putting on male boots and jacket, the latter with the fake credentials for Ben she’d had made in China and then used at the bank. It might help confuse things until the right descendant came along. The calendar pages were taped shut by the Tibetan stamp. She didn’t think the county coroner would look too hard at a hermit’s leavings. And after that? Would any of it ever matter?
She just had to hope the right blood lock heir would survive.
When dusk fell, headlights swung up the old access road: two or three vehicles, at least. Doors slammed and she heard the heavy tread of big men getting out.
She pulled off the rest of her bandage and peered at the puckered and swollen bullet hole, her stomach a mottle of purple and yellow bruising. Pain came in pulses. She didn’t know you could hurt so much!
They were gathering outside. She could hear the muttered German.
So she plunged her forefinger into the bullet hole, screaming as she did so.
They froze, uncertain. Then there was a command, and they broke through the door.
Beth yanked her finger out. It was like taking a finger out of a dike. Blood spurted in a rush, a fountain of mortality, and her vision blurred.
As she faded into unconsciousness and death, she got a last glimpse of the man who’d first burst inside.
Oh, my God! He looked wild with disappointment.
And far, far worse than she did.
46
The Nunnery of the Closed Door, Tibet
September 20, Present Day
S ince Sam wasn’t critically hurt, the nuns didn’t have to lug him. Wheezing and constantly cursing (until he remembered the company he was with, but then the soreness would make him forget again), he staggered step by step under his own power. He was bleeding, but the wound was a surface cut where the shattered iPhone had bruised and scraped his chest. Once at the iron door, Jake Barrow’s theft of the keys delayed the party only fifteen minutes. After pounding, Amrita shouted directions to a spare set she kept hidden in her cell, and more nuns scurried to fetch them.
“It helps that Mr. Barrow has to think everyone else a fool,” she told them. “If he didn’t think that, his philosophy would collapse against commonsense reason.”
When the Americans were released into the yellow glow of the nunnery temple, Rominy felt a rush of relief. Escape was like being raised from the dead. She knelt and touched her forehead to the base of the Buddha as the nuns looked on in sympathy. She could swear electricity coursed through her when she touched the relic, restoring her spirit and strength. Did God have many faces?
“Come on! Let’s go after him,” Sam said. He coughed and winced.
“How?” said Amrita. “He’s taken your vehicle and by now is many miles from here. Which isn’t such a bad place for him to be.”
“But he’ll get away!”
“Always you Americans are in such a hurry. You’ve just opened a secret that has been waiting for more than seventy years. No time has been lost. The world had to wait until this moment for the Closed Door to be relevant. And no time will be lost because you must first understand what it is you must do.”
“Why is it relevant now?”
Rominy stood up from her prayer. “Because of atoms,” she said.
Sam squinted. “Care to translate, Dharma?”
“Jake talked about how Shambhala may have had an ancient atom smasher. He thinks that staff is a wizard staff that can somehow play strings smaller than atoms. Scientists are learning new things that convinced Jake he can finally make the staff work. That’s why he came after me now, after all this time. He thinks he can harness the new power source called Vril.”
“This is the guy you picked as your boyfriend?”
“I didn’t know this at first. And yes, I’ll be kicking myself the rest of my life. Which might be a short life, if any more Nazis are around.”
Sam nodded soberly. “How about it, Amrita? You spot anyone else skulking?”
She shook her head. “I suspect Mr. Barrow has not fully convinced his superiors, whoever they might be. They left him to succeed or fail on his own. Recovery of that staff may prove him to the others.”
“And if anyone else had come with him, I wouldn’t have trusted Jake,” Rominy said. “Or at least I hope not.”
“We can’t catch that misguided man now,” Amrita said. “So let’s bind our wounds, give you butter tea, and let you sleep a little. Then, before you decide what to do next, I have something important to show you.”
T hey met later in Amrita’s cell. The floor was packed earth, the bed little more than a plank, and yet the nun seemed more content than any woman Rominy had ever met. What was the secret of satisfaction? Was letting go of desire liberation, or lobotomy?
“This letter was sent from America, sealed, and with instructions to give it only to the heir who could open the Closed Door,” Amrita said. “That would be you, Rominy.”
The envelope crackled with age, its airmail stamp and border dating from long, long ago. To the Last Shambhalan, it read. She shivered, Sam watching her closely. Then she opened it.
The writing was in English as she expected, the script a feminine hand similar to the other notes she’d retrieved. The paper was yellow and the ink slightly faded, but still quite legible. The penmanship was of a quality never taught anymore.
“Read it aloud, Rominy,” Sam said. She did so. Dear Descendant, If you are reading this you’ve used the essence of your veins to open the last blood lock of the drowned city of Shambhala, or at least that is how I think of that odd, troubling place. My companion, who made more study than I ever will, doubts this is the Shambhala of legend at all; that it was a tragic experiment that delved too deep into the mysteries of creation and tapped what shouldn’t be tapped. I don’t know. Those of us who escaped did so in panic and confusion, and there was no time to really understand. If you’ve refound the door that we shut, it’s possible you know far more than we do. Nonetheless, there may be some confusion. Let me share what I can. In 1938, I was a pilot flying scouting and transport missions for the Chinese air force. At the order of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, I flew an American museum curator named Dr. Benjamin Hood from Hankow to Tibet. He was in pursuit of a German mission to that same mysterious nation. The Nazi goal was secret, and our own pursuit was secret as well. The world was slipping toward war, and great issues were at stake. In due time, we were sent by the Reting Rinpoche to follow Germans led by a man named Kurt Raeder. The Nazis were going to the place in the Kunlun Mountains where you presumably are now. Hood parachuted into a remote valley that appeared to contain the ruins of Shambhala, the legendary city that was supposed to be a paradise and redeem the world. Instead, my companion related, they found a dead city full of bones, as if some terrible calamity had struck. I meanwhile landed my plane, made my way to this nearby nunnery, and convinced the nuns to show me a back way into the mountain and city. I found Ben, but could not convince him to flee with us. He was determined to stop Raeder. Shortly afterward, huge explosions rocked the Kunlun Mountains and a canyon caved in on itself, damming the city’s river. Shambhala, or whatever name it once really went by, was flooded. Ben and Raeder were gone.
This puzzled Rominy. Hadn’t her great-grandfather gone back to America? She looked at the envelope. It was postmarked CONCRETE. I can’t explain precisely what caused that catastrophe, but I can explain a little of what happened afterward. If you’ve come this far, on the clues I left, you’re worthy of your ancestors. But no doubt you’ve wondered at your origins and how I came-too briefly, I predict-to be a guardian.
Guardian? Hood had saved a Tibetan nun named Keyuri Lin from the Nazis. Keyuri was wounded in the fighting, and after that terrible night in Shambhala, neither Keyuri nor I was in a condition to go anywhere. The nuns healed wounds both physical and spiritual. And then came the pregnancy. We should have been grateful, but instead were apprehensive. What if the Nazis came back? We wrote down what we remembered, but it was like reconstructing a dream. Keyuri was crushed by the entire experience, and I feared for her sanity. My duty was to return to the Chinese front, but I dared not leave. The birth was a difficult one and Keyuri became even more
