Concrete, Washington. Now, as he stood on the train station platform near the junction of the Skagit and Baker rivers, Hale could look uphill to a one-block downtown that slumbered under a haze of morning mist and coal smoke. With gas rationing still in effect, not much moved on the roads. The war had ended only three weeks before. But a new, more dangerous war, the OSS believed, was just beginning: with the Red Hordes of the Soviet Union. It was time to learn what Ben Hood knew and make sure nobody else could learn it.

  Hale, burdened only with a briefcase, walked uphill to State Bank of Concrete. Flags and bunting from the recent VJ Day celebration still hung from houses, and no service personnel were back home yet. Yet the sense of relief, after a bad Depression and worse war, seemed as palpable as the sweet smell of the surrounding forest. The bomb had ended the thing and ushered in a whole new world. There were even rumors of turning the OSS into some new kind of permanent intelligence outfit, he’d heard. The Russians were throwing their weight around just like the Nazis had, and America was going to have to respond.

  Hale knew he might be wasting his time on Benjamin Hood. The guy was a crank, giving up a family fortune to live like a recluse on some stump ranch. Hood’s trip back in ’38 had cost the government next to nothing (it irked Hale that he’d never gotten much credit for yoking the playboy for all the heavy lifting) and nothing had come of the Nazi expedition, near as he could tell. It was as if Tibet had swallowed the whole lot. Hood’s disappearance had been small brew in a world hurtling toward total war. So Hale hadn’t thought much of it—he had a war to win!—but when the Japs threw in the towel after Nagasaki, the old mystery came back. He’d received an anonymous letter raising all kinds of interesting questions. Had Hood perished in central Asia? Or had he gone to ground like some crazy hillbilly, hiding out like some kind of goddamned draft dodger to let the others do the fighting for him?

  More important, had the curator found something that could be important in the coming struggle? Was Hood trying to hide some terrible secret?

  Terrible secrets were what Duncan Hale liked to find.

  Picking up Hood’s faded trail hadn’t been easy. The American Museum of Natural History had no contact since ’38. His family assumed him dead, and his inheritance had passed to his brothers. There’d been brief talk of giving Hood a posthumous medal, so the department could take credit for another secret mission . . . except no one was quite sure what the mission was or what it had accomplished. The Germans were no help either, their archives silent on Tibet except for some enigmatic hints from people like Goebbels. Himmler was dead, a suicide, after trying to sneak by the Allies in disguise. So was most of the SS. Ancient history.

  Except Duncan Hale never forgot anything.

  He tried military records first, then Social Security, and then voter registration and Census data. No Ben Hood. It finally occurred to him to try banking records. That was a needle in a haystack, except the FBI had required reporting of abnormally large deposits to keep tabs on spies during the war. Tucked in a card drawer from late 1938 was a deposit of $10,000, a tidy sum at the time. The depositor’s name was Calloway, but there was a cross-reference noted to a Caucasian whose former address was Lhasa. On a hunch, he’d called up the bank.

  The deposit had been made in another name: Benjamin Hood.

  Bingo.

  So now he’d come out to the moss-shrouded ass of the earth to find the happy hunter himself. Hood had gone from a corner office overlooking Central Park to a shack in the armpit of the Cascade Mountains. This when you had enough sitting in the bank to buy a nice house, and an inheritance back home worthy of a Rockefeller. It didn’t make sense, and Duncan Hale didn’t like things that didn’t make sense.

  He showed his credentials to a teller. “I need the address of one of your depositors.”

  The bank president, a fellow named Henderson, came out to confer. A visit from a G-man to Concrete was unusual indeed.

  “This Hood, he live around here?” Hale asked.

  “Upriver quite a few miles. Cascade River, I understand. We never see him.”

  “What do you mean you never see him? Isn’t this his bank?”

  “He’s a hermit, except there’s a woman living up there, too, and a child—none of it sanctified by marriage, I’m afraid. Maybe he doesn’t want us judging him. In any event, he never comes downriver. We see Miss Calloway once in a while, shopping for groceries and supplies.”

  “And who is Miss Calloway?”

  “His . . . housekeeper. Girlfriend. They have joint custody of the account.”

  “Have you ever seen Ben Hood?”

  “Why no, I haven’t. I’m sure my employees have. Is there something he’s done?”

