There was a knock. Heidi’s face appeared around the heavy oak door.

‘You have a visitor, Herr Bormann.’

‘Otto Kalt?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No reply yet from Charlie Jung?’

‘His butler told me he was in Switzerland, skiing or mountaineering.’

Charlie Jung. As elusive as smoke in fog.

‘Well, find out the name of his hotel and get a message to him. I want him to call me as soon as possible.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And don’t take no for an answer.’ He lit another cigarette from the butt of the old one. ‘Now give me two minutes, then send Kalt in. We are not to be disturbed.’

‘Yes, sir. Would you like coffee?’

‘No, Heidi. That is all.’

‘Heil Hitler, Herr Bormann.’

Bormann opened the desk drawer and pulled out a photographic copy of a clear but slightly faded sheet of paper. It was titled Taufschein und Geburtszeugnis – Certificate of Baptism and Birth. He read it through carefully once more, memorising every last detail.

There was a knock at the door again.

‘Enter.’

Otto Kalt was a small man with metal-rimmed spectacles and dark hair. He stood to attention, raised himself to his full height – no more than five and a half feet – and clicked his heels.

‘Heil Hitler!’ He shot his arm out in the fascist salute.

From behind his desk, Bormann waved at Kalt to approach. Kalt took two steps forward. No one could have looked less like the Nazis’ idealised Nordic Aryan than Otto Kalt. Not even Himmler was such a poor specimen.

Bormann was not much taller, but he was broad and powerful, with the build and demeanour of a hog and the cunning of a cur. He ran his hand through his thinning, slicked-back hair and nodded to Kalt.

He had known and used Otto Kalt, who was of a similar age – early forties – half his life. They had been together since the heady days of the early 1920s. Kalt came from a rural peasant family, but he had been a Party member since the very beginning and had risen to some wealth. He was useful to Bormann, for he was obedient and had the slyness and callous brutality of his breed; he would shed blood with no more flicker of emotion than if he were killing a pig, as he had shown in the forest outside Parchim when he had slit the throat of the treacherous Walther Kadow on Bormann’s orders. Kalt had always submitted to Bormann, obeying every command. Just as Bormann, in his turn, submitted to every desire of his master, the Führer.

Some said that Bormann was like a son to Hitler. Perhaps it was true. If so, then it was even more true that he was like a father to Otto Kalt.

Bormann’s loyalty to Hitler had been repaid with immense power and he was now Head of the Party Chancellery. Kalt in his turn had been repaid for his loyalty – with the means to purchase a large and splendid farm a little way east of Hamburg.