So she pivoted and squeezed behind a middle-aged shopper who had her cart nearly athwart the aisle in that worst-of-Safeway rudeness. Now Mrs. Dumbo could unintentionally run interference while Rominy headed for the cash register. The fast-checkout lane, eight-item limit be damned.
Escape! But, no, Mr. Frosty appeared again, the front of his cart cutting in her direction like the prow of a battleship, his look anxious and his pace quicker. Would he make a scene? Where was pepper spray, or self-defense kickboxing training, when she needed it? Or was this klutz just socially inept, like so many men?
Calm, Rominy. Just another of your countless admirers.
As if.
But then his jacket opened slightly and she gave a start. There was something black on his hip.
Let the ice cream melt. She abandoned her cart, squeezed by the rump of another overfed matron tapping password numbers into a debit card reader, and headed for the door. Sorry, Safeway. No sale.
Rominy’s experience (which included more than a few dead-end dates as excruciating as an IRS audit) was that intriguingly eccentric men turned out to be… weird. Politeness only encouraged them. Avoidance was a mercy.
Nor could she call for help.
Please, a man with a grocery cart is looking at me.
But instinct screamed that something was wrong.
Rominy had dropped some overdue bills in the mailbox at the lot’s outer limits, so her car was parked a good fifty yards away. The vehicle was her pride and joy, a silver 2011 MINI Cooper scrubbed bright as a new quarter, suddenly as distant as a football goalpost. It had taken the trade of her ancient Nissan, a diversion of funds that should have gone into her 401(k), and the commitment to four years of monthly payments to buy the runabout, but my, how she loved its cuteness and handling. Now it represented refuge. She knew she was probably hyperventilating about Abominable Snowman, but she’d never had a grocery guy track her relentlessly as a cruise missile without first attempting a friendly hi.
“Miss!”
He’d come out of the store after her. Rominy quickened her pace toward her car. This clumsy come-on would make a snarky text message for her girlfriends.
“Wait!” Footsteps. He was starting to run, fast.
Okay. Get in the car, lock the doors, start the engine, engage the transmission, crack the window, and then see who this lunatic was. If harmless, it would be a story to tell the grandchildren.
So she ran, too, purse banging on her hip, low heels hobbling her speed.
“Hey!”
His footsteps were accelerating like a sprinter. Wasn’t there anyone in the lot who would interfere? Run, Rominy, run!
Her MINI Cooper beckoned like a castle keep.
And then without warning the creep hit her from behind, sending her sprawling. Pavement scraped on hands and knees. Pain lanced, and she opened her mouth to scream. Then his weight crashed fully on top of her, a body slam that knocked out her wind, and the bastard clamped his hand over her mouth.
This is it, she thought. She was going to be raped, suffocated, and murdered in the broad daylight of a Safeway parking lot. Frozen food guys, it seemed, were psychopaths.
But then there was a boom, the ground heaved, and a pulse of heat rolled over them. Her eardrums felt punched. She lay pinned, in shock. A cloud of smoke puffed out, shrouding them in fog, and then there was the faint rattle of metal pieces clanging down all around them.
Her beloved MINI Cooper had blown up. She still had thirty-nine months of payments, and its shredded remains were bonging down around her like the debris of some overextended Wall Street bank.
Her assailant put his mouth to her ringing ear and she winced at what he might do.
But he only whispered.
“I just saved your life.”
3
Berlin, Germany
March 21, 1938
N ational Socialism is based, Herr Raeder, on the inevitable conclusion one must take from modern biological science: we are locked in Darwinian evolutionary struggle.” Himmler took the tone of pedantic lecturer adopted by men who have risen so high that none dare disagree. “Just as species vie with one another in nature, and individuals struggle within those species, so are the human races locked in eternal conflict. This is the lesson of all history, is it not?”
Raeder knew this interview could be a path to promotion. “So the Fuhrer teaches, Reichsfuhrer.” He felt like he was squatting, looking up at the big desk.
“The Aryan race has continually been in competition with the Slavic, the Asiatic, and the Negroid,” Himmler said. “Rome was invincible until it allowed itself to be polluted by the inferiors it conquered, and then was defeated by our ancestor Arminius in ancient Germany. And the Germanic tribes were invincible as long as they kept to themselves behind the Rhine, and vulnerable once they became mongrelized. Ultimately, there can only be one evolutionary winner, and the Aryan can win only through purity of blood. It is about breeding, Untersturmfuhrer -breeding. Take it from a chicken farmer.”
The dogma was nothing Raeder hadn’t heard in the tedious SS classes that half the membership skipped-the men wanted action, not eccentric pedantry-but the reference to chicken farming startled the explorer. There were jokes about Himmler’s brief unhappy experiments with animal husbandry, but he’d never dreamed the Reichsfuhrer would bring up this past. “Your scholarship is reflected in the teachings of the Schutzstaffel,” he managed.
Himmler’s smile was thin as a razor. “You think I don’t know the disparagement of my agricultural background? I know everything, about everyone.” He tapped the files. For a horrible moment Raeder thought the reference was directly to him, and he furiously wracked his brain for when he might have mocked the head of the SS. Was this meeting a prelude to a concentration camp?
“I hear all the jokes,” Himmler went on. “About our Fuhrer, about me, about Goring, about the lot. Do you think this makes me angry?”
Raeder was beginning to sweat. “I swear I’ve never…”
“Listen to me, Untersturmfuhrer. The powerful act, and the powerless make jokes about them. Better to be the superior who is the butt of a joke than its minion teller, trust me. This is how society functions. This is how life functions. Struggle.” He held Raeder’s gaze. “Yes, I raised chickens and learned life is breed against breed, and the holy mission of the SS is to purify our race and raise mankind to a new level. Our mission is scientific. It is mystical. It is evolutionary. And when we’re done, the planet will be a utopia unknown since the ancient days of Ultima Thule when our ancestors came down from the stars.” He nodded, as if affirming the point often enough would ensure its truth.
Raeder finally managed a shaky breath. “Why are you telling me this, Reichsfuhrer?”
“Because you’ve been called to duty by God as I have,” Himmler said calmly. “I, to purify. You, to apply your expertise in Tibet toward the National Socialist cause. You’ve been there twice, have you not?”
“Yes.” He exhaled, realizing he was here for his experience, not some indiscreet remark. “Two exploratory zoological and anthropological missions.”
“Hunting. With a rifle.”
“To collect specimens.”
“A Mauser M98,. 375 Magnum, on expeditions with American funding and led by Dr. Benjamin Hood of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.” Himmler was reading from the folder. “Four months from Nepal to the Himalayas in 1930, and six from China to eastern Tibet in 1934. You wrote a book, High Himalaya, and used classification and preparation of the bird and animal skins to win your doctorate from the Berlin Academy. Adventure combined with science, and notoriety before you were twenty-five. An alpinist as well, with some notable first ascents. An exemplar, one might say, of the new Germany.”