Descendant

by Sean Ellis

  “Don’t you think that’s a little conspicuous?” Mira said as she stared in disbelief at the car Booker had rented for the drive from Frankfurt to Ludwigsburg.

  “I didn’t realize that was something we needed to worry about.” He grinned. “Come on. This is the land of the autobahn. I couldn’t pass up a chance like this. Besides, Uncle Sam is picking up the tab.”

  “This is why people complain about wasteful government spending.”

  Mira’s reproof had been offered in jest. Mostly. Although she sensed that the journey to Shambala would eventually require them to be more discreet in their movements, that time had not yet come. Still, the rental car—a fire engine red Ferrari 458 Italia—was an indulgence that she worried might come back to bite them.

  “Can I drive?” she asked.

  His face screwed up in an almost childish display of selfishness. “I didn’t put your name on the rental agreement. I wasn’t even sure if you had a license.”

  Mira could not actually remember if she had one either.

  “Tell you what,” Booker said. “I’ll drive the first leg to Ludwigsburg. You can have the drive back. If you still want to, that is.”

  “What, you think you can scare me?”

  He shrugged but his mischievous grin suggested that was exactly what he had in mind.

  “Do your worst.”

  As the sports car raced along the A6, Mira began to think that perhaps frightening her was not Booker’s intention at all, or rather if it was, it was only part of a broader—and decidedly juvenile—strategy to both impress her and perhaps stimulate an adrenaline fueled attraction.

  This guy’s a cipher, she thought.

  Her heightened precognitive senses gave her an edge when it came to controlling the fear response that Booker’s driving might otherwise have triggered. Although he pushed the Ferrari to what seemed like an outrageous two hundred kilometers per hour—more than one hundred and twenty miles per hour—weaving in and out of traffic like a Formula One racer, Mira knew that he was in total control at all times; he was actually holding back a little, though even he didn’t realize it, limited by his own instinct for self-preservation.

  Still, there was no denying that it was kind of a turn on. She was only human after all.

  Collier might disagree.

  She tried to put that thought out of her head, allowing her thoughts to drift along with the scenery. The long straight stretches flew by almost too fast to see, but closer to populated areas, traffic snarled almost to a halt during which time the Ferrari seemed to be champing at the bit. Finally, about an hour and a half after leaving the airport, they arrived in Ludwigsburg, home of the Bundesarchiv, one of the repositories of national records that included documents from the Nazi period and, they hoped, records of the Ahnenerbe’s activities abroad.

  As Mira had expected, getting access to the information was not as straightforward as simply walking in and asking. The German government was especially wary when it came to documents from the National Socialist regime and had established a series of ponderous safeguards to protect the information and regulate how it might be used. They were permitted to browse the archives and preview certain documents, but under no circumstances would they be allowed to make copies—real or virtual—of anything they found. Booker was not even allowed to take his mobile phone past the reception desk.

  They ensconced themselves in front of a terminal in the reading room and went to work. The Ahnenerbe files relating to investigations in Tibet were not difficult to locate, but because the documents had not been digitized, they were not able to narrow their focus with a word search. Instead, they spent more than an hour poring over image files made from microfiche photographs, all of them written in German.

  Ninety minutes after arriving, they found what they were looking for. The file was simply marked “Forschung”—Research—but after a page of introductory comments relating to when and where the document had been procured, they discovered Tarrant’s diary, written in English.

  Mira now felt acutely the limitation of the archival restrictions. The diary ran to nearly a hundred pages, detailing all the leads Tarrant had pursued in his quest to find the hidden city. Many were dead ends, but she wondered if even those investigations might contain important clues that would help them. She read every word, uncertain what might be important, tracking her former mentor through his adventures, trying to commit as much to memory as she could. Finally, as the record neared its end, she sensed that Tarrant’s search was also drawing to a close.

