Blood of the Reich

16

Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

September 20, 1938

T he winter palace that would soon house Tibet’s toddler god-king mimicked the majesty of the surrounding mountains. It stacked toward the clouds, tier upon tier of white and red, its walls sloping inward in the Tibetan fashion to give the edifice the firmness of natural cliffs. It was a royal crown the color of snow and dried blood, roofed with gold, and set high atop a hill above the capital of Lhasa. When dawn sun hit the Potala Palace and made it glow, the shrine seemed to be absorbing energy enough to lift free of its escarpment entirely and ascend into heaven like a stone balloon. Birds soared beneath the uppermost windows, and purple and yellow banners marked the royal apartments. Scarlet-robed monks kept watch from terraces, and a thousand windows looked out to green mountains and Kyi-Chu, the Lhasa River. To Raeder and his Germans the four-centuries-old palace was a fever dream, the fantasy of ten thousand long miles turned real, a storehouse of Asian mystery and (reports went) incalculable amounts of religious gold. Now the regent of the kingdom, who ruled until the recent reincarnation of the young Dalai Lama could come of age-a regent named Thupten Jampel Yishey Gyantsen, the Reting from the Rinpoche monastery-had agreed to see the Nazis.

He did so over heated British objections. The Reting wanted to hear what these foreigners might offer, or threaten.

Raeder had already wooed Thupten by sending presents. The Reting had torn wrappings off a telescope, radio set, and music box stamped with the Nazi swastika. Raeder also sent copies of several of Himmler’s favorite books-in German-along with a letter translated into Tibetan by a hired monk. It proposed that the German and Tibetan races might share Aryan ancestry.

The gifts must have provoked curiosity, because now the quintet of SS men were ascending the steep switchbacking staircases that led to the palace’s primary gate, wearing their hastily pressed black Schutzstaffel uniforms trimmed with silver. Despite their conditioning from crossing the Himalayas, the Germans still panted. There were 2,564 steps in the palace, a physical reminder of man’s difficult rise to nirvana. The edifice itself was a dizzying five hundred feet high, a stone skyscraper broad as a dam.

From the red-and-gold gate topped by the heads of seven white lions, Lhasa below looked like a scattering of brown cubes on a cultivated valley floor of yellow barley, an arena encircled by green, grassy mountains. The river curled like a khata scarf, silver where hit by the sun. Monasteries clung to the foothills, and the golden roof of the Jokhang temple in central Lhasa was an answering wink to the gleam of the Potala. The view was one of the most breathtaking Raeder had ever seen, earning his respect. Perhaps the people who had built this did have secrets that could help the Reich triumph.

If so, they must be learned. And stolen.

The Germans were greeted by the dinosaur bellow of the Tibetan long trumpets, the dungchen, a mournful, underworld serenade that echoed against the sloping walls. They passed through gate and passageway and a steward led them into a labyrinth of dark rooms, steep ladders, and dim passageways of the Red Palace, their porter Lokesh translating as they penetrated deeper into a shadowy maze. Gloomy chambers were built around gigantic images of Buddha, each serene and buttery smooth from a fabulous overlay of gold. Ventilation chimneys plunged down story after story like empty elevator shafts, butter lamp flames dancing in the resulting currents of air. There were metal mandalas the size of waterwheels, the sculptures representing exquisite miniature temples that symbolized the universe, each of them gilded with gold and studded with jewels. Adjacent to this artisan glory, the painted wood of the hand-trimmed posts and beams gave a curious mountain lodge feel to the place. The floors were beaten earth and pebbles, tamped into a dry concrete on ancient joists.

“There’s wealth enough here to buy a dozen panzer divisions,” Raeder murmured, “guarded by medieval sentries who could be overcome by a platoon of storm troopers armed with machine pistols. We are conquistadors, comrades, able to view treasures equivalent to the Inca Atahualpa, and yet now we must bow and scrape in order to achieve a greater goal. If Himmler is right, this treasure is mere dross.”

“Dross! Compared to what?” Muller whispered. Slit-eyed Buddhas, golden lamas, and gilded saints looked sternly ahead. The palace was a museum of frozen gold, hundreds of statues, thousands, in a bewildering pantheon.

