The Hunt

“So it might be possible under hypnosis to ask questions which the subject might normally be reluctant to answer?” Himmler asked.

“I should think so,” said Ingersoll - “Of course there is a danger.”

“And that is?” Hitler asked.

“Well, supposing I was hypnotized and told I was a pig and then the hypnotist suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack. Would I think I was a pig forever?”

There was a moment of silence. Then Eva began to laugh.

“That’s a very funny notion,” she giggled. Everyone else began to laugh, too, except for Himmler. He smiled, but only for the briefest moment. Ingersoll watched his eyes and knew that, from the way they darted, Himmler was thinking, Would it work?

For the most part, Ingersoll sat through the meal entranced. These were the elite of Hitler’s elite. Men who had simply been names and faces before tonight now were his peers, handpicked by Hitler to mold his ideas into the new German order.

Each of them was different, each had a specific objective. Himmler, head of the SS, a little no-nonsense man with no sense of humor and a mind as cold as a crypt, seemed incapable of frivolous conversation. The perfect man to lead the SS.

Goring, bulky head of the Luftwaffe, the state police, and Reich Master of the Hunt, the World War ace who had shot down twenty-two British and American flyers. He had been Hitler’s closest friend and confidant since they had marched side- by-side at the Burgerbraukeller Beer Hall Putsch of ‘23 and Goring had taken two bullets in the thigh. Goring was the court jester, constantly making jokes, many times on himself.

Goebbels. The midget with a club foot. Cadaverous, pushy and cynical, with a nervous laugh, he had written, after first hearing Hitler speak at the Zirkus Krone in Munich in 1926, “I am reborn.” As the master propagandist he seemed the perfect man to spread the Gospel of the Third Reich.

Walther Funk, the mousy little man with dodgy eyes and very little to say. The party’s money genius. It didn’t seem possible that this quiet, involuted, self-deprecating man had whipped Thyssen, the steel magnate, Schnitzler, leader of the chemical cartel, and von Schroeder, head of the banking trust, into line and kept them and the other industrialists there. His promise that Hitler would get rid of both the Communists and the labor unions had lured the industrial power of Germany into the Nazi party. A schemer, Ingersoll decided, probably best at executing the ideas of others.

Speer the architect, young, handsome, with the bright-eyed look of the idealist, the youthful genius seemed a bit awed at being in such powerful company. Speer, who had little to say except when he was talking about buildings, was the dreamer who would create a phoenix from the ashes of Germany’s defeat.

Eva Braun, the vivacious little girl from the village who appeared to be Hitler’s current girlfriend. Frivolous, pretty in a common way, but empty-headed, she was apparently an innocuous diversion for the leader.

Vierhaus. Deformed, persuasive, an enigma who apparently had no title but held an autonomous position within the Gestapo and reported to no one but the Fuhrer. Could he be the Iago to Hitler’s Othello?

And Hess. Dark, handsome, quick-witted and sarcastic, Hess was the mystery man. He had transcribed much of Mein Kampf from the Fuhrer’s notes while Hitler was still in prison and was probably closer to Hitler than anyone except Hermann Goring. His role in the hierarchy was vague to Ingersoll, although as Deputy Fuhrer he was next in line of succession, the crown prince of the Nazi party.

Was he, like Vierhaus, a back-room planner, an unheralded advisor working in the shadows? Or was he simply a confidant whose opinion Hitler respected and whom Hitler trusted to carry on the dream if something happened to him?

Hess had another bond with the Fuhrer, an uncommon interest in witchcraft and the occult. After dinner, assisted by Hess, Hitler told the future using an old-fashioned divining process. In the eerie light of candles, Hitler held a spoon of lead over one candle, dripping the molten lead into a bowl of cold water, then Hess read the misshapen blobs, predicting an amazing and successful year for the Fuhrer, much to the Fuhrer’s delight.

Ingersoll reluctantly had excused himself on the pretense of making sure the film was properly prepared for the screening. But he had other things to do. He had conceived a crazy stunt, daring and dangerous, but one his showman instincts could not resist.

Dressed all in black, he slipped a pair of ice spikes over his shoes, put on a pair of thick work gloves and took a long length of coiled rope from the case. Wrapping his black cloak around his shoulders, he stepped out on the icy balcony.

He had studied the front wall of the chalet earlier in the day. The screening room was on the same level as his room but two balconies away. Normally it would have been a simple stunt to climb up to the roof and down to the screening room but the building was encrusted with ice. Even though the wind had died away, snow flurries drifted down, making it difficult to see up to the roof and making the stunt doubly dangerous. And then, of course, there were the guards constantly patrolling the grounds. But Ingersoll was determined to go through with it.

He swung the loop of coiled rope around, letting it out as he did in a widening circle, and tried to hook it over the cornice on the roof. It missed and fell over the side of the balcony, sending a cascade of broken ice to the ground. Ingersoll flattened himself against the wall as one of the guards peered up. But the guard could see nothing, his vision impaired by hundreds of twinkling snowflakes, and he walked around the corner. On the third try, the rope slipped over the cornice and caught.

Pulling it taut, Ingersoll worked 1is way up the face of the chalet, his spikes biting into the patches of ice imbedded in the wall. Once he was on the steeply eaved rooftop, he loosened the rope. Balanced on the edge of the roof with no safety line, he could feel the ice shifting underfoot. Snow sprinkled into his eyes and mouth.

He bent his knees slightly for added balance and swung the rope around again, this time attempting to hook the cornice over the screening room balcony. It was difficult to judge in the dark and the falling snow. Each time the rope missed, shards of ice clattered down fifty feet to the garden beneath him.

His heart was throbbing with excitement as he continued to try to loop his line over the cornice. Finally it caught. He started to pull it taut but as he did, the icy patch underfoot crumbled and he felt himself slipping over the edge. He reached out with one hand, grabbed the roof, felt his hand slide off and pitched over the side into the darkness.

He plunged downward, grasping the lifeline, wondering for an instant whether it would catch and break his fall.