Blood of the Reich

45

Hood’s Cabin, Cascade Mountains, United States

September 8, 1945

W hen Beth Calloway pulled into the weedy yard of her cabin hermitage, ten thousand miles from where the nightmare had begun, the gas gauge on the ’29 Ford Woody was hovering on empty. The truck’s panels were stained and mossy, its bed holding only her backpack. No matter. It was interesting what didn’t matter when the end was finally near. They’d come sooner than she’d hoped, later than she’d feared. Once she read about the atomic bombings, she knew they’d want more magic. The world had gone nuts. She’d done her best, and now it was in God’s hands.

Whatever God really was.

She eased herself out from behind the wheel and stood, her knees almost buckling. Duncan Hale had been quick and she’d been quicker, but the bastard had still put the bullet in her gut that changed everything. She’d wrapped a girdle of bandages around her waist and worn a pea jacket to hide the bleeding so her neighbor Margaret wouldn’t be spooked any more than she already was… but Christ on a Crutch it hurt! Perversely, Beth smiled at the pain.

She’d known a man like Benjamin Hood was bad news.

And she’d still fly him anywhere, if she still had a plane.

Limping, she crossed the yard and stumped up onto the porch, wincing as she did so. She wished she still had the pistol, for comfort if nothing else, but she’d had to entrust it to Margaret to add to the other things in the safety deposit box. She couldn’t fight anymore anyway.

“I’m moving, Gertie-moving back to Nebraska tonight,” she lied to her friend. “You tell ’em you’re just running an errand for me, and don’t let ’em see the gun when you lock it in the bank.” She’d rehearsed these instructions many times in her own head. “Then you get my kid down to Seattle and leave her with the Sisters until I can come back. That hundred dollars will more than cover it, I know.”

“But why can’t you do it, Beth?” Margaret had wailed. She wasn’t the strongest of women, but there hadn’t been time for a better choice. Margaret was just five miles down the road, and Beth dared not risk more time or blood loss. Poor little Sadie, short for Palisade, would likely wind up in an orphanage no matter who she picked, but that was a better chance for safety than she had here. It broke Beth’s heart to hand her over, but it was a relief as well. Would it ever make a difference?

That was in God’s hand, too.

“And you mail that letter. That’s the most important of all. You mail that. You hear?”

“I will, Beth.” Her voice quavered. She was alarmed at the pallor of Calloway’s complexion. What trouble had she brought here? Why this sudden run back to her family? She’d always been a little fascinated by Beth Calloway, but a little afraid, too. “When you going to come back for Sadie?”

“When I finish what I have to do.”

But you didn’t get back. Not from eternity.

Beth knew the end had finally come that morning, when Duncan Hale had driven up in the pale light of predawn. His hair was greasy from lack of washing, his face city-pale, and his suit looked about as appropriate as a hickory shirt and caulk boots on Wall Street. But he’d skipped up her deck slick as Eliot Ness, badge out and hand in one jacket pocket, the snout of his little pistol poking against the fabric like a tiny erection.

Girl’s gun, that’s what Beth had thought. She’d slipped Ben’s heavy. 45 automatic in her backpack before she opened the door.

Hale had been arrogant as snot, informing her that he was a by-god-genuine government G-man of some agency or other-who could tell which one, since Roosevelt and Truman had spawned all those bureaucracies?-and that he was looking for one Benjamin Grayson Hood, a special agent who’d gone missing for uh, seven years.

“You haven’t found him in seven years, city boy?”

“I have now, sweetheart, haven’t I? Or do you want to go to jail?”

She’d shrugged. “Sure, I can show you Ben. Or rather, what’s left of him. But that’s not what you really want, is it? Aren’t you after what he found?”

“I’m after both. Benjamin Hood has a lot of questions to answer. It’s a matter of national security, Miss Calloway. We live in a dangerous world. A very dangerous world. Hitler was bad, but Stalin is going to be worse. If there’s something that might help America, Uncle Sam has a right to it.”

“Does that include paying for that right?”

The G-man smirked. “Mr. Hood volunteered to bear most of the expense of his expedition himself. Nothing has changed that arrangement.”

“He never paid me, you know. I flew him there.”

“I can help you file the necessary paperwork for possible compensation.” He glanced around. “We’ll have to do it downriver. We’d need a typewriter.”

“I got all day.”

“You take me to Hood first.”

She looked him up and down. “He’s a bit reclusive. It’s up a mountain and down a mine. No offense, but you aren’t dressed to even trek across my yard.”

“He lives in a mine?”