“Shambhala,” Raeder replied. “The real Shangri-la.”

“That might be Himmler’s fantasy. This is real.”

“For us, what’s real is what the Reichsfuhrer says is real.”

Sufficiently awed and subdued by the splendor, the Germans were taken across the eastern courtyard to the White Palace, its icy color a symbol of peace. More than a hundred people waited in the plaza: guards, monks, emissaries, and petitioners. It was hot in the sun, cold in the shade. After a wait of forty-two minutes-Raeder timed it on his Junghans military watch-the Europeans were led up a short pyramid of stone steps to wooden ones so steep they were almost ladders. Banners with a purple symbol of infinity flanked the door. Inside was dimness that kept only tentative rein on a riot of color, a kaleidoscope of painted reds, golds, blues, greens, and purples on every pillar and beam. The designs could take a year to fully examine and decipher. It was the very opposite of the cold, intimidating austerity of the Third Reich. White, obelisk-shaped posts rose to a mustard-yellow ceiling in the throne room. Cushions were Vatican red, while bowls of ceremonial water were Viking silver. The inside was as baroque as the mountains were bare.

Various functionaries, monks, and hangers-on sat on padded benches in the smoky shadows, murmuring and humming prayers. Light was cast by wicks flaming in tubs of yellow yak butter, the air pungent with incense. The place smelled like every one of its four hundred years.

“Never use a thousand colors when a million will do,” murmured Kranz. “It’s like the explosion of a child’s paint-box set.”

“Look,” whispered Hans Diels, “swastikas!” The symbol was sewn onto tapestries.

“As foreign as this seems, we have, I suspect, in some sense come home,” Reader told his men.

Tibet’s regent sat cross-legged on a padded throne, draped in robes and crowned with a peaked saffron-colored hat that descended over his ears and back of the neck like bird wings. The Reting was a serious-looking, smooth-cheeked, large-eared young man who didn’t look entirely happy about his weight of responsibility. He ruled while the new Dalai Lama, whom he’d helped discover the year before, was coming of age in Kumbum monastery. The majesty of the transition was unsettling. Reting had had a dream of where the reincarnation of the deceased Thirteenth Dalai Lama might be found, and a retinue of holy men had made a pilgrimage to a remote rural home. Eerily, the peasant toddler had picked out the belongings of the dead holy man, shouting, “Mine, mine!” while ignoring other choices. Even to a believer, actually finding a reincarnated presence had been shaking. Soon His Holiness would be brought to Lhasa, but for now Reting was the monarch of the Potala and responsible, with his council, of deciding what to do with these Germans.

The Europeans were stocky, sunburned, hard-looking men, who seemed to want to suck experience in with their mouths instead of feeling it with their souls. The Tibetan thought their eyes darted like those of rodents, their limbs trembled with restlessness, and their black uniforms were forbidding. They wore death’s heads at their collar. Pale, anxious, unhappy men.

The world was squeezing Tibet, the regent knew. There was war to the east between China and Japan. The British had bludgeoned their way into Lhasa more than thirty years before. The Soviet Union was a secretive dark dictatorship hulking beyond the Kunlun Mountains. Airplanes and radio waves were violating the sanctity of distance that had always protected the sacred kingdom. Reting himself had been alerted of Raeder’s approach by British radio. And now these Germans had come claiming some kind of ancestral kinship! Everyone was suddenly Tibet’s friend, because everyone wanted to turn it against their enemies. Which nation should be trusted and which kept out? How could these giants, with their steel machines that groaned and spat fire, be played off against each other?

And then the German spokesman, a man named Raeder, gave a solution.

The handsome visitor began by presenting an album of pictures of Nazi Germany and its leaders, pointing to the National Socialist symbols that seemed inspired by ancient Tibetan iconography. The Fuhrer, like Reting and the future Dalai Lama, was not just the political leader of Germany, Raeder explained. He was the spiritual leader as well, a new kind of god, for a new kind of man.

Some of the pictures depicted huge rallies for him, all the people standing curiously in line, as rigid as posts. They wore helmets and looked like lines of beetles. Reting wanted to laugh at their rigid stiffness but knew that was impolite. He passed the album back.

