Ingersoll repeated the entire oath verbatim.

Hitler smiled and held out his hand.

"Congratulations, Colonel. I will put you in touch with my personal tailor in Berlin. Your uniform will be my gift. Along with this."

Hitler held his hand out. Vierhaus took a package from his coat pocket and gave it to him. It was wrapped as a present, a long slender box, about a foot long, four or five inches wide. Hitler offered it to Ingersoll.

"Congratulations," he said with a smile. Yet, as Ingersoll met his gaze, he saw more than a smile. He saw pride. And he saw anticipation.

The actor slowly took the package in both hands and stared at it a moment. Subconsciously he hefted it once or twice, a throwback to his childhood when the heaviest gifts were always the best. It was heavy enough.

"Open it, open it," Hitler said impatiently.

Ingersoll put it on the edge of the table and took off the wrapping paper. It was a mahogany box. Inside was a dagger, the official SS long knife, ebony handled with a gleaming double-edged blade almost a foot long scabbarded in black leather. On the hilt was the official SS insignia, two jagged lightning streaks in gold. He turned it over and on the opposite side of the handle was a golden eagle perched on a wreath which encircled a diamond-studded swastika. He drew the dagger from its scabbard. Just below the hilt, pressed into the steel, were the initials "A.H."

Ingersoll was struck dumb. In a matter of moments he had been commissioned a colonel in the SS and presented with a personal gift signed by the Fhrer.

He looked at Hitler with adoration.

"I can tell you this now," he stammered. "Although we have been keeping it a very guarded secret. I've made five horror films in less than two years and frankly, I want to get away from these thrillers, play a dramatic part. Stretch my talent. We plan to have the world premiere of Der Nacht Hund on February twenty-seventh in the Kroll. On that night I plan to appear as myself and end this publicity charade. It's become a terrible burden. Now I can go as Colonel Hans Wolfe. The publicity impact will be even greater!"

Hitler looked at Vierhaus for a moment and pursed his lips.

Now is the time, Hitler thought. He is ready.

Hitler began to stride the room, hands behind his back, slapping a fist into the palm of his other hand. He stared at the ceiling of the room as he spoke.

"You have a unique combination of talents, my friend. You are a superb actor. You speak four languages fluently, you are a master of dialects and accents. You are a master of disguise, a soldier and a survivalist, an acrobat. You believe in the Third Reich. And . . . you are a killer. Two squads of American Marines in one encounter, correct?"

He stopped and looked down at Ingersoll.

"Yes, Fhrer, that is correct."

"Was it difficult? The killing, I mean?"

Ingersoll stared at him for a few seconds and smiled. "On the contrary, Fhrer, it was very satisfying," he said.

"There, you see," Hitler said, spreading his arms to his sides. "Unique talents. One of a kind. Did I tell you, Willie?"

"Yes, mein Fhrer, you told me," Vierhaus agreed, accepting the fact that the plot had suddenly become Hitler's.

"Is the Third Reich your dream, Hans?"

"Yes."

"The most important thing in the world?"

"Yes."

"More important than your career, even life itself?"

"Yes!"

Hitler poured himself another glass of wine. His gaze was riveted to Ingersoll's. He sipped the wine and leaned forward again and nodded.

"I believe you. And I believe that if I told you I had an impossible mission to be performed, a mission requiring great personal sacrifice, one which would require giving up your name, your career, your fortune-everything-I do believe that if I asked you to take on such a mission, you would say yes."

Ingersoll said nothing. Hitler's words had put him in a near trance of ecstasy.

"Even if this mission meant living in a country you detest for years, six, seven, perhaps?"

Now Hitler leaned closer, his voice a whisper.

"Even if I tell you this mission is so secret that I cannot tell-even you-what it will be. Only the professor and I will know, until it is time for you to act. Even then I believe you would accept such an assignment."

"It would be an honor even to be considered for such a task," Ingersoll whispered back.

"Well, Hans Wolfe, so you are. You are the man I want to carry out that mission."

Stunned, Ingersoll looked back and forth between the two men.

Is he serious? he wondered. Is this some kind of a test of my loyalty, my trust in him?