“It’s safer that way.”

Hale looked suspicious. “Is there a trail?”

“Miner’s trail.”

“Then don’t worry how I’m dressed, Miss Calloway.”

“How do you know I’m not a Mrs.?”

“I checked the records before I came. All the records.”

She’d even fixed him breakfast before they went, thinking over what she had to do, and not liking the way he eyed Sadie so intently. She’d have run the child down to Gertie then, but she couldn’t risk him knowing where the child was in case things didn’t go as planned.

“Sadie, you stay in the cabin here and play while Mama goes up the mountain with this man. Understand?”

The girl nodded. The seven-year-old had been alone before and was precociously independent. “When will you be home?”

“By lunch, I hope. If I’m not, you fix yourself a peanut butter sandwich. Just stay here and don’t open the door to anybody or anything. You want to be a cupcake for a black bear?” It was a running joke between them.

Sadie giggled. “No, Mama! Is the suit man a friend?”

“No, honey. Just a man.”

She’d turned so Sadie couldn’t see her cry. It spooked her, every time she looked into the child’s eyes.

Then they drove down the brushy lane, Sadie at the window watching them go.

Hale was in shape, she’d give him that. He’d kept up with her brisk stride up the crude trail in country that stood on end. And even city boy Hale had marveled when they came over the rise and first saw Eldorado, wiping his face on his handkerchief as he viewed the glorious panorama of the North Cascades. Then they’d cut downhill on the eastern side, carefully working over to the mouth of the mine. It was halfway up the cliff face, with a bank of old tailings providing a crude ramp.

“What is this place?” he asked.

“Old gold mine. Probably didn’t produce much more than cheap copper. Nobody’s going to work it in today’s economy, so it’s a good hidey-hole.”

Cautiously, he entered. “Hello?”

There was no answer.

He turned. “I’m warning you, Miss Calloway, my superiors know exactly where I am. If this is any kind of an ambush, the entire weight of the United States government will come down on you like a ton of bricks.”

She looked around. “Yeah, I can see ’em.”

He hesitated.

She smiled, an effort. “Go on, city boy. I’ll show you what you came for.”

They walked back into the shaft for a hundred yards. There was an oasis of light ahead, coming from some kind of hole above. Except for a couple of rusting tools and a pool of drip water under the vertical shaft, the mine was empty.

“Where’s Hood?”

She gestured with her head. “There.” A satchel dangled from one of the old mining timbers, wrapped tight in oilskins to keep out water and animals.

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“You ever wonder what we are, Mr. Hale?”

“What do you mean?”

“The meaning of life, and all that.”

He grunted. “The meaning is to win instead of lose. We learned that in the war.”

“The Tibetans believe it’s divine thinking that created us. That when you kill something-kill anything- that thinks, you’re killing something divine. Don’t you wish the Nazis believed that before they started the last six years of insanity?”

“What’s your point? Hood’s dead?”

“If Benjamin was really just a thought, a divine thought, he’s still a thought, I figure. I mean, if I write down his thoughts, write down what little I understand about what he found, then he’s still here. There. In that satchel. That’s all we remember, and if you can makes sense of it you’re smarter than me. But it’s all inside there: Shambhala.”

“Then he did find it.”

“He sure as hell found something.”

“But he didn’t come back?”

She pointed at the satchel. “I just told you he did.”

The slightest glint of greed crossed his eyes. Then, his face more masklike, he took down the satchel and put its strap over his shoulder. “By the fact that Hood was on a government-sanctioned mission, this satchel is the rightful property of the U.S. government.”

“An heir might dispute that.”

“So sue me.”

“Not me.”

“That kid of yours?”

“I have to get back to Sadie.”

“Your child should be downriver, enrolled in a proper school. She’s going to grow up like an animal out here.”

“I think I’ll take your advice.” Beth pointed to the mine entrance. “Lead on, Agent Hale.”

“This is it? We’re done?”

“Yeah. We’re done.”

He looked down the long, dark length of the mine and shook his head. “Ladies first.”

It was an ambush all right, Hale thought, but not hers. Regrettable, but if Hood was dead it wasn’t smart to leave Calloway alive either. Too much loose antigovernment crap about confiscatory federal agents. And she could still sell stories to the Commies. So as she started walking for the mine entrance, silhouetted against the circle of light, his hand felt for the little pistol to plug her. Loose end. First this pilot, then the little girl. He’d had to do much worse in the war.

