Ingersoll barely heard the words.
.
Ingersoll entered his room and quickly shed his suit jacket, replacing it with a black turtleneck. He and Heinz had devised a simple mask that on superficial inspection looked like the
Dinner had been electrifying. The air in the dining room seemed to crackle from the combined power of the people around the table, though there had been only subtle references to politics and the problems of state. Ingersoll wondered what, if any, significance there was to the seating arrangement. Hitler, Herman Goring, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Eva Braun at the foot of the table, Ingersoll seated between Eva and Albert Speer, then Walter Funk, Vierhaus and Rudolf Hess seated at the Fuhrer’s right. It seemed obvious that Hess and Goring, who were sitting on either side of Hitler, were the two most important men in the hierarchy.
They all had listened enrapt as Speer described his plans for the stadium and several other state buildings. Speer was different from the rest of them, more concerned with architecture than its political ramifications. When he talked about buildings it was with such passion one could actually envision the towering structures.
Himmler, on the other hand, seemed bored and uncomfortable with the conversation that rambled from architecture to the depravity of the Communist artist Picasso, whose first art exhibit was the talk of Paris, to motion pictures, to Hess’s theories on the occult and numerology, to Wagner’s
Hitler was fascinated by the story of Cola da Rienzi, who freed the fourteenth-century Romans from the oppression of the noblemen only to be stoned to death because he gave the people freedom they didn’t want. A lugubrious tale at best.
“I was twelve or thirteen when I first heard
“That he was a fool,” Himmler said in a humorless monotone.
“How so?”
“He should have known there is no such thing as a benevolent leader. The tool of power is terror. Physical.. . and mental. And the only way to assure victory is through the total annihilation of all enemies within the state. Scare them to death. Or kill them.”
“You mean the Jews?” Hitler said.
“Jews. Dissidents,” Himmler said with a shrug.
“You’re talking about millions of people, Heinrich,” Hess said. “What are you going to do, poison all the matzoh balls in Germany? A difficult thing to do.”
There was a ripple of laughter.
“Oh I don’t know,” Himmler answered. “The Turks disposed of eight hundred thousand Armenians between 1915 and 1917.
“Rather a dark interpretation of
“Wagner is dark,” Himmler said flatly.
Was he talking about
“And what lesson did you learn, Fuhrer?” Goebbels asked, shifting the conversation back to Hitler.
“Never give anything to the people until you have convinced them they want it,” Hitler answered and laughed. “Nobody should know that better than you, eh, Joseph? It’s your job to convince them.”
They had all laughed and moved on to a lighter subject.
“I understand they are using hypnotism now as a means of interrogation, is that true, Willie?” Goring asked.
“It’s not really that new,” Vierhaus answered. “Psychiatrists have been using hypnotism for years to get inside the mind.”
“I was hypnotized once,” Ingersoll said.
“Really?” Hitler said. “Why?”
“We had a hypnotist in a film I was working on. I was curious, I did it out of curiosity.”
“What happened?” Vierhaus asked.
“I hate oysters. So I asked him to hypnotize me and make me like oysters. He did it! I sat there and ate an entire plate of raw oysters. And relished them. I asked him to do it again, before I started
“And ...?“ Vierhaus leaned forward slightly.
“I could actually invoke pain when I was in costume.”
“Amazing,” Vierhaus said.
