The Hunt.

(aka 27).

Wiliam Diehl.

To the four people who love this island as much as I do:.

The late, great Bobby Byrd, my daughter, Temple, Mark Vaughn, and always, for Virginia.

"What is past is prologue."

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

The Tempest.

BOOK ONE..

"What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart.

What jailer so inexorable as one's self. "

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851.

ONE.

The creature was a terrifying specter. A bizarre distortion, part human, part animal, this scarred, panting, wild-eyed obscenity seemed proof that all things in nature are hot perfect and that even God in his infinite wisdom is sometimes capable of a monstrous blunder.

The face was a network of red, ridged scars, one of which stitched his left eye shut. The nose was a crushed lump, its nostrils flattened against a pale, cadaverous face like the snout of a pig. Thick lips revealed tortured, broken teeth which overlapped as if, in a divine afterthought, they had been jammed haphazardly into the gums. His hair was a thick, blond, twisted mane that tumbled down both sides of his face, framing and accentuating its abnormalities.

His body had not escaped the ravages of natural disorder. He was short, barely five feet tall, bent over by a bowed spine, his shoulders jammed against his neck in a perpetual shrug, one foot turned inward and slanted so he walked on its side in a curious limp that lacked rhythm and cadence.

Misery permeated every pore and sinew of this tortured being.

His one good eye hinted at the angry soul encased in this crippled cage of skin and bone; a fearful gray, glittering orb, unable to conceal his unbridled hatred for the normal humans who, on those rare times when he had been seen, were so revolted by his hideous deformities that they turned their own eyes away from him in horror.

Only his arms and hands seemed to have escaped the uncontrolled genes which had molded him into a human disaster. His arms were powerful and muscular, his hands long, expressive, even delicate. And yet, as if their beauty reminded him of what might have been, he kept them tucked away under his armpits, making his peculiar gait even more ominous.

A night predator, he emerged only after dark to forage for food, to steal what little money he required.

And to kill.

Shrouded by a long, dark green loden coat, its hood concealing his face, he stalked the shadows, dodging the police and the brownshirts, looking for victims. His rage was such that he hunted only the most beautiful and innocent-looking women, and when he found them he killed them, disfiguring their bodies with a ragged butcher knife as if he were getting even with the fates for what they had done to him.

In this, the spring of 1932, he had butchered no less than two dozen women over a period of three years.

The Berlin police were confounded by this monster serial killer who seemed to vanish in the city's shadows. Clues were nonexistent. There was no pattern to his crimes other than the victims' youth and beauty.

To everyone who read the newspapers or listened to the radio, he was now known as Der Nacht Hund, the Night Dog.

In deep shadows, Der Nacht Hund lurked ten feet above the grim, dimly lit alley that wound between the Berlin city hospital and the morgue and ended a block away at the Gelderstrasse bus stop. He had pulled himself, hand-over-hand, up into the shadows by the pipes that ribbed the alley wall. There he waited and watched as the night shift ended and the doctors, interns and nurses drifted out, jabbering as they walked to cars or down the alley below to the bus.

Fifteen minutes passed. He had been watching the alley for several nights, perched in its shadows, checking the nurses, seeking out that perfect beauty and waiting for the moment when she might drop her guard and walk down the alleyway alone.

Der Nacht Hund was infinitely patient.

Two nurses came out of the staff door of the hospital and waited under the bright lights of the emergency entrance for several minutes. One was short and stout, the other, taller and slender with long equine features.

The tall one moved out of the light and lit a cigarette which she shared with the other one. They giggled mischievously, passing the cigarette back and forth, watching lest a doctor or senior nurse catch them. Women were forbidden from smoking on the hospital grounds; if caught, the two would be sternly chastised. In fact, the night supervisor frowned on women smoking at all, considering it a common and filthy habit suitable only for men.

They finished the cigarette, looked back at the exit, then the shorter one shrugged. They proceeded down the alley toward the bus stop.

The third woman was young, barely in her twenties, with an angelic face that exuded innocence and wonder, a delicate beauty who had been in nurses' training for only a few weeks. As she exited the hospital, she looked around and called out, "Anna? Sophie?"

No answer.

