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Can we talk about George Stein, we ask? 'Oh.' The line goes quiet. 'George Stein.' A lengthy pause. 'That was a long time ago. If you can make it down here tomorrow, then I'll see if I can squeeze you in. But I have a young lady to escort to Switzerland at i p.m., so I won't be back until L.30 p.m.' He lives in a small world, a principality of sixty-two square miles squeezed between Switzerland and Austria. 'Have your lunch before you come, dears. I'm a simple bachelor of ninety-one years old and I don't entertain. You'll find my little place up Schloss Strasse, the last house before the castle. Look for the name, Askania Nova, my beloved birthplace.'

In Vaduz, Liechtenstein's capital, where the air is filled with a rich scent of warm milk and the gentle thrum of cash machines, we find the Baron's white stucco villa wrapped in wisteria, overlooked by that of his next-door neighbour, Crown Prince Hans-Adam II, ruler of the tax haven.

Baron Eduard von Falz-Fein might be ninety-one years old but in his fawn moccasins and slacks he looks like a youthful playboy. 'You are journalists, I take it? I hope you have brought your tape recorder.'

Closer to, the Baron's full head of hair has a sandy tint and he shaves patchily. The scent of spiced fruitcake wafts around him. 'My pedigree is very important to me, my dears, and I am very proud to be still alive.' Can we come in? 'No.' He bars the entrance and points with an exquisite feminine finger to half a dozen rusting coats of arms bolted around the door. 'First you must understand I am a legend in Russia and the Ukraine. This one on the right is the oldest coat of arms in the whole of Russia, it came down to Mummy directly from Peter the Great. And here, this is the Falz-Fein coat of arms. From Daddy. Died of a broken heart after we fled the Bolsheviks.'

The Baron steers us over the doorstep. 'Now you know a little, you may enter my humble refugee's abode.' He stops again in the hall. The walls are lined with oils, many of which look familiar. 'Here is the last Tsar. Here is his wife,' the Baron gushes over a murky portrait whose original certainly hangs in the Russian Museum in St Petersburg. 'What a beautiful lady she was. What a tragedy. Murdered in that filthy cellar in Ekaterinburg.' The Baron clutches his breast. I gave DNA to identify the Romanov bones. I was the only "foreigner" invited to the funeral when they were laid to rest in St Petersburg in 1990. Such an honour.

'Here is my grandfather Nikolai Alexeievich Epanschin, the General of Infantry and Director of the Emperor's Page Corps.' The Baron trails a protective finger across a line of blurred portraits. We notice the clock on the wall is set four hours ahead. To Ukrainian time.

An hour into the tour we reach the Baron's own generation. We are ushered into his living room. In one corner is a vast nineteenth-century boyar's desk and next to it a well-used exercise bike. 'Everyone wants to give me a special order,' says the Baron with mock fatigue, opening a glass cabinet crammed with citations and medals, a glittering mass of hammers, ribbons, sickles, red stars and even a black iron cross. 'They want me to wear them.' He doesn't say who. 'But heaven forbid! I would look like Brezhnev.'

The Baron leads us to a red leather sofa from which we can see sweeping views over the velvety Liechtenstein valley. How did you meet George Stein, we ask? 'My life has taken ninety-one years to live and you cannot understand my motivations for hunting for the Amber Room unless you understand my background. Allow me this short summary.' He checks to see that our tape machine is whirring. 'L'Equip snapped me up in Paris and sent me to cover the 193 6 Olympics. I saw how Hitler was mad when Jesse Owens won the LOO metres! The Fiihrer was only twenty yards from our press box.' After his stint in journalism, the Baron became a cycling champion, a luge champion and then a racing driver.

'Eventually my friend Porfirio 'Rubi' Rubirosa said to me, "Eduard, there is a time in every man's life