“Troy, everybody in the room is totally up to speed with the backstory. I’ve also briefed them on your meeting with the Franklins and, of course, we all witnessed the outrageous press conference.” She turned her attention to Vargas. “Nic, you know why we are here. The question is, are the materials safe and can you bring them to us?”

Vargas nodded, stood up and walked across the room. He turned when he reached the doorway. “Trust me when I say they are totally safe. Give me an hour to go and collect them.”

Amanda seemed genuinely relieved. “Great, now we are here, can I ask where you hid them?”

A small grin broke out on Vargas’s face. “I got myself a safe-deposit box.”

The HSBC branch where Vargas had rented the box was only ten minutes from the hotel, and he returned to the suite forty minutes later. Nobody spoke when he entered the living room and he could sense five sets of eyes glued to the large object he was carrying in his right hand. There was a collective intake of breath as he gently placed the weathered black case in the middle of the table and carefully removed the contents. For the five other people sitting around the table, the level of anticipation and excitement couldn’t have been higher if he’d been unveiling the Crown Jewels. Once all the items were on the table, Vargas opened the tobacco tin and retrieved the seven German medals.

Taylor was the first to react. He reached across and picked up the black Iron Cross, balancing it in the palm of his hand, as if he were weighing it. When he was satisfied, he turned it over and saw that Hitler’s name and the year 1918 had been engraved on the back. For a man of his age, his voice was still remarkably strong, and his cut-glass English accent helped give an air of authenticity.

“If this is genuine, and my initial instinct is that it may well be, it is an earth-shattering discovery and turns all our historical understanding on its head.”

The next few hours seemed to pass remarkably quickly as Amanda and her colleagues worked their way through the piles of documents and photos. At one point, Vargas laced up the two three-minute film reels and projected them onto one of the walls of the suite. The films had the same effect on everyone in the room as they’d had on him when he first saw them. Although they had all been told in advance what to expect, they watched in complete silence with a sense of incredulity.

Everyone worked on their respective laptops and iPads but all eyes were on Taylor, who used his classic Parker pen to make meticulous handwritten notes in a large leather-bound notebook, which seemed as old as he was.