This Fuhrer ’s lieutenant, Himmler, was intensely interested in the origins of mankind and the history of the Aryan race, Raeder explained. Tibetan nobility had the fine bone structure of the Aryan, and it was in this beautiful country that ancestral proof of their relationship might be hidden. The Germans had come to Tibet to learn if their peoples were related.

“There are even Western theories of ancient powers that might have been found and lost in Tibet,” Raeder said. “My friend Kranz here has been casting masks of facial characteristics and finding remarkable correlations between your citizens and ours. My friend Muller has been making scientific measurements of magnetism and gravity to hunt for hiding places where such powers might reside. My friend Diels wants to study your history, and my friend Eckells to record your ceremonies. Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler has sent us here to offer our help.”

“We hide nothing,” Reting said. “In another chamber I can show you a Buddha made of a thousand pounds of gold. No crypt is needed to secrete it. Our faith is our life. And this life is but a step toward the next one.”

“There is much we can learn from such wisdom,” Raeder replied, even though he believed no such thing. “And much we could share. Some Germans, like Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler, believe in reincarnation, too.”

“Then why did you hunt, when you came before with the Americans?” Clearly, Reting knew more about Raeder than was expected. “Why have you shot animals this time, when you thought we weren’t watching? You killed what may have been your leaders’ ancestors, reincarnated in animal form.”

Raeder shifted uncomfortably. “That was for science.”

“You left them to rot. You must not kill while you are in our kingdom.”

The German gave a curt nod. “We apologize for our custom. We accede to your wisdom.”

“The sanctity of life is a path toward nirvana.”

“We Germans appreciate your beliefs.”

Reting shook his head. “I’ve seen your books and movies. We believe in an escape from passions, and you believe in heightening them. We believe in losing our desires, and you believe in feeding them. We believe ambition leads to dissatisfaction, and you believe ambition is life’s purpose. We believe in exploring what is within, and you believe in exploring what is without.”

The Germans looked at each other, murmuring. Then Raeder tried again.

“It’s true there are differences, but there are similarities as well. You believe in perfecting your soul through many incarnations, and we believe in perfecting all mankind through natural selection and the discipline of National Socialism. We both believe in past ages better than the present, and a future of promise. We are both, your monks and we Nazis, idealists in our own way.” He took a breath. “But we also believe in the importance of this life, and use science and engineering to improve it. The world is shrinking, regent, and you’ll want powerful friends if your giant neighbors press too close.”

“Friendship is why we didn’t arrest you as you approached Lhasa.”

“And friendship is why more Germans should come here to protect you. We can teach your soldiers.”

“More Germans? With your American friends?”

“The Americans are not our friends. I was here on an academic partnership on that earlier expedition, but their leader, a man named Benjamin Hood, was jealous of my achievements and tried to thwart them. You must never allow Americans here. They are a greedy, shallow people. They care only for money.”

“And you do not?”

“We Germans are scholars and idealists. We could help search for lost secrets that could help us both.”

“Ah, secrets. What everyone seeks.”

“There are reports of a lost kingdom of Shambhala, are there not?”

“There’s a mural of it here in the Potala,” Reting said. “It is our Olympus, our Atlantis, our utopia. It is a kingdom ringed by impenetrable mountains, accessible only to the most holy. There, poverty, hunger, sickness, and crime are unknown. People live for a hundred years. At the center is a glittering palace where the sacred Kalachakra teachings are kept. And someday, when wickedness is rampant and the world is engulfed in catastrophic warfare, the mists that hide Shambhala will lift and its king will ride forth with his host to destroy the forces of evil and establish a new Golden Age that will last a thousand years.”

“Not entirely different from the prophecies of the Christian Bible.”

“Which were inspired, perhaps, by Shambhala, if your theories of ancient connections are correct.”

“Or Shambhala by the West. Who knows?”

“Once, in the distant past, all was one. Just as in the universe.”

“Yes. The northern legends of the Germanic people have similar echoes. So perhaps we were indeed, our people and yours, once one. And now we share symbolism.” Raeder pointed to a swastika.

“But not necessarily alliance. Tibet doesn’t want the world’s quarrels.”

“And yet the world is quarreling.”

“And what do you want for your friendship?”