  Every day Schafer says to the high lama, “Rinpoche, where is Shamabala?” and every day he is told “To reach Shambala, you must walk the path of enlightenment.”

  “Schafer” had to be Ernst Schafer, a German hunter and biologist, who had previously led two expeditions to Tibet purportedly for zoological research. Under the auspices of the Ahnenerbe, he undertook another expedition in 1938, this time accompanied by an American treasure hunter named Tarrant. The expedition had a political motive—the Tibetan Government wanted to maintain diplomatic relations with the Japanese and their German allies—but there was little doubt that the real reason for Schafer’s expedition was the search for Shambala.

  Schafer sits and meditates and chants all day long, trying to find enlightenment. The high lama seems amused.

  Today I asked the lama the same question, and received the same answer. I pointed to Schafer and asked: “Is he on the path of enlightenment?”

  The lama smiled and said, “On the path, yes.”

  I asked the lama if he would show me the path the enlightenment. He pretended to be confused by my question, and gestured around at the other lamas. “There is no mystery. We all seek enlightenment.”

  “I’m not seeking enlightenment I told him. I’m looking for Shambala.”

  “Ah,” he said. “To reach Shambala, you must walk the path of enlightenment.”

  This is maddening, but not unexpected. The lama always speaks in such riddles. It is a tenet of their faith that the wanting of a thing—the desire—confounds the search for enlightenment. Is he saying that, in order to find Shambala, I must stop seeking it?

  Or is this a riddle that I must solve?

  To find Shambala, I must walk the path of enlightenment.

  No, I have that wrong. He said: “To reach Shambala, you must walk the path of enlightenment.”

  What is the difference? Reaching would suggest that is has already been found, and yet I do not know where it is.

  “Walk the path…”

  A literal path perhaps? When I asked him, he pointed to the other monks. Henceforth, I will pay closer attention to their activities. Perhaps I will chance to see one of them walking this path.

  Success! How foolish Schafer is to think that the path of enlightenment is some kind of mental discipline. I see it clearly now. Tonight, I will walk the path of enlightenment and see if I cannot also reach Shambala.

  “That’s it?” Booker asked. “Did he find it?”

  “We know he did. Evidently, he found the city and a piece of the Trinity, but before he could write any of it down, Mann took the diary away.”

  “Dead end, then.”

  Mira shook her head. “Not at all. The answer is right here. To reach Shambala, we have to walk the path of enlightenment, just like he did.”

  “Great. He spent months trying to figure out what it was.”

  “I think he spent months figuring out what it was not. Schafer and the other Nazis thought it was some kind of mystical journey, but it wasn’t. ‘Tonight, I will walk the path.’ It’s not even a separate location. It’s an actual path and it must be right there in the monastery. Remember, the vision showed that the city was partly underground. Maybe the path of enlightenment is a secret passage that leads to caves where part of the city is still hidden. We just need to find the entrance.”

  “In Tibet?” Booker rubbed his chin. “You realize that’s in China. We aren’t going to be able to just waltz in there.�
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  “I thought you SEALs could go wherever you wanted?” she retorted playfully.

  “Oh, we can. I’m just saying, no waltzing.”

  Mira thought back to the events of a few months previously when she had followed Tarrant—a.k.a Walter Aimes—into the Tibet Autonomous Region. With the Trinity in his possession, Aimes had not been hindered at all by obstacles of geography and politics, but his destination had been remote. Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, would not be so easy to sneak into.

  Booker sat back in his chair. “Seriously, we’ll have to do this very carefully. We’ll have to join a tour group, using false papers, and even then, we’ll be watched every minute.” He stopped and gave her an appraising glance. “Why am I even telling you any of this? You’re a Company girl, you know how it works.”

  “I’ve been out of circulation for a while.”

  He accepted this with a shrug. “I’ll have to make some phone calls. We’re done here?”

  Mira took a last look at the end of the diary entry. I see it clearly now. She wondered if that path would still be so easy to see more than seventy years later.

