William Dietrich, Blood of the Reich: A Novel
HarperCollins, New York, 2011
Chapter 32: Shambhala, Tibet, October 3, 1938 (pp. 228-229)
Something rolled across the floor. Hood snaked on his belly toward it and reached.
The staff. As his hand closed upon the smooth crystal, it was as if his finger was inserted
in a light socket. A jolt shuddered through his arem and he winced.
The staff glowed, illuminating their tableau.
Keyuri was on her belly, a dozen feet away.
The Germans turned.
Raeder, his rifle on the floor, sprang with a knife, his boot coming down on
Hood's wrist that held the .45. The SS dagger swept down, to pinion his other hand,
which held his staff.
Hood twisted as the knife struck, feeling a sharp pain in his ring finger
and meanwhile losing hold of his gun. Then Raeder's boot slipped off his wrist and
stamped on the staff.
There wa a bang, like a short circuit. Some mysterious but stupendous
energy kicked the German backward and he fell and skidded, with a grunt.
The American picked up the strange weapon in a bloody grip, wincing,
and swept it toward the Nazis, not knowing what to expect.
Something bright, hot, and terrifying stabbed out. It also stabbed
in, to Hood's injured hand, and he shouted.
There was a boom like thunder and lightning that was blinding.
The Germans shrieked, hands to their eyes and ears, frozen in the flash. It was
like looking into the sun. Then there was a crack on the ceiling and stone rained
down, slamming against the floor and bouncing. The staff and Hood went skidding
away across the floor, shot like a puck, his teeth clenched in agony. Finally it
was dark again, except his eyes were filled with sparks from the dazzle. He could
dimly hear the Germans shouting, and he wondered if any had been hit by the debris.
What had happened? It was as if the staff had a life of its own, or as if his thoughts
had merged with its properties to eject some kind of thunderbolt. If this is what
Shambhala held, he wanted no part of it
Yet he didn't let go. As his night vision returned, he realized the
thunder stick still glowed dimly.
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Chapter 34: Shambhala, Tibet, October 3, 1938 (p. 245)
"Thanks for coming back for me, but I was sent here to put a stop
to this. I think Raeder's going to try to take another one of those thunderbolt
staffs back to Adolf Hitler. I don't think I can let him do that."
"How you going to stop him?"
"Just two krauts left, I think."
"Then I'm coming with you, Ben. Even odds."
"No, This isn't your fight."
"The hell it isn't! That bastard dragged my biplane to the middle of
nowhere." She looked at him expectantly. Keyuri was shot, Hood desperate. This was
a way to cement their partnership.
"No." He shook his head decisively. "I might not make it. I want
you to take this staff of mine to the surface. It's too low on juice to fight with,
but I think we need to show it to the American government. War's coming."
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Chapter 37: A Boeing 747, over the Pacific, September 7, Present Day (pp. 267-269)
"Something's driving the universe apart faster than it should. That
'thing' has been labeled dark energy."
"And you take these physicists seriously?"
"This is real! Okay, so now there's this idea that there's a smaller particle
still, something a trillion times smaller than an atom, called a string. It's a one-dimensional
line, meaning it's so small, this string has length, but no width."
"And then when this string vibrates, it creates everything— everything—
the way a vibrating violin string creates music."
"And Nazis wanted the music."
"In essence, yes. What if you had a violin bow that could play these tiny,
tiny strings and in so doing manipulat reality in ways we could barely imagine? I'm not
talking just lead into gold. I'm talking matter into energy, and consciousness into action,
and space into time and time into space. I'm talking extra dimensions, because string theorists
think there may be a dozen or so we're not even aware of, besides the usual four. I'm talking
about walking through walls and teleportation and, well, magic. The Tibetans believe in tulpas,
or beings created by conscious thought: that we can think things into existence if we
understand how the universe really works. I'm taling about extraordinary abilities that the
smartest people in the world searched for over many centuries. Wizards, alchemists, priests,
and kings. It would be like the bow of God." He looked at her expectantly.
"Adolf Hitler wanted to play these strings?"
"No, Hitler and the Nazis had no idea they existed. There were these legends
of Vril, but no one in Germany had an idea what it really was or how it might be controlled.
But since then we've had all these amazing discoveries in physics and suddenly this crazy
1930s idea sounds more plausible. What if an ancient civilization somehow figured this out
centuries ago? Or some alien civilization came down to earth? What if Shambhala was a research
center? Think about it— Tibet is the highest plateau on earth, the closest to angels and
aliens, a natural landing point for a visiting civilization. What if someone, at some time,
figured out how to play the music of the cosmos, to draw a bow across the fundamental strings?"
"You think this is what my ancestor and the Nazis were after?"
"Yes."
She thought. "These strings are really small, right? I mean, we're
talking about tiny violins."
"Teeny-tiny."
"So this is a tiny bow? like, I'm not going to pick it up with my fingers?"
"I don't know. My suspicion is that they forged a great big bow that could play
very little strings. You know, what's come down to us in legends and stories is the idea of
a stick— a magic wand, or a wizard's staff— with magical powers."
"Like Gandalf."
"Exactly. And not just fictional wizards. Cardinal Richelieu carried a wand
of gold and ivory his enemies thought had special powers. Newton was entranced not just by
science but by alchemy and magic, and hunted for ways to transcend normal material boundaries.
Nikola Tesla thought there was a connection between the mental and physical planes—
mind over matter, if you will. What I think is that these legends have some basis in reality,
that Shambhala devised very big tools— compared to subatomic particles— that could
play this subatomic music and control the natural world with what we would call magic.
What if they really existed? What if they still exist— in a hidden city
that you great-grandfather found?"
"Jake, this is starting to sound a little bigger than a newspaper scoop.
A little scarier, too. And a wholt lot crazier."
"Conceded. But maybe my weirdness makes a little more sense to you now.
I seemed crazy because the story seemed crazy, until your car blew up. That's when I knew
this was real, and you had to be protected."
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