William Dietrich - Blood of the Reich

“No, Beth. I want you to fly it, and Keyuri, back to Lhasa.”

“I’m flying you to Lhasa!”

“Listen. There’s only room in the biplane for two. If I don’t survive, none of this matters if we can’t report what happened. Somebody has to get out alive. Somebody has to warn the Tibetans, so they can arrest Raeder if he tries to escape overland. There’s something strange about how this place feels, like it does something corrupting. So stay clear. If I stop him, I’ll come back here. If not, Keyuri and you have to tell what happened. And Keyuri is shot. You have to make her well.”

“I’m no doctor! You make her well. Maybe we can just seal Raeder in.”

“And maybe he’ll blow his way out, if we let him play with this infernal machine long enough. Please go up and wait.”

“This is nuts.” It was the end, Beth could feel it, and it tore her in two. She liked this guy. He was an egghead, all right, but an egghead with gumption, dammit. “Leave the fanatics down here to play with their machine, Ben. If he’s got another magic wand, what chance do you have if you give this one up? Where’s your pistol?”

“It jammed, and Keyuri’s carrying it. But I’ll take the submachine gun of the German you just shot. I’ll get the drop on them.”

“Ben…” She was pleading.

He wearily held up his bloody hand. “I’ve been lucky my whole life. Rich my whole life. Catered to my whole life. And rarely had much I cared about, except shooting blue sheep and falling for both of you. Now I’ve fallen into something important, against a man I know better than anyone. Kurt Raeder and I have been destined to come back together ever since the death of Keyuri’s husband.”

Beth’s faced twisted. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“And I need to straighten things out. It starts with Shambhala.”

“This isn’t Shambhala,” Beth said. “Not this evil power. This isn’t what the legends promise.”

“Well, whatever it is, we need to button it up before all hell breaks loose in the world. I was told it wouldn’t be difficult for me to kill Kurt Raeder, and I realize Duncan Hale was right. Go, seal the door until it’s over. Save Keyuri.”

The aviatrix shut her eyes. “Try not to lose any more fingers.”

“I wish we’d kept that scotch.”

“I could use a swig myself.”

The nuns called down “Hurry!” in English.

“At least I’ve got a flashlight for you in case the lights go out.” Beth handed him one and glanced at his holster. “And take my pistol.”

“No, I’ll have the machine gun. I can’t leave you unarmed.”

“You’re the one going to a gunfight, and you’d better have a backup. Take it, dammit, so I can go heal your girlfriend. Meanwhile I’ll fix your forty-five.”

“She’s not…” He stopped, frustrated. “Thanks.” He took the revolver, a cowboy six-shooter, and jammed it in his holster.

“Don’t get too grateful. There’s just one bullet left. It’s for you, if you get trapped in the cave.”

“Oh.”

“I think ahead.”

He smiled, tiredly. Then he went to the body of the dead German lying in a flower of blood. Calloway was quite the crack shot with a pistol; there were three holes in the bastard. He picked up the machine gun, lighter and more practical than anything Americans had.

“Good-bye, Beth.”

“We’ll be waiting.” She said it without conviction.

He watched as she climbed up out of sight. A stone door slid shut, fitting so tight he could barely see the joint. How many access points were there?

Then he stepped off down the tunnel to hunt Kurt Raeder.

A Boeing 747, over the Pacific

September 7, Present Day

R ominy had never flown business class before, but Jake persuaded her that they needed the indulgence to rest before the tiring journey ahead. “And we need room to inspect Benjamin Hood’s lost satchel with some measure of privacy. You want to do a treasure map in the middle seat, coach?”

Since the money she’d just inherited didn’t seem real, she’d acquiesced to the surreal $5,000 one-way cost for the two of them. She was betting on Jake Barrow, despite her doubts: in for a penny, in for a pound. His sense of purpose, confidence, and journalistic mission had cast a spell. They’d raced from the Cascade River road in a stolen SUV, taken back roads to Darrington and Granite Falls, and driven to Seattle’s airport without stopping. She’d asked to get fresh clothes at her apartment and he’d refused.

“Too risky. The skinheads might be watching. We’ll buy a few things at the airport.”

“Jake, the police are looking for me. I can’t just disappear.”

“You have to, for a while.”

“ How? ”

He thought. “Your adoptive parents are retired, right?”

“In Mexico. They don’t keep track of me.”

“Close relatives?”

“No.”

“We just need a few weeks. We’re going to stop at the Business Center at the airport and set up a new e-mail account. Write your boss that you’re alive. Mention something only you and he would know you’re working on, so he knows it’s you. Then say you quit.”

“What!”

He glanced at her, gaze opaque behind sunglasses he’d found in the glove department. “You’ve got more than a hundred thousand dollars in the bank, a dead-end job, and the adventure of a lifetime, as they say on TV. Do you want to go back to your cubicle? An e-mail will save police the trouble of looking for you. The money gives you a year or two to look for a job. To travel, first, if you want. To see what happens between us. And if you decide to bail on me… they’ll probably hire you back.”

Probably not, but yes, a door had cracked open to freedom. It was as terrifying as it was exhilarating. She bit her lip. “All right.” She considered. “That doesn’t explain the MINI Cooper.”

“E-mail a friend that you’ve met a guy who’s changed your life and you’re on a journey of self-discovery. That’s true, isn’t it? I torched your car for the insurance to get some cash to travel with. You never thought it would be on the news, but don’t worry, you’re safe and happy.”

She blinked at the audacity. “You’re quite the liar, Jake Barrow.”

“Some is true. I’m expedient.”

“You think the cops will buy it?”

“No, but they get reports about a hundred runaways and messed-up chicks a day. It reduces the crime to insurance fraud, a low priority. And even if my truck was spotted at Safeway and they find it abandoned up by Eldorado, we’ll be in Asia. We go cold case. Then we come back with the story, all will be explained, and it’s book-and-movie-deal time.”

“ Movie deal?”

“Think who you want to play you. This is big.”

It was crazy. Thrilling. Absurd. Hypnotic. “ If you get the story.”

“If we get the story.”

To cut all ties and vault halfway around the world? Liberating. Irresponsible. Irresistible. “I feel like Bonnie and Clyde, not Woodward and Bernstein.”

“I’m hoping it’s more like Pierre and Marie Curie, discoverers of radium. There’s a couple of things I have to tell you on the plane.”

“I’m losing my old life, Jake.”

“And gaining a new one.”

He’d parked the stolen car in the half-empty lot of a discount store-“Leaving it here may confuse the police more than the airport garage, until we’re out of the country”-and called a cab to take them to the terminal. To her objections that she had no passport, he produced two proclaiming them Mr. and Mrs. Robert Anderson (her first name listed as Lilith, of all things) along with the requisite permits to fly to China, of which Tibet was now a part. “I was hoping the story would take us this far,” he said, “so I got these from a forger I met on the crime beat.”