He spotted an old woman watching him from the doorway of a nearby house.

‘Frau Schulze…’

‘What about her?’

‘Do you know where she is?’

The woman was chewing something black, and her teeth were stained the same colour. She leaned forward and peered at the gap where the house had been. ‘She seems to have popped out!’ This was followed by a bitter laugh and a bout of noisy coughing. When she had recovered, she asked him why he wanted her.

‘I was a friend of hers.’

‘You don’t look like one of her friends.’

‘Do you know where she is?’

Another cackling laugh, followed by more coughing. She pointed to a high pile of rubble blocking the end of the street. ‘Somewhere in there, I imagine, what’s left of her. Her house took a direct hit. What’s your name anyway?’

He thanked her and hurried away. He hadn’t asked Bormann how he knew Frau Schulze, though the connection seemed strange. She wasn’t his kind of contact, not beautiful or an obvious Nazi. She was just an ordinary woman, a war widow with two sons on the Eastern Front. Maybe that was why he’d chosen her: because no one would suspect her of a connection with a prominent Nazi.

She was one of four contacts Bormann had set up across the city.

If I manage to leave the bunker, Wolfgang, and can’t get out of Berlin and down to you, I’ll try to leave a message with one of these people. I may even be able to hide there – or at least tell them where I am. That way you will know where to find me.

Steiner had had his doubts about the plan but couldn’t think of anything better. The idea had been to find contacts in different parts of the city, thus increasing Bormann’s chances of getting a message to at least one of them. As well as Frau Schulze in Prenzlauer Berg, there’d been a man called Köhler who ran a cobbler’s in Neukölln in the south-east of the city; a schoolteacher called Kühn who lived in a smart apartment with stunning views of the Tiergarten; and an elderly woman – Frau Vogt – in Schöneberg.

For two days Max Stein walked the city, his identity card getting him through checkpoints easily enough and the dollars in his wallet enabling him to buy a bed for the night. The cobbler in Neukölln was horrified when he entered the shop and asked whether the pair of dark brown hunting boots he’d brought in to be re-soled months ago were ready… name of Graf. Köhler said he knew nothing – absolutely nothing, nothing whatsoever – and he was to leave. Please go! He pushed him out of the shop.

Frau Vogt’s apartment in Schöneberg was still there, but Frau Vogt wasn’t. As he knocked on the door of her apartment, he spotted neighbours watching him from every doorway.

She’s dead.

Steiner said he was sorry to hear that – how did it happen? he wondered.