Various functionaries, monks, and hangers-on sat on padded benches in the smoky shadows, murmuring and humming prayers. Light was cast by wicks flaming in tubs of yellow yak butter, the air pungent with incense. The place smelled like every one of its four hundred years.
“Never use a thousand colors when a million will do,” murmured Kranz. “It’s like the explosion of a child’s paint-box set.”
“Look,” whispered Hans Diels, “swastikas!” The symbol was sewn onto tapestries.
“As foreign as this seems, we have, I suspect, in some sense come home,” Reader told his men.
Tibet’s regent sat cross-legged on a padded throne, draped in robes and crowned with a peaked saffron-colored hat that descended over his ears and back of the neck like bird wings. The Reting was a serious-looking, smooth-cheeked, large-eared young man who didn’t look entirely happy about his weight of responsibility. He ruled while the new Dalai Lama, whom he’d helped discover the year before, was coming of age in Kumbum monastery. The majesty of the transition was unsettling. Reting had had a dream of where the reincarnation of the deceased Thirteenth Dalai Lama might be found, and a retinue of holy men had made a pilgrimage to a remote rural home. Eerily, the peasant toddler had picked out the belongings of the dead holy man, shouting, “Mine, mine!” while ignoring other choices. Even to a believer, actually finding a reincarnated presence had been shaking. Soon His Holiness would be brought to Lhasa, but for now Reting was the monarch of the Potala and responsible, with his council, of deciding what to do with these Germans.
The Europeans were stocky, sunburned, hard-looking men, who seemed to want to suck experience in with their mouths instead of feeling it with their souls. The Tibetan thought their eyes darted like those of rodents, their limbs trembled with restlessness, and their black uniforms were forbidding. They wore death’s heads at their collar. Pale, anxious, unhappy men.
The world was squeezing Tibet, the regent knew. There was war to the east between China and Japan. The British had bludgeoned their way into Lhasa more than thirty years before. The Soviet Union was a secretive dark dictatorship hulking beyond the Kunlun Mountains. Airplanes and radio waves were violating the sanctity of distance that had always protected the sacred kingdom. Reting himself had been alerted of Raeder’s approach by British radio. And now these Germans had come claiming some kind of ancestral kinship! Everyone was suddenly Tibet’s friend, because everyone wanted to turn it against their enemies. Which nation should be trusted and which kept out? How could these giants, with their steel machines that groaned and spat fire, be played off against each other?
And then the German spokesman, a man named Raeder, gave a solution.
The handsome visitor began by presenting an album of pictures of Nazi Germany and its leaders, pointing to the National Socialist symbols that seemed inspired by ancient Tibetan iconography. The Fuhrer, like Reting and the future Dalai Lama, was not just the political leader of Germany, Raeder explained. He was the spiritual leader as well, a new kind of god, for a new kind of man.
Some of the pictures depicted huge rallies for him, all the people standing curiously in line, as rigid as posts. They wore helmets and looked like lines of beetles. Reting wanted to laugh at their rigid stiffness but knew that was impolite. He passed the album back.
This Fuhrer ’s lieutenant, Himmler, was intensely interested in the origins of mankind and the history of the Aryan race, Raeder explained. Tibetan nobility had the fine bone structure of the Aryan, and it was in this beautiful country that ancestral proof of their relationship might be hidden. The Germans had come to Tibet to learn if their peoples were related.
“There are even Western theories of ancient powers that might have been found and lost in Tibet,” Raeder said. “My friend Kranz here has been casting masks of facial characteristics and finding remarkable correlations between your citizens and ours. My friend Muller has been making scientific measurements of magnetism and gravity to hunt for hiding places where such powers might reside. My friend Diels wants to study your history, and my friend Eckells to record your ceremonies. Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler has sent us here to offer our help.”
“We hide nothing,” Reting said. “In another chamber I can show you a Buddha made of a thousand pounds of gold. No crypt is needed to secrete it. Our faith is our life. And this life is but a step toward the next one.”
“There is much we can learn from such wisdom,” Raeder replied, even though he believed no such thing. “And much we could share. Some Germans, like Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler, believe in reincarnation, too.”
“Then why did you hunt, when you came before with the Americans?” Clearly, Reting knew more about Raeder than was expected. “Why have you shot animals this time, when you thought we weren’t watching? You killed what may have been your leaders’ ancestors, reincarnated in animal form.”
Raeder shifted uncomfortably. “That was for science.”
“You left them to rot. You must not kill while you are in our kingdom.”
The German gave a curt nod. “We apologize for our custom. We accede to your wisdom.”
“The sanctity of life is a path toward nirvana.”
“We Germans appreciate your beliefs.”
Reting shook his head. “I’ve seen your books and movies. We believe in an escape from passions, and you believe in heightening them. We believe in losing our desires, and you believe in feeding them. We believe ambition leads to dissatisfaction, and you believe ambition is life’s purpose. We believe in exploring what is within, and you believe in exploring what is without.”
The Germans looked at each other, murmuring. Then Raeder tried again.
“It’s true there are differences, but there are similarities as well. You believe in perfecting your soul through many incarnations, and we believe in perfecting all mankind through natural selection and the discipline of National Socialism. We both believe in past ages better than the present, and a future of promise. We are both, your monks and we Nazis, idealists in our own way.” He took a breath. “But we also believe in the importance of this life, and use science and engineering to improve it. The world is shrinking, regent, and you’ll want powerful friends if your giant neighbors press too close.”
“Friendship is why we didn’t arrest you as you approached Lhasa.”
“And friendship is why more Germans should come here to protect you. We can teach your soldiers.”
“More Germans? With your American friends?”
“The Americans are not our friends. I was here on an academic partnership on that earlier expedition, but their leader, a man named Benjamin Hood, was jealous of my achievements and tried to thwart them. You must never allow Americans here. They are a greedy, shallow people. They care only for money.”
“And you do not?”
“We Germans are scholars and idealists. We could help search for lost secrets that could help us both.”
“Ah, secrets. What everyone seeks.”
“There are reports of a lost kingdom of Shambhala, are there not?”