Blood of the Reich (49 page)

“
What?
”

“It’s just something that Jake said. I’m wondering if all guys are alike.”

“Oh. No way, man. Football is king.”

She’d found, she supposed, a guy from the beer and chips aisle.

The shadow of war and Nazism seemed purged from Germany as they approached Wewelsburg. The landscape was fat, bucolic, satisfied. The villages were quaint. The cars were washed. The people looked prosperous. The politics were liberal. Hitler was dead history, wasn’t he?

Sam pulled to the side when the castle came into view. It looked a little like a blunt-bowed ship perched on a low ridge that rose above the Alme Valley, its apex pointing north. A round, low-roofed tower was at the northern end. At the other two corners were smaller towers with dome roofs, like derbies.

Sam counted. “There’s a good sixty windows just on the side we can see. For the home of the most sinister organization in world history, it doesn’t look very scary.”

“It’s not a King Arthur castle. It’s a Renaissance castle.” Rominy was reading from notes they’d made in the airport. “Himmler wanted it to be more of a church, a pagan church, than a fortress. Or a meeting lodge for a new kind of Freemasonry. They had a world globe in there so big they couldn’t bring it in the conventional way. They had to lift it through a window.”

“The better to carve up the planet, my dear. Well, what’s our plan? If Barrow sees us he’s going to go ballistic, you know.”

“There was a B and B about five klicks back. Let’s check in there and go up to the castle after dark. We can sneak around when he can’t see us.”

“Great. Unarmed. Clueless. Unable to speak the language. I like the way you think, Tomb Raider.”

“We need evidence for prosecution or to take to CERN. Jake tried to murder us, Sam. And we need to take him by surprise. Jake thinks we’re dead, or that I’m a ninny waiting for him to tell me what to do. The best defense is a good offense. Let’s start doing the unexpected.”

“What evidence is there?”

“The staff. I want it back: it belonged to my great-grandparents. I’m going to find it and steal it. Then we go to the police.”

“And tell them what?”

“That he tried to murder us in Tibet. That he stole from the nunnery.”

“And how do we prove that, exactly?”

“The staff seemed made of something I’ve never seen before. We find that, and Jake’s real identity. We show the bruises on your chest and the bullet in your iPhone. We even call the
Seattle
Times
back home and get them to investigate this impostor.”

“We sneak, we steal, we give a news tip, and we go to the cops. Golly. D-Day wasn’t this carefully crafted.”

She ignored the sarcasm, studying the castle like a besieging general. “Sam? You don’t think the police could be in on this somehow, do you? You know, like neo-Nazis?”

He got serious. “Not in Germany. They’re pretty paranoid about that stuff. And that was three generations back. I’m guessing Jake Barrow is on his own, except for a lunatic skinhead or two.”

Rominy started. Had the bald man in the cabin window been working
with
Jake Barrow? Did he shoot his arrows to help them escape?

She realized how little she still knew about what was really going on.

48

Wewelsburg, Germany

October 2, Present Day

I
t was near midnight when they parked a quarter mile from the castle and cautiously made their way through the outskirts of Wewelsburg, their bags in the trunk in case they had to suddenly flee. It was autumn, the days shortening, the crops in, but even at that the town seemed oddly quiet. Every curtain was drawn. They could see the glow of lights and the flicker of television in a few houses, but only occasionally did a car hiss down the village lanes. It was so quiet that the slam of a door could be heard from a hundred yards away, and the bark of a dog twice that. Their footsteps seemed loud, and Rominy had a sense of being watched. Yet no one challenged them.

They studied the castle from the shadow of trees. The building was entirely dark, shut for the night. A ramp led across a ditch to the castle entrance, but the way was barricaded with lumber and tape, signs bearing international symbols for construction. Apparently off-season remodeling was going on. Looming above, the edifice seemed somber and sad, not a Camelot at all. Did the ghosts from old SS plots, seminars, initiation ceremonies, and Aryan weddings still linger here?

“Looks like a wild-goose chase,” Sam murmured. “If the castle is closed, Barrow wouldn’t come here, would he?”

“But where else would he go?” She was frustrated.

“We’re not detectives, Rominy. We might have to hire one, or find some officials who’d believe our story and do the detective work themselves. Jake might not even be in Germany. We need Interpol, not our instincts.”

“But we don’t even have proof Jake Barrow exists, or whatever his real name is.”

“Maybe if we told our story, the Chinese police would verify it for Interpol by interviewing the nuns.”

“I’m not going to sic Communist Chinese cops on a Buddhist nunnery.”

He looked back at the quiet village. It looked Disney clean, like everything in this model railroad of a country. “What then?”

“I don’t know. Let’s look around a little more.”

“We can’t even get in the place.”

“There’s a dry moat on this side. I think that sign in German says it leads to a tower. Let’s try that. Maybe we can peek in some windows.”

“You got balls, girl.”

“I just don’t want to waste my plane ticket. And I’m angry for letting life happen to me, instead of me happening
it
.”

“Happening it?”

“You know what I mean. Come on, you’re the one who lost his iPhone to that maniac.”

Skirting the barricades, they made their way down into a grassy moat. A three-quarter moon floated above and gave enough light to mark their way through the mown trench. Down there the castle seemed even higher and darker, a cliff like the cliff that had barred their way to Shambhala. There were actually no windows at moat level to peer into, and Rominy was almost pleased. She’d be glad to get away from this creepy castle, but she had to do
something
. Her best, and then go home.

