Blood of the Reich

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 The millionaire had gone mad, most thought, and withdrawn like a hermit crab somewhere into the American wilderness.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