"In that case, let's call the cops."

"We can't. It might just be a janitor with a flashlight."

"Rominy . . ."

"Look, there are some stairs leading down from the base of the tower into a well with a basement door. Maybe we can get in there."

"You're going to break into a Nazi castle in the middle of Germany? And then make our case to the police?"

"We need proof." She sounded a lot braver than she felt. "It probably is just a janitor."

"I'm not even getting paid anymore."

"I let you rent the BMW. Or should I go by myself?"

"No, you need adult supervision. Lacking that, you get me."

They descended the stairwell to a wooden door with an old-fashioned iron handle and latch. "How are your lock-picking skills?" Sam whispered.

She grasped the latch. It lifted. "Perfect. It's unlocked."

He put his hand on her arm. "That's not necessarily a good sign."

"Sam, we have to peek. We don't know what else to do."

"Vin Diesel and Schwarzenegger would go in shooting."

"Come on."

It was pitch-black inside. They shuffled into the basement of the tower carefully, wary of unseen steps. Then they halted. Only the palest radiance came from the open door they'd crept through. They could see nothing.

"Light the candle," she whispered.

They'd found one in the bed-and-breakfast they'd checked into, provided either as insurance against power outages or to let guests cast a romantic mood. Now Sam pulled it out and used the hostel's matches to light it. The sudden illumination threw back the shadows and revealed a round, stark, gloomy room.

It was the basement of the tower. The roof was a stone dome.

"Oh my God, look at that!" Rominy hissed.

At the dome's apex was a stone swastika, each arm extended with additional turns. Despite countless war movies it looked, in its geometric intricacy, oddly compelling.

"I've seen that kind in Tibet," Sam muttered. "Sometimes it's called a sun wheel."

Their feet were at the edge of a sunken circle in the room, like a shallow pool. Directly below the swastika was a circle within this circle, a depression that sank a few inches deeper. Its purpose was unclear.

Arranged around the room were twelve squat round stone pedestals, like the bases of pillars. Placed on each one was a bronze sculpture.

"The signs of the zodiac," Rominy said. "What could this be for?"

"Pagan cosmology," said Sam. "Twelve is an ancient sacred number, like seven. The ancients believed the gods were aligned with the planets, and the Web site said Himmler planned an observatory here. Maybe the Nazis came down here to cast the future."

"Must have been disheartening if it worked."

"Maybe they still come down. The sculptures look bright and new, and they're not all aligned evenly, like someone just set them up."

"Very perceptive, Mr. Mackenzie!" a new voice said.

The door through which they'd entered closed with a boom, and they whirled. There was a figure in the shadows.

"It's actually Valhalla," a woman's voice said with a crisp German accent. A flashlight blazed, freezing them like deer in its beam. "A Hall of the Dead." The woman shining the light was standing next to the door, wearing a business suit and pumps and holding a wicked-looking assault rifle. "There are tours that explain all this when the castle is open. Which it is not."

"The door was unlocked," Sam tried.

"Convenient, don't you think?" The light danced on them, making sure they had no weapons.

"You know Jake Barrow?" Rominy asked, her voice trembling despite her best effort to be brave. Why not get to the point?

"Silly girl. Of course I do."

The woman came closer, the beam lowering so they could see.

And Rominy almost fainted.

Her hair was coiffed, her teeth were perfect, her makeup carefully applied, and her look a generation younger. But holding the gun was Delphina Clarkson, Rominy's backwoods neighbor from the Cascade Mountains.

49.

Wewelsburg, Germany October 2, Present Day Himmler built it as a hall for the dead of the SS elite," Clarkson said, letting the beam bounce around the chamber for a moment. "What the pedestals were designed for isn't entirely clear. Statues? Urns? The twelve comes of course from the twelve signs of the zodiac, so we decorate accordingly when we meet."

"Nazis decorate?" Sam asked.

"She isn't a Nazi, she's my neighbor. Aren't you?" But why was Delphina dressed up and talking with a German accent? Why was she here?

"And you're supposed to be dead, Rominy. Aren't you?" Her smile was sly.

"You look different." She sounded one step behind again, naive and dimwitted, which was precisely what she didn't want to be.

"No, Rominy, it was Mrs. Clarkson who looked different. I usually look exactly like this."

The perfection of the disguise, the Tar Heel accent, the language, the age . . . was stupefying. Was anyone who they said they were?

"The castle entrance is closed for construction," Sam said.

"It is closed for us," Clarkson corrected. "Remodeling is a cover. This is a special time, and we wanted a special place, with special privacy, with special uninvited guests. We watched you approach."

"Who's 'us'?" Sam asked.

She motioned with the wicked-looking weapon. "Upstairs."

It was an order. They passed through an interior doorway with a gate of iron bars and ascended to the room above the crypt. This was circular, too, with twelve pillars and twelve arches at its periphery, and a round medieval-style chandelier overhead with twelve bulbs. The lights weren't lit, and the only dim illumination came from a couple of desk lamps sitting on the floor against the walls. Whoever was here did not seem anxious to advertise their presence to the village outside. On the marble floor beneath the chandelier was another design that played off the wheeling swastika. Rominy had a jolt of recognition.

"It's the sun wheel you saw on my shoulder," said a voice from the shadows. And out stepped Jake Barrow, or the man who'd claimed to be Jake. He was dressed in a black business suit with white shirt and silk tie of maroon, like a politician or CEO. The tie's subtle pattern was runic lightning bolts. Jake's left wrist glinted with an expensive gold watch. And his right held an automatic pistol, black and deadly, its dark mouth aimed waist high. There were, Rominy decided, entirely too many guns in the world.

