As Renate finishes her description of Hitler's bunker and what she found inside, we arrive back at the scene which opened this issue: Someone has chopped down a tree, blocking the only road to the mountain peak.
“Many [tunnels] were bombed and destroyed, and it's impossible to walk through them because of the rubble that blocks the passage. As you know, since the post-war period, the Eagle’s Nest has been a restaurant. A few months ago, my firm was chosen to renovate it. The tunnel that goes to the elevator is also undergoing maintenance and restoration.
“While we were drilling in a wall to eliminate water seepage, one of the tunnels I was telling you about came to light. It was clear that no one had been through it since 1945. The tunnel goes into the heart of the mountain, and at the end is a small room, completely empty except for a padlocked locker. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I asked the workers to open it.
“Inside we found a binder containing various documents. It seemed unimportant, but I stopped to read. It was material compiled by the Gestapo*, a complete dossier on Rudolf of Habsburg-Lorraine.”
Footnote: *Nazi Germany's secret police
“I just happened to be talking about him in the footage we shot for my program.”
“I think that passage was walled up during the Nazi era. The reinforced concrete wall is thicker than normal, so much so that we thought it was a retaining wall.”
“But what is a dossier on Prince Rudolf doing there? If it is in that place, it is clear that it must have been of interest to the Fuhrer... great interest, given the care with which it was kept...”
“Mghrr... rghmm!” (Java grumbles because of the tree across the road)
“Brake! Brake immediately!”
Technically, we are back to page 5 since page 1 is the cover according to Italian numbering conventions. Sforza does a consistently great job giving volume to the snowy trees with negative space.
