Wilde raised his hand, palm forward. ‘Enough, Dr Schellenberg, you’re straying from the subject.’

‘Forgive me.’

‘You are an educated man, so it must have pained you to have to work with Hitler and his mindless thugs. Wouldn’t you like to help me bring him to justice – the last chapter in this sorry tale of cruelty and murder? I know you have already done a great deal to assist the British and Americans. Finding Hitler would be a final feather in your cap, would it not? Proof that you are truly no longer a Nazi. When you come to trial for war crimes, it would go a long way towards mitigating your sentence.’

‘I understand, Professor. The thing is, I had very little to do with Hitler on a day-to-day basis. I don’t think he liked me much. Intellectuals made him feel uneasy. A little inadequate or inferior, perhaps.’

‘You’re still skirting the issue.’

‘The point is I was not in the bunker in his last days. You need to speak to those who were there: Bormann, Müller if you can find him, two or three generals such as Jodl, Krebs and Burgdorf. Linge, his servant, and Kempka, his driver. And the secretaries, of course. I don’t know what became of them? Did any survive, or did the Soviets slaughter them?’

Wilde had a small notepad and pencil and made a note of the names. He looked up at Schellenberg. ‘Actually, Herr Doctor, I don’t want to talk with you about the bunker. I want to know about the Alpenfestung. You were deeply involved in that . . .’

He waved the very concept of involvement away with an extravagant display of his hands, like swatting flies. Then he laughed. ‘The Alpenfestung? Do you believe in that?’

‘I don’t know. You tell me.’

‘Nothing happened. Hitler did not want anything done about it. He was determined to defend Berlin and fight to the end. That’s what I was told.’

‘From what I understand, you were involved in the original Alpenfestung planning on the orders of Himmler. I believe it was first proposed at the end of 1943, after the defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk, when it became clear Germany could not win the war. Is that correct?’

‘That is essentially the case. But—’

‘Forget the buts for the moment. The idea was that you would hold the mountains between southern Bavaria, through Austria to the Italian border, and that it could be held with a relatively small army of highly trained, dug-in troops. This redoubt would have huge stocks of food and munitions and prepare for the long haul.’

‘Yes, but it was all fake. We produced plans and Goebbels let them be leaked to the world. It was done to demoralise our enemies.’

And it had worked, Wilde knew. The Allied powers had fallen for the deception and it had delayed the advance of the Sixth Army in the south. In the end, resistance by the Nazis was remarkably light in Bavaria and Austria. However, that was not necessarily the end of the story. ‘You see, Herr Dr Schellenberg, I readily accept your statement that the redoubt wasn’t built, but that doesn’t mean the work didn’t start. And, if nothing else, the Nazis were extremely good at constructing and concealing reinforced concrete fortifications.’