"Are you mad?" snapped Muller. "Franz Eckells is dead! I can't get my instruments because our leader has destroyed our only escape. And you want to celebrate? Or comment on the temperature?"

"A scientific phenomenon." Diels sounded hurt. "We can't bring Franz back, and he was too much the Nazi brownnose anyway. Come, Julius, we're making one of the greatest discoveries in the history of the world! Don't you feel anything?"

"I feel trapped. Look at what you're seeing. The city's dead. There's no way out. We're led by a fanatic."

"And I feel on the brink of achievement," Raeder retorted. "Germany sent us here out of conviction that there were valuable secrets to be learned. This is what Heinrich Himmler dreamed of. Sulk if you want by the river, here, Muller, but the rest of us are going to explore Shambhala."

"Even her, this Delilah who somehow helped the American find us?" Muller pointed to Keyuri.

"Especially her, to interpret what we find. She can scheme all she wants, but the American can't follow us. And look at her eyes. She wants to explore this, too. You didn't really believe it, did you, Keyuri? You thought we were chasing a myth. But German will prevailed. National Socialism prevailed."

"Destiny prevailed," she said. "Remember, none have ever returned."

"I'll return. With Vril." He addressed the others. "Unsling your weapons. We don't know who might be hiding here."

"Ghosts," Muller said.

They advanced into the bowl, the geophysicist reluctantly bringing up the rear. The valley's sides had been terraced, Raeder realized, with the glacial streams feeding pools that at one time were part of a complex irrigation system. At some point in the past this had been an intensively farmed oasis. Why had this civilization tucked itself away like this? Who'd come to build it?

They found themselves walking on what must have been the principle avenue, many of the paving blocks heaved or broken. Their gun muzzles swept the road. The lost city's layout and order became plainer, but so did the fact that it had almost certainly been abandoned, contrary to myths of long life and perfect harmony. Had it fallen prey to catastrophe, or to the simple old age that doomed all civilizations? This find was the fantasy of any archaeologist-Diels was walking goggle-eyed-but Raeder's goal was a practical one, to find a new kind of power.

They passed two enormous statues of warriors or kings, each at least sixty feet high. The men, one on either side of the avenue, were holding staffs thrust forward in their fists. Their bodies were encased in a kind of chain mail. This was overlain by rigid armor across the chest and groin. Curiously, however, their helmeted heads were turned backward, as if looking for followers through the narrow slit of their visors. Their faces couldn't be seen.

"They don't know whether they're coming or going," joked Kranz. "Not the most heroic of poses."

"They're looking for something behind them, I think," said Diels.

"Or they're turning away," said Muller.

"Turning from the face of God," Keyuri said quietly.

"God?"

"Or his manifestation. The power of the universe. It's blinding, like the sun."

"Hmph," said Muller. "What do you think, Kurt?"

"I think all humans have historically worshipped the sun because it's the obvious source of life on our planet. We're dust and water animated by energy. Some theosophists believe there's a black sun at the center of our planet with similar power. Perhaps the Shambhalans tapped that, or brought their own energy with them. Look at those friezes. They could be ships, but we're thousands of miles from the ocean. They could also be flying machines, or rocket ships like the American Buck Rogers. Their suits could be spacesuits. Or they could be gods, with winged chariots."

"But why Tibet, in this valley?" said Kranz.

"If you wanted an outpost or base hidden from hostile natives," Diels speculated, "this is the very best place. It's too high for conventional civilization, and far away from roads and cities. It's on the highest plateau of our planet. The valley is hidden, but easily defended. Maybe they just stopped here to build something or repair something."

"Who stopped here?"

"The helmet men," Raeder said. "Gods, or visitors from outer space. The ancestors of us Aryans. They cast the seeds of civilization, completed what they wished, and moved on. Possibly leaving descendants, Germans, to rule the earth."

"Or they didn't leave but just died," Keyuri said quietly.

