Blood of the Reich

32

Shambhala, Tibet

October 3, 1938

H ood dared not fire, lest he hit the woman. The Germans were under no such compunction, and muzzle flashes blazed in the blackness. Luckily the American had thrown himself flat, and bullets ricocheted with an awful whine while Raeder shouted at them to stop.

“Listen! Listen for his footsteps!”

Sound echoed away. Hood inched across the floor.

“I think we hit him, Kurt.”

“You almost hit me, you idiot.”

“Do you have the girl?”

“No, she bit me!”

“ Scheisse! ”

“Where’s the staff?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t see a thing. I didn’t know it could be so dark.”

“We’re dead men. Muller was right.”

“Shut up, shut up! Listen!”

Something rolled across the floor. Hood snaked on his belly toward it and reached. The staff. As his hand closed upon the smooth crystal, it was as if his finger was inserted in a light socket. A jolt shuddered through his arm and he winced.

The staff glowed, illuminating their tableau.

Keyuri was on her belly, a dozen feet away.

The Germans turned.

Raeder, his rifle on the floor, sprang with a knife, his boot coming down on Hood’s wrist that held the. 45. The SS dagger swept down, to pinion his other hand, which held his staff.

Hood twisted as the knife struck, feeling a sharp pain in his ring finger and meanwhile losing hold of his gun. Then Raeder’s boot slipped off his wrist and stamped on the staff.

There was a bang, like a short circuit. Some mysterious but stupendous energy kicked the German backward and he fell and skidded, with a grunt.

The American picked up the strange weapon in a bloody grip, wincing, and swept it toward the Nazis, not knowing what to expect.

Something bright, hot, and terrifying stabbed out. It also stabbed in, to Hood’s injured hand, and he shouted.

There was a boom like thunder and lightning that was blinding. The Germans shrieked, hands to their eyes and ears, frozen in the flash. It was like looking into the sun. Then there was a crack on the ceiling and stone rained down, slamming against the floor and bouncing. The staff and Hood went skidding away across the floor, shot like a puck, his teeth clenched in agony. Finally it was dark again, except his eyes were filled with sparks from the dazzle. He could dimly hear the Germans shouting, and he wondered if any had been hit by the debris. What had happened? It was as if the staff had a life of its own, or as if his thoughts had merged with its properties to eject some kind of thunderbolt. If this is what Shambhala held, he wanted no part of it.

Yet he didn’t let go. As his night vision returned, he realized the thunder stick still glowed dimly.

Light footsteps, and someone seized his arm. “Hurry!” It was a hiss. Keyuri. “I have your pistol.”

“Then shoot them.”

“I tried. It’s jammed.”

Hood staggered up. The third finger on his left hand was hanging by a tendon, blood gushing. The hand, seemingly electrocuted as well as sliced, felt on fire. Meanwhile his gun hand had been stomped on. The room echoed with German curses. Keyuri clutched his arm and forced the tip of the staff to the ground to mute its illumination, like an aisle light in a dim theater. Numbly, he followed her pull. He thought at first that she’d lead him past the bones and onto the main causeway they’d descended. But the Germans were between them and the door. Instead she was pulling him toward one of the tunnels that led away from the side of the machine.

There was the crack of a revolver and a bullet whined off machinery. They ducked around a massive metal arm, making themselves invisible, just as the submachine gun went off with a stutter. More bullets pinged and buzzed.

“Stop! They’re ricocheting toward us!”

“But they’re getting away!” The Germans began arguing some more.

“Where are we going?” Hood whispered to Keyuri.

“Where we close one door and open another, if you can use that magic staff again.” They entered the tunnel, a stumbling trot taking them along horizontal pipes. He looked back. There was a faint whitish glow; the German light sticks must have reignited. Hood’s body ached, and he mentally cursed Raeder. That madman made a mess of everything.

“They’ve gone the wrong way!” he heard the German cry. “We’ve got them trapped.”

“Leave them,” another said. “Muller was right. This place is evil.”

“No, I want her and I want the staff. She knows more than she’s telling!”

Keyuri caught Hood’s arm and they stopped a moment, looking back. “Seal us in.”

He looked at her questioningly.

“There’s supposed to be a second door, a back door, somewhere deep inside this underground city. Use the staff, seal us in, and we’ll look for it.”

“This is legend?”

“This is our only chance.”

He lifted the staff again, feeling energy surge through it and him, his arm shaking. It glowed bright, and he heard the Germans shout and begin to run toward them. Blood dripped from his grip to the floor. Gritting his teeth, he aimed toward the ceiling of the tunnel entrance. Another crack and boom, the recoil excruciating, but then with a rumble a section of rock roof gave way and crashed onto the pipes at the tunnel mouth, a cave-in that blocked that entrance. Dust blew back at them, grit swirling.

Hood’s head ached and his ears rang. They were in a tunnel about ten feet high that stretched as far as he could see, large pipes running through it at breast height.

“Bravo,” he said. “Sealed us in. Trapped like moths in a jar.”

“And them out, for a while.”

The staff’s illumination was dimmer than before. Was it weakened like a battery? Keyuri pulled at him again and they went on, deeper into Shambhala.

