Blood of the Reich (2 page)

Raeder’s credentials were checked and he was admitted to a more private reception area, the offices beyond barricaded by a massive counter of dark-stained oak, stout as a dam. Now a more thorough check, this time by a blond-headed Nordic guard of the type the SS put on its posters. The officer scrutinized his insignia skeptically.

“An
Untersturmführer
to see the
Reichsführer
?”

Raeder showed the letter that had summoned the SS lieutenant from his residence in the respectable Wilmersdorf district, the apartment haunted now since Lotte’s death. “The
Reichsführer
expects all ranks to serve.”

The comment drew no reaction from a man with the expressiveness of a robot. “Wait.”

The explorer stood stiffly as the orderly spoke into a telephone and then returned it to its cradle. The guard didn’t bother to look at Raeder again.

Long minutes passed. Raeder could hear the faint clack of heels on tile, the cricket-murmur of typewriter keys and code machines, the rumble of wooden file drawers sliding out and slamming home. Each muffled ring of distant phone was answered before it could jangle a second time. All was whispered, as if the ministry building had been selected to absorb sound. Was noise from the basement muted, too? The colors were institutional green and cream, the lights a somber yellow.

“This way, Professor Raeder.”

Another SS officer, a
Sturmbanführer
, thicker and pinker, briskly led him into the maze of corridors beyond. They wound one way and another, climbed a flight of stairs, and wound again. Raeder was (perhaps deliberately) lost. The office doors they passed were shut, shapes moving behind obscured glass. The few people in the hallways were male, hurried, boots drumming, conversation a murmur. The walls were blank. Floors gleamed. The calm efficiency, the monkish concentration, the paper-and-glue smell of a library . . . it was admirable and disquieting.

Then more SS guards as strapping as Vikings snapped to attention, a double door swung open, and they came to a high-ceilinged anteroom paneled in beech. Sentries checked Raeder for weapons and scrutinized his identification once again. No one smiled or spoke more than the minimum. It was a wordless play, the anteroom dim, windowless. He was in the middle of a vast hive.

A knock on a side door, an answering buzz, and he was ushered through.

Raeder expected another corridor, but instead found himself in a modest painted office, with a lower ceiling than in the anteroom outside. A single window looked out on a courtyard, the wall it faced blank stone. No one from outside could look in. There was a large but plain desk, left over from some Prussian ministry, and three leather chairs in front of it. Behind sat the second most powerful man in Germany.

Himmler looked up from a manila file and gave Raeder an owlish blink. With round spectacles, receding chin, and narrow shoulders, the
Reichsführer
SS was nothing like his praetorians outside. In fact, he resembled a bank clerk or schoolmaster. He had a thin mustache, pale skin, and white, fastidious, womanly hands. His hair was shaved close to the skull above his ears in the dull helmet shape of Prussian fashion.

A much fiercer portrait of the
Führer
looked down on them with burning zeal: that shock of black hair, that punctuating mustache.

The office was otherwise absent of decoration. There were no personal pictures or mementos, just a wall of books, many of them old, leather-bound, and cracked. Raeder couldn’t read the faded titles. The
Reichsführer
’s desk was as neat as that of an accountant, stacks of files with colored tabs precisely squared and ranked. Either this was not Himmler’s regular office or the
Reichsführer
had no need of the baronial opulence of a Hermann Göring. The abstention was eerie.

Himmler closed the folder and turned it so Raeder could discern his own name and picture.

“Sit.”

The zoologist did so, sinking into a chair. Its legs had been trimmed so that he almost squatted, looking up at Himmler. The
Reichsführer
smiled thinly, as if to relax his guest, but the chilliness simply reinforced the man’s power. There was something oddly vacant about the personality he projected, as if Raeder were meeting with a facade.

Then Himmler abruptly leaned forward in a disconcertingly intense way, with a predatory glare like an insect, eyes obscured behind the reflection of the glasses, purpose ignited as if with a match.

“Untersturmführer
,” the security minister began without preamble, folding his hands on Raeder’s folder, “do you believe in the importance of blood?”

2

Seattle, United States

September 4, Present Day

H
e was cute, he was checking her out, and he was a frozen foods guy.

Rominy Pickett believed a man’s character could be divined by his location in the supermarket, a method at least as reliable as the signs of the zodiac. She usually dismissed males spotted in the beer-and-chips aisle, on the theory they might represent the man-child-slob archetype in need of too much reform. Those in stock foods she suspected to be conservative and dull: only a Republican would buy canned peas. The wine section was more promising (she supposed that marked her a bit of a snob, favoring wine over beer), and fruits and vegetables were also possible. She didn’t need a vegetarian, but a man who thought about his greens and took time to cook them might be thoughtful and slow about other things as well.

The bread aisle was a place to find solid whole-wheat types, but too many already wore wedding rings. Picnic supplies suggested an outdoorsman, while intellect could be gauged by where a guy planted himself on the magazine aisle: Was he browsing
The Economist
or
Truck Trend
?

But spices, condiments, and wine were best, Rominy believed, suggesting a fellow open to detail, experimentation, and taste.

Admittedly, this screening was far from perfect, given the tendency of grocery hunks to move from one aisle to another. But then the zodiac was open to interpretation, too. Her criterion was at least as reliable, she maintained to her friends, as the arch fiction encountered on Internet dating sites.

Frozen food was a problem. The likelihood of meeting bachelors rose here, given the stacks of entrees aimed at singles. But the freezer cases also implied haste, microwaving, even (could you read this much into a grocery cart?) a certain lack of ambition. Defrosting was too easy.

