Hour followed hour. They’d no idea what the sun was doing; it was eternal shadow in this crack in the mountains. They crept a hundred feet at a time, Raeder refusing the offers of the others to pioneer the route.
“I led us here, and I will lead us out,” he said. “The Fatherland calls us to courage, my friends.”
Muller rolled his eyes. Diels shared a sly smile.
After an eternity, the canyon seemed to be lightening. Raeder had Diels grip his pack while he leaned out over the rushing river to peer ahead. Then he gestured and was pulled back.
“I see the canyon ending,” he said. “There’s a wider valley beyond, and distant snow. I think we’re coming to Shambhala, comrades.”
“What does it look like, Kurt?”
He winked. “Paradise.”
All he had glimpsed was the white of ice. But his men began shuffling faster.
They could see where the trail broadened at the end of the canyon, two hundred yards ahead, when the pitons at last ran out.
“What if we need them for this Shambhala?” Muller asked moodily.
“I’ll send you crawling back to get them,” Raeder snapped. Then, even though he couldn’t possibly know, “Don’t worry, we’re past the worst.” He addressed the others. “We’re almost there. From here we balance. You’ve seen me do it. We’re almost off this hellish path.”
They’d made another thirty yards, legs trembling from the strain of mincing along the icy ledge, when there was the flicker of a shadow above. The others might have missed it, but Raeder’s senses were honed by the concentration required when hunting. His head jerked upward. A vulture?
No, a plane! It flashed a moment in the narrow ribbon of sky above the canyon and then disappeared behind the other rim. An airplane here? The Tibetans had none. Was this some British trick?
He could hear the craft circling. “God in heaven,” he muttered.
“Not God, Kurt,” Keyuri said. “Benjamin Hood.”
“What?” For just a second his practiced composure was gone. He looked back to where she clung on the canyon wall.
“He’s pursuing you,” she said. “You’ve led him to what he’s looking for.”
“You’re lying.”
She looked at him evenly, and he knew she wasn’t.
“How do you know this?”
“I planned it. As did the Reting.”
“Damn you!”
She allowed herself a smile.
The other Germans looked bewildered.
“The American?” asked Diels. “In Tibet?”
Raeder thought. “He can’t land ahead in the valley of Shambhala, or he’d be doing so already. We’d hear the drone of his motor. He’ll have to come in the same way we did. But we’re first, and ready for him.”
“You’re going to shoot him?”
“Stop him.”
“But if he brings the British or Tibetan army…”
“No one is bringing an army.” He glanced around the precipitous canyon. “You others, go around me. I’ll be last.”
“Go around you?” protested Kranz. “We’ll fall off!” The river thundered below, steaming as if boiling.
“I’ll jam my mitten into the crack here to brace myself. I’ll be like a root in this cliff. Hold on to my pack and squeeze by.” There was another flicker and a faint sound of engine noise. The biplane again. “Hurry!”
One by one they crept around him, clutching his pack, trembling at the strain, and then continued sidling on the narrow trail, creeping toward where it widened to a shelf in what must be a valley. Muller, Kranz, Diels, Keyuri…
Eckells was last.
The Nazi cameraman was exhausted. The movie camera and tripod were awkward and unbalancing. He grabbed Raeder’s pack, began moving around, and hesitated, his limbs shaking from exhaustion. His gear was hauling him backward. A foot slipped, and he leaned out over the river.
“Franz, don’t stop! Move, move!”
Eckells began to flail.
“Franz, you’re pulling me loose! We’ll go into the river!”
The cameraman’s eyes widened as he panicked. He tried to make a sound, but nothing came out. All he could sense was the water below.
“Franz, you’re peeling me off the cliff! Let go!”
Eckells clung tighter. Raeder began to lose his own grip.
So the Untersturmfuhrer stomped on the cameraman’s instep, the pain causing Eckells to release his grip in surprise. His mouth formed an O of pain and shock.
Then he was falling.
There was a splash and Eckells was gone in an instant, a dark form flashing down the racing sluice of a river, sinking from the weight of his own pack. In less time than it took to drown he would reach the falls.
And then it was as if their companion had never existed at all.
Raeder slammed himself back into the protection of the cliff.
The others froze, horror-struck. All were in front of their leader now, staring back.
Raeder took a breath, cursing, and then ignored them. He slung off his pack, put it on the slippery ledge, and hauled out some explosive.
“Kurt!” Muller yelled in alarm. “What are you doing?”
The zoologist jammed dynamite into the crevice he’d just clung to. There was no way to wire a detonator. He fumbled for a lighter and lit a fuse. “Sending the American a message!” he called. “No army can follow!”
“Kurt, no!”
“Silence!” He began following the others, facing forward on the trail to make better speed, ignoring the torrent below as he tottered. The fuse was burning. “Go, go, if you don’t want us all to be blown off the cliff!”
“But how are we going to get back?” Diels shouted.
“By finding Shambhala and a new kind of power!” the German roared.
“You’re a madman!” Muller cried.
“And you’re dead if you don’t move!”
Keyuri put her hand on Muller’s arm. “It’s all right,” she whispered.
Muller stared at her. What did she mean?
“Soon it will all be over.”
She’s a witch, the geophysicist thought. We’re doomed.
They crept on as fast as they dared, trying to put distance between them and the explosive.
It went off like a clap of thunder, the shock wave nearly shaking them off. Rock blew out from their side of the canyon to crash against the other wall before falling into the river. Where the precipitous trail had been, where Eckells had fallen, there was now only a bite out of the rock.
They had no more pitons, no means of ascending glaciers, no route home.
The biplane passed by one more time, a flicker as it flew from rim to rim.
Raeder laughed, lifting his arm in Nazi salute to the sky. “Try to follow me now, Hood!”
His companions huddled. They had become Shambhalans.
26
Shambhala Valley, Tibet
October 3, 1938
I f Kurt Raeder hadn’t set off his explosion, Benjamin Hood might never have confirmed the Nazis were there.