"Like any number of European explorers," Muller said. "Disease, starvation, despair. Maybe what they were seeking didn't work."

"Or they couldn't control it," she said.

"I will, if it's here," Raeder said. He looked at his companions. "Are we women, worried about the worst like Keyuri? Or are we going to get what we came for?" He pointed. "I think the helmet men are looking back at that tunnel entrance. See that glow? That's the real entrance to Shambhala. They aren't guardians. They're guides."

Just then they heard the whine of the airplane again. The sky was already twilight blue, everything in shadow. The biplane caught a last ray of the sun at its height and shone for a moment like a star.

"It's Hood," Raeder growled. "Looking for us. He could strafe us, even! Run to that cave before he spots us. He'll soon run out of fuel and turn back. If he ever finds his way in here, it will be too late. We'll have Vril and be ready for him." He jerked Keyuri's arm and began hurrying her. The other Germans broke into a trot as well. Ahead was an arched entry into a hill, the stone portal carved into a scrolling tapestry of what looked like mathematical and geometric symbols. From within came a faint green glow.

The opening was as big as a train tunnel. The causeway they were on peaked at the entrance and then sloped down into the earth. While the others ran under its roof a few yards, Raeder paused to look up at the sky. The biplane was circling aimlessly. There was no place to land. Hood had come all this way for nothing.

Satisfied, the German stepped inside. "Somewhere below is our El Dorado."

29.

Shambhala, Tibet.

October 3, 1938.

The vault of the Shambhala tunnel was as riotously decorated as the painted pillars of the Potala Palace, but the intricacy was carved with stone instead of drawn by paint. A universe of images enclosed them as they descended on a gently sloping ramp: thick jungles with slant-eyed beasts peering through prehistoric fronds, high mountains with plunging waterfalls, vast temples, marching armies, strange ships that seemed to float on air instead of water, voluptuous dancers, stampeding chariot teams, grinning monkeys. The figures wound around each other in spirals and loops, a giraffe nibbling at a maiden's hair, a salmon leaping through a ring of fire, a soldier thrusting a spear at what looked like a dirigible. Here a prisoner had his heart torn out; there figures erotically entwined. The artwork was in panels, as if telling a story like the stained-glass windows of a church. The panels were separated by geometric bands.

"Exquisite and barbaric at the same time," Kranz said. "It looks almost Mayan or Mexican. But also Indian, Cambodian, Minoan. Could the connections between ancient cultures be deeper and more profound than even the Ahnenerbe has dreamed?"

"Either these people copied from everyone," Diels said, "or the world copied from them." He was transfixed and wanted to stop and study, but Raeder dragged him on. Time for art history later. What intrigued and worried him was the mysterious force that infused the stone with a green, electric glow, as if the rock itself was somehow alive and illuminated from within. What caused that?

"It's the dream of madmen," Muller whispered, looking about in the ghostly glow. "Every surface is covered. And what is this light? Curie's radiation?"

In a hundred yards their progress ended at a massive gate, made of an unknown substance dull as pencil lead. It sealed the tunnel. The gate, divided into petals like the shutter of a camera, was a disk a dozen feet across. It bore a carved Tibetan mandala like they'd seen in the Potala Palace, a symbolic portrait of the universe. It was a map of a fantasy temple or palace as viewed from a bird or flying machine, a succession of canals dividing the utopia of palaces and gardens into circular bands. Each section was grander as the eye was drawn to the center: the Atlantis of legend was like that, according to Plato. The heart of the design was not a throne or king, however, but a literal heart-a carving of the human organ where the petals joined. At the center of this universe was the universal human pump of blood. A carved artery sprouted from it like the tube of a flower.

"That looks Aztec, too," said Muller. "Remember how the ancient Mexicans plucked out hearts? Is that a symbol of blood sacrifice and worship?"

"It's a way in," Raeder said.

"Why did they delve underground at all?" asked Muller.

