Max Breslow sat for a long time, lost in contemplation of the events which had taken him from the Reich Chancellery and brought him in a complete circle back to it again. Staring into the gloom of his imposing set, Breslow’s eyes moved down from the Bismarck portrait to the armchairs grouped round the fireplace below it. He leant forward to stare into the darkness.

‘It’s me,’ said the voice of Charles Stein. ‘It’s me, Breslow. I knew you’d come.’

Breslow stood up. He felt his heart beating at abnormally high speed. ‘What the devil do you want? I thought you were dead.’

‘I’m going to kill you, Max. I’ve been waiting here a long time. I’ve been waiting to kill you. That’s what kept me alive, Max.’

Breslow reached for the carved wooden armrest to steady himself. He was frightened by the tone of Stein’s voice. There was some quality in the voice that persuaded Breslow immediately that he was in earnest. Breslow held tight to the arm of the chair and felt the palm of his hand sweaty under his grip. There was not much light here. He could only just see the gross shape of Stein slumped in the big armchair, his crumpled white suit visible against the dark red marble wall behind him. Breslow had mistaken the white shape for a dust sheet thrown over some genuine piece of antique furniture.

‘It’s too late now,’ said Breslow. ‘The papers are destroyed. The Jaguar burnt.’

‘I know,’ said Stein. ‘I lost every last penny I had in that auto… Bearer bonds: two million dollars’ worth of them.’

Breslow inched along the edge of the Führer’s desk. He had always thought that desk absurdly out of proportion to the human scale and now, as he moved along it, it seemed as long as a football field.

‘Just stay exactly where you are,’ Stein called. Now that Breslow’s eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness he could see that Stein was not sprawled back in the armchair; he was crouching forward. Breslow continued to move sideways only a fraction at a time. He knew that the left side of the desk was in line with the double doors behind it. He had remembered that from the real thing, and from the photographs he had given the set dresser. Now he prayed to God that the technicians had placed everything exactly the way the research indicated that it had been. At last he could get his left hand to the chamfered corner that surmounted the massive leg.

‘You’re moving,’ called Stein loudly. It was a good-natured complaint of the sort that children might use when playing the game of ‘statues’. Breslow strained his ears and fancied he heard the distant sound of a police-car siren. It was no more than a stifled whine but then sometimes they only used the siren just before crossing the intersections, and cut it off until they got to the next one.

‘I’ve got a gun,’ said Stein. He still had not moved from the armchair. ‘And I know how to use it.’ Breslow remained very still. There was no point in getting killed if the police were already on their way. He was comforted by the fact that he could not now hear the siren. The police dispatchers only authorized one police car at a time to use the siren: that was how you could differentiate police sirens from those of the fire department, which let all vehicles use them.

‘Stand still, damn you!’

Suddenly Breslow remembered that this was a sound stage. Those vast padded doors he had passed through would not permit even the roar of low-flying aircraft on the approach to Los Angeles International airport to mar the recordings. There was no chance that he could have heard a siren of any kind. No sound could get into here, and none-not even a pistol shot-could get out. That’s why Stein had chosen this place. He could play with him like a cat with a mouse.

Breslow felt himself sweating and knew his face must be flushed and shiny. He wondered whether Stein could see from that distance. Perhaps he had even planned it carefully enough to bring night glasses. He must run; once Stein got closer to him he would have no chance. He whirled round and ran for the doors. Crack! There was a flash as Stein fired but the bullet whined over his head, chipped a piece of wood from the ‘marble’ and threw a handful of splinters at him. By now Breslow had reached the big mahogany doors and was struggling to get through them and away. His panic seemed to give him the agility and the strength of two men, but no matter how hard he tugged at the doorknobs the door didn’t budge or even rattle.

‘Oh, my God!’ These were not practical; these were dummy doors, as solid and immovable as the remainder of the wall. Breslow turned the other way and ran, as another shot flashed and whined through the darkness. Breslow was suddenly punched in the abdomen and felt a blow to the knees. He nearly cried out aloud but enough of the old discipline remained to repress his emotions to a grunt. He had blundered straight into the mahogany cabinet that was placed under the seventeenth-century Gobelin tapestry. His splayed arms encountered the ornaments on the cabinet top. There was a crash as some statuettes and a beautiful George II bracket clock hit the floor with an agonizing crash of breaking movement and jangled chimes. He heard Stein chuckle.

By now Breslow was at the next set of doors. He wrestled with them and waited all the while for the sound of the next shot and inevitable blow that would crack his spine and tear out his belly. At first he thought that these must also be dummy doors but then he felt them move under his weight. His shoulder was against the carved mahogany, and he pressed so hard that he thought he must fracture his bones. But the doors were twelve feet high, and even the version that the studio carpenters had fashioned seemed as heavy as lead. He squeezed through them as soon as they were partly open. Behind him he heard another shot. It sounded closer and the flash of the gun seemed nearer too. Stein was behind him.

Breslow looked right and left. On one side of him there were the gigantic studio doors through which large pieces of scenery were moved. That was out of the question. On his right-down the dark corridor marked only with blue safety lights-there was the door usually used by the sound technicians going into their glass-fronted room. Breslow dodged to one side and swung under a microphone boom and behind one of the big searchlights that the industry calls ‘brutes’. It was dark here and he waited a moment in the hope Stein might hurry off down the corridor and give him a chance to recross the studio and escape through the vegetation of the ‘gardens’ outside the Chancellery windows.

But Stein halted at the sign ‘recording in progress’ marked with the red warning light that was now dark. He seemed to realize that Breslow had not gone that way and he turned back and carefully surveyed the space behind the high walls of the Chancellery set. The great Nazi eagle threw a huge shadow across the complex patterns of the simulated marble floor. There was a clang and a muffled curse as Stein’s pistol struck a lamp stand and his foot caught a cable. But Stein did not stumble; he was moving slowly towards Breslow as he scanned and eliminated each part of the studio.

‘I can see you, Max. Come on out, I can see you.’

Breslow did not move. He held his breath. He could see Stein’s ungainly form as he ambled very slowly forward, crumpled and dishevelled like some disturbed gorilla.

‘I can see you, you bastard,’ Stein called loudly when he was only a few feet away, but Breslow remained motionless and felt his heart beating so loudly that he thought he was going to faint from the exertion. Just as Breslow was going to speak, Stein turned away from him and went towards the camera crane that was parked against the wall. ‘I can see you,’ he repeated.

Breslow cursed his foolishness at not having brought his little pocket pistol with him. He eased slowly backwards toward the padded wall of the studio. His foot caught in one of the electrical cables but he untangled it carefully and stepped out of the loop. Stein was inside the Führer’s study now and Breslow was able to get back to the doorway which, with clever use of some trick photography, would look like a part of the long hall of the Chancellery. He stepped over some elaborate bronze wall candelabra that were placed on the studio floor ready to be positioned after the camera dolly had moved back this way.