“Another? You had one on the way here?”
“More interesting than looking at the ocean.”
The Englishman shook his head. “You Yanks always manage to make things a lark, don’t you? But then I wish I still looked like you.” Arthur was bald, sixty pounds overweight, and red as an apple. “And you’ve got a hankering to see the Roof of the World again?”
“Something like that. It appears the Nazis are trying to beat us to it.”
“Nazis! Good lord, they seem to be everywhere, don’t they? And which Nazis this time? The German military mission has abandoned the Chinese. Their new Japanese friends made them do it. Everyone’s choosing up sides, trading this dance partner for that one.”
“This Nazi is different. Old partner of mine named Raeder, an explorer and scientist on his way to Tibet. Capable, but perhaps too capable. I’m to catch up to him and find out what he’s up to.”
“Dominating the world, I imagine. That seems to be the German obsession these days.” Sir Arthur sniffed, glancing at his own empire’s clubs and racetrack. It was hard to imagine such established opulence ever being threatened. “Well, if you want to chase after Jerry, more power to you. Just take gold coin for bribes, ammunition to shoot your way through, and a good quart of scotch, because you’re not going to find any in Tibet. Worst cuisine in the world, I hear.”
“And some of the most glorious country. Their valleys are higher than the crest of our Rockies.”
“All the more reason not to go there, if you ask me. Dreadful climb. But say, here’s my idea. Have an eye for the ladies, do you?”
“Just the normal male appreciation.”
“Have you heard of Beth Calloway?”
“A looker?”
“A flier, though I hear she doesn’t look bad, either. A regular Amelia Earhart, this girl. A tomboy, what you Yanks might call an oddball. She showed up to shoot down Japanese, and while the Chinese won’t let a woman do that, Madame Chiang put her to work doing other things for the Chinese air force.”
“What things?”
“The male mercenaries monopolize the fighter and bomber planes, so they put Beth to work as an instructor. She also scouts airways and airfields to India and Burma, now that the Japanese are clamping off the Chinese coast. She’s flown over more of Asia than any woman, and more than any man, probably.”
“Really?” Hood sat straighter. “Tibet?”
“No idea, but you can spend three months walking there and being waylaid by bandits and warlords, or three days flying. I’m thinking you might be able to hire this girl away for a week or two, if Madame Chiang thought you were on the generalissimo’s side. I could write a persuasive letter. Jolly romp to go with a comely aviatrix, no? You can drop in on these Nazis while they’re still sweating uphill.”
“You think she’ll take me there?”
“The truth is, she’s done some timely jobs for the Crown here and there and we’ve had some contact,” Sir Arthur said. “She’s earned a penny or two doing it. I’ve also had some correspondence from your Mr., er, Hale, and he, too, suggested her.” The merchant sipped his drink. “Everybody wants to speed you on your way, it seems.”
“Reassuring.” Hood slugged his whiskey.
“Calloway has certain flair. If you can get to the new Chinese capital of Hankow alive, you can’t miss her. As often as not, she’s got cowboy boots and a Colt. 45. Bowie knife, too, I imagine. Lovely girl.” He smiled. “Resourceful.”
“You make it so enticing.”
“Better than the rogue Genghis Khans you’ll otherwise meet, I assure you. Just keep your head low when the Nips strafe. And never trust the Jerries.”
12
Summit Bank, Concrete, United States
September 4, Present Day
Y our descent from Benjamin Hood is on your mother’s side,” Barrow said as they continued driving up the Skagit Valley, Rominy purposefully numbed after emptying more than half the wine bottle. She was an occasion-only drinker, but had decided this qualified as an occasion, even if she’d been slightly embarrassed at having a third glass in front of Jake. “If the records are correct, your grandmother, Hood’s daughter, was an only child. When she married she lost her maiden name, and the chain of descent continues through your mother, who also took her husband’s name. It’s no surprise, given the circumstances, that you haven’t heard of Benjamin Hood.”
“So how have you heard of him?”
“It started as a historical feature story on a local figure everyone has forgotten. Tibet explorer moves to rural Washington and dies in unappreciated obscurity, that kind of thing. But then I began digging up these enigmatic documents suggesting that Ben Hood hadn’t just gone to Tibet, he’d found or seen something there that other people wanted. Federal government people. But access to his old place is barred by some nutty Dotty Crockett type upriver, and the only person with right of entry is an heir. Which, I eventually figured out, is you.”
“What did Hood find or see?”
“That’s unclear, but the Nazis were after it, too. So I think, wow, this is the kind of yarn I could sell to American Heritage or Smithsonian, or maybe get a book contract, once it ran in the paper. Nice Depression-era mystery. But then there were odd clicks on my phone, and I found a bug on my desk.”
“Bug?”
“Listening device.” He waved his hand as if this was an everyday irritation. “I realized some other folks were looking into this story, too, but not just to make a freelance fee out of it. Either they want what Hood found or they want to make sure no one else ever gets it. It turns out there were Nazis in Tibet, too, and suddenly I’m being shadowed by skinhead goons. I realized I’d better find you and figure out just what exactly is going on.”
“I have no idea what’s going on.”
“But you have the genealogy to find out.”
“I didn’t ask to be dragged into this!”
“Of course not, but you’re key. Which is why you’re in danger. And it was dumb luck I learned enough to warn you. And there is an inheritance, apparently. You can thank me later.”
“After my knees heal.” She felt truculent about being caught up in something without being asked first. It wasn’t fair.
“That wasn’t planned. Before we could be properly introduced, ‘boom’! And, well, here we are.”
“Here we are where?”
“Concrete.” Once more he turned the pickup off the main highway, driving them past some gigantic dull-gray concrete silos that, in faded red letters, indeed announced Concrete. “Guess what they made in this place? It built some big dams upriver.”
“Benjamin Hood lived in Concrete?”
“Nah, he’s up on the Cascade River, which is where we have to go. But he did his banking here, and that’s where you come in.”
Rominy looked out at a rain-stained, pocket-sized town punched into more of the valley’s lush forest. She’d heard of it but never been here.
Barrow turned onto Main Street. “This burg is actually modestly famous, because De Niro and DiCaprio made This Boy’s Life here. The Tobias Wolff memoir? Wolff lived up in the Seattle City Light company towns, Newhalem and Diablo, but he came down here for high school. Hollywood, baby.”
They parked. Downtown was a block-long clump of architecturally uninspired buildings about as charming as a gas station and as typically American as baseball and Barbie. Tavern, hardware store, Laundromat, food bank-unsurprising, since there was no sign of money-and, more heartening, a surviving movie theater. Many of the time-warp buildings were built (as she should have guessed) of painted concrete. There were old lodge halls for the American Legion and Eagles and an eight-foot carved wooden bear, incongruously rearing under a gazebo built to keep the rain off. Summit Bank had a reader board displaying the temperature (67 degrees) and a sign, SINCE 1914. Inside was utilitarian as a post office. Paneling painted white, forest green carpet, and the kind of fluorescent lighting that gives off the warmth of Greenland’s ice cap. The clerks, however, smiled. A vault door gave a peek toward safety deposit boxes.