The Kunlun Mountains, Tibet
September 19, Present Day
N ine days after leaving Lhasa, the trio of Americans stiffly got out of a Land Cruiser that had been transformed from white to brown from dust and mud. There’d been three flats and one broken water pump, all patched by Sam. Pavement had turned to dirt road, and dirt to rocky track. They jounced down jumbled dry streambeds and ground through the gears to creep up snaking passes. Rominy’s heart almost stopped as they crept over a rope-and-wood suspension bridge hung across a precipitous canyon, water shining a thousand feet down. Had the Germans come this way? Later, the wind cut like a knife on one particularly high pass. There were still patches of dirty snow from the winter before, and the smell of new autumn storms in the air. Beyond were a vast basin, and then the white wall of the Kunlun. Now they parked directly below those remote and lofty mountains.
To their left ran a cold river, gray with glacial silt. They’d picked up its trace where it sank into the sands on the plain. As they drove toward its source the river became loud and vigorous, originating in a waterfall that plunged hundreds of feet before running white down a slope of shattered rock. The escarpment ahead was otherwise as sheer as a fortress wall, its black rock cliffs topped by slopes of ice and snow. They’d come to a dead end.
“This is where you want to be?” Sam asked.
Jake studied his GPS unit. “If the coordinates from the documents are correct, yes. Instruments weren’t as good in those days, but Hood and Calloway had navigation skills.”
Their guide turned and surveyed the landscape. Behind a pitiless plain, ahead precipitous mountains, chill gray sky, and lonely wind. “Scenic. If you like eastern Wyoming.”
“What’s beyond that waterfall?”
“Never been here, man. I’m feeling pretty cocky I got you here at all. This is pretty intense. It’s not like we can call for pizza.”
“No, Sam, we cannot.” He took out the binoculars and studied the cliff. “Rominy, what did Hood’s satchel say about the waterfall?”
“That there was one, low on the cliff, with a canyon above it. This looks different from the drawing, Jake. The falls seem much higher. I’m not sure we’re at the right place.”
“We’d better be in the right place.” He studied the falls, as if willing them to look like he expected. “We’ve come ten thousand miles to be in the right place.”
There was silence. Jake was the one who had used his GPS to direct them here.
“So,” Sam finally asked, “we just going to hang out? Is this what you came for?”
“We could camp by the river,” Rominy said.
“I came for the history of the Kurt Raeder expedition of 1938,” Jake finally said. “We’re going to climb that cliff and see what’s on the other side.”
“You don’t mean we the literal way, right?” Sam said. “It’s like the royal we, meaning you?”
“We’ve been sitting on our asses in that Land Cruiser for nine days. The exercise will do us good. I’ll lead the way.”
“Jake, I can’t climb that,” Rominy said.
“I think I see a way up. We’ll fix some ropes.”
“And just what’s so fascinating on the other side?” Sam asked.
Jake considered the guide before answering, debating how much to confide. “Shambhala,” he revealed. “If the stories are correct.”
“Shambhala!” Sam groaned. “Come on, we’re not here for some Shangri-la legend, are we? I could have talked you out of that one over beer in Lhasa.”
“I’ll tell you when I look over the top of that waterfall.”
Sam shook his head. “Tourists.”
Jake smiled. “Guides. You can’t get decent help these days.”
“Why don’t I just wait with Rominy down here?”
“It’s not safe to climb alone. Besides, I feel better having us all together. We’re united on this. Right, Rominy?”
She frowned, looking up the falls. “I’ve never felt so far from everything. Sam, is there anything out here?”
“No. But I’m getting paid to humor your boyfriend. He’ll see for himself, we’ll come back down and console ourselves with Rice Krispies Treats and Bailey’s. Sugar makes everything go down.”
“Gear up, Mary Poppins,” Jake said.
Once more, the ever-surprising Mr. Barrow seemed to have a good idea of what he was doing. They each took two coils of line, heavy but reassuring, and a hammer with some spikes Jake called pitons. “We’ll string a rope across the worst pitches. It’s mostly a scramble across rubble. Won’t be too bad.”
And it wasn’t, at first. The three of them ascended alongside the roaring plunge of the river, staying just outside the mist that coated the rocks with frost. It was mostly like climbing a steep staircase. But eventually they came to sheer “pitches,” or stretches of cliff where they couldn’t boulder-hop their way. Jake went ahead, driving pitons and shouting down to Sam until a length of rope was secured. That was their handrail. With it, Rominy found the courage to climb higher. The last two weeks had carried her a long way from her confined existence as cubicle girl. They’d been camping in the Tibetan wilderness, fixing tires, pouring fuel out of jerry cans, and speculating under the stars. She made love to Jake in their tent. His anticipatory happiness calmed her, and his wacky historical and scientific passions were tolerable. He was very bright. She’d fallen in love with him, too, but hadn’t confessed it yet.
Nor had they taken off the rings.
“Your boyfriend looks like he’s done this before,” Sam remarked as they waited for Jake to lead a pitch above.
“He’s climbed in the Cascades back home,” she said. “For a journalist, he’s a jack-of-all-trades.”
“All this for a story?”
“He thinks it could make his career.”
“Looks like he’s got a hell of an expense account.”
“He found me an inheritance. I’m helping.”
“Hmph.” Sam looked skeptical. “How about you?”
“How about me?”
“What do you do when you’re not retracing Nazi footsteps?”
“I’m a publicist. I spend my days promoting bug-laden software that will be obsolete six months after we sell it. I’m like Dilbert.”
