Blood of the Reich

28

Shambhala, Tibet

October 3, 1938

K urt Raeder’s mother had taught him that life is a series of disappointments, where reality falls short of hope. She’d been widowed by the Great War and impoverished by that widowhood. She’d almost starved in the chaos of the Weimar Republic that followed Germany’s defeat and become bitter because of it, a shrew for whom even the good was never good enough. She’d spent Kurt’s youth recoiling from any suitors and railing against fate. In reaction, Raeder had retreated into adventure stories. His childhood strategy was to believe that if he just hiked hard enough, or climbed high enough, or won prizes enough, he could reach the end of the rainbow and flee his family gloom. His thick-necked, mustached father, who disappeared at Verdun, had glared balefully at him from a photograph fading in a tarnished frame; he’d sought to please the brutal ghost who had beaten him in his earliest years by fighting bullies, until he became one himself. Always, though, Kurt felt destined for something nobler than his mother’s religion of pessimism and his father’s eternal dissatisfaction. He would scale Valhalla.

Well, he had hiked and climbed now. He’d come to the very end of the earth, a place of thin cold air and epic vastness, a Hyperborea of ice and rock, seeking the victory of the hero stories he’d escaped in as a child. And here, finally, was the rainbow’s end, the El Dorado he’d dreamed of all his life.

He’d found Shambhala. He was sure of it.

The survivors of their party had fallen silent when they emerged from the gorge into the valley. Even Keyuri, who had somehow betrayed him to Hood, had gone quiet in awe and trepidation. The valley into which they’d emerged was surrounded by cliffs so precipitous that it was craterlike, glaciers hanging above like half-descended curtains. A dozen waterfalls that cascaded down from those ice fields were drawn like wavering lines of chalk, feeding the river they’d just inched along. The river, gray and cold, bisected the valley. There was no pass at the upper end, just towering mountains. The effect was claustrophobic but sheltering.

The valley floor was a wonder. It was green in this otherwise brown Tibetan autumn, not lush by any means, but full of grass and heather.

“The mountains must catch the clouds and wring out more rain,” Muller speculated, as much to himself as to the others. “The cliffs trap warmth.”

This pasture was broken by old ruins, a crumbled maze of roofless walls and pillars. Their style was vaguely Tibetan, the walls sloping slightly inward to mimic mountain slopes and brace against earthquakes. Yet in detail, the stonework was different from anything Raeder’s party had seen. There was a hint of Egypt, Rome, and China, and yet the architecture was none of these and impossible to date. Abstract patterns created a frieze on some of the broken walls. Pediments, buttresses, and porches had carvings of animals both recognizable and fantastic, from lions and camels to winged serpents, shaggy yetis, and crocodiles the length of a Mediterranean galley. Here the remnants echoed Babylonia; there the geometry of the Yucatan. Erosion had taken its toll, but there were still bits of bright paint on the stonework.

“This place might once have been as brilliantly colored as the Potala in Lhasa,” said Diels, the archaeologist. “The Egyptian and Greek temples were like that, too, before the paint wore away.”

“We’ve found our lost city,” Raeder announced, unnecessarily. He’d expected the others to cry out in wonder at this moment, or slap him on the back, but instead everyone seemed subdued and wary. There was something haunted about this place.

“Feel the air,” said Diels. “It’s warmer, is it not? Not warm, but warmer than outside. Isn’t that strange?”

“There’s an odd tingling, too,” said Kranz. “Do you feel that? A silent buzzing, like electricity. The feeling you get in a generating plant. Could this be some trick of electromagnetism, Julius, like an energy field?”

“If we’d brought my instruments, I could tell you.” Muller was grumpy.

“And if I had my cache of schnapps, we could drink a toast,” quipped Diels.

“Are you mad?” snapped Muller. “Franz Eckells is dead! I can’t get my instruments because our leader has destroyed our only escape. And you want to celebrate? Or comment on the temperature?”

“A scientific phenomenon.” Diels sounded hurt. “We can’t bring Franz back, and he was too much the Nazi brownnose anyway. Come, Julius, we’re making one of the greatest discoveries in the history of the world! Don’t you feel anything?”

“I feel trapped. Look at what you’re seeing. The city’s dead. There’s no way out. We’re led by a fanatic.”

“And I feel on the brink of achievement,” Raeder retorted. “Germany sent us here out of conviction that there were valuable secrets to be learned. This is what Heinrich Himmler dreamed of. Sulk if you want by the river, here, Muller, but the rest of us are going to explore Shambhala.”

“Even her, this Delilah who somehow helped the American find us?” Muller pointed to Keyuri.

