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'Before die Wende you didn't ask questions,' Wermusch says, forgetting the caller and hanging up. 'We worked on the manuscript at Paul Enke's house in Berlin-Griinau. There was always a third man present, with black hair, but he never talked. Enke once introduced him as "my friend Hans".'

You met this man on dozens of occasions and never knew who he was, we ask?

I only found out after Enke died in December 1987.' Wermusch pauses. He stares at us. Looks at his watch. He fills his pipe and then begins again. 'The funeral. I suppose I was invited because I was Enke's Lektor. We were not great friends or anything. Zo, there were a few people to see him off. But no green policemen. You know, the Volkspolizei. No friends from the force turning up. I thought it was, er, sonderbar.' Wermusch rifles through the dictionary. 'Odd, ja} The only person I recognized was the black-haired silent man from the meetings in Enke's house. I went up to him after the service. He introduced himself as Hans Seufert.'

Seufert. The Stasi Oberst or colonel in charge of the Amber Room study group.

I asked Seufert: "Where are Enke's Volkspolizei colleagues? Seufert laughed at me. "Comrade," he said. "We don't wear uniforms." He was laughing so much he could not get his words out. And I still didn't get it.'

We sit in silence, pondering Wermusch's claim to have worked out Enke's membership of the Stasi only after the funeral.

Can we clear up something else, we ask?

'Anything,' he splutters. 'Whatever you like.'

Were you in the Stasi too, we ask?

Wermusch jumps up, a glimpse of his old agility returning, and rustles furiously through one of his boxes. I was only ever paid by my publishing house,' he shouts over his shoulder. 'Look, look at the proof.' He bounds over to pass us some paperwork mutilated with the familiar stamp of the Ministry of Truth. But he sees that we linger over an abbreviation next to his name: 'Gen.'

'Nein. Nein. Nein.' He pounds the arm of his chair. 'Nicht General but Genosse. We were all comrades. Look here. Look at this word.' He points to Freiwilliger. 'Volunteer, that's what I was. Volunteer, not Stasi, not informer. Take it. I have another copy.'33 We have no idea of what he 'volunteered' for but he has a ready supply of these non-incriminating references from his Stasi file. 'How could I be Stasi after all?' He rings his hands. 'My father was in the SS.' The warped logic of unified Germany is that someone would rather expose their family's Nazi pedigree than be revealed as Stasi. 'Maybe I was singled out to edit the book because I was good at Russian. I don't know. I had worked for Comrade Naumann as translator. I went with him to Moscow several times.' (Konrad Naumann had been the SED's party boss for East Berlin in the early 1980S and held a senior position in the Politburo.)

Wermusch fetches three bottles of soda water and pops the lids. So what had Enke and the Stasi learned that made them certain that the Amber Room had been concealed somewhere in Germany, we ask?

I don't know. I was not involved in the Stasi investigation,' Wermusch snaps. He stands and hobbles into the hall, reaching up to a shelf almost at ceiling height, where dozens of binders and files are stacked, their spines annotated with dates, all of them drafts of Bernsteinzimmer Report. 'Enke exercised total control over his material. All I have is what he showed me. There are many official papers about the search for the Amber Room and they must be in the Stasi files.' Yes, we know. That's the main reason we are here. His face takes on a sweaty sheen. 'Are you taping me?' No, we say. We need your help. To decode Enke's Stasi files. Wermusch giggles. 'You don't need me. You need someone who was on the inside.'

We read out some of the names we jotted down in the Ministry of Truth. Generaloberst Beater? 'He's dead. 1982.' Generalleutnant Neiber? 'You'll never get him to talk, not since he was sued by someone he imprisoned.' Markus Wolf, the Stasi's foreign espionage chief? 'You