“Where’s this second door?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I think this fire stick is losing its power. Will its light go out?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should we run?”

Now she pulled to stop him. “No.” She wiped her mouth free of a smear of blood. “He hit me,” she said when his look was questioning. “What happened to your hand?”

He clenched his half-severed finger. “Raeder cut me. And the recoil from this devil weapon didn’t help, either. Hurts like hell.” He felt dizzy from the craziness of the last hour. “How did the Shambhalans use these things?”

“Open your hand.”

Wincing, he did so. She placed it on one of the huge pipes so the damage to his digit was more apparent. It was throbbing and covered with blood.

“Now, kiss me.”

“What?” She was looking at him with her great dark eyes, her features fine as polished porphyry, her lips insistent, her hair still short but growing out since leaving Lhasa. She seized his head with one hand, bent him to her, and kissed him fiercely, not like a nun but a lover.

Then the pain from his hand seemed to explode, and he roared. She’d chopped with another knife and completely severed his finger!

“God Almighty! What did you do, Keyuri?”

“I’m sorry, but we’ve got to bind it. Give me your scarf.”

She took the white silk Reting had given him in Lhasa and ripped off a portion, using it to wrap and gap where his finger had been and cinching down on the dressing.

“Couldn’t you warn me?” His eyes were watering, it hurt so bad.

“That would have made it worse.” She inspected her dressing. “We’ve got to get the bleeding to stop or you might faint.”

He sat down hard against the pipes. “That might happen anyway. I’ve had quite a day.” He couldn’t quite believe where he was. Probably the greatest discovery in his museum’s history, and he’d just deliberately caused a cave-in. Roy Chapman Andrews would have shot his way out by now.

She knelt beside him. “Me, too.” She picked up the severed finger. “I may use this for a blood lock.”

“A what?”

“The locks of this place, like to the door of that main tunnel, can be opened only by the right person’s blood. Raeder said he had the necessary blood from a long-dead German hero.”

“That makes no sense.”

“He thinks the Germans and Shambhalans are cousins. Aryans.”

Hood laid his head back. “And to think he and I were partners, once. Scientific colleagues. I sure know how to pick ’em.”

“He’s still embarrassed you fired him. Ashamed of what he is, but unable to change.” Keyuri looked at him, her own cheeks wet now with tears. “I’m sorry I had to do that to your hand. I’m sorry destiny made you come back here.” She leaned and kissed him again. “I’m sorry you picked me, not just Kurt. But we were meant to be together again, Benjamin.”

Despite the pain he kissed back, the communion an instinctual antidote to everything that was going on. Her lips were full, ripe, soft, everything that was opposite the machine nightmare that was Shambhala. Pressing against her seemed to lessen the pain, and then she was pressing against him, and he groaned with sudden lust and longing.

He broke from their kiss, panting. “Keyuri, I’m sorry, I can’t help myself, I know you’ve taken vows…”

“You must have me now.” Her voice was commanding, insistent. “I think we may die in here, and I want you to make love first.”

“For God’s sake, we’re in a cave running from a lunatic.”

“The tunnel is sealed. Now, Ben, it’s important! I want to erase the memory of Raeder. Now, now, please!” She was crying. “Please, to undo what he did to me.”

She was clawing at his clothes, unbuttoning his pants, and to his own surprise he was responding. What was wrong with him? She was a Buddhist nun! This was as crazy as the Nazis, but of course he didn’t care. She pulled him down on top of her, her robes pulled up, knees high, hips lifted, and in seconds they’d fused. She clung and rocked urgently. “Please, we may never have time again.”

She was impatient. A few thrusts, she bucked, he finished.

“I’m sorry, you took me by surprise…”

She put her finger to his lips. Rather than be displeased with his speed she seemed fiercely satisfied, pulling him as deep as she could, hips quivering as she gently rocked. “It’s good.”

At least he’d forgotten about his hand.

Keyuri let out a loud, shuddering breath, squeezing her eyes shut. Then she reached up to pull him close again and kissed, fiercely, and then just as abruptly pushed him off her. “We must go, but this was my only chance for salvation.”

“That’s some salvation.” He looked at her in wonder. “What about your vows?”

“He already raped me again.”

“Raeder? Did the other krauts know?”

“Yes and no. I don’t know. What does it matter?” There was sorrow there, a profound sense of loss and doom. “I just didn’t want him to be my last. Now, tend to your clothes. We have to hurry to find the second door.”

“I thought you said you sealed the Germans off? Seems to me we have eternity.” He looked down the tunnel into the dark.

“To Westerners, everything is a line. To us, all is circular. Look down the tunnel. How far can you see?”

“It’s dim…”

“The pipe doesn’t extend forever, it disappears, like a ship going over the horizon. This tunnel gently curves.”

“What does that mean?”

“The tunnel is a circle. If you walk far enough from this end of the machine you will come to the other, like walking around the world. The beginning is the end, and the end the beginning. These pipes stretch to infinity, they never end. And yet they go nowhere at all.”

“Is that some kind of Tibetan riddle?”