The moat led them north to the big, flat-roofed tower. The ditch ended where the castle ridge dropped toward the valley below, since no barrier was needed on that steep side. A few farm lights glittered on the plain beyond. They backed away from the tower and looked up, its crenellations picked out by the moon. Nothing . . .

Except
that
.

“Did you see it?” Rominy whispered.

“What?”

“A candle. It moved. Someone’s inside.” She shivered from both excitement and dread.

“This isn’t one of your wacky ‘I see God’ moments, is it?”

“No, there was a light, I swear it.” She pointed. “It was up where the main floor of the tower would be.”

“A janitor with a flashlight.”

“Or someone sneaking around inside.”

“In that case, let’s call the cops.”

“We can’t. It might just be a janitor with a flashlight.”

“Rominy . . .”

“Look, there are some stairs leading down from the base of the tower into a well with a basement door. Maybe we can get in there.”

“You’re going to break into a Nazi castle in the middle of Germany? And
then
make our case to the police?”

“We need
proof
.” She sounded a lot braver than she felt. “It probably is just a janitor.”

“I’m not even getting paid anymore.”

“I let you rent the BMW. Or should I go by myself?”

“No, you need adult supervision. Lacking that, you get me.”

They descended the stairwell to a wooden door with an old-fashioned iron handle and latch. “How are your lock-picking skills?” Sam whispered.

She grasped the latch. It lifted. “Perfect. It’s unlocked.”

He put his hand on her arm. “That’s not necessarily a good sign.”

“Sam, we have to peek. We don’t know what else to do.”

“Vin Diesel and Schwarzenegger would go in shooting.”

“Come
on
.”

It was pitch-black inside. They shuffled into the basement of the tower carefully, wary of unseen steps. Then they halted. Only the palest radiance came from the open door they’d crept through. They could see nothing.

“Light the candle,” she whispered.

They’d found one in the bed-and-breakfast they’d checked into, provided either as insurance against power outages or to let guests cast a romantic mood. Now Sam pulled it out and used the hostel’s matches to light it. The sudden illumination threw back the shadows and revealed a round, stark, gloomy room.

It was the basement of the tower. The roof was a stone dome.

“Oh my God, look at that!” Rominy hissed.

At the dome’s apex was a stone swastika, each arm extended with additional turns. Despite countless war movies it looked, in its geometric intricacy, oddly compelling.

“I’ve seen that kind in Tibet,” Sam muttered. “Sometimes it’s called a sun wheel.”

Their feet were at the edge of a sunken circle in the room, like a shallow pool. Directly below the swastika was a circle within this circle, a depression that sank a few inches deeper. Its purpose was unclear.

Arranged around the room were twelve squat round stone pedestals, like the bases of pillars. Placed on each one was a bronze sculpture.

“The signs of the zodiac,” Rominy said. “What could this be for?”

“Pagan cosmology,” said Sam. “Twelve is an ancient sacred number, like seven. The ancients believed the gods were aligned with the planets, and the Web site said Himmler planned an observatory here. Maybe the Nazis came down here to cast the future.”

“Must have been disheartening if it worked.”

“Maybe they still come down. The sculptures look bright and new, and they’re not all aligned evenly, like someone just set them up.”

“Very perceptive, Mr. Mackenzie!” a new voice said.

The door through which they’d entered closed with a boom, and they whirled. There was a figure in the shadows.

“It’s actually Valhalla,” a woman’s voice said with a crisp German accent. A flashlight blazed, freezing them like deer in its beam. “A Hall of the Dead.” The woman shining the light was standing next to the door, wearing a business suit and pumps and holding a wicked-looking assault rifle. “There are tours that explain all this when the castle is open. Which it is not.”

“The door was unlocked,” Sam tried.

“Convenient, don’t you think?” The light danced on them, making sure they had no weapons.

“You know Jake Barrow?” Rominy asked, her voice trembling despite her best effort to be brave. Why not get to the point?

“Silly girl. Of course I do.”

The woman came closer, the beam lowering so they could see.

And Rominy almost fainted.

Her hair was coiffed, her teeth were perfect, her makeup carefully applied, and her look a generation younger. But holding the gun was Delphina Clarkson, Rominy’s backwoods neighbor from the Cascade Mountains.

49

Wewelsburg, Germany

October 2, Present Day

H
immler built it as a hall for the dead of the SS elite,” Clarkson said, letting the beam bounce around the chamber for a moment. “What the pedestals were designed for isn’t entirely clear. Statues? Urns? The twelve comes of course from the twelve signs of the zodiac, so we decorate accordingly when we meet.”

“Nazis
decorate
?” Sam asked.

“She isn’t a Nazi, she’s my neighbor. Aren’t you?” But why was Delphina dressed up and talking with a German accent? Why was she
here
?

“And you’re supposed to be dead, Rominy. Aren’t you?” Her smile was sly.

“You look different.” She sounded one step behind again, naive and dimwitted, which was precisely what she didn’t want to be.

“No, Rominy, it was Mrs. Clarkson who looked different. I usually look exactly like this.”

The perfection of the disguise, the Tar Heel accent, the language, the age . . . was stupefying. Was
anyone
who they said they were?

“The castle entrance is closed for construction,” Sam said.

“It is closed for
us
,” Clarkson corrected. “Remodeling is a cover. This is a special time, and we wanted a special place, with special privacy, with special uninvited guests. We watched you approach.”