“What if Shambhala is true in some way and could be found and learned from? That is what the Reichsfuhrer believes. Its secrets could ensure the security of your country and mine for a long time.”

“If any Tibetan has found Shambhala, he has not returned.”

“But my men are willing to look for you, with your guidance. We believe it exists. But we need your help to find it.”

“Shambhala exists as much as anything exists in the dream we call life,” the regent said. “But I believe the journey to it is within one’s heart as much as upon one’s legs, and to understand one’s heart is perilous indeed.”

Raeder smiled. This was the kind of Eastern nonsense that would keep these societies in the Middle Ages while the master race took control. “Then let us Germans take the risk for you.”

“You have the right consciousness?”

“We have the right will. We condition our hearts to probe the wilderness. I respect your inner journey, but Shambhala is a physical place as well. Do you know where the kingdom is supposed to lie?”

“The traditional belief is a lost valley deep in the Kunlun Mountains at the head of a disappearing river, far from every trade route and habitation. There, the voices of the dead inhabit the wind. Difficult to find and, by reputation, dangerous to penetrate. There are impossible gorges and impossible mountains.”

“Impossible until it is done.”

The young regent considered his visitors. He’d heard a hundred stories. Tibet’s past was a fog of history and myth, a fog one could get lost in-but a fog rising from a lake of truth. These Europeans had no idea of the hazards ahead, or the terrible things they might discover. “You think you can do this when we have not?”

“Only with your help and permission. As you said, we explore the world when perhaps we should be exploring our souls. But we are very good at exploring the world.”

“And if you found what you are looking for?”

“We would share what we found.” The Germans nodded.

Reting looked into the shadows of the room. There, on shelves, were stacked thousands of holy books, peche, unbound leaves wrapped in cloth and tied with wooden end pieces, dating back centuries beyond counting. The books were enigmatic, but had many clues. One remarkable young nun had been compiling those clues. She’d met Westerners before, and had prophesized this moment. She’d warned that modern Tibet must rediscover Shambhala before foreigners did, or ensure that it could never be found.

Her perspective had been poisoned, Reting knew. There were rumors upon rumors about Keyuri Lin.

Still, he and she had made their plans.

The Reting’s visitors were tough, restless men, obsessed with the longings the Buddha taught should be escaped. But here they were in the Potala, which they’d been forbidden to approach. Where else might they reach? What if they could give Tibet real power in a dangerous world?

“Perhaps we can make a partnership,” he said, watching the Germans.

The Westerners’ eyes lit with ambition and greed. “The world’s crisis is growing darker,” Raeder said. “Time is of the essence. Do you have any trucks or cars that would speed part of the journey to the Kunlun?”

The regent smiled. “The British do. Ask them.” Let the Europeans quarrel among themselves. He wasn’t going to risk his own motorcar, shipped in pieces on animal backs and reassembled in Lhasa so he could drive on the palace parade ground. So he’d heed Keyuri and work with these interlopers to either retrieve rumored secrets or get rid of the Germans entirely. The woman had counseled that perhaps they could do both-this odd woman who studied things that were rightly the province of men.

The Germans shifted. “The English will not help us,” Raeder said. “We fought a war with them a generation ago.”

Reting shrugged. “We have a scholar, a most unusual nun of most unusual curiosity, who has studied the Shambhala legend more than any monk. Does your culture allow you to work with a woman as a guide?”

“Of course,” Raeder said, not admitting that he agreed with the Nazis that a woman’s best duty was raising children. “European nations have been ruled by queens as well as kings.” The Germans glanced at each other. This seeming cooperation was more than they’d hoped, and they were both elated and wary.

Reting clapped his hands, once, and monks bowed and disappeared in the shadows. A short time later, they led a young woman into the reception area. Her head was cropped as short as a boot camp recruit in the fashion of both monks and nuns, but she was quite pretty, her features fine, her lashes long. She advanced with eyes low, a sheaf of papers and maps in her hand.

“Keyuri Lin will give you what guidance we can,” the Reting said.

Raeder started. His companions looked at him curiously, but he had eyes only for this female scholar, his face suddenly pale. She lifted her head.

It was the woman Benjamin Hood had taken from him.

Each waited for the other to shout warning, but neither did.