"There is within the SS a highly guarded unit called Die Sechs Fchse, the Six Foxes. It is headed by Professor Vierhaus. There are only five members, including himself. Each of the other four is a unique individual, like yourself. Each has been given a specific mission to perform. Each is known by a code name known only to Willie and myself. Even Himmler does not know their identities or their individual objectives. There are no written reports and no records kept by the Six Foxes. The reason is that these missions are so sensitive, so secret, that we cannot afford even the slightest breach of security. The individuals themselves do not know the nature of the assignments. Obviously if they were caught and gave up the secret, that mission would have to be abandoned. And each of these missions is vital to the future of Deutschland."

"I understand," Ingersoll said.

"The agents of Die Sechs Fchse report only to Vierhaus and he reports only to me. The particular assignment we have in mind for you would, in the event war is imminent with the United States, paralyze their war effort and neutralize them. It would, we are certain, keep the United States out of the war. In other words, Hans, this mission could directly affect the outcome of our struggle. So, if you choose to accept and are successful, you will be the single most important war hero in the history of the Third Reich."

Ingersoll's excitement flooded over. He began to speak but Hitler held up a finger.

"Before you say anything, Hans Wolfe, you must understand if you accept this job, both Hans Wolfe and Johann Ingersoll must die. You would become a man without an identity. A number."

"A number?"

"Willie . . ." Hitler said.

"You would be known only as Siebenundzwanzig. "

"Twenty-seven? Why twenty-seven?"

"You will understand in time," Vierhaus said. "Between the three of us, we will shorten it to Swan. I would suggest that we move your personal fortune to Swiss banks, although you would have to promise never to draw money from these accounts until the mission is complete. Upon your death, your property would be sold and those funds, too, would be deposited in Switzerland. We cannot afford to establish the remotest kind of paper trail. Does that make sense?"

Almost in a state of shock, Ingersoll merely nodded.

"You will be trained in every facet of espionage, sabotage and survival," Vierhaus continued. "When you are ready you will be the most competent agent in the German intelligence system. And then you would go underground until the time is right. And that, dear sir, could be," and he paused before completing the sentence, "five to eight years from now."

"What would I do for eight years?"

"Wait," said Hitler. And then he smiled. A genuine, uncomplicated smile. "Become an American. A plain, insignificant American."

Ingersoll could not speak. The awesome scope of Hitler's proposal had short-circuited his thinking powers. Too much had happened in the last few minutes for him to rationally sort it all out. Only one thought was beginning to come through: to become another person, in another country. What an acting job. The world's greatest acting job. . . .

"Wealth, recognition, fame . . . all these things are yours," Hitler continued. "To give all that up for any reason is almost unthinkable." Hitler stared into the fire. The flames crackled in the now total silence. "There have been many sacrifices made for the glory of Deutschland and there will be many, many more. But none will be greater than what I have proposed to you . . . Colonel Wolfe."

Ingersoll barely heard the words. The glory of Deutschland . . . none will be greater . . . almost unthinkable . . . Colonel Wolfe . . .

The world's greatest acting job. . . .

SEVEN.

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 Nacht Hund makeup. He unpacked the black cloak and shook it out.

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 Gring, 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 Fhrer's right. It seemed obvious that Hess and Gring, 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 Rienzi.

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 Rienzi, " Hitler said. "I sat up all night thinking about it. About the lessons to be learned from it. Heinrich, what did you learn from Rienzi?"

"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. Eight hundred thousand, using only the crudest methods. I should think with proper ingenuity and planning, sophisticated techniques . . ." He shrugged again, letting their imaginations complete the sentence.

"Rather a dark interpretation of Rienzi, " Vierhaus offered.

"Wagner is dark," Himmler said flatly.

Was he talking about all the Jews in Germany?, Ingersoll had wondered. Impossible.

"And what lesson did you learn, Fhrer?" 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 Der Nacht Hund. I told him to make me feel the pain of being crippled. And then let me recall those feelings at will while I was making the movie."

"And . . . ?" Vierhaus leaned forward slightly.

"I could actually invoke pain when I was in costume."

"Amazing," Vierhaus said.

"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.

Gring, 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 Brgerbrukeller Beer Hall Putsch of '23 and Gring had taken two bullets in the thigh. Gring 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.