“Neo-Nazis want this to make a bomb?” What was she mixed up in?
“Well, the original Nazis, the 1930s Nazis, wanted it to make something more controllable than that. Atom bombs are kind of indiscriminate. It would be nice to have such firepower that could be aimed.”
“If you’re a mad scientist.”
“If you’re trying to defend your country. When I started reading about your great-grandfather I stumbled onto all kinds of theories and legends about Tibet, Heinrich Himmler, and secret expeditions. Yet all of it was just that, stories, until I found you. Then we discovered, together, this satchel of documents. Hood was the guy who was the key, but he died and left clues only for his heirs, who have had a disturbing habit of dying off. Until you.”
Only because he’d saved her life in that Safeway parking lot. “The Nazis killed my grandma and birth mother.”
“Maybe. Maybe buddies of Agent Hale killed them, because the U.S. government wanted this secret covered up. They didn’t know what Hood had hid, so they just discouraged any attempts to find out. Heck, it took me a long time to track you down. That’s why it was so awkward in the grocery store. I didn’t know how to start this conversation. ‘Hi, baby, can I talk to you about Nazis?’ ”
“But if we’ve got cyclotrons there’s no need for an old one, right?”
“Tibetan holy men have always been reputed to have magical or supernatural powers. What if those rumors have some basis in science? Our atom smashers are designed to break things apart. But this one, according to Nazi legend, was designed to put things together, to reassemble energy in a new way.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m a science nerd, like I said.” He took her hands in his. “Rominy, have you ever heard of a secret power source called Vril?”
36
Shambhala, Tibet
October 4, 1938
T he noise of the great machine was growing louder, a rising whine more powerful than any sound Hood had heard before. He advanced down the tunnel cautiously, grateful it was lit but also feeling exposed. At any moment he expected another German to appear at the tunnel horizon from the other end, maybe with a bizarre staff that would fry him like the electric chair. But nobody appeared.
They were waiting in ambush for him.
No, they were preoccupied.
The circle of pipes was several miles in extent, and it took him an hour of cautious walking to get from Shambhala’s “back door” to the machine room where he’d first caught up to Raeder. At the end of the pipeline tunnel he crouched and crept, the MP-38 ready, until he had most of the big cavern in view.
At the far end was a heap of rubble where the other entrance of the circular tunnel had been caved in by Hood’s thunder stick. The main hall was still littered with rock from the blasted ceiling. Bones were tossed about like confetti. And the horribly mutilated German who’d triggered Raeder’s wrath-or at least the wrath of the weirdly diabolical staff-still sat, half-disintegrated, against one wall. Raeder and the other surviving German were at the machine, a staff reinserted in its cradle. The weapon was pulsing amber, and presumably was being charged.
The two were arguing. Shambhala did not seem to induce harmony.
Hood stepped out, submachine gun in hand, and walked toward them. Raeder had another staff in his hand, the American saw. It, too, glowed.
“Let’s try this again,” Hood said. “Drop your weapons.”
The Germans turned, momentarily disconcerted but then regaining their poise. “Ah, you found that the tunnel doesn’t go anywhere,” Raeder replied. “Yes, now we’re back as we were. Except what did you do with Keyuri?”
“Your henchman shot her.”
“Ah, too bad. And you shot him?”
“Something like that.”
“It’s gotten a little crazy, has it not, Benjamin Hood? We have here, I suspect, something more valuable than the gold of El Dorado.” He shook his staff. “And instead of rejoicing we’re fighting. Why is that?”
“Because you want to give it to a bunch of book-burning Nazi lunatics.” Hood gestured with the muzzle of the machine gun. “You’re finished, Kurt.”
“Am I? Under whose authority?”
“The Tibetan government sent me here.”
“To get this power for themselves.”
“It’s their country, isn’t it? So I repeat: Hands up!”
“And what proof do you have that you work for anyone but yourself, Hood?”
“I have the machine gun.”
“What happened to the staff you already stole?”
“It went cold.”
“Keyuri is spiriting it away, that’s what I think. We still have a destiny, she and I. And I have something entirely different from your primitive gun. Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler called it Vril, and it makes that toy in your hand as obsolete as a stone club. I have a weapon as quick as thought itself, and just as mobile. I think, therefore I destroy.” He lifted the staff slightly. “Imagine a tool that doesn’t hammer on reality but rearranges it. That’s what I feel when I hold it, Benjamin. I’ve gotten hold of the fabric of the universe itself.”
“Don’t make me pull the trigger.”
“Will you really shoot me down like one of your museum specimens?”
“Just like you fried your own man there, hurled against the wall.”
The other German looked at Raeder nervously.
Raeder ignored him. “Who really sent you? The Chinese? The Americans? What faith they have, dispatching you all by yourself!”
“We’re both scientists, Kurt. They sent me as a fellow scientist.”
“To steal discovery. Alas, I got here first.” And he raised the staff to point it.
So Hood fired.
The M-38 spat, the barrel climbing slightly as he fought to control the unfamiliar weapon. It stuttered like the guns in the gangster movies, shells flying like flung coins. Raeder should have been cut down.
Instead there was a blinding flash, a boom as loud as bells in the belfry of a cathedral, and the whine of angry hornets.
Hood’s bullets flew all around the room, anywhere but at Raeder, having been deflected by the force in his crystal staff. The American, meanwhile, was cuffed backward by power like hurricane wind, flying off his feet and skidding on his back against the pipes.
The sound of Raeder’s shot gonged off the walls before rolling away into a throaty rumble. The air crackled as if there’d been a bolt of lightning. It tasted like ozone. More rock rained down from the ceiling and bounced off the floor, the other German wincing.
“I’ve no idea how it works,” Raeder called, “or what it can really do. If it hadn’t had to deflect the energy of your bullets, I’d guess you’d be dead by now. So let’s just finish what I started and bring the curtain down.”
Hood scrambled for cover in the tunnel. Raeder aimed the weapon at the tunnel mouth. A thunderbolt flashed again and the cave quaked, the tunnel ceiling shattering and rock dropping down as Hood rolled under the pipes. It smashed onto the second entrance of the tunnel, burying it. Stray fragments bounced out across the floor of the main chamber and a cloud of dust shot out. The great machine itself seemed to shift gears and whine higher.
“Oh, I do enjoy that energy, even if it hurts. Hood? Have I killed you?”
“For God’s sake, Kurt, let’s go,” the other German urged.
“Silence, Hans. Do you realize that at this moment I’m the most powerful man in the world?”
Diels lifted his own staff. “No, you’re not. This one is charged, too. We both have Vril.”
“Then go make sure he’s finished. None of this slaughter would have happened without the interference of that damnable hack scientist and his nun. Keyuri Lin has my comrades’ blood on her hands.”