Blood of the Reich (12 page)

“When Hood lived up here, this was the State Bank of Concrete,” Barrow explained. “He left a will and a safety deposit box for his heirs, but guess what? No heirs. Until you. And a mystery seventy-plus years unsolved. Until now.” He grinned and went up to a teller. “Mr. Dunnigan, please.”

“I’ll see if he’s available.”

“Tell him Mr. Barrow and Ms. Pickett-Hood are here to see him. He’s
expecting
us.” Jake stood tall like it was his birthday, glancing around impatiently. Rominy studied him again. Her companion, she admitted, was intriguing, smart, and a bit of a stud. He was built like a fitness freak, and his eyes seemed lit with blue fire. Certainly more interesting than another evening home with Netflix and Häagen-Dazs. Instead of savior or kidnapper, Jake was making himself, she realized, a partner.

Curiosity kept her with him. And it was reassuring he’d taken her somewhere dull, like a bank.

“I still don’t get what I’m supposed to do here,” she whispered.

“Inherit, remember?” he whispered back.

Mr. Dunnigan was a balding, portly bank vice president in a white no-iron synthetic shirt and JCPenney sport coat, who reigned behind a Formica desk of faux oak. He picked up a stack of manila folders and took them into an adjacent small conference room with wooden table and hard chairs, looking at Rominy as if she were a ghost. Which she supposed she was in a way, if what Barrow claimed was true. The missing heir of Benjamin Hood! Who?

“Congratulations, Mr. Barrow,” the banker began, dropping the folders with a thump. “As you know, I was skeptical of your research.”

“You sound like my editors.”

“The DNA test, however, convinced me.”

“DNA?” Rominy asked.

“Yes, Miss, it’s been so long since Mr. Hood’s death and his family history is so truncated—goodness, such tragedy—that a mere genealogical table wasn’t going to convince me an heir still existed. That’s when Mr. Barrow suggested the use of DNA evidence, which is surprisingly quick and affordable. We had a rather gruesome relic . . .” He paused, looking at Barrow.

“A finger.” The reporter shrugged. “It must have meant something, because Hood kept it in his safety deposit box after he lost it from his hand.”

“He was
attached
to it,” Dunnigan said, smiling. Apparently, bankers in Concrete possessed quite the wit.

“Wait a minute,” Rominy said. “You matched my DNA to his?”

“Yes, dear. An impossibility for earlier generations, but science marches on.”

“But how did you get
my
DNA?”

Dunnigan looked surprised at the question and turned to Jake. He in turn looked uncomfortable.

“How did you get my DNA, Barrow?” Rominy asked again.

He cleared his throat. “Saliva.”

“Saliva?
When?
”

“I got it off a Starbucks cup. I fished it out after you left a store.”

“Are you joking? When was this?”

“A week ago.”

“You’ve been following me to get my saliva?”

“To let you inherit, Rominy,” he said patiently, as if she was a little dense.

“That’s
illegal
. Isn’t it?
”

“My bank cannot condone anything improper,” Dunnigan added.

“Of course it’s legal,” Barrow said blandly. He turned to the banker. “My newspaper’s lawyers checked this out. As long as you’re not taking samples from a person’s body without permission—like clipping their hair—it passes the test. We’ve done this before. It’s fine, so long as it’s from discarded organic material.”

Dunnigan frowned, then shrugged.

“Discarded like a Starbucks cup,” Rominy said.

“Yes.”

“That’s sick.”

“Do you think you would have let me run a swab inside your mouth?”

“Maybe, if you’d ever explained yourself in a normal way.”

“I had to be sure or you would have run like a rabbit. ‘Hi there, you might be due a missing inheritance so do you mind if a run a Q-tip?’ It sounds like molestation. You would have dumped espresso down my pants and been furious if it wasn’t a match. So I did something that didn’t disturb you one iota, and we compared Hood’s finger to the saliva you left on the cup.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Maybe so, but because of it you’re sitting in a bank about to get a look into Benjamin Hood’s safety deposit box. How many times do I have to tell you I’m trying to
help
you?”

“You’re trying to help yourself.” She closed her eyes, momentarily wishing she could will this day away. But when she opened them they were both still looking at her with troubled and not unkind expressions. There was sympathy there. And Jake did have that compelling little scar. She sighed. “The DNA shows this Hood character and I are related?”

“Yes,” Dunnigan said, visibly relieved she wasn’t going to throw a fit.

“What happened to all the other descendants? After three generations, there should be a zillion of them by now.”

“Only children after mysterious accidents to their mothers,” Jake said. “A drowning, a car crash. Nobody ever put it all together because of the changes of names and growing fear of even discussing the Hood relationship, I’m guessing. Nobody put it together until I did. And I realized there was one final survivor: a survivor because she was left in a campground, adopted by strangers, a girl who knew nothing of her own past.”

Had her real parents been protecting her? Had they known they were about to die? Were they being chased? “And you think this was somehow the work of Nazi fanatics, leftovers from World War II, who didn’t want whatever my great-grandpa found ever getting out?”

“Possibly.” Jake glanced at the banker, and then shrugged. “Or the American government.”

“The Americans? But Great-grandpa was American.”

“He left a hero, a government agent, and came home a dropout. Why, we don’t know. That’s the mystery I’m trying to unravel. I thought we had more time until that bomb went off.”

“What bomb?” Dunnigan looked alarmed.

“Watch the news tonight, Mr. Dunnigan. But don’t worry, we’re well past them. Don’t call the press and they won’t call you. But let’s not linger, shall we? What if reporters find the same paper trail I did and trace Rominy up here? Or cops do? Or Nazis?”

