Blood of the Reich (41 page)

Maybe the journal would make sense in Shambhala.

40

Concrete, United States

September 7, 1945

S
o 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 to 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 The millionaire had gone mad, most thought, and withdrawn like a hermit crab somewhere into the American wilderness.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

N
ine 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.”

“We’d better be in the right place.” He studied the falls, as if willing them to look like he expected. “We’ve come ten thousand miles to be in the right place.”

There was silence. Jake was the one who had used his GPS to direct them here.

“So,” Sam finally asked, “we just going to hang out? Is this what you came for?”

“We could camp by the river,” Rominy said.

“I came for the history of the Kurt Raeder expedition of 1938,” Jake finally said. “We’re going to climb that cliff and see what’s on the other side.”

“You don’t mean
we
the literal way, right?” Sam said. “It’s like the royal
we
, meaning you?”

“We’ve been sitting on our asses in that Land Cruiser for nine days. The exercise will do us good. I’ll lead the way.”

“Jake, I can’t climb that,” Rominy said.

“I think I see a way up. We’ll fix some ropes.”

“And just what’s so fascinating on the other side?” Sam asked.

Jake considered the guide before answering, debating how much to confide. “Shambhala,” he revealed. “If the stories are correct.”

“Shambhala!” Sam groaned. “Come on, we’re not here for some Shangri-la legend, are we? I could have talked you out of that one over beer in Lhasa.”

“I’ll tell you when I look over the top of that waterfall.”

Sam shook his head. “Tourists.”

Jake smiled. “Guides. You can’t get decent help these days.”

“Why don’t I just wait with Rominy down here?”

“It’s not safe to climb alone. Besides, I feel better having us all together. We’re united on this. Right, Rominy?”

She frowned, looking up the falls. “I’ve never felt so far from everything. Sam, is there
anything
out here?”

“No. But I’m getting paid to humor your boyfriend. He’ll see for himself, we’ll come back down and console ourselves with Rice Krispies Treats and Bailey’s. Sugar makes everything go down.”