  As soon as he got his mobile phone back from the reception desk, Booker placed a call. In short order, arrangements were made for them to join a tour group that would be leaving for Tibet in less than twenty-four hours.

  “They’re going set us up with everything we need to enter the Tibet Autonomous Zone,” Booker reported to her. “Passports, papers, you name it. We’re going to be Jeff and Tonya Sexton from Cartersville, Georgia, on an adventure travel vacation.”

  “Disguises?”

  “Of course. There’s a Dagger kit at the consulate in Frankfurt.”

  Dagger, Mira recalled, was the nickname given to the Mission: Impossible style cosmetic disguise system that had been developed for intelligence agencies during the Cold War. While not quite as elaborate as the Hollywood creation that had inspired it, the Dagger system had been very effective at masking the physical features of agents heading into foreign assignments.

  “Are we going to have to talk with a drawl?”

  Booker laughed. “Just say ‘y’all’ once in a while and we should be good. I’m told the real Mr. and Mrs. Sexton were more than happy to postpone their trip in the interest of national security.”

  “Then I guess the next question is, what do we do when we get there?”

  Booker adopted what he probably thought was a serene, inscrutable Buddha-like expression and spoke with an awful parody of a Chinese accent. “‘To leach Shambara, you must walk path of enrightenment.’ Any ideas about that?”

  “The center of Tibetan Buddhism was Lhasa in Tibet. This ‘path to enlightenment’ must start there. It’s probably some kind of holy pilgrimage that leads to a cave entrance. Maybe once we get there, we’ll see it more clearly.”

  Booker grunted but then held the door for her. She followed him out of the Bundesarchiv and out to where the Ferrari sat parked on the street. Booker went immediately to the driver’s side, but Mira stepped in front of him as he opened the door.

  “My turn.” She held her hand out, palm up.

  Booker feigned confusion. “What? I told you. Your name isn’t on the rental agreement.”

  “We had a deal,” she replied. “What are you worried about? You bought the extra insurance, right?”

  He wagged his head, but then held out the key and dropped it in her hand.

  As her fingers curled around it, she felt something that she had not experienced during the drive, nor at any time since the escape from Libya: an overwhelming sense of danger.

  She twisted around and caught a glimpse of a silver car moving down the street—moving fast and headed right toward them.

  27.

  She saw what was about to happen with perfect clarity, as if watching a video playback of the future in slow motion, and knew exactly what she had to do.

  A hard shove sent Booker into the interior of the sports car, sprawling across the seats. There was no time for her to follow. The car was right there and in that instant she sensed the driver preparing to swerve out if she tried to dodge the other way.

  Nowhere to go but up.

  She hurled herself into the air, directly in front of the onrushing car, twisting her body like an Olympic high jumper and throwing her legs up to give herself additional lift. For anyone but Mira, it would have been impossible; not the jump, but the timing. A fraction of a second too soon or too late and she would be splattered across the windshield like a bug. But instead of bone-breaking collision, she felt only the roof of the car brushing against her for just a moment.

  The car was moving at least sixty miles per hour, and yet strangely, she heard no engine noise. It was as quiet as a wraith. The only sound was the hideous crunch of the Ferrari’s door being ripped off. The silver car shot out from under her as she twisted around and threw her arms and legs out wide to absorb some of the impact with the ground. The key flew from her hand and bounced off the pavement a few feet away as she tried, with only partial success, to catch herself. Her arms folded beneath her and she slammed hard onto the blacktop.

  The eerie silence was shattered by the rasp of metal scraping across the macadam and the squeal of tires skidding as the driver of the attacking car slammed on the brakes.

  Gritting her teeth against the pain that was shooting up both arms all the way to her elbows, she sprang up into a crouch.

  Fifty feet away, the car had come to a complete stop. Mira saw its doors thrown open and two figures emerged, one from each side. She caught only a glimpse of the pair, but knew that they were not getting out to come render assistance.