“Exactly.” Now the banker was brisk. “Let’s get the pretty lady on her way.” He took the folders and began spreading papers out on the table as if dealing cards, suddenly in a hurry to have them gone. “Here are the genealogical tables Mr. Barrow assembled, birth certificates, address reports, news clippings, and the DNA testing documentation. It’s been quite an exercise in investigation, because Benjamin Hood was apparently quite the recluse. We never saw him; he was a complete hermit. He was represented by a woman; possibly your great-grandmother. But we have the will, the bank records, and information on the Cascade River property.” He glanced at Rominy. “Are you a fan of compound interest, Ms. Hood?”

“Of what?”

“The way savings can accumulate over time. Mr. Hood left a relatively modest savings account here when he died in 1944 and it by rights now belongs to you. It was a little over $8,000. Which has become with compounding interest . . .”—he searched a table of figures—“a healthy $161,172, after deductions for the safety deposit box, taxes on the Cascade River property, and our administrative fees. Would you like a cashier’s check? We’d like to clear out the account.”

She was stunned. First her car gone, now this? Was she on drugs? She looked at Barrow.

“Now do you understand why this is important?” he asked. “And this is just the tip of the iceberg.” He turned to Dunnigan. “We may need travel money. I suggest thirty thousand dollars in cash and a check for the rest.”

“That’s quite a lot of cash to carry around,” the banker cautioned.

“Not for long. She’ll be careful.”

“I’m afraid the young lady is going to have to speak for herself.”

Rominy was dazed. “Thirty thousand?” Her annual salary wasn’t much more.

“Just for a day or two until we figure out if we need to go to Tibet,” Jake said.

“Tibet!”

“Hang with me just a little longer, Rominy. It will make sense.”

“Right.” She threw up her hands. “In twenties, please.” Wasn’t that how they did it in the movies? It didn’t seem like real money. “And you can transfer the balance to my account in Seattle.” Her voice sounded small even to her. But she wasn’t taking a check Barrow or neo-Nazis could run off with.

“I think we may have difficulty accumulating that many twenties in this branch. Now if you could give us a day or two . . .”

“Whatever bills you have, Mr. Dunnigan,” Jake said. “As much as you can spare. We’re a little pressed for time, remember?” He gestured toward the door. “Don’t want anyone following us here.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Sign these forms, and I’ll start the arrangements.”

Hand shaking at the thought of so much money, Rominy signed everything put before her. Then the bank vice president gave her a small brass key. “This is yours for the safety deposit box, should you decide to keep it. I trust you want to look inside?”

She still had a headache, but what answer could she give?

“Yes. Let’s see what all this fuss is about.”

13

The Lhasa Road, Tibet

September 2, 1938

T
he Tibetan Plateau averages three miles in height and sprawls across an area four times the size of France, but it is not the simple tableland the name implies. The German “descent” from Kangra La (
La
was the Tibetan name for “pass”) was in fact a journey into an unending sea of treeless, arid, undulating mountains, swell after corrugated swell that ran on without obscuring haze until limited by the curve of the earth. It was magnificent desolation, only the highest peaks capped with snow at the end of summer. Tibet was grass-and-rock emptiness completely different from humid Sikkim, its brown folds meandering and stark. Rock cliffs broke through its grassy felt with vivid bands of ocher, yellow, and white. Rivers braided their way across gravel bottoms in deep valleys like the silver strands of a necklace. The sky was a deep, violet blue—Prussian blue, Raeder told the others, though his companions thought it purpler than that—and sunrise and sunset were yellow-green in the icy sky, dawn and dusk more electric and urgent than at home. Clouds and cliffs cast deep shadows that made a pinto contrast to the sunny ridges, and everything had a sharpness that confused any sense of distance. The Germans could pick out snowy peaks—Muller said one of them was Everest—that on the map were nearly a hundred miles away.

The air was thin but more precious because of it, and breathing reminded Raeder of drinking champagne. Lungs sucked greedily, throats raw and chilled from the draft, and there was a curious feeling of giddiness. The druglike euphoria countered the ache of muscles from the ceaseless climbs and descents.

At first, this side of Tibet—different from the Chinese border areas a thousand miles to the east that Raeder had explored with Hood four years before—seemed utterly empty. But then the explorers realized the dark humps they might mistake for distant boulders were in fact grazing yak, and that the black smudges were not patches of heather or thorn but nomadic felt tents. Southern Tibet was essentially steep pasture.

As the Germans marched, dirty, snot-nosed nomad children would sometimes run out to the dirt trail to fruitlessly beg. Or herdsmen would gallop on their ponies to pull up and stare at the German caravan as it passed, their faces dark and angular and their bodies wrapped in their
chuba
, a cloaklike fleece coat. The Germans kept their guns in view, Diels wearing the submachine gun and Raeder slinging his hunting rifle with scope across his back.

On three occasions the
dugchen
offered them tea, and Raeder and Eckells would then amuse the herdsmen by competing at shooting at rocks up to four hundred yards away. The men shouted approval at each puff of dust. But once, when Raeder aimed at a distant antelope, a chieftain gently shoved the muzzle aside. The Buddhists would not abide unnecessary killing.

When Raeder and Eckells were alone, however, they amused themselves by picking off animals that showed white against precipitous cliffs. They left the carcasses to the vultures.

The few Tibetan soldiers they encountered still practiced archery, since they had no spare bullets to expend on practice.

The Western show of arms was balanced by the little red swastika pennants that jutted up from the German pack animals like sturdy stalks, the wind snapping what Raeder hoped the natives would take as a familiar goodwill sign. Certainly they spotted similar swastikas inscribed or painted on doorways, monastery porticos, and farm carts. In some the swastika arms were extended into the intricate circular geometry Himmler had called a sun wheel. It was an encouraging suggestion that the Aryans were, indeed, finding ancient cousins.