A full company of one hundred and fifty Tibetan soldiers, under the advisement of Captain Derrick Hoyle, readied to charge. An old artillery piece from Younghusband’s 1904 expedition was positioned opposite the hostel’s front door. One of the army’s two heavy machine guns was set up at the rear.
The Germans could be seen moving through the small, dim windows.
Finally a shrill whistle was blown and the British led the charge. Doors were smashed, entry forced. Hoyle shouted in German that Raeder was under arrest!
No shots had to be fired. Their quarry meekly raised their hands.
The soldiers took into custody five Tibetan porters attired in the full-dress uniform of Himmler’s SS.
Raeder’s own men, equipment, and weapons were gone.
Captain Hoyle snapped his swagger stick in frustration.
S everal miles away, a British motorcar and heavy truck with a squad of English soldiers were racing north from Lhasa, winding up a dirt road to a pass that led to the broader plateau. Far to the north, the remote and mysterious Kunlun Mountains waited.
A young Tibetan woman was guiding from the front seat of the lead car, having assured the English that they represented a more logical alliance in the hunt for ancient secrets than the restless Germans. The British legation thought this choice made perfect sense. If war was coming, the British Empire and nearby India would surely prevail. England was Tibet’s natural ally. The British truck towed a trailer loaded with extra fuel, food, explosives, and climbing gear. The vehicles wouldn’t get over the final worst terrain, but caravan trails would get the hastily organized expedition close enough to make a forced march feasible before winter descended.
With luck, the Nazis who’d escaped India were already interned in Lhasa.
And in return for Keyuri’s help, the English had sworn to turn over whatever they found to the Potala. Reting had nodded gravely at their offer, not believing it for a moment.
The moon was up, the mountains silver, and the plume of dust from the hurrying vehicles was pewter in the gloom.
Then a dark blockage loomed. The British driver of the lead car slammed on the brakes.
A shaggy yak stood tethered in the roadway. Boulders prevented the vehicles from going around either side.
“What the devil?” said Major Howard Southampton. He bounded out to investigate.
Four men dressed in the yak-hair robes of Tibetan herdsmen materialized from the gloom. Bandits! Before the English could reach for their own weapons, the muzzles of German weapons were pressed to their ears.
“Careful,” said Eckells in English. “I’m an Olympic shot.”
“Hello, Keyuri,” the lead herdsman greeted, holding a Luger. “So convenient that you’ve gotten us an early start to Shambhala.”
It was Kurt Raeder, his yak-wool cloak giving him the look of a shaggy bear.
“It’s them!” she cried. “It’s him!”
But the British were already disarmed.
“Thanks for delivery of the motorcars,” Raeder said. “Fortunately for you, it’s a downhill walk back to Lhasa.”
“This is not just theft,” Southampton sputtered. “It’s an act of war!”
“It’s an act of expediency forced by your own malfeasance in trying to interfere with Reich research and to benefit from Reich discoveries. It’s your attempt to arrest us that is an act of war.” Jabber, jabber, the currency of diplomacy. Hitler was right. Guns made the point more strongly.
The Germans began loading their own expedition’s equipment into the car, truck, and trailer.
“You’ll have to come back this way,” the major warned. “The whole Tibetan army will be waiting for you.”
“And us, them, with whatever we find. Your shoes, quickly!”
“Shoes? That is beyond bounds, sir!”
“Be happy I’m only slowing you, not shooting you.”
Then, the vehicles commandeered, the Germans sped on toward the mysterious mountains of the north. Eight British soldiers and their three accompanying porters were left standing, barefoot and disarmed, a humiliating hike from Lhasa. Except for the Reting’s limousine, there were no other cars in all of Tibet.
In the backseat of the lead motorcar, Raeder regarded his new captive. She’d betrayed him exactly as he’d expected, and led the British away from the protection of the Tibetans. Fortune was smiling on the Ahnenerbe.
“How sweet to complete our reunion,” he told her.
She turned away. “Beware what you desire.”
He laughed. Buddhist rubbish. Then he pounded Diels on the shoulder. “Drive faster!”
20
Flying to Lhasa, Tibet
September 10, 1938
O n the third day of Hood’s flight from Hankow, China began to rise like a lumpy loaf of bread. Hills became a universe of forested mountains, cut by deep, shadowy valleys that were seamed by rivers. He and Calloway crossed the upper reaches of the Yangtze and the Mekong. The little biplane jounced as it cleared each ridge crest, land falling dizzyingly away and carrying Hood’s stomach with it.
If Ben couldn’t catch Raeder in Lhasa, it was going to be hard to track him in the vastness that was Asia.
The trees thinned and then largely disappeared. Clouds scattered, and the sky became a vast bowl of blue. Snowy ranges occupied the horizon in all directions, like distant whitecaps. Their plane was an insect buzzing across eternity.
Ben was jostled from a doze when Beth pounded him on the shoulder. “Check the gas!”
The fuel tank was in the upper wing and fed the engine by a tube strapped to a strut. Next to it was a glass gauge that gave a simple eyesight reading of how much gasoline was left.
“We’re almost empty!”
“See why we needed those cans?” She glanced around. “There’s pasture in that valley. Maybe flat enough to land.” The biplane began to descend.
It was like entering a room, the mountains rising around them as they sank, narrowing the sky. Hood could see a few tents at the upper end of the valley and was uneasy about landing where there were people. Farther on, animals grazed. Calloway swept down over the herdsmen and sped down the length of the valley, dropping until the plane was skimming only twenty feet off the ground. She leaned out, studying. Rocks and bushes flashed by. To Hood, it looked like the kind of place where once you landed, you didn’t leave.
“Looks risky!” he shouted.
She pulled on the stick, climbed, and banked. Empty mountainside flashed by the wingtips. They’d stirred the herdsmen’s camp and people were running, pointing, and fetching horses. A final tight turn at the valley’s head and Beth was aimed down the valley again, her touchdown picked.
“I saw a red flag back there!” she warned.
“So?”
“Those aren’t just herdsmen. They’re Communist mercenaries!”
“So?”
“Drafted bandits. Hang on!”
They drifted down the last few feet as the plane felt for safe purchase. Hood could hear grass whickering at the spinning wheels. They touched, bounced, touched, and bounced again, and then they were roughly down. A boulder loomed ahead but the plane slewed to miss it, coming around to point back toward the tents at the head of the valley. The engine coughed and stopped, the propeller jerking to a halt.
“We’ll take off into the wind,” she said. The breeze blew exhaust smoke back into their faces. “Get out and pass up those petrol canisters.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ben opened the compartment behind the pilot and boosted the five-gallon cans up to where Calloway balanced by the upper wing. She used a funnel to pour the precious fuel, its color a whiskey peat. Periodically she glanced up-valley like a wary bird.
“Company,” she finally said, pointing.
A party of men on tough little ponies was galloping toward them.
“What do you think they want?” Hood asked.
“Whatever they can take, I imagine. Or to arrest us and steal the plane, if a commissar is looking over their shoulder.”