"Because invention is not the same as wisdom," said Keyuri. "What these people were doing was dangerous. They hid it down here. They were seeking to protect themselves, or others."

"Was dangerous, in ancient times," said Raeder. "Dangerous before the rise of science. Dangerous before the rise of National Socialism. Dangerous before the research of the Ahnenerbe." He addressed them as a group. "We have a chance, comrades, to change world history. All it takes is courage."

"Providence rewards the bold," Kranz seconded.

"Not," said Muller with more practicality, "unless we have a key to this gate."

The barrier weighed many tons but had no handle or keyhole. The joint where the sections met was at the heart, but the means of opening was unclear. Diels pushed on the gate. It was as firm as a mountain.

"It's a blood lock," said Raeder.

"What does that mean?"

"Tell them, Keyuri."

She looked at Raeder with unease, surprised that he had guessed this. "The Shambhala legends say the ancients had keys that only one person on earth could open, the person with the correct blood. The mechanism could detect the worthy from the unworthy."

"That's nonsense," said Diels.

"On the contrary, isn't that what National Socialism teaches?" said Kranz. "Race is real. Blood is real. Heredity is real. Perhaps there's some code in blood that tells one man from another."

"Which we don't have," said Muller.

"Which is why I in fact may have the necessary key," said Raeder. He withdrew from his shift the silver vial, slightly bigger than a rifle shell. A small chain was attached to a metal cap. "I've been carrying this for ten thousand miles."

"What is it?" Diels asked.

"Before we left Germany, Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler entrusted me with a relic that has been brought to the Nazi Party by German scholars of the medieval period. For eight hundred years it has been guarded, passed from custodian to custodian, as 'The Shambhala Key.' No one understood what that meant, until the research of the Ahnenerbe. It's Aryan blood from the mists of history, brought from here to Europe after being taken from the veins of our great German ancestor Frederick Barbarossa."

"Barbarossa?" said Muller. "Are you mad?"

"If I am, then so is Heinrich Himmler. Barbarossa didn't die in the Third Crusade, comrades. He secretly came here."

"Came for what?"

"To learn. And perhaps to lock this door until the time was right, until National Socialism had been created by Adolf Hitler and our people were ready to receive Shambhala's secrets."

"Wait," said Diels. "Barbarossa went to Tibet and back?"

"Maybe not back. But his blood did. And locked the door until his rightful descendants returned to make sense of what he'd found. See the hole in the heart, that artery?" He uncapped the vial and stepped forward. The stone artery gaped like a little mouth, leading into the stone heart. "This is where I pour, don't I, Keyuri?"

She said nothing.

Raeder shrugged, carefully tipped the vial, and emptied the bright red contents into the gate. "As Wilhelm said, scholars of our Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society contend that Shambhala's doors read something individual in blood, some code that we do not yet understand but which differentiates each of us from the other. This code is too tiny for even microscopes to see. Keyuri is right; only chosen individuals, somehow programmed by nature like the numbers of a combination lock, can gain access. And in reading, the door responds."

Indeed, there was a sudden whir and growl like the sound of a machine. Gears and levers clunked at the sides of the tunnel. Then the great stone gates groaned and an aperture began to slowly open. Dust puffed out to settle around them. The air that blew out was musty.

"This is crazy," Muller said. "Barbarossa was an old man by the time of the Crusade. How could he have come here?"

"A better question is why. What did he know or seek? I suspect he heard tales of this place in the Holy Land. Who knows who else visited here. Abraham? Jesus? Mohammed? A key to its entrance was our king's last gift to Germany. Perhaps this door was locked when he left. Or perhaps his bones are here and not in the Holy Land."

"You believe that?"

Raeder pointed. "The doors believe it." The massive petals had mostly receded into the tunnel walls, just a small portion of each still jutting out like the curved teeth of a shark. A circular entry led to more tunnel. The way was clear.

Raeder cautiously stepped through. Nothing happened.