"Thought we'd catch you in storm trooper drag, Barrow," Sam said.

"And I thought you might try to improve on slacker-slob apparel should you ever make it to Europe, but apparently not," Jake responded. "The clean chin is a start, however. Trying to impress Rominy, Sam?"

"Just airport security."

"We of The Fellowship don't wear the clothes of three generations ago. National Socialism is about ideas, not uniforms."

"Yeah, genocide. Conquest. Looting. Book burning. And attempted murder of a woman you claimed you loved."

"Not murder, but simply a delay so we had time to prepare things. I'd no doubt the nuns would get you out sooner or later, no doubt that you'd follow me here. I deliberately aimed for your mobile phone so you'd survive to help deliver her. I deliberately gave Rominy clues. So welcome, we've been impatiently expecting you, and now the final act in our little play can finally begin."

"Play?" Rominy asked.

"Surely Ursula Kalb's performance as an American hick deserves an Academy Award." Jake gestured toward the woman she thought of as Delphina.

"So it was all a charade? The skinhead, too?"

"Fashionably bald." And the man Rominy had seen at the cabin window, the one who'd killed the poor hounds, emerged from behind another pillar. His Mohawk stripe was gone and he was completely shaven. "Otto Nietzel, at your service." He, too, had a suit and narrow black tie, but his feet were armored with high-top black military boots. Tie or no tie, he still looked like a thug. "I'm real, not a charade."

"You butchered those dogs?"

"Put them to use. You fled with Jakob as intended."

She looked from one to another. "My car explosion was your doing?" she finally asked Jake.

"I'm afraid so. More effective than an opening line in a single's bar."

"Was anything real?"

"As I said in Tibet, you, to start. I'm glad your hand appears to be healing. The mystery was real. We couldn't get access to the safety deposit box short of robbery, which would bring in the FBI. We didn't know if there was anything useful in it but had to look. We knew nothing about the mine or satchel. The physics we discussed on the plane is real. Your ingenuity was real, and your body was real."

"Is your scar real? Flipping your bike?"

He fingered his chin. "A Jew fought back."

She shuddered. She'd had sex with this manipulative monster.

"Ursula did use the hounds to track us and rescue us at the Eldorado mine," he went on, "after I sent a signal from an EPIRB rescue beacon I'd hidden in my pack. The toughs at the airport were an American bodyguard for me, should you panic and run for a cop. The inheritance was a stroke of luck. You've contributed to a noble cause."

"Is there a real Delphina Clarkson?"

"There was. She has, alas, passed away."

"You murdered her?"

"We solved a problem. She was . . . recalcitrant."

"Oh, my God." Rominy felt sick. The poor woman would never have been harmed if Rominy hadn't drawn these lunatics into her life. It just got worse and worse.

"I'm not real," Jake said amiably. "I'm not a reporter, not an American, and not very fond of wine. My German name is Jakob."

"At least your English is impressive," Sam said sourly.

"I studied at Columbia and Yale. Laughably liberal, decadently idealistic."

"Obviously you flunked."

At that Frau Kalb rammed the muzzle of her M3 assault rifle into the guide's kidneys. Sam gasped and fell to his knees.

Otto grinned at the blow.

Rominy's heart was hammering. Please don't be a hero, Sam.

He struggled to talk. "Brave move, Ursula, just like your mass-murdering master. Uncle Adolf never won a battle when he couldn't land a sucker punch."

Otto's expression darkened and he strode quickly across the room's circle, the steel at the tip of his boots ringing on the marble. "You want to fight, American?" He grabbed Mackenzie's ears and brought up his knee, slamming it into Sam's face. Blood spurted. Sam fell sideways and Nietzel kicked viciously, a hard boot to the groin. The victim curled like a slug that's been salted. The Nazi kicked him again, in the side. Sam went white.

"Enough." It was Jake, or Jakob. "You'll have opportunity to play with him later, Otto."

The skinhead spat and stepped back.

Rominy was trembling. She hated violence and these people were bullies, killers, and liars. And now she had some answers, at least, to who they were and what they'd done. Which meant they were planning to kill her, too, didn't it? Or were they? She was tensed for a blow herself, but none came. For some reason they were leaving her alone. It didn't make sense. "Why did you even let us come here?" She hated the way her voice broke.

"It's obvious, isn't it?" A new voice sounded, low and sonorous, and when this figure stepped from behind a pillar the other Germans unconsciously straightened. More people emerged as well, men and women, all dressed as high-ranking professionals. Conspiracy with style. But this figure alone advanced across the room's circle, walking erect and gracefully over the inlaid sun wheel.

"You've been chosen, Rominy," the man said. "That's why Jakob here didn't simply kill you in America and take your blood to Tibet. He didn't kidnap you, either. We've been testing you, to see if you meet our criteria as a Chosen One. It's not that different from the hunt for the next Dalai Lama, really."

"Jacob?" Sam wheezed. "The Jew who wrestled an angel and was renamed Israel? Have your friends checked your bloodline, Jake?"

"Shut up, or Otto will kick you again," Jake-or Jakob-warned. "No one here is interested in your muddle of religious tripe."

"Sam, don't provoke them," Rominy added. She turned to their leader. "You murdered my mother and grandmother, too?"

"Your mother and grandmother had to be disposed of because the time of discovery was not yet ripe and we didn't want to risk them falling into American hands," the new man said smoothly, ignoring the others. "We waited for the next heir before extermination. You're fortunate in being alive at a pivotal time. Science has saved you."

"You mean physics."

"Particle accelerators," Jake said. "Atom smashers."