  She snatched up the fallen key and hurled herself into the gaping hole where the Ferrari’s driver’s side door had been.

  Booker’s legs were still stretched across the seat, but she didn’t wait for him to move them. Instead, she used her body to shove him out of the way and insinuate herself behind the steering wheel. Moving with a smoothness that belied the urgency she felt, she slotted the key and started the engine.

  Then she ducked.

  Something—almost certainly a bullet—cracked against the windshield. The sound repeated twice more, the noise astonishingly loud even over the throaty roar of the 562 horsepower V-8 engine. She raised her head just enough to see over the dashboard, and through a windshield now spider-webbed with cracks, saw the two figures walking slowly toward the Ferrari.

  The impacts continued, but there were no accompanying reports, no spurts of flame. Suppressed pistols, she thought absently. Professional operators, not that there was ever any doubt about that. This most certainly was not a random crime of opportunity.

  Mira jammed the accelerator down and the red sports car leapt forward, rocketing straight toward the shooters. She kept a light touch on the steering wheel, adjusting so that the Ferrari angled to the left of the motionless car that blocked the street. She glimpsed one of the shooters diving out of the way and then the silver car was behind them. More rounds struck the Ferrari, but this time from behind. While she didn’t think any of the shots had penetrated, she didn’t dare raise her head any higher. The sliver of the world that was visible above the dash showed that the narrow street was clear of traffic. It also revealed the looming intersection with Schorndorfer Strasse, a major thoroughfare that cut across the heart of Ludwigsburg.

  Mira sensed that she was in much greater danger from the cars that were zipping past on the main street than she was from a bullet. She eased herself up a little bit more, squaring her body behind the steering wheel, and braced for the turn.

  Her instincts were screaming at her to slow down. There were too many cars and she was going too fast. She ignored the panicked warning and instead pushed both her precognitive awareness and the Ferrari even harder.

  Mira never touched the brakes and barely let up on the accelerator. Her hands moved on the steering wheel like she was part of the machine, making adjustments rapidly but with flawless precision. The analogy w
as not far off the mark. In that moment, she gave herself entirely over to automatic control, letting her extra-sensory abilities guide her through a series of maneuvers that happened faster than normal human reaction time. The car shot out into the main street, its momentum carrying it all the way to the far lane even as it drifted through a ninety-degree turn, heading the same direction as the cars in that lane. Traffic wasn’t especially heavy or fast, but for the next few seconds, a two-block long section of Schorndorfer Strasse was transformed into a vehicular obstacle course. Mira slalomed the Ferrari around cars that had come to a screeching halt in her path, dodging those that, in a misguided attempt to get out of the way had inadvertently placed themselves right in it.

  Then, in an instant, the street ahead was clear. She straightened, only now seeing clearly the damage the sports car had sustained. The windshield was marked with a dozen or so pock marks, each one a nebulous smudge and all of them connected by jagged fracture lines, the whole held together only by a thin membrane of laminate. In the mirror she saw that the rear window had fractured into an opaque curtain, shot through with several fist sized holes. Then there was the door. The street, a gray blur beside her, was so close that she could have reached out a toe and dragged it along the pavement if she had so desired. A stiff forty mile per hour breeze was creating a strong slipstream that sucked at her hair and clothes.

  Something wriggled beneath her, Booker trying to extricate himself from the tangle. The Ferrari had not been designed to facilitate a lot of moving around and for a few seconds, the SEAL had to twist himself like a contortionist to finally achieve something like a seated position in the passenger’s chair. He shook his head in mock despair. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to let you drive.”

  “Nice,” she muttered. “You got any idea what that was about?”

  “Somebody doesn’t want us finding Shambala.”

  “Obviously. Who?”

  “Atlas, maybe? He went after the Trinity before. I can’t think of anyone else who might even be aware of what we’re doing.”