She approached the mouth of the alley cautiously, and leaning forward peered into its gloomy depths. Fifty yards away the alley curved. She could see the long shadows of her two friends cast against the brick wall by the street lamps at the bus stop, could hear faint laughter.

She huddled into her coat and walked rapidly after them.

The loden coat made a slight flapping sound as he dropped toward his prey and she turned a moment before he landed behind her.

She caught a brief glimpse of his warped features but before she could scream he lashed out with one hand, slamming it over her mouth and shoving her against the alley wall. Her eyes bulged in terror; he immediately struck her in the temple with his other fist, a sharp, hard punch that knocked her unconscious. She made a slight whimpering sound, her knees buckled and as she dropped straight down he gathered her up in his arms and whisked her into a doorway.

There was not a sound. The alley was suddenly empty.

"Cut!"

Fifty feet away, the director rose from his canvas chair and applauded.

"Wunderbar, wunderbar!" he said in a thick German accent as he walked across the eerie Gothic movie set toward his stars. "That should whiten their knuckles."

The girl walked out into the set with a sigh.

"Wonderful, my darling," the director cooed, and brushed her cheek with his lips. He was a slight, esthetic man, ramrod straight with the manners of a duke.

"Thank you, Fritz," she said, genuinely pleased by the compliment. This was only her third film, the first in a costarring part. She was still awed by her luck at playing opposite Johann Ingersoll, Germany's most popular actor, and being directed by Fritz Jergens, one of Germany's best-known directors.

The creature emerged behind her.

"Excellent, Johann. Magnificent as always." Jergens shook the monster's hand. "You can go to lunch. Freda, we will do your close-ups before we break."

Ingersoll merely nodded. Remaining in character, he crossed the set in his strange crablike gait and entered a dressing room in the corner of the sound stage.

His valet, Otto Heinz, was waiting as usual. As the actor pulled the door closed, the small, gray-haired man poured Ingersoll a small snifter of brandy. Ingersoll suddenly seemed to grow a foot taller, straightening his shoulders, standing up to his full height. He shook his shoulders out, took out the grotesque plate that covered his real teeth and placed it in a glass cup which Heinz held open for him. He carefully removed the shaggy wig and, as Heinz placed it on a head mold on the corner of the makeup table, the actor dropped wearily on a chaise lounge in the corner of the room.

"It will soon be over," Heinz said, standing behind him. Short and in his late fifties, Heinz still had the body and arms of a weightlifter. He kneaded his muscular hands into Ingersoll's shoulders.

"Ten more days," Ingersoll sighed in a voice that was refined with only a trace of an accent. "This has been the most difficult one so far. Those stunts in that grotesque posture . . . and the makeup! My God, I will think twice before I ever go this far again."

Heinz laughed softly. He knew the agony of enduring seven, sometimes eight hours a day in the heavy disguise. It was unbearably hot under the layers of latex and cosmetics, uncomfortable to the point of pain. But he also understood Ingersoll's drive to make each character more startling, more frightening and original than the previous one. Ingersoll created his own makeup, arising several hours before he was due on the set, applying it himself, assisted only by Heinz, who was also his valet, cook and chauffeur.

"You say that on every show," Heinz said.

"This time I mean it. I will swear it in my own blood."

"Of course."

Heinz had given up his own respectable career as a top makeup man to become Ingersoll's servant and confidant. He was a key figure in one of Germany's most popular mysteries-who was the real Johann Ingersoll?

The star had made seven enormously popular horror films, five of them talking pictures, and was being compared to the great American actor Lon Chaney. Yet nobody knew anything about Johann Ingersoll. There were no photographs of him except in the grotesque makeup he invented for each picture. His biography listed only his films. He never granted interviews and went to unusual lengths to protect his real identity. Adding further to the mystique was Ingersoll's eccentric habit of arriving on the set each day in makeup and leaving the same way, sneaking through the underground tunnels that led to the furnace rooms and the adjoining sound stages, scurrying to some predetermined spot where Heinz was waiting with the limousine. For four years he had eluded both the news reporters and the fans who tried to peer behind the masks, to unveil the real Johann Ingersoll.

The ploy was a publicist's dream and had enhanced the celebrity and stardom of the actor. His stature was now equal to that of Conrad Veidt, Emil Jannings and Peter Lorre. Together they were the four most popular actors to emerge from Germany's young film industry.

