William Dietrich - Blood of the Reich

Keyuri stepped back from him.

“… except think it,” he finished in wonder. He stared at the staff in his hand. “But I didn’t mean for it to happen. It reached out for him at its own accord.”

“Like your wife, eh, Kurt?” one of the other Germans said shakily.

Raeder rounded on him. “Don’t you dare mention Lotte.”

The man swung a submachine gun around. “You’re going to fry me, too?”

“No. No! Dammit, I don’t know what happened!”

“It’s wicked, I told you,” said Keyuri. “A sword or gun from ancient Shambhala. Its power comes from the deepest pits of the earth, the core of the universe, and you’ve no idea how to control it.”

Raeder let the staff fall to the floor where it clattered. “It fired on its own.” He stepped away. “I never meant to harm Muller. I needed him, dammit. It’s his fault, his criticism, his whining…” He glared at the others. “None of you can tell Himmler. I won’t have my career ruined.”

“It won’t be if it’s really a weapon, Kurt,” one of the other Germans said. “You’re still a hero, if this is what Himmler wanted us to find.” He looked at the disintegrating corpse. “It’s too bad about Muller, but I’m sorrier about Franz. If only we had his camera to document this! My God, a handheld lightning bolt? A ray gun? Imagine an army of these! No nation could stand before us.”

Hood had been calculating the odds. One German had let his submachine gun drop, dangling from his shoulder, and another had rested a hunting rifle on the floor. Raeder had shed his own rifle. All had pistols on their hips. But would he ever have a better chance than this, when the Nazis were in turmoil over their own fiasco?

He stepped out from the shelter of the wrecked door, pistol leveled, and closed the distance as quickly and quietly as he could.

Then Raeder fastened on Keyuri. “This is your fault. You knew this was going to happen.” He was tired of moralizers. Everyone was always questioning, whereas his need was to act.

“I did not point the staff.”

He pulled his pistol. “You should have been a better lover.”

“Because I don’t enjoy your assaults? You’re going to murder me, too?”

He blinked. “I don’t need you anymore.”

Hood was within twenty feet. “Freeze!” He aimed at Raeder. The Germans whirled.

The muzzle of Hood’s. 45 was pointed at his enemy’s head.

Raeder looked at him in bewilderment. “But I blew up the path.”

“I dropped in anyway. Keyuri, take the staff!”

She hesitated.

“Hurry, pick it up! And if they go for their guns, use that witchcraft on them!”

“I don’t know how.”

“Neither did Kurt, but a man that dared talk back to him is dead. How did it feel, Kurt, to have the finger of God?”

“He’s alone,” the German said to his companions. “He can’t escape us. We outnumber him. When I give the word, use your weapons.”

“Keyuri, now!”

“Hans!” Raeder shouted. The archaeologist jumped and Hood instinctively swung his gun toward him. And as Keyuri bent for the amber staff, Raeder grabbed for her and it.

Shots blazed.

All their light abruptly vanished.

Eldorado Mine, Cascade Mountains

September 6, Present Day

I t just gets weirder than weird,” Jake said, studying the sad heap of bones. “What in the devil was Special Agent Duncan Hale doing in an old gold mine in the Cascade Mountains, with city shoes and a business suit? It had to have something to do with Benjamin Hood.”

“My great-grandfather took him here,” Rominy guessed.

“Or forced him here.”

“If he worked for the government, he should have been on Grandpa’s side, shouldn’t he?”

“Let’s review what we know.” Jake was squatting, thumbing through the papers in the satchel, now the businesslike investigative reporter. “Grandpa is recruited to go to Tibet. He comes back, but instead of returning to New York he becomes a hermit up here. Somewhere there’s a child, who will turn out to be your grandmother. And Hale comes calling. To lure him out of retirement? To find out what he knows? What if Hale was stealing this satchel?”

“What if Great-Grandpa Ben lured him here? Or was hiding here, or the satchel was here, so Agent Hale comes up the mountain…”

“Or was killed at the cabin and brought up here. Carried like a sack of potatoes.”

“I don’t think my ancestor would do that. Can you imagine carrying a corpse up that mountain? And wouldn’t the OSS have come looking for him?”

“And found Benjamin Hood. And… killed him.” Jake stood up.

“That’s pretty melodramatic.”

“Well, all we know is that everybody died. Except your grandmother. Except maybe she was murdered, too, eventually.”

Rominy shivered. “So who was her mother? Who did Hood marry?”

“You don’t have to be married to have a child, Rominy.” He stopped shuffling the papers and pulled out a photograph. It was a faded shot of a woman standing next to an old biplane, in flying helmet and pants. “Take her, for example.”

Rominy craned to look. “She’s pretty. You think she’s my great-grandmother?”

“It’s possible.”

“Who is she?”

He turned it over. “It says, Beth Calloway, 1938. Maybe there’s more in here about her.”

“This is so strange, finding people who’ve been dead so long and having some obscure connection to them.”

“Not obscure. A blood connection. Blood is thicker than water. Descent is important. Ancestry is important.”

“Don’t talk about blood down here. It’s creepy.”

“Historically, it used to mean everything. You were who your parents were. Children inherited the sins of their fathers. Now genealogy is just a hobby, nations are mongrelized, race is politically incorrect. But blood is who we really are.”

“No. Too confining.”

“I’m talking about family, Rominy. DNA. Self-identity. Belonging. As an orphan, you should understand that better than anyone.”

“Belonging? To a race? Yes, Jake, politically incorrect.”

“You want to know how to become a messiah? Tell your followers they’re chosen. Jews, born-again Christians, Muslim fundamentalists, it doesn’t matter. Tell them they’re chosen and they’ll follow you anywhere. You think Hitler didn’t understand that? People long to be told they’re special. Blood, my dear, makes the world go round.” He turned the flashlight so it lit his face from below, drawing deep shadows like a Halloween mask. “The trick,” he said in a deep voice, “is deciding who’s really chosen.”

She looked at him in confusion. Now he was frightening her. “Who are you, Jake?”

He turned the light away, becoming a silhouette in the dark. “I’m a reporter, remember? I just try to see the world clearly, without all the self-censorship crap that goes on these days. We don’t burn witches, we fire the blunt from media jobs. Well, I speak to truth. Isn’t that what journalism is all about?”

“Why did you take the battery out of my cell phone?”

“What?” He cocked his head.

“I found it in the trash this morning. That’s why my cell wouldn’t work, wasn’t it? You’d taken the battery out.”

“I took the battery out because it wouldn’t work. I was trying to fix it. When it was obvious it was really dead, I tossed it. What, you think I sabotaged your phone?”

“Yes! Somehow. Way back at Safeway. I wanted to call and I couldn’t.”

“Because your battery was already dead! How could I get your battery out? Do I look like Houdini? Come on, don’t be paranoid. We’re trying to help each other here. Figure this out together.”