William Dietrich: Blood of the Reich

There’s snobbery in the sciences, as in all professions, and it was a reverse snobbery that would have discriminated against a rich man like Ben. But Hood bludgeoned his way into their fraternity by contributing to others’ causes and financing his own expeditions to unknown Tibet. He took along British, German, and Swiss companions and bore hunger, thirst, and insects without complaint.

Like Andrews, he was featured in National Geographic, and it was quietly let known that the Hood family might make a donation to the hard-pressed New York museum if a permanent position could be made on its staff. The fact that Dr. Hood had published in the best peer-reviewed journals made such an appointment defensible to the museum employees he vaulted ahead of. So he’d been given the second-best office, a starving wage, and periodic reminders from Andrews that he must answer to the museum hierarchy. The subordination grated, but it also gave him something in common with the other curators. He’d become, through routine slights from his boss and quiet contributions to his rival’s projects-he was buying friendship, Hood knew-one of them.

Too bad it didn’t satisfy.

Hood led a double life. He was handsome, single, and circuited the New York clubs to bring home to Park Avenue the carefully coiffed women who were curious about his eccentricity. Everyone was betting on when he’d tire of the museum charade and buckle down to the family business. Women gambled on when he’d settle into domesticity, sleeping with him in hopes of timing his change of heart.

But he didn’t buckle down. Hood’s scientific travels were the one place he could escape his birthright and reinvent himself as scientist, scholar, and explorer.

So he met whomever Chapman told him to.

Agent Hale reminded Hood of a dark lamp pole: a narrow, ink-haired man with a bulb-pale face who was dressed in that kind of cheap, somber suit that was the uniform of civil servants everywhere. The visitor let Hood study his credentials-Army Corps of Intelligence Police-while the agent examined the animal heads and Asian maps that decorated Hood’s office. There were Chinese flintlock firearms, Afghan scimitars, polished fossils of ancient ammonite shells, Persian pikes, and Victorian-era paintings of wilderness panoramas and women bathing naked in a stream. There were photographs of Hood with shahs, lamas, and movie stars.

“You got more stuff than Woolworth’s,” Hale said, his flat tone making it unclear if he meant it as a criticism or a compliment.

“It’s a curator’s office. We’re collectors.”

Hale took in the view across Central Park, Manhattan’s towers rising like Oz. “I don’t even have a window.”

“Yes, your agency,” Hood said, holding Hale’s identification card. “I’m afraid I’ve never heard of it.”

“That’s the way we like it,” the agent replied. “Active in the Great War, and then down to as few as twenty officers this decade. However, with the Japanese at war in China, Italy in Abyssinia, and Hitler into Austria and hot for the Sudetenland, we’re back in fashion. Now we need your help with the Germans.”

“You’re spies? And Hale, is that really your name? Like Nathan Hale, ‘I have but one life to give for my country’?”

“It’s my name to you.”

This was just the kind of cowboy intrigue that thrilled the flamboyant Andrews. They’d probably been comparing decoder rings upstairs. “And you’re here to see a museum employee, a curator of stuffed animals, because of Hitler?”

Hale plopped into a fat leather chair without being invited. “I’m here to see an employee who has the means to get himself what he wants, including a trip back to Asia.” He took out a cigarette and lit it, without offering one to Hood. “The museum director agreed that you’re the one to help us.”

“I’m an expert on Tibet, not Germany.”

“You’re about to become an expert on both.” Hale took a drag and let out a long plume of silver smoke. “We understand you know a German explorer named Kurt Raeder.”

Hood started. He thought he’d put that mess behind him. Best to be careful here. “ Knowing Raeder might be an overstatement. He keeps his own counsel, and he’s an odd duck. But, yes, we journeyed together to Tibet four years ago, as I’m sure you’re aware. Difficult man to deal with, but a great hunter. He brought down a magnificent ibex for the Berlin collection at four hundred yards. Crack shot.”

“Do you know he’s returning to Tibet?”

“No, we don’t correspond. We had a falling-out.”

“Over a woman.”

Hood frowned. “How do you know that?”

“You saved her.”

The zoologist looked uncomfortable. “It’s complicated.”

“I’ll bet.” Hale took a puff again. “A new SS expedition left Genoa in mid-April. Passed through Suez, Colombo, and on to Calcutta. The British tried to hold them up in India but they couldn’t come up with a good enough reason, and now the Nazis have pushed ahead for the Himalayas. Trying to reach the Tibetan capital at Lhasa, from all reports. Why do you think the SS is sending men to Tibet?”

“I have no idea.”

“Did you know Raeder was a Nazi?”

“He wasn’t overtly. Politics rarely came up.”

Hale puffed again, considering. “Just the pair of happy hunters, were you?”

“It was a scientific expedition, sponsored by this museum. Raeder had been to the Himalayas once before and was recommended. We didn’t always get along, but that’s normal among scientists. Why this interest in a German zoologist? Nazi or not, he’s hardly a prominent figure of Hitler’s regime.”

Hale nodded, as if this was an entirely reasonable assessment. “Not yet.”

“What does that mean?”

“Hood, we have information that Raeder is being sent back to Tibet by none other than Heinrich Himmler himself, director of the German secret police. Exactly why is unclear. Hunting for Shangri-la, for all we know.”

The mythical utopia, invented by the British author James Hilton, had become a popular Hollywood movie the year before-a nice antidote to the Depression.

“Which is fantasy. Hilton’s never even been to Asia.”

“So were El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth, but the Spanish still looked for them. The krauts are up to something, and my office thinks war is on the horizon. If it comes, we think the United States will be dragged into it, and not on Hitler’s side. We can’t allow the Nazis any advantages.”

“Tibet is not a strategic power, Agent Hale.”

“The hell it isn’t. It squats between India, China, and the Soviet Union. It’s more inscrutable than Fu Manchu. It’s the high ground of any Asian contest. And Himmler is sending Raeder there for a purpose.”

“What purpose?”

“That’s what we want you to find out.”

“And how am I to do that?”

“Roy Chapman Andrews tells me you like the outdoors as much as he does, and you’re about as content in this curio closet as a ferret in a bag. Said he had to give you this grand chamber here to keep you from wandering off to the Smithsonian or Philly.”

How had Andrews known that? Hood had talked with rival museums but thought he’d kept it a secret.

“The United States government, Mr. Hood, is offering to give you the necessary paperwork and introductions for your next trip to Tibet, including a reserved flight on the China Clipper, a genuine government-issue Colt. 45 automatic, and letters of introduction to the Chinese government, such as it is. We’re giving you diplomatic status to go to Lhasa and, if possible, see this Buddhist pope I understand is cooped up there. Lama, they call him. I thought that was some goat in South America.”

“The current lama is just a child. There’s a regent, the Reting Rinpoche, or the regent from the Rinpoche monastery.”