There was a soft tapping at the door. Ingersoll groaned.

"Now what?"

"Ja?" Heinz said.

"It is Friedrich. Sorry to intrude but it is important."

"Come, come," Ingersoll said impatiently.

Friedrich Kreisler was a tall, intense man in his mid-thirties, a bon vivant who dressed in the latest fashion, wore his fedora jauntily cocked over one eye and affected a monocle and cane. He was Ingersoll's attorney, agent and manager, and Ingersoll had made him a rich man in a bankrupt Germany where such a feat was virtually impossible. Only one person other than Heinz knew the truth about Ingersoll and that person was Kreisler. It was Kreisler who had created the idea of the movie star nobody knew, who had accompanied him on his first screen test when Ingersoll had stunned the studio by arriving already made up as a character of his own diabolical imagination. It was Kreisler who negotiated all the contracts and who handled all of Ingersoll's business affairs.

To everyone else, his friends and neighbors, Ingersoll was Hans Wolfe, a reclusive Berlin businessman who frequently spent weeks at a time abroad.

"So, how does it go?" Kreisler asked.

Heinz rolled his eyes as if to say "don't ask."

"I need rest," Ingersoll said.

"Three months when you finish. We don't start Das Mitternchtige Tier until spring."

"It will take me that long to create the character. I have already done a werewolf once; this one must be different."

"Ah, you go skiing in Austria for a month, think about it around the fire at night."

"I suppose."

"I . . . uh . . . you have a visitor," Kreisler said tentatively.

Ingersoll looked up sharply.

"I do not take visitors on the set. You know that," he snapped.

"I think perhaps you will make an exception this time."

"No exceptions!"

Kreisler took a letter from his pocket and handed it to Ingersoll.

"He's outside," the agent said.

Ingersoll turned the letter over. There was an official wax seal on the back. His intolerance with the intrusion was obvious as he ripped open the envelope and unfolded the note. It read:Herr Ingersoll, This will introduce Dr. Wilhelm Vierhaus, a member of my personal staff. I will be in your debt if you will give him a few moments of your time on a matter of the utmost importance to us both.

It was signed "A. Hitler."

TWO.

Ingersoll was shocked when Vierhaus entered the dressing room-the visitor's body might have been a creation of his own. Vierhaus had a hunchback, a small distortion on his left shoulder which he partially concealed with a cloak. He held his head true instead of cocked to the side and stood as straight as his physical deformity would permit in an attempt to minimize it. Thick glasses magnified keen, scrutinizing blue eyes. His hair was neatly trimmed and short but not in the crew cut one might expect of someone in the Nazi hierarchy. Were it not for the crippling defect and the thick glasses, Vierhaus would have been handsome, for his features were cleanly chiseled and perfect, his jaw was firm and hard. Everything about Vierhaus exuded strength except the physical trick birth had played on him, a black joke which he managed to minimize with a sense of confidence and self-assurance. His handshake was firm and deliberate, his smile warm and genuine.

"Please forgive this intrusion," he apologized. "But I was advised that you are a hard man to approach at the end of the day. Herr Kreisler suggested this might be the best time to talk."

"Of course, of course," Ingersoll answered. Heinz placed a small salad and a cup of tea on a tray in Ingersoll's lap.

"Will you join me in some lunch?"

"Nein, nein," Vierhaus said waving his hand. "Danke. I had a late breakfast. But please, go ahead, I know your time is limited."

Ingersoll nodded, toying with his salad as he studied Vierhaus through his gray eye.

"So, Herr Doktor, why should I suddenly be so important to you and the Fhrer?"

"It is quite simple," Vierhaus said. "Our Fhrer is a great fan of yours, Herr Schauspieler. He has seen all your films, some of them several times. He is having friends to his retreat at the Berghof a few weeks from now, a weekend of conversation and perhaps skiing if the early snow is good. He would be pleased to have you join him."

Ingersoll was surprised-no, elated-by the invitation. Although he tried his best to remain calm, his heart pounded with excitement. He had just been invited to the leader's most private retreat, the house known as the Eagle's Nest high in the Bavarian Alps above Berchtesgaden.

Hitler wanted to meet him!