The broad avenue sloped down as before, but this time the way ahead was dark; there was no green glow. The Germans hesitated.

"What does legend say is down there?" Raeder asked Keyuri.

"Revelation. And the danger that comes with it, like the apple in your Bible. Everything you believe is counter to my own religion, Kurt. Everything you strive for, my religion teaches is illusory. Go down that road, and you'll only bring misery to yourselves and the world."

"And I say everything that is wrong with your religion can be seen in the medieval barbarity of your country, Keyuri. You teach acquiescence and despair. We teach hope and triumph." He turned to the others. "This door has been waiting for the right men to open it: the triumphant heirs of Frederick Barbarossa. And it opened! That's the lesson here."

"Kurt, we can't go down there without lights," warned Kranz.

"Maybe we can make torches," said Diels. "Look, there's a rack of staffs to the side here. They must be antique weapons or tools. We tie on some brush, light a match, and proceed. If we carry several we can light the next with the last one and have some time to look about."

"Good idea," said Kranz. He strode and seized one, and . . .

It lit.

The upper third of the staff glowed. The German almost dropped the staff in surprise and then raised it higher, in wonder. When he lifted his arm, the tip shone brighter. In bright daylight the output would seem modest, but in the gloom just beyond the massive gate, it sent shadows fleeing. "What magic is this?" Kranz gasped.

"Shambhala," Keyuri said.

"See?" said Raeder. "It's a sign from God-our God-that we're on the right path. A sign that our nun's fears are groundless."

The others picked up staffs as well. With the touch of a human hand, each glowed. The light staffs tingled the palm as they illuminated, and there was an odd energy to the air, a feel like an approaching thunderstorm.

"I hope it's not black magic," said Muller.

"No more magical than a battery torch would be to a medieval knight," Raeder said. "We're encountering what we came for, a technology more sophisticated than our own. Our theosophist philosophers dubbed it Vril, but under any name it's the power that girds the universe. We can't detect it, but these staffs absorb it from the air or the cave walls. We're going to find it, comrades. We're going to control it. And when we control it, we control the world."

"Then where is everybody?" Muller asked. "Why were the doors sealed, opened only by special blood? I sense a wickedness about this place."

"You've turned into an old woman, Julius. We've got two nuns, not one!"

The other Nazis laughed.

"This from a man who's marooned us all? Who let poor Franz fall into that river?"

"Who just led you to the most exciting find in all history, if you have the sense to seize it. My God, here's your magnetic anomaly, your underground cavity, your source for a hundred scientific papers and everlasting fame! And you don't want to walk down this ramp? Fine! Then sit outside with the machine gun and keep watch for more interlopers like Benjamin Hood."

"You're not rid of me so easily. I want to keep an eye on you. I'm the only one here who retains common sense."

"Then stop undermining morale and help lead the way. Live up to the ideals of the SS, Julius. The fact that no one remains is a blessing. We can explore the city in peace." Raeder's eyes burned.

They descended, Muller in reluctant lead. The main avenue remained the size of a train tunnel, and from it opened doors on both sides, dark rooms beyond. They peered into a couple but they were empty, with stairs leading both up and down into darkness. "It's a vast hive, I'm guessing," Raeder said. "See the size of the steps? These were people, just like us."

They didn't pause to explore any other rooms. Instead they kept to the main path, noticing more decay and detritus as they did so. There was broken pottery and scraps of odd material, flexible like cloth but stiffer and harder-canvas, or oilskin, but from a substance they'd never felt before. The deeper they went, the more cracks appeared in the tunnel's walls and ceiling. From them water dripped, the leachate forming small stalactites. Some of the bas-relief carvings-presumably of kings and queens, courtesans and captains, royal pets and a zoo's bestiary-seemed deliberately defaced. If Shambhala had been sealed, it had not been when it was in pristine condition.

"They were fleeing, I think, and dropped things behind," said Keyuri.

"Or they were an army issuing forth," said Raeder.