‘The real place was destroyed by Red Army artillery in 1945,’ said Max Breslow dryly.

‘You’d never know it,’ said the art director.

Max Breslow walked across to where his daughter was examining the doors and looked back to get the effect of the whole gigantic room.

‘This must have cost the earth, Papa.’

‘Only a fool tries to spread his spending over the whole production,’ said Max Breslow. ‘I looked at that script and I realized at once that the scenes inside the Kaiseroda mine could be filmed for practically nothing. It’s little more than a dark tunnel, I’m negotiating to go out and shoot some outdoor locations in Solvang village near Santa Barbara.’

‘Papa, that’s Danish.’

‘I’ve been up there to look at it, Mary, The director and I believe that with careful shooting we can make Solvang look like the village of Merkers in Thuringia. And of course we’ll get permission to take down the television antennae and remove the billboards and so on. And we’ll put up authentic-looking street signs and posters, and paint Nazi slogans on the walls. We can fit a couple of bomb-damaged buildings-just the fronts, of course-between the houses. These American villages are far more spread out than the German ones ever were. And those fronts we add will be complete with damage and so on.’

‘You’re so clever, Papa.’

‘My Hitler scenes will take place on this set, and we’ll see him outdoors in a small convoy of vehicles, using some big three-axle Mercedes that I’m arranging to rent.’

‘So this set we’re on is the only big one?’

‘No. If all goes well, I’ll have an even bigger one than this. I want to recreate Hitler’s private train for the sequence in which Hitler argues with Göring about whether the fighting should continue. If I can persuade this museum in Chicago to rent me the two Pullman cars they have, I will convert them into the Führersonderzug. Then I will woo the railroad company into letting me shoot five days in Union Station, right here in the city.’

‘In Union Station?’

‘It’s a wonderful building, Mary. Did you ever take a proper look at it? Can you imagine what that would look like draped with fifty-foot-tall red swastika banners, lined with German soldiers of the Führer Begleit Batallion, and packed with extras shouting and screaming the old Nazi slogans, while Hitler walks slowly past them to his train? Can you imagine what a great sequence that would be?’

‘I can imagine how many column inches you’d pick up in the local papers and TV news.’

Max Breslow permitted himself a thin smile. ‘There would be that too, Mary, of course.’ He went out through the main workshop into the smaller rooms, All of them were putting together hastily constructed furniture for the Hitler Chancellery scene. His immense desk was receiving the plastic spray that would make it look, to the camera’s eye, like a masterpiece of French polishing. Only two chairs were so far constructed from the pile of ornate legs and seats.

‘Everything’s so oversize, Papa. Is that the way it was?’

‘They are working from photos,’ said Max Breslow, ‘All the original furnishings were deliberately made too large. They say it was intended to overawe the visitor, and make him feel insignificant in the presence of the Führer.’

Mary Breslow walked over to the part of the workshop where the working drawings were pinned to the walls, along with dozens of large glossy photo prints of the Reich Chancellery in its days of glory. ‘What a place,’ she said. ‘You can smell the megalomania.’ She turned to her father, ‘Were you ever there, Papa? Tell me truly. I want to know.’

‘I saw it,’ admitted Max Breslow. ‘More than once. And I saw the monster too.’

‘Was he a monster, Papa?’

‘Let history be the judge,’ said Breslow. ‘It is too early to rake over the reputations of those so recently dead.’

‘It’s thirty-five years ago, Papa,’ said Mary. She watched him closely and he knew he was being observed although he did not turn round, or even move his head.

‘It’s only yesterday for some of us,’ said Breslow. How did he ever get into this absurd situation? The money was welcome, of course, but this wretched film about Hitler, which he had never wanted to have anything to do with, might be the very thing to get him into trouble with the Americans. If the newspapers discovered that he had served with the Waffen SS that might be enough to have him deported. Damn Kleiber. Damn him, damn him, damn him.

‘Cheer up, Papa,’ said Mary.

Since the beginning of July, Max Breslow had rented a temporary office on the block where the sets were made. It was shabbier than his previous office on Melrose, and certainly not the sort of place where he would want to bring clients, but it was clean and convenient enough until they actually started shooting. Then he would move into a proper suite of offices which would house all the production staff in one building. He reached into his pocket for the well-worn key; goodness only knows how many other producers had used it-big hits, big flops, mostly men like himself, he supposed, small-time producers shrewd enough to plan towards a modest profit, rather than to risk everything in the hope of a bonanza. But surely no other producer had been blackmailed into making a picture.

Max Breslow went outside, across the lot, and up a single flight of wooden stairs. He walked along an open balcony to a door marked ‘Number Fourteen’ in elaborate, painted script lettering. He went inside and one of the phones rang. The receptionist doubled as telephone operator in this block. She must have seen him come up.

‘Breslow.’

‘There is a message in your clip, Mr Breslow. A visitor is waiting for you downtown.’

Breslow sighed. ‘Where downtown?’

‘A pizza parlour on La Cienega between Pico and Venice Boulevards intersection. Buster’s, it’s called. It’s one of those eateries which screen old movies all day.’ She had a shrill New York accent that fascinated Breslow. He wondered whether she had at one time been an actress.

‘Who?’ said Breslow. ‘Not the press, is it, Lucy?’

‘Did you ever hear of a press reporter lunching in Buster’s? Those guys are all in the Polo Lounge. No, this was a message from someone called Kleiber. Do you want me to spell that for you?’

‘No, I don’t want you to spell it, Lucy. What time did he call?’

‘About half an hour ago. He said he’d just arrived on the airplane. That’s why he wants to meet you near the airport, I suppose.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Your wife says, will you pick up her shoes if you are back in Westlake before six? She said you’d know where, and they’ll let you have them without a ticket.’

‘Thanks, Lucy. Get my daughter a car, tell her I’ll see her for dinner at Tony Roma’s Rib Place in Beverly Hills and I’ll drive her home. Explain that I had an unexpected meeting, will you, Lucy?’

‘Sure will, Mr Breslow.’

Max Breslow never had any trouble spotting his friend. Willi Kleiber never changed very much. Apart from a little weight around the hips and some grey hair, he had changed little since the days when he had been with Max in the war. He had always favoured very close-cropped hair, and his teeth still flashed when he smiled. Even the colour of the expensive suits he wore never varied much from the drab hues of wartime Feldgrau, and he liked to wear old-fashioned high boots, so like the ones the army had given him.

He was sitting at the back of the pizza parlour. It was typical of Willi to choose such a place for a meeting, a ‘Treff’ he would have called it; he had never really stopped fighting the War. Max Breslow looked round him with a shudder. The plain wooden tables and uncomfortable benches were, littered with paper plates, the remains of a pizza and salad and some Coke cups. It was not the sort of place that Max Breslow would have chosen for a meeting. At the sides of the eating room there were a dozen coin-in-the-slot amusements, most of them with video screens and warlike themes. ‘U-boat-Commander’, ‘Blitzkrieg’, ‘Dive Bomber’ or ‘Panzer Clash’, from each of the machines in use there came the electronic bleeps of ricocheting bullets and the continual rat-a-tat of simulated machine-gun fire. This was the war we won, thought Max Breslow, this war that came after the war.