The Templar Prophecy by Mario Reading Read Free Book Online Page A

needed at the Führerbunker. This briefcase Scheuer stole contains a document of the utmost importance to the Reich. A safe pair of hands must deliver it.’
    Eberhard didn’t wait for a reply. He started off immediately in the direction of the bunker. When next he turned back to look, some of his men were clustering round the body of the Hitler Youth boy.
    Well. They could transform themselves into sitting targets if they so desired. He had other fish to fry.
    By the time he had rounded the first corner, Eberhard had convinced himself that what he carried in the briefcase would garner him at the very least a commendation. Possibly even a promotion. Perhaps even a medal.
    But best of all it carried with it the chance of meeting the Führer himself.

NINE
    Adolf Hitler looked like an old man. At fifty-six years and nine days old, he was developing the beginnings of a dowager’s hump from stooping, dropping his head, and hunching his shoulders. His skin was ash-coloured from lack of sunlight, and his eyes and expression were dull. He wore blue-tinted glasses. When he walked he dragged his left leg and shuffled. During the past nine months he had developed the habit of favouring his left arm following the damage his right arm had received in the July 1944 assassination plot, making him seem lopsided when he approached people.
    But for Master Sergeant Friedhelm Eberhard, the evidence of his own eyes was irrelevant. He had worshipped the Führer for so long from afar that the reality he saw in front of him bore no relation to the picture his mind succeeded in conjuring up. To him, as he stood there in the Führer’s personal study, the man who took the briefcase from him seemed God-like. And to serve such a man was the equivalent of a divine commission.
    â€˜How did you come by this item?’ There were stress lines on Adolf Hitler’s cheeks, and dried spittle at the corner of his mouth from a recent outbreak of shouting.
    â€˜I took it from a dead Russian soldier, Mein Führer.’ Eberhard had pocketed Lieutenant Colonel Pfeidler’s medals and wasn’t about to give them up. After the war was over he could claim them as his own. Failing that, they might be worth money. He had tossed Pfeidler’s ID tag into the rubble, where it belonged. And to hell with the boy he had killed.
    â€˜Extraordinary.’ Hitler exchanged his blue-tinted glasses for a pair of reading glasses, painstakingly checked the condition of the official seal on the document wallet, then sliced through it with a penknife. He drew out the covering letter and read it. The hand holding the letter shook like that of a drunkard, so that the letter flapped limply, like a handkerchief farewell. ‘Quite extraordinary.’ As Hitler read further, a smile crossed his face. The smile steadily grew, and Hitler seemed to grow with it, until he resembled a partially inflated caricature of the man who had ordered the invasion of Poland in 1939. ‘Bormann!’ he shouted. ‘Bormann and Goebbels. I want them in here. Now.’
    One of the SS guards standing by the study door saluted, swivelled on his heel and left the room.
    Hitler began to laugh.
    Eberhard stood aghast. What was going on? Why was the Führer in such high spirits? What could possibly have been inside the briefcase to cause such jubilation? For even Eberhard, a past master at wishful thinking, sawlittle or nothing to be jubilant about in the present crisis confronting the Reich.
    As Eberhard watched, Adolf Hitler cut what amounted to a caper on the carpet in front of him. In reality it looked more like the uncontrolled gyrations of a madman. To Eberhard, however, Hitler’s dance resembled nothing so much as the victory jig he had seen the Führer do on newsreels after receiving news about the capitulation of Paris to German forces in June 1940.
    â€˜You.’ Hitler pointed to the second guard. ‘Fetch me Colonel von Hartelius and