The building was the headquarters of the Field Security Section, and within minutes of announcing himself at the guard post, Prince was in Major Stewart’s office.

‘Where the hell have you been, Prince?’

Prince said he’d taken a roundabout route.

‘I don’t think people like you appreciate quite what havoc you wreak. Poor old Cuthbert at Munich has had something of a nervous breakdown. He’s being blamed for losing you. What’s this about you hitching a ride on an American plane to Vienna?’

Prince said that was for another time. His priority now was to get to Villach and find Hanne.

‘Oh, don’t worry about her, she’s fine – turned up at the FSS headquarters there very pleased with herself and with a group of bloody Slovenes in tow. She wants to be damn careful – these Slovenes think Carinthia is theirs by right, and we can’t be seen being too helpful to them. She thinks she may have found a house being used by the Nazis, but once she heard you were on your way, she decided to wait for you. I’ll go with you, Prince; can’t have you going freelance again, can we?’

‘We’d better get a move on then.’

‘Hang on. There’s a telegram for you from a chap called Bartholomew. Seems it’s urgent.’

Chapter 23

Germany, December 1945

Wolfgang Steiner had planned to remain in Berlin for a few days after meeting his contacts there in October. His intention was to leave no stone unturned in his search for Martin Bormann. He still believed there was a good chance the Reichsleiter was alive: Bormann was smarter than most people he knew, and he wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it turned out he was hiding in a cellar somewhere, being protected by a sympathiser, patiently biding his time until it was safe to make his next move.

He remained convinced that the absence of any news on Bormann’s whereabouts had to be a good sign. If he’d been captured by the Russians, the Americans or the British, they would quickly announce it – as they would if his body had been found. In Mitte and elsewhere in the Soviet sector, they sold a newspaper called Deutsche Volkszeitung, which was a communist publication but seemed to devote a good deal of coverage to the fate of important Nazis. Steiner scoured it daily but saw no mention of Bormann.

But his meeting with Willi Kühn had unsettled him. The schoolteacher had asked too many questions, and there was something about his manner that had made Steiner suspicious. Kühn may well have been a childhood friend of Bormann’s, but Steiner hadn’t detected much sympathy: he’d seemed curious about Bormann rather than concerned. As a result, Steiner had left Berlin the following day, travelling by bus and by foot and arriving three days later at the farm near Eggenfelden. He was relieved to find that Ulrich and Friedrich were no longer there.

‘They left perhaps two days after you did,’ Frau Moser assured him. ‘The younger one, he didn’t even say goodbye or thank me. Manners don’t cost anything, do they? Their parents should teach them manners.’