‘I didn’t want to, but I warmed to him. He’s hard working. The sort of man who built America.’

‘I know what you mean, but don’t go too easy on him. He’s effectively using slave labour these days – hundreds of thousands of men from the occupied territories. Fritz Todt is as hard as they come. The fact that he’s hard on himself too doesn’t change that. Perhaps you didn’t notice the death’s head ring he wears.’

Wilde hadn’t. ‘Well, with luck I won’t have to see him again.’

Vanderberg was driving. The car was open-topped with whitewall tyres and running boards – and the engine noise was loud.

‘Don’t look around, Tom, but we’re being followed.’

‘What a surprise.’

‘But we can talk. There’s no way of bugging us here.’

‘Good. Then answer me this, Jim – are you really saying this Klara Wolf is Adolf’s daughter?’

‘On the balance of probabilities, I’d say yes – but who knows? And why not? He has a mistress, you know. A woman named Eva Braun, though no one outside his close circle knows it. She lives in the Berghof – and they have adjoining bedrooms.’

‘God, Jim, I always thought he was asexual. You know – no interest.’

‘That’s what you’re supposed to think. But for a man whose relationships with women are supposed to be purely platonic, he sure seems to stir some dark and deadly passions. Geli, dead, shot with Hitler’s own pistol. Unity Mitford – who was desperate to marry him – shot herself in the head at the start of the war. Two years before that, the actress Renate Müller threw herself to her death from a window after their relationship ended. I’ve heard a rumour that Eva Braun also took an overdose of sleeping pills but survived. Maybe Herr Hitler is just unlucky – but Tom, there’s a pattern there.’

Wilde said nothing; this was all new to him. Why didn’t these details make the press?

‘Oh, and there’s more,’ Vanderberg said. ‘His own mother’s name was Klara and he has often liked to go by the name Wolf.’

‘Compelling evidence – but not conclusive.’

‘As you say. But Freudians might also note that there is another pattern here. The age gap between Hitler and Geli – twenty years – is very similar to the age gap between Hitler’s father and mother. Apparently there are some pictures somewhere – intimate drawings Hitler made of Geli. Not in the manner of a life class, but of the boudoir, if you get my meaning.’

‘Jim, how do you know all this?’

‘I’ve got most of it direct from the midwife who delivered Geli’s baby. She came to the embassy with this tale just over two weeks ago, and she was desperate. I believed her instantly. She laid it all out to me while we walked in the Tiergarten and down by the canal. She said the whole thing had been discovered and she was desperate to escape – and get the little girl to safety. She believed Bormann’s men would be on to her within hours.’