The Hunt aka 27 Read Online Free PDF Page B

could carry it with him to Berchtesgaden for a private showing to the Führer. It would be the first public showing. The premiere was set for late February at the Kroll Opera House and would be a gala event.
    For two hours, he and Heinz worked on his makeup. H e had decided to go as a middle-aged businessman with latex masking that moved his hairline back, giving him a partially bald look. Heinz built up the bridge of his nose to give it a hard, almost hooked appearance; rubber fleshed o u t his cheeks and jowled his jaw line. Gray streaks in his thinned hair, a gray mustache and goatee and wire-rimmed glasses with clear lenses finished the process. He put on a tweed double-breasted suit and wore his fur-lined black trench coat.
    He smiled in the mirror at the older man who looked back:
    a forty-five-year-old, respectably affluent, slightly paunchy businessman.
    At precisely six A.M., a uniformed sergeant arrived at the door and whisked him in one of Hitler’s private cars to the airport for the two-hour flight to Munich. He was treated like royalty. By 8:30 he was having coffee and pastries at the old Barlow Palace facing Munich’s Konigsplatz, waiting to be picked up by Hitler’s personal chauffeur.
    In the lobby, Ingersoll sensed Hitler’s presence everywhere. In January, the old palace had been opened as the headquarters for the Nazi party after months of renovations. It was now called the Brown House and had been redesigned by Hit le r’s personal architect, Albert Speer. The cost had been staggering although nobody knew what the changes had actually cost. “Blood flags” from the Beer Hall Putsch and other early Nazi Street battles snapped in the wind over the entrance and the place seemed to be a hive of activity. Dispatch riders wheeled up on motorcycles. Officers marched briskly in and out of the building, their riding boots clacking on marble floors. There was a constant ringing of telephones. The place was antiseptically clean, smelling of cold steel, leather, and boot polish.
    Hitler’s dynamic charisma dominated the place even though Ingersoll knew he was in Berchtesgaden, one hundred miles away. This was the heart of the Nazi party, the nerve center of the New Germany. One could almost hear the Führer’s voice as he dictated Germany’s future from behind the walls of his vast first-floor suite of offices.
    He had only to wait a few minutes before the chauffeur arrived in Hitler’s open Mercedes.
    “Shall I put up the top?” the chauffeur asked. “It’s quite cold.”
    Ingersoll shook his head. He knew the drive south to the Bavarian border in the Alpine foothills was one of the most beautiful in all Germany and he wanted to enjoy the scenery. A blanket and his heavy coat would suffice. The chauffeur gave him a hat with ear flaps and then raced off down the main highway toward the Führer’s hideaway.
    Hitler, usually a late sleeper, had awakened as first light cast long red shadows into the bedroom. He lay wide awake, staring at the ceiling for several minutes before he slipped out of the bed he shared with Eva Braun and walked through the bathroom into his sitting room.
    Four days earlier, Hindenburg had named him chancellor of the German Republic.
    Chancellor!
    He was Chancellor of Germany.
    He held out a hand and stared at it. As the new president of the Reichstag, the nation’s parliament, Hitler had the laws of Germany in the palm of that hand.
    Chancellor Hitler.
    He had strutted around the room in his bathrobe laughing aloud and repeating the two words over and over again before ordering up coffee and sweet rolls and drawing his bath.
    Now Hitler stood at the window of his sitting room, as he often did, gazing north toward Braunau. am Inn, his birthplace, and then east toward Vienna, remembering with rage the words which had once torn at his heart.
    N i cht zur Prufung zugelassen.
    He tapped a forefinger on his cheek and chuckled with self-satisfaction. Ingersoll! One of the world’s