But at a spot she’d picked, where just enough light came from the entrance to give her aim without being blinded, she suddenly stopped, unslung her knapsack, and knelt on one knee. “I need a drink of water,” she said, reaching inside.

He watched her like a predator.

Her hand closed around the. 45.

The bitch was trying something. He yanked out his pistol.

As he did so, she shot him through her knapsack, the bark of the report opening a neat little hole in the fabric. An instant later his own gun went off.

The reports boomed and echoed in the mine as one.

They both hit each other’s stomachs.

Slow wounds, a terrible way to die.

Beth’s caliber was heavier and Hale was kicked backward, grunting in surprise that the woman had beaten him. He fell on his back, his pistol flying wide before he could think to hold on to it. Damn.

She simply sat back, stunned that it had finally happened, and clenched her muscles against the pain. She hadn’t expected it would hurt so much. It was hard to breathe. She imagined she could feel the bullet in there, eating, and a wash of nausea almost made her faint.

Steady, Beth. Not until you’ve taken care of Sadie.

Because it hasn’t ended yet.

Wincing, she stood up, her gun out of the pack now and steady. Hale was lying on his back, his arms and legs making swimming motions as he tried to move. He was looking at her in fear.

She walked past him and scooped up his gun, pocketing it, and then quickly patted him down for another. He groaned as she pressed his sides. Then she stepped back.

“You don’t deserve a finishing shot.”

“Don’t leave me,” he begged.

She walked back to her pack. “You weren’t going to let me live, were you, Hale? Because if there was anything really valuable in that satchel, anything really top secret, you couldn’t risk having me run around with it in my head. You didn’t even ask if I was a patriot, or if I’d help. Because you didn’t want help. You wanted possession.” She started to work, pulling sticks of dynamite out of her pack.

His mouth bubbled. “Hood?”

“The funny thing is that you got what you came for. Ben is in that bag, and all the strange and wondrous things you hoped for are in there, too. I’ve no doubt you’d find someone smart enough to figure them out. Maybe some of those Nazi scientists you boys have been capturing. So now we’re both dying, and that’s the best outcome of all. Because you know what, Mr. Hale? You don’t really want to find Shambhala. You don’t want to find what Ben found.”

“Hood?” It was a gasp.

She unreeled fuse toward the mine entrance. “Good-bye, Duncan.”

The explosion sent an arc of rock flying out toward Eldorado. As the fragments bounced and ricocheted off the talus slope below, there was a roar of collapse and a cloud of smoke and dust rolled out of the mine. Beth waited for the air to clear and then checked to make sure the cave was completely plugged. Yep. A solid wall of rock entombed Hale. Then she ripped off the bottom half of her shirt, bandaged herself as best she could, using the pain to keep her focus, and painfully climbed to the top of the cliff where the mine’s vertical airshaft was. She’d prepared this cover long before. Wincing as she felt her gut leak into itself, she dragged the logs and brush over the hole and kicked on some dirt. Erosion and growth would seal the shaft for decades to come.

Agent Duncan Hale would bleed to death in the dark.

Then a stagger down to the cabin, forced smiles to a confused Sadie, and quick delivery to a frightened Margaret. The effort had just about killed her, but not quite.

Too bad, because what was coming up the road next would kill her. She’d die all right, but in the most horrible way possible, and not before she told them everything she knew.

One side would bring the other like flies to rot, she’d long figured.

So she lay on the bed, unarmed, dizzy, and resigned, curious about this other man to come. She prepared by putting on male boots and jacket, the latter with the fake credentials for Ben she’d had made in China and then used at the bank. It might help confuse things until the right descendant came along. The calendar pages were taped shut by the Tibetan stamp. She didn’t think the county coroner would look too hard at a hermit’s leavings. And after that? Would any of it ever matter?

She just had to hope the right blood lock heir would survive.

When dusk fell, headlights swung up the old access road: two or three vehicles, at least. Doors slammed and she heard the heavy tread of big men getting out.

She pulled off the rest of her bandage and peered at the puckered and swollen bullet hole, her stomach a mottle of purple and yellow bruising. Pain came in pulses. She didn’t know you could hurt so much!

They were gathering outside. She could hear the muttered German.

So she plunged her forefinger into the bullet hole, screaming as she did so.

They froze, uncertain. Then there was a command, and they broke through the door.

Beth yanked her finger out. It was like taking a finger out of a dike. Blood spurted in a rush, a fountain of mortality, and her vision blurred.

As she faded into unconsciousness and death, she got a last glimpse of the man who’d first burst inside.

Oh, my God! He looked wild with disappointment.

And far, far worse than she did.