'Now this is the Nazi fellow?'

'Yes, Paul Winter the Nazi lawyer.'

'In prison?' asked the D-G, who wanted to get it quite clear.

'He wasn't in prison, in a billet. He'd been released in order to defend Esser. The Nazis accused at Nuremberg were permitted to choose anyone they wanted, even POWs from a prison cage, as their lawyers. The message said she was in this damned mountain hut, so off he dashed. He hadn't seen his wife since the war ended. His brother was a US colonel as you said: he got a military car or a jeep or something and they both cleared off without waiting for permission.'

'To Berchtesgaden?'

'And in particularly foul winter weather. I remember that winter very well. When this fellow Paul Winter got to the mountain house, his wife Inge was waiting for him. She'd had a child; she wanted money.'

'Did he have money?'

'There was a metal chest buried up there. Esser had taken it there and hidden it. During their sessions together he told Paul where it was. Then I suppose Esser must have told Inge Winter that her husband knew. They dug it up. It was gold; a mixed collection of stuff Esser had collected from the Berlin Reichsbank vaults, leaving a signed receipt for it.'

'And her child was Esser's,' supplied the D-G.

'How did you know?'

'It's the only part of the story that sticks in my mind.'

'Yes. Paul Winter must have suspected it wasn't his. They'd been married for ages and never been able to have a child. I can imagine how he felt.'

'And the two Winter boys were killed. But how did they get shot?'

'That's the question, isn't it? If you want the truth they were shot by a drunken US sergeant who thought they were werewolves or deserters or gangsters or some other sort of toughs who might hurt him. That region was plagued with deserters from both sides who'd formed gangs. They stole army supplies on a massive scale, ambushed supply convoys, robbed banks and weren't too fussy about who they hurt.'

'The story I heard… '

'Yes, there were lots of stories. Some people said that the Winters were shot by mistake: by someone who was trying to kill Samson and the General who was with him. Some said they were shot by the sergeant acting on secret orders from Washington. Some said Max Busby shot them because he was in love with Paul Winter's wife, or, in another version, involved in some black-market racket with her. It's impossible to prove any of those stories wrong, but believe me, I went into it thoroughly. It was as I told you.'

'But the report said Brian Samson had shot them,' said the D-G. 'I remember distinctly. He was bitter about it right up to the day he died.'

'Ah, yes. That was later. But at the time no one had any doubts. It was the drunken sergeant who was arrested and taken back to the cells. Only when the Americans asked for Samson to go and give evidence to their inquiry did things change. We couldn't let Samson face any sort of questioning of course: that's been Departmental policy since the beginning of time. When we refused to let Samson go down there, the Yanks suddenly saw a chance to get it all over quickly and quietly. By the time I arrived there, all the depositions were scrapped and new ones written. Suddenly they could produce eyewitnesses prepared to swear that Samson accidentally shot the two men.'

'That's despicable,' said the D-G. 'That verdict went on Samson's record.'

'You're preaching to the converted, Henry. I protested about it. And when "Boy" Piper wouldn't support me I made a devil of a fuss. Sometimes I think I blotted my copybook then. I was forever marked as a troublemaker.'

I'm sure that's not true,' protested the D-G without putting much effort into it.

'I don't blame the Americans for trying it on; but I was furious that they could get away with it,' said Silas mildly. 'You couldn't entirely blame the men who perjured themselves. They were American soldiers, draftees who hadn't seen their families for ages. An inquiry might easily have kept them in Europe for another year.'

'Was Busby a party to this?'

'Busby was the Duty Ops Officer at the Nuremberg CIC office that night. He was getting a lot of stick because he was in command of the party. He preferred an accident with some foreign officer as the guilty party.'

'I can see why there was such bad feeling between him and Samson when he came to work in Berlin.'

'That's why Busby went to work for Lange's people: Brian Samson wouldn't have him.'

'And the wife?'

'She took the gold, probably changed her name and disappeared from the story. There was no sign of her by the time Samson got to the house, and I never found her. She left Esser to face the hangman, and took her daughter and went into hiding; perhaps that's what Esser wanted her to do. She was a very resolute and resourceful young woman. She worked in a nightclub in Garmisch, so she would have had no trouble in contacting the people from whom she could buy permission to live in the French Zone, which is what she did. That removed her from the British and the US jurisdiction. Eventually she got a French passport and took her gold and her baby…'

'And lived affluently ever after,' supplied the D-G caustically.

'Crime does sometimes pay,' said Silas. 'We may not like to concede it but it's true.' He drank some tea.

'How much gold was there?' asked the D-G, helping himself to a second piece of seed cake.

'I saw the large metal box. It had been buried – the dirt was still on it. It was provost exhibit number one. About this big.' Silas extended his hands to show the size of a small steamer trunk.

'Do you have any idea what that would weigh?' said the D-G.

'What are you getting at, Sir Henry?'

'No one could carry gold of that dimension; it would weigh a ton.'

'If she couldn't carry it, what would she do with it? Why would you dig it out in the first place, unless you were going to take it away?'

The D-G smiled knowingly. 'Speaking personally, I might dig it up because too many people know where it is.'

'Her husband and Esser and so on?'

'And perhaps many other people,' said the D-G.

'And bury it again,' said Silas, following the D-G's thought processes. 'Ummm.'

'Now there would be only three people who know where it is.'

'And two of them are dead a few minutes later.'

'So only Inge Winter knows where it is.'

'Are you suggesting that she got this American sergeant to shoot her husband and her brother-in-law?'

'I've never met any of them,' said the D-G. 'I'm simply responding to the story you've told me.'

Silas Gaunt said nothing. He tried to remember the evidence he'd examined and the soldiers he'd talked to. The sergeant was a flashy youngster with jewellery and a vintage Mercedes that he was taking home to America. Was he really drunk that night, or was that a ruse to make the 'accident' more convincing? And there was, of course, the sergeant's missing woman friend, who was a singer with a dance band. Silas never did find her. Were the woman friend and Inge Winter one and the same person? Well it was too late now. He poured more tea, drank it and put the mystery out of his mind.

Soon, reflected Silas, the D-G would retire, and that would sever his last remaining link with the Department. Silas found the prospect bleak.

The D-G got up, flicked some cake crumbs from his tie and said, 'I want you to promise me you'll have someone to look at those trees, Silas. It's a beetle, you know.'

'I don't think I could bear to lose those elms, Henry. They must be about two hundred years old. My grandfather adored them: he had a photo taken of the house when they were half the size they are now. There were four of them in those days. They say one of them blew down the night Grandfather died.'

'I've never heard such maudlin nonsense. Elms don't blow down, they're too deep-rooted.'