True,
she
was in the frozen foods aisle, too, with Lean Cuisine Cheddar Potatoes and Broccoli and a pint of Häagen-Dazs. But this was about prospective life partners, not Rominy’s own singleton existence as software publicist. She’d achieved a bachelor’s in communication, a gray forty-square-foot cubicle with industrial carpet and underpowered PC, two longish relationships broken off well short of real commitment, and personal resolve not to settle for competent mediocrity. Yet nothing ever
happened
. Grim global news, limping economy, girlfriends who only quipped, men who only wanted to hang out.

And shopping at Safeway. For one.

She was almost
thirty
.

Not that old, she reminded herself. Not nowadays. She was due for promotion soon. She was due for things to happen.

And yes, cute frozen foods guy was glancing again. Rominy caught herself instinctively and embarrassingly flipping her brunette hair as she imagined a thousand things about him: that his lingering by the pizza case made him interested in Italian food and Renaissance art, that the way his left foot with trail shoes rested on the shopping cart gave him the athletic stance of a mountain biker or rugby player, that the pen in his shirt pocket announced not nerd-with-grocery-list but poet prepared for spontaneous inspiration. Unruly surfer blond hair, icy blue eyes, an intriguing scar on the chin: how delicious if it had been from reckless danger! (Probably a juvenile skateboard accident.) And there was a hint of a muscular physique under the denim shirt. Yes, Rominy was a regular Sherlock in the way she could scope out the human male at a glance. Too bad if the scrutiny took them aback—and damn them if they did too much of the same to her.

What
she
wanted was to undress their souls.

He wasn’t approaching, however, just looking. Too much looking, in fact. Evaluating her with a curious, hesitant stare that was anything but coy, flirtatious, or even leering. He simply regarded her like a curious specimen. Creepy, Mr. Frozen Foods Guy. Or boring. Get a life.

On to the condiments! Rominy pushed her cart two aisles down and pondered the advance in civilization represented by squeeze bottles of ketchup. Her ambition was to invent something simple and practical, like the paper clip, retire to the beach, and try Proust or Pynchon again. Master Sudoku. Train for the Iron Man. Open an animal shelter. Build a kayak. Figure out her camera.

But then Frosty the Snowman idled into view, leaning on his own cart like a handsome cowboy over a saddle horn, oblivious to whatever might be melting on his metal mesh. Still looking but not doing. Shy or stalker? Not worth it to find out. Maybe she read too much chick lit, but she wanted a man who showed confident initiative. Who came up and said something funny.

So she wheeled around and took a quick dash to the feminine products aisle, territory guaranteed to ward off unwanted males the way garlic and crucifix could deter vampires. Rominy should never have returned his glance in the first place, but how could you know? She’d camp here until the lurker had time to move away.

But no, he’d peeked down the aisles from the broad corridor at the back of the store and tracked her to this new refuge. Now he turned his cart into terra incognita and, looking questioningly at her, mouth opening like a fish, hopelessly uncertain what his first line should be. Next to the tampons? Did she know this dude? No. Why was he trailing her? Why hadn’t he said anything? He wasn’t just checking her out. He was
watching
.

So she pivoted and squeezed behind a middle-aged shopper who had her cart nearly athwart the aisle in that worst-of-Safeway rudeness. Now Mrs. Dumbo could unintentionally run interference while Rominy headed for the cash register. The fast-checkout lane, eight-item limit be damned.

Escape! But, no, Mr. Frosty appeared again, the front of his cart cutting in her direction like the prow of a battleship, his look anxious and his pace quicker. Would he make a scene? Where was pepper spray, or self-defense kickboxing training, when she needed it? Or was this klutz just socially inept, like so many men?

Calm, Rominy. Just another of your countless admirers.

As if.

But then his jacket opened slightly and she gave a start. There was something black on his hip.

Let the ice cream melt. She abandoned her cart, squeezed by the rump of another overfed matron tapping password numbers into a debit card reader, and headed for the door. Sorry, Safeway. No sale.

Rominy’s experience (which included more than a few dead-end dates as excruciating as an IRS audit) was that intriguingly eccentric men turned out to be . . . weird. Politeness only encouraged them. Avoidance was a mercy.

Nor could she call for help.

Please, a man with a grocery cart is looking at me.

But instinct screamed that something was wrong.

Rominy had dropped some overdue bills in the mailbox at the lot’s outer limits, so her car was parked a good fifty yards away. The vehicle was her pride and joy, a silver 2011 MINI Cooper scrubbed bright as a new quarter, suddenly as distant as a football goalpost. It had taken the trade of her ancient Nissan, a diversion of funds that should have gone into her 401(k), and the commitment to four years of monthly payments to buy the runabout, but my, how she loved its cuteness and handling. Now it represented refuge. She knew she was probably hyperventilating about Abominable Snowman, but she’d never had a grocery guy track her relentlessly as a cruise missile without first attempting a friendly hi.

“Miss!”

He’d come out of the store after her. Rominy quickened her pace toward her car. This clumsy come-on would make a snarky text message for her girlfriends.

“Wait!” Footsteps. He was starting to run, fast.

Okay. Get in the car, lock the doors, start the engine, engage the transmission, crack the window, and
then
see who this lunatic was. If harmless, it would be a story to tell the grandchildren.

So she ran, too, purse banging on her hip, low heels hobbling her speed.

“Hey!”

His footsteps were accelerating like a sprinter. Wasn’t there anyone in the lot who would interfere? Run, Rominy, run!

Her MINI Cooper beckoned like a castle keep.

And then without warning the creep hit her from behind, sending her sprawling. Pavement scraped on hands and knees. Pain lanced, and she opened her mouth to scream. Then his weight crashed fully on top of her, a body slam that knocked out her wind, and the bastard clamped his hand over her mouth.