“Oh.” He unwrapped a piece of gum. “Want some?”
“No, thanks.”
He put it in his mouth to chew. “How’d you two meet?”
She pulled back her filthy hair. “He kidnapped me after my car blew up.”
Mackenzie looked at her questioningly, like she was joking. “Oh… kay.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I guess. You know this guy well?”
“Two weeks.”
“And you come all the way to Tibet with him, wear a wedding ring, and pretend to be his wife?”
“Like I said, it’s a long story.”
“Don’t you find his Nazi crap a little weird?”
“He just likes history.” Mackenzie made her defensive.
“He talks about them like they were normal somehow. Like he could explain them. Who does that, man? I asked him what he wrote for the paper and he was real vague. He just seems a little… off. You know? You seen his stuff?”
She was annoyed. Sam Mackenzie had no idea what had been going on. “No.”
“Meet his friends? Visit the paper?”
“Trust me, we haven’t had time.”
“But this guy’s on the level, right?”
“Hasn’t he paid you well so far?” Zing!
“Well, that’s the thing. Most guys your age are backpackers, roaming Asia on the cheap. They’re always trying to bid me down, or trying to write a check, or cursing at the cash machine at the Jokhang for not giving them what they want, because they don’t really have it. And Jake pulls out all this cash.” He shook his head. “I guess that’s impressive that he got you to give it to him. But unusual, too, you know?”
She flushed. “Unexpected inheritance.”
“But he spends it.”
“ We spend it.”
“Okay. I mean I’m cool with it. I just…”
“Just what?”
“Want to make sure you’re okay.”
She spread her arms. “Other than being perched on a cliff in the middle of nowhere, I’m fine, see? Sorry, I just can’t talk about everything. Don’t worry, it’s nothing illegal. No drugs. We’re looking for my great-grandpa.”
“And great-grandpa was a Nazi?”
“He was fighting the Nazis.”
“Okay, that’s cool.”
But it wasn’t, completely, and the look he gave bothered her because it reignited her own doubts. That bullet casing. The cell phone battery. But Jake had been kind to her a hundred times this trip. Gentle. Caring. Loving. Sexy. Able. Confident. It was like a check-off list from Cosmo.
So why hadn’t she admitted she loved him?
Because he was guarded: he only revealed what he wanted to reveal. Because he was eccentric. Because, to be honest, sometimes he seemed too good to be true; guys weren’t like that. Because he’d given her his charm, she sensed, but not his heart. And because if she were honest about her own heart, she was here for herself, not him. It was an adventure. She was curious. She wanted to do something, to be something, that wasn’t just as add-along to some guy.
That wasn’t the same as love.
Jake called down. “Ready!” And up they went again.
In all, it took three hours. At last they neared the brink of the falls, the last scramble the steepest. Jake impatiently disappeared over the brow of the cliff, and then Sam. Wearily, Rominy dragged herself over, too. Were they about to see the oddities depicted in the satchel of diagrams?
A cold wind cooled her sweat when she stood, blowing out at her from a broken canyon. Jake was staring as if hypnotized, his arms dangling, his shoulders sagged. Sam Mackenzie had already slumped to rest on a boulder, puffing.
Above them, a ravine continued to climb toward ice and clouds, but its edges were uneven and the rock a lighter color, as if great chunks had broken loose and tumbled down. Ahead, seen through the fractured gorge, was a bowl of bright mountains, shimmering with snow, a perfect stadium of peaks. And in the middle was…
A lake.
The water was slate gray and opaque. From it ran the river, twisting through a broken barrier of boulders before dipping over the falls. Rominy went to where Jake was standing. He was staring, shocked. Clearly, this wasn’t what he expected to find.
“There’s no Shambhala, Jake.” She touched his shoulder. He twitched like a wary animal.
“They dammed the canyon,” he whispered.
“Who dammed the canyon?”
“They made a lake. It flooded the valley. It flooded Shambhala.”
“I don’t see a dam.”
“We just climbed up it. It’s a rock dam, an earth-fill dam, not a concrete one. Look.” He pointed up to the lighter-colored rock. “They blew out the canyon walls and it came down and plugged the river. Whatever was here is underwater.”
It looked like other alpine lakes she’d seen in the Cascades and Olympics, but Rominy decided not to contradict him. If he wanted to believe some kind of lost utopia was under the water, fine with her. But if the coordinates were right, they weren’t going to learn more about Benjamin Hood. And Jake didn’t have his scoop.
Now they could go home.
To what? How much of a couple were they, now that the quest had ended?
“You mean this happened sometime after 1938?” she clarified.
“Or even during 1938. Maybe this is why Hood slunk home to America and hid. Maybe he spoiled what would have been the greatest find in archaeological history.” The tone was bitter.
“You mean he was embarrassed by whatever happened here?”
“I hope he was embarrassed, if there was a Shambhala and he drowned it.”
“Maybe you could come back with scuba gear.”
“Maybe.” He walked back to the brow of the cliff. To the south were the plains and mountains they’d already crossed, an immensity of emptiness. Far below, their parked Land Cruiser was a tiny toy. Vultures wheeled between them and that bottom.
“So it ain’t here?” Mackenzie asked. Told you so, he thought to himself.
Jake ignored him, looking all about. He glanced at the lake but didn’t seem inclined even to scramble the final distance to its shores.
Instead, he suddenly stiffened and pointed, bringing to Rominy’s mind for a moment one of Delphina Clarkson’s hunting hounds.
His head turned to them and he smiled. “Smoke.”