“Whatever is in these pipes, it’s meant to come back to where it started,” she said. “That’s not a riddle, it’s a mandala, a map of the universe.”

He stood. “But if this tunnel leads back to the machine…”

“Yes. They can come at us from the other end. We have to hope it will take them a while to figure that out.”

“Maybe they’ve given up. And we’ve got this crazy staff.”

“Raeder would give you up. Even give me up. But not the staff.”

Hood took a breath, furious at Raeder for Keyuri all over again, but also oddly renewed. She hadn’t depleted him, she’d tapped new strength. She’d recharged him, like the machine apparently had done to the magic wand here. By blazes, was she in love with him still? Was he in love with her, as Reting and Beth believed? What happened to the three of them if they got out of this nightmare?

But Keyuri, he sensed, didn’t expect to.

“Okay,” he said. “Listen for Nazis coming the other way. The light from this staff keeps getting weaker, and I’ve got a feeling there’s not much pop left. I think it’s low on ammo. Give me back my pistol.”

“You can’t carry it in your injured hand and I told you, it doesn’t work.”

He grimaced. “We need to find that second door. Then we can destroy the tunnel in the other direction and escape.”

The rock tunnel they were fleeing down had no decoration on its sides, and no doors. It just ran on and on, mile after mile, a tube in solid rock. The pipes were mute beside it. They ran, then jogged, then trotted, wheezing from exertion. Mile followed mile. Hood left bright drops of blood on the floor like a spoor trail.

“How long is this tunnel?”

“Not long enough,” said Keyuri.

And then there was a burst of machine-gun fire.

Bullets whined and pinged as they bounced down the curving tunnel. It was a German coming from the other side. They were trapped.

Hood clenched the staff. “Better to go down fighting,” he said. “I can try to blast with this, or maybe hide in the dark behind the big pipe and clobber them. You’ve got your knife… Keyuri?”

He turned. She’d fallen down.

“Keyuri!”

Blood was pooling out beneath her onto the smooth rock floor.

One of the Germans, not Raeder, shouted. “Give it up, Hood! I have a machine gun! Surrender the staff and I let you live!”

The Nazi wasn’t coming close, however. He’d seen the explosion at the other end of the tunnel and was keeping a wary distance.

Hood knelt near the nun and gently turned her over. The front of her coat was sticky with blood and she was wheezing. It looked like she’d been hit in the lower lung. Not instantly fatal, but not good.

“Keyuri, I’m going to drag you between the pipes and the far wall. At least it will protect you from a stray bullet.”

She moaned. “Maybe he’ll go past us,” she whispered.

“No, he’ll see the light of the staff. How do we turn it off?”

“I don’t know.”

The beam of a flashlight stabbed toward them. The German kept a cautious fifty yards away, too far for accurate submachine-gun fire but also far enough to be out of easy range of their thunder stick.

“Hood, I know you’re there! Come out with your hands up if you want to live!” he called in English. “Come out, and we spare the nun!”

He and Keyuri stayed silent, hiding behind a pipe.

“You can’t escape, you blocked your own retreat. Come out, American, and we negotiate, eh? Do you want the girl hurt?”

Hood squeezed the shaft with his left hand, feeling the familiar jolt of power. His only hope was that he got a shot at the German before the German saw him.

Then the Nazi flashlight went out.

The staff glowed brighter. Amber illumination peeked from under the piping.

“Ah, there you are. You ran with the wrong man, Keyuri. He led you into a trap.”

Why not at least save her? She wasn’t dead yet. “I’m going to surrender in return for your life,” he whispered. “Raeder still wants you in his own twisted way. He may still spare you.”

She shook her head. “If he does, it will be to destroy me slowly. He needs to destroy people, Ben. You know that.”

They heard footsteps, a heavy tread, coming toward them. Slowly, cautiously, inexorably. “Don’t make me kill you!” the German called.

“Let him come closer,” she whispered. “Then erase him.”

Feisty for a Buddhist nun. Hood rose and braced, dreading to have to fire the painful thunder stick again. Would it bring everything down on top of them? Then the flashlight came on, blinding. Its cone of illumination fell directly on him, and then played over the pool of Keyuri’s blood.

“I see you! Stand, stand!” The stubby snout of the machine gun gleamed, dark and oily in the gloom. The German was nervous but excited. “Come out, come out, it’s your only chance! Come out or I machine-gun the girl!”

Slowly Hood put down the staff.

“No!” Keyuri groaned.

He didn’t care. The German was too far away. A thunderbolt could bring the whole tunnel down on them. He had to save her.

“Raise your hands! Climb over the pipes!”

He began to do so.

The German raised the submachine gun. “Now. We finish this and get out of here.” He nodded and aimed.

And then there was the crack of a pistol. Several shots rang out and the German jerked, a hole appearing in the middle of his forehead, and he slowly toppled backward. A tendril of blood ran down his face. His torso was punctured, too. His submachine gun fell with a clatter. He sat down with a woof, looking at where a new light blazed from the ceiling. His mouth opened, as if seeing an apparition.

And now a new voice came down, as if from heaven.

“This way, college boy. And bring baldy there with you.”