Short Cryptofiction: Yeti-Chasing Nazis

A collection of short stories by Jim Shepard, Like You'd Understand, Anyway, includes a yeti-themed story titled "Ancestral Legacies."

From the LA Times:

"There are also quests in this collection, foolhardy expeditions for political or sociological reasons, yet driven by foolhardy inner demons as well. Ernst Schafer, who narrates 'Ancestral Legacies,' has been sent by the Third Reich to search for the 'Nordic-Aryan legacy' while stirring up British-Tibetan tensions in the Himalayas; he's skeptical of Himmler's bogus theories but happy to exploit those state-provided funds. A self-proclaimed man of science -- "I'm interested in the racial origins of inventiveness. . . . [B]efore this mission I myself had begun branching out into the more positive aspects of eugenics" -- Schafer is more intent on justifying his quest for the mythical yeti: 'I've been mocked for devoting my life to a legend. But legends have moved whole nations, and held them together.'"

From the NY Times:

"'This is the roof of the world. An immense, sequestered place, the highest of the high plateaus, many times the size of the Reich. I'm still sick. The porters still gesticulate and exchange private jokes when they assume my attention is elsewhere. Beger's bad ankle is still swollen. Somewhere I've misplaced my certainty.'
"So opens 'Ancestral Legacies,' with Shepard's trademark sucker punches displayed to full effect: an attention-getting opening sentence (nicked from Mingtao Zhang's 'Roof of the World,' and 10 bucks for anybody who knew that already), a sneaky reference ('the Reich') that slips in a setting and a point of view while ostensibly describing the scenery, the establishment of internal and external conflict in a few short phrases -- we've met several other characters and learned that the narrator is both watchful and ill -- and a paragraph closer that works in a lovely turn of phrase while establishing our hero's state of mind, then and now. All this in the tale of two Nazi scientists trekking through Tibet on a search for the yeti as a way of proving racial theories beloved by Himmler. I can think of six writers offhand, myself included, who might drag that idea through a 400-page first draft tentatively titled 'Misplaced Certainty.' Shepard gets the job done in 15 pages, tipping his hat to H. P. Lovecraft and M. R. James and still coming out ahead."