  “Or not done. Look, if I go upriver, can I find him?”

  “I’m sure you can. Everybody knows everybody up there. Just approach carefully. Upriver folk are possessive of their privacy, and some shoot first and ask later.”

  “I’ll be careful.” He thought. “This woman—she ever talk crazy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About treasure, or knowing something secret, or having to hide things from the world?”

  “She doesn’t talk at all. A real tight-lip for these parts. Good-looking dame, but nobody really knows her. You think she’s some kind of Axis spy?”

  He put his hands up, laughing. “Don’t start that rumor. The war’s over, buddy! No, no, not a spy. Just some anomalies on a tax form.” He winked.

  “What on a tax form?”

  “Mistakes. And that’s just between you and me.” The gossip would be from one end of Concrete to the other by suppertime, he knew, which was just what he wanted. “Thanks for the help. Your government appreciates it.”

  “Well.” Henderson puffed proudly. “Glad to serve.”

  Hale picked up his briefcase. “Just one more thing. You said there was a kid?”

  “Yes, a girl by rumor. Daughter, I assume. She should be in school by now, but the district hasn’t seen her.”

  “Ah. I’ll ask about that, too. There are laws.” He tipped his fedora. “Good day to you, Mr. Henderson.”

  “And good day to you.”

  Hale stepped outside, breathed in the clean air, and looked at the patriotic bunting. Concrete was probably a nice place. A decent place. It was too bad about the kid.

  He walked to a garage where he’d been told he could rent a car, bought a county map, and asked some directions.

  Then he slipped in the front seat, opened his suit jacket, and checked the load on his .32 Colt M1903 automatic. The OSS issue was light, deadly, and small enough that it was said gangster Bonnie Parker taped one to her thigh to break Clyde out of jail. Sweet little gun.

  Time to tie up loose ends.

  As Hale drove off, the gas station attendant looked again at the card given by an oddly pale stranger who’d shown up in town the day before, asking where a man might rent a car. The fellow didn’t rent one, but the business card came wrapped in a one-hundred-dollar bill, a staggering sum. Now the attendant mouthed the number, picked up the phone, and cranked for the operator.

  He was going to report who did rent a car.

  41

  The Kunlun Mountains, Tibet

  September 19, Present Day

  Nin
e days after leaving Lhasa, the trio of Americans stiffly got out of a Land Cruiser that had been transformed from white to brown from dust and mud. There’d been three flats and one broken water pump, all patched by Sam. Pavement had turned to dirt road, and dirt to rocky track. They jounced down jumbled dry streambeds and ground through the gears to creep up snaking passes. Rominy’s heart almost stopped as they crept over a rope-and-wood suspension bridge hung across a precipitous canyon, water shining a thousand feet down. Had the Germans come this way? Later, the wind cut like a knife on one particularly high pass. There were still patches of dirty snow from the winter before, and the smell of new autumn storms in the air. Beyond were a vast basin, and then the white wall of the Kunlun. Now they parked directly below those remote and lofty mountains.

  To their left ran a cold river, gray with glacial silt. They’d picked up its trace where it sank into the sands on the plain. As they drove toward its source the river became loud and vigorous, originating in a waterfall that plunged hundreds of feet before running white down a slope of shattered rock. The escarpment ahead was otherwise as sheer as a fortress wall, its black rock cliffs topped by slopes of ice and snow. They’d come to a dead end.

  “This is where you want to be?” Sam asked.

  Jake studied his GPS unit. “If the coordinates from the documents are correct, yes. Instruments weren’t as good in those days, but Hood and Calloway had navigation skills.”

  Their guide turned and surveyed the landscape. Behind a pitiless plain, ahead precipitous mountains, chill gray sky, and lonely wind. “Scenic. If you like eastern Wyoming.”

  “What’s beyond that waterfall?”

  “Never been here, man. I’m feeling pretty cocky I got you here at all. This is pretty intense. It’s not like we can call for pizza.”

  “No, Sam, we cannot.” He took out the binoculars and studied the cliff. “Rominy, what did Hood’s satchel say about the waterfall?”

  “That there was one, low on the cliff, with a canyon above it. This looks different from the drawing, Jake. The falls seem much higher. I’m not sure we’re at the right place.”