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We hand over one of Valeria Bilanina's envelopes.

'Stephan, look. How strange!' the woman exclaims, her eyes scanning the handwriting. I remember Vati writing some of these.' She turns to us. 'Stephan and I were just married, in 1972, and Gerhard, my father-in-law, asked me to translate some letters into Russian. He was trying to find a curator in Leningrad, right? The one who was looking for the Bernsteinzimmer} You found these in Russia? Vati was so disappointed, you know. I don't know if he ever received replies.'

Kuchumov, we say, is unfortunately dead. And Dr Gerhard Strauss?

Stephan has had time to gather his thoughts and now his arms are wrapped tightly around his ribcage and his legs are crossed. Suddenly all of his anxieties tumble out: 'What do you know about my father's work? Who are you? Why do you want to know about him? Why are you here?'

The woman lays her hand on his lap. 'Stephan, let the people talk.'

He relaxes a little. 'It is difficult to speak of these things,' he says. 'You may know facts now that even I, we - ' he squeezes his wife's hand - 'do not know about my father. There were things he had to do in the war to survive. We have come through difficult times.' He glances at his wife for reassurance. 'I'm not sure what you will do with any information I will give you. And anyhow I was a child, you must realize.' He pauses. 'But I do recall my father travelling to Kaliningrad sometime after the war.' He fixes his gaze on the Christmas tree. 'Russians came to the house. They were not wearing uniforms. At the time I was disappointed. Now I think they must have been KGB. There were whispered discussions. Papers were passed around the room. This room. But why should I tell you about these things?' He is losing his cool again, frowning deeply. 'You are strangers in my house.'

It is a beautiful house, we say, slowing everything down. And it is true that only