Read Online Through the Eye of Time by Trevor Hoyle - Free Book Online

then asked what was the reaction of the British people to Press reports that the Reich was gearing itself for war. Did they accept such reports as being objective statements of fact?
    Mandrake thought not. He said that the Press was sharplydivided. Some newspapers and journals, notably those with a left-wing bias, were making all kinds of ridiculous claims about the so-called ‘German militarization programme’ while other sections, the more sober-minded and sensible, calmly pointed out that every sovereign nation had the right and the duty to protect itself from potential aggression.
    His final judgement, I surmised, was that the British people wanted some form of tangible reassurance that Germany was a peace-loving nation whose leaders sought nothing more sinister than to join hands with their ‘island cousins’.
    Bormann, standing nearby, had listened to all this in silence, just occasionally raising his heavily-lidded eyes, his square stolid face betraying no emotion. Now he spoke up and said that in his opinion the British people were short of only one thing – leadership. The people would follow if others were willing to lead. There was to be an election in the autumn, was there not? What better opportunity to put the hypothesis to the test?
    Whether he was testing Mandrake or merely voicing an opinion I do not know: Bormann is an odd fellow, taciturn, morose, a real cold fish, and like the rest of his fishy race possesses a mind which normal warm-blooded creatures find difficult to comprehend.
    In any case Mandrake would not be drawn. He nodded once or twice, which might have indicated assent or perhaps the politeness of a guest hiding his yawning indifference before one of his host’s bumptious buffoons. The upshot of this was to increase my respect for Mandrake and harden the distrust and suspicion I already felt for the secretive and molelike Bormann, second-in-command to Hess.
    *
    It is three a.m. and I have just this minute returned from the Führer’s bedroom. He relies on me more and more.
    After the reception the toadying von Hasselbach suggested he rest for an hour, not knowing that I had injected him twice that morning with 250 mg. of dextrose and concentrated hormones. Consequently the Führer was in peak condition (essential for such an important occasion) and still keyed up withnervous energy. He gave von Hasselbach one of those blank yet curiously hypnotic stares which chill the blood of most people, saying that he would rest when he felt like resting and not a moment sooner. Von Hasselbach seemed to shrink visibly in front of us all, a gathering of forty or more in the Führer’s private apartments overlooking the Chancellery gardens.
    Goering, Himmler, Ribbentrop and several of the others looked at von Hasselbach piteously and then turned away as if he were a leper; his days in the Sanctum are numbered, of that there’s little doubt.
    Mandrake retired early, exhausted after his flight and the day’s hectic celebrations, leaving about a dozen senior members of the Chancellery and their personal attendants. We stood in a large informal group with the Führer as centre-piece, still elated with the day’s events and what he regarded as his own personal triumph of political strategy: the appearance of two great leaders in agreement over Europe and in perfect harmony.
    His spring, you might say, was being wound tighter and tighter. As he talked he got carried away with his own inner vision, which in turn fed his eloquence and he went on and on, swivelling on the heels of his boots, his fingers jabbing stiffly to make a point, his right fist jerking up and down to drive home the importance of what he was saying, and then the fleshy smack as the fist hit the palm of his hand, doing this again and again and again.
    His colour was high; his blue-grey eyes had taken on that dulled vacant expression as when a person is not in full possession of his faculties but