He focused his thoughts entirely on the Führer … focused them, as he once had done years ago, on a sham Italian count. If he was going to break this monster’s mind, he first had to find a way inside it.
The discussion went on all around him, Mainz rambling on about a Spear of Destiny, Himmler babbling about an ancient king named Heinrich the Fowler, but Sant’Angelo tuned them out, as if adjusting a wireless set, and concentrated on a single signal … the one coming from the Führer himself.
But no sooner had he found it, loud and clear, than he felt as if a wintry wind had just blown through his very bones. Even in that stifling room, he felt a glacial chill. Rather than being able to marshal his own thoughts, he found them scattering in all directions, like dead leaves drifting across a field of rubble.
Concentrate, he told himself. Concentrate.
But it was like loitering on a battlefield, after the slaughter.
He gathered himself together, trying to erase the desolate scene, and tried again. With every ounce of energy that he could muster, he burrowed into the Führer’s brain.
And this time—this time—he saw Hitler’s head snap backwards. The palsied left hand—was the man diseased?—brushed the back of his hair again, in what was plainly a nervous tic.
He had found his point of entry, and now the marquis bored in deeper, harder. His own temples throbbed with the effort. The Führer’s shoulders seemed to droop, his knees to bend.
“Of course we haven’t even begun a proper interrogation,” Himmler was saying, as if Sant’Angelo weren’t there to hear it. “This so-called marquis cannot be as ignorant as he claims.”
Sant’Angelo was careful not to move a muscle, or call any undue attention to himself, as he continued about his work.
“But in my estimation, the entire chateau is a source of power,” the professor added. “I felt it the moment we passed the gatehouse. We must look under every stone.”
The blood drained from the Führer’s face, and he wavered on his feet. His hand shook more violently, and Himmler suddenly took note.
“Mein Führer,” he said, “are you all right?” He motioned for the desk chair—an ornately carved throne—and one of the soldiers carted it around the table as if it were made of toothpicks and slapped it down behind him. Himmler guided their shaken leader onto its velvet seat.
“Go get the doctor!” Mainz cried, and the soldier standing by the door bolted down the stairs.
Beads of sweat dotted Hitler’s brow.
The marquis concentrated even more. Like a mole, he was tunneling into the deepest recesses of the monster’s brain, and there, once he was at the very core, he would brew a storm so great that the Führer’s eyes would go blind, his ears go deaf, and his blood would boil beneath his skin. To the Nazis in the room it would look like a stroke—a fatal stroke—the kind that might suddenly afflict anyone … even the master of the almighty Third Reich. And no one would be the wiser.
But then the jolt came. The counterattack.
Sant’Angelo had never felt such a powerful blast. It dwarfed Cagliostro’s powers.
The Führer, whose chin was nearly resting on his chest now, whose whole left arm was quivering, showed no emotion, but the shock wave came again, rocking the marquis so hard he nearly lost his balance. He was amazed that no one else had felt it.
Recovering himself, he leaned forward, his hands on the desk to brace himself, but now he saw Mainz, kneeling by the chair, glance up at him suspiciously.
“What are you doing?”
Sant’Angelo couldn’t reply—he needed to focus all his attention. Hitler slumped in his chair, as Himmler stood helpless by his side.
“Answer me!” Mainz stood up, fists clenched, the veins bulging in his neck. “What are you doing?”
Sant’Angelo summoned all his strength, whipping the storm inside the Führer’s head to an absolute fury, a raging tornado of pulsing blood and engorged vessels, of electrical discharges and chemical surges … dragging him toward the brink of a fatal seizure or stroke. He didn’t care which.
But Mainz had figured it out, and he was grabbing at the marquis, wrestling with him.
“Shoot him!” he shouted at the oafish guard. “Shoot him in his fucking head!”
As the two men fall to the floor, struggling, the marquis felt another shock of retaliation, as powerful as a hammer blow to his chest. The Führer’s power was greater than anything he had ever encountered, as if he were channeling the devil himself.
The guard was trying to get a clear shot, but Sant’Angelo and the professor were so entangled that it wasn’t possible.
And that was when the marquis was able to reach under the table and snare the garland.