“Especially her, to interpret what we find. She can scheme all she wants, but the American can’t follow us. And look at her eyes. She wants to explore this, too. You didn’t really believe it, did you, Keyuri? You thought we were chasing a myth. But German will prevailed. National Socialism prevailed.”

“Destiny prevailed,” she said. “Remember, none have ever returned.”

“I’ll return. With Vril.” He addressed the others. “Unsling your weapons. We don’t know who might be hiding here.”

“Ghosts,” Muller said.

They advanced into the bowl, the geophysicist reluctantly bringing up the rear. The valley’s sides had been terraced, Raeder realized, with the glacial streams feeding pools that at one time were part of a complex irrigation system. At some point in the past this had been an intensively farmed oasis. Why had this civilization tucked itself away like this? Who’d come to build it?

They found themselves walking on what must have been the principle avenue, many of the paving blocks heaved or broken. Their gun muzzles swept the road. The lost city’s layout and order became plainer, but so did the fact that it had almost certainly been abandoned, contrary to myths of long life and perfect harmony. Had it fallen prey to catastrophe, or to the simple old age that doomed all civilizations? This find was the fantasy of any archaeologist-Diels was walking goggle-eyed-but Raeder’s goal was a practical one, to find a new kind of power.

They passed two enormous statues of warriors or kings, each at least sixty feet high. The men, one on either side of the avenue, were holding staffs thrust forward in their fists. Their bodies were encased in a kind of chain mail. This was overlain by rigid armor across the chest and groin. Curiously, however, their helmeted heads were turned backward, as if looking for followers through the narrow slit of their visors. Their faces couldn’t be seen.

“They don’t know whether they’re coming or going,” joked Kranz. “Not the most heroic of poses.”

“They’re looking for something behind them, I think,” said Diels.

“Or they’re turning away,” said Muller.

“Turning from the face of God,” Keyuri said quietly.

“God?”

“Or his manifestation. The power of the universe. It’s blinding, like the sun.”

“Hmph,” said Muller. “What do you think, Kurt?”

“I think all humans have historically worshipped the sun because it’s the obvious source of life on our planet. We’re dust and water animated by energy. Some theosophists believe there’s a black sun at the center of our planet with similar power. Perhaps the Shambhalans tapped that, or brought their own energy with them. Look at those friezes. They could be ships, but we’re thousands of miles from the ocean. They could also be flying machines, or rocket ships like the American Buck Rogers. Their suits could be spacesuits. Or they could be gods, with winged chariots.”

“But why Tibet, in this valley?” said Kranz.

“If you wanted an outpost or base hidden from hostile natives,” Diels speculated, “this is the very best place. It’s too high for conventional civilization, and far away from roads and cities. It’s on the highest plateau of our planet. The valley is hidden, but easily defended. Maybe they just stopped here to build something or repair something.”

“Who stopped here?”

“The helmet men,” Raeder said. “Gods, or visitors from outer space. The ancestors of us Aryans. They cast the seeds of civilization, completed what they wished, and moved on. Possibly leaving descendants, Germans, to rule the earth.”

“Or they didn’t leave but just died,” Keyuri said quietly.

“Like any number of European explorers,” Muller said. “Disease, starvation, despair. Maybe what they were seeking didn’t work.”

“Or they couldn’t control it,” she said.

“I will, if it’s here,” Raeder said. He looked at his companions. “Are we women, worried about the worst like Keyuri? Or are we going to get what we came for?” He pointed. “I think the helmet men are looking back at that tunnel entrance. See that glow? That’s the real entrance to Shambhala. They aren’t guardians. They’re guides.”

Just then they heard the whine of the airplane again. The sky was already twilight blue, everything in shadow. The biplane caught a last ray of the sun at its height and shone for a moment like a star.

“It’s Hood,” Raeder growled. “Looking for us. He could strafe us, even! Run to that cave before he spots us. He’ll soon run out of fuel and turn back. If he ever finds his way in here, it will be too late. We’ll have Vril and be ready for him.” He jerked Keyuri’s arm and began hurrying her. The other Germans broke into a trot as well. Ahead was an arched entry into a hill, the stone portal carved into a scrolling tapestry of what looked like mathematical and geometric symbols. From within came a faint green glow.

The opening was as big as a train tunnel. The causeway they were on peaked at the entrance and then sloped down into the earth. While the others ran under its roof a few yards, Raeder paused to look up at the sky. The biplane was circling aimlessly. There was no place to land. Hood had come all this way for nothing.

Satisfied, the German stepped inside. “Somewhere below is our El Dorado.”