‘When Kühn met Hoffman in the Tiergarten in April, he said he’d recently been summoned to see Bormann, who told him he was making plans to escape from Berlin, “should the eventuality arise”. The escape would depend on how matters turned out, because he would have to take his chances if and when they arose – you understand I’m reading from my notes here. Bormann said that his main concern was getting out of Berlin – he believed that would be the most perilous part of any escape – but he’d made plans for once he was away from the city. He told Kühn that he had set up or was involved in something called the Kestrel Line, which was an escape route that would take him south and from there hopefully to South America.’

‘Hang on.’ Hanne was leaning forward, a frown on her face. ‘This Hoffman is seriously asking us to believe that one of the top Nazis in the regime divulged his secret escape plans to a schoolteacher?’

‘If I may answer, Hanne,’ said Gurevich. ‘You are right to question this, but we need to consider what the situation was like in Berlin in April. It must have been hell: we were throwing everything we had at the city, and the RAF was bombing it too. After being assured this was a thousand-year Reich, most people realised it would do well to last another thousand hours. Bormann himself would have known how bad things were and was probably grateful to have an old friend he trusted he could talk to.’

Fyodorov nodded in agreement. ‘Also, Comrade Kommissar, he probably thought Kühn owed him after he saved him in 1941. Kühn said Bormann asked for two favours. One was to act as a conduit for messages: if he received a message from an Else, he was to know it was from Bormann – that was the name of Bormann’s half-sister, whom Kühn knew. And if someone approached him asking about a friend called Graf, then he would know he should pass any message on to them. But no one ever approached him – no message from an Else or anyone asking about Graf. He mentioned a Wolfgang Steiner who was a senior Nazi Party official: Bormann told Kühn he was to trust him if he ever contacted him.’

‘And the other favour?’

‘Bormann gave him some papers and some American dollars. Kühn said the papers were identity papers for Bormann to use, and he thinks the dollars were counterfeit. He says that as soon as the Red Army entered the city, he was terrified they’d find these things on him, so he burnt them. When the British moved into West Berlin, they commandeered his apartment, so he went to live with his daughter in Wedding. We released Paul Hoffman, because he was clearly no Nazi, and in fact he is now working for our police service in the Soviet sector. When I closed his file, I also made those notes on Wolfgang Steiner’s file – it showed he was also unaccounted for. I apologise that they were not more extensive.’