you feel anything?”
“I feel trapped. Look at what you’re seeing. The city’s dead. There’s no way out. We’re led by a fanatic.”
“And I feel on the brink of achievement,” Raeder retorted. “Germany sent us here out of conviction that there were valuable secrets to be learned. This is what Heinrich Himmler dreamed of. Sulk if you want by the river, here, Muller, but the rest of us are going to explore Shambhala.”
“Even her, this Delilah who somehow helped the American find us?” Muller pointed to Keyuri.
“Especially her, to interpret what we find. She can scheme all she wants, but the American can’t follow us. And look at her eyes. She wants to explore this, too. You didn’t really believe it, did you, Keyuri? You thought we were chasing a myth. But German will prevailed. National Socialism prevailed.”
“Destiny prevailed,” she said. “Remember, none have ever returned.”
“I’ll return. With Vril.” He addressed the others. “Unsling your weapons. We don’t know who might be hiding here.”
“Ghosts,” Muller said.
They advanced into the bowl, the geophysicist reluctantly bringing up the rear. The valley’s sides had been terraced, Raeder realized, with the glacial streams feeding pools that at one time were part of a complex irrigation system. At some point in the past this had been an intensively farmed oasis. Why had this civilization tucked itself away like this? Who’d come to build it?
They found themselves walking on what must have been the principle avenue, many of the paving blocks heaved or broken. Their gun muzzles swept the road. The lost city’s layout and order became plainer, but so did the fact that it had almost certainly been abandoned, contrary to myths of long life and perfect harmony. Had it fallen prey to catastrophe, or to the simple old age that doomed all civilizations? This find was the fantasy of any archaeologist-Diels was walking goggle-eyed-but Raeder’s goal was a practical one, to find a new kind of power.
They passed two enormous statues of warriors or kings, each at least sixty feet high. The men, one on either side of the avenue, were holding staffs thrust forward in their fists. Their bodies were encased in a kind of chain mail. This was overlain by rigid armor across the chest and groin. Curiously, however, their helmeted heads were turned backward, as if looking for followers through the narrow slit of their visors. Their faces couldn’t be seen.
“They don’t know whether they’re coming or going,” joked Kranz. “Not the most heroic of poses.”
“They’re looking for something behind them, I think,” said Diels.
“Or they’re turning away,” said Muller.
“Turning from the face of God,” Keyuri said quietly.
“God?”
“Or his manifestation. The power of the universe. It’s blinding, like the sun.”
“Hmph,” said Muller. “What do you think, Kurt?”
“I think all humans have historically worshipped the sun because it’s the obvious source of life on our planet. We’re dust and water animated by energy. Some theosophists believe there’s a black sun at the center of our planet with similar power. Perhaps the Shambhalans tapped that, or brought their own energy with them. Look at those friezes. They could be ships, but we’re thousands of miles from the ocean. They could also be flying machines, or rocket ships like the American Buck Rogers. Their suits could be spacesuits. Or they could be gods, with winged chariots.”
“But why Tibet, in this valley?” said Kranz.
“If you wanted an outpost or base hidden from hostile natives,” Diels speculated, “this is the very best place. It’s too high for conventional civilization, and far away from roads and cities. It’s on the highest plateau of our planet. The valley is hidden, but easily defended. Maybe they just stopped here to build something or repair something.”
“Who stopped here?”
“The helmet men,” Raeder said. “Gods, or visitors from outer space. The ancestors of us Aryans. They cast the seeds of civilization, completed what they wished, and moved on. Possibly leaving descendants, Germans, to rule the earth.”
“Or they didn’t leave but just died,” Keyuri said quietly.
“Like any number of European explorers,” Muller said. “Disease, starvation, despair. Maybe what they were seeking didn’t work.”
“Or they couldn’t control it,” she said.
“I will, if it’s here,” Raeder said. He looked at his companions. “Are we women, worried about the worst like Keyuri? Or are we going to get what we came for?” He pointed. “I think the helmet men are looking back at that tunnel entrance. See that glow? That’s the real entrance to Shambhala. They aren’t guardians. They’re guides.”
Just then they heard the whine of the airplane again. The sky was already twilight blue, everything in shadow. The biplane caught a last ray of the sun at its height and shone for a moment like a star.
“It’s Hood,” Raeder growled. “Looking for us. He could strafe us, even! Run to that cave before he spots us. He’ll soon run out of fuel and turn back. If he ever finds his way in here, it will be too late. We’ll have Vril and be ready for him.” He jerked Keyuri’s arm and began hurrying her. The other Germans broke into a trot as well. Ahead was an arched entry into a hill, the stone portal carved into a scrolling tapestry of what looked like mathematical and geometric symbols. From within came a faint green glow.
The opening was as big as a train tunnel. The causeway they were on peaked at the entrance and then sloped down into the earth. While the others ran under its roof a few yards, Raeder paused to look up at the sky. The biplane was circling aimlessly. There was no place to land. Hood had come all this way for nothing.
Satisfied, the German stepped inside. “Somewhere below is our El Dorado.”
29
Shambhala, Tibet
October 3, 1938
T he vault of the Shambhala tunnel was as riotously decorated as the painted pillars of the Potala Palace, but the intricacy was carved with stone instead of drawn by paint. A universe of images enclosed them as they descended on a gently sloping ramp: thick jungles with slant-eyed beasts peering through prehistoric fronds, high mountains with plunging waterfalls, vast temples, marching armies, strange ships that seemed to float on air instead of water, voluptuous dancers, stampeding chariot teams, grinning monkeys. The figures wound around each other in spirals and loops, a giraffe nibbling at a maiden’s hair, a salmon leaping through a ring of fire, a soldier thrusting a spear at what looked like a dirigible. Here a prisoner had his heart torn out; there figures erotically entwined. The artwork was in panels, as if telling a story like the stained-glass windows of a church. The panels were separated by geometric bands.
“Exquisite and barbaric at the same time,” Kranz said. “It looks almost Mayan or Mexican. But also Indian, Cambodian, Minoan. Could the connections between ancient cultures be deeper and more profound than even the Ahnenerbe has dreamed?”
“Either these people copied from everyone,” Diels said, “or the world copied from them.” He was transfixed and wanted to stop and study, but Raeder dragged him on. Time for art history later. What intrigued and worried him was the mysterious force that infused the stone with a green, electric glow, as if the rock itself was somehow alive and illuminated from within. What caused that?
“It’s the dream of madmen,” Muller whispered, looking about in the ghostly glow. “Every surface is covered. And what is this light? Curie’s radiation?”
In a hundred yards their progress ended at a massive gate, made of an unknown substance dull as pencil lead. It sealed the tunnel. The gate, divided into petals like the shutter of a camera, was a disk a dozen feet across. It bore a carved Tibetan mandala like they’d seen in the Potala Palace, a symbolic portrait of the universe. It was a map of a fantasy temple or palace as viewed from a bird or flying machine, a succession of canals dividing the utopia of palaces and gardens into circular bands. Each section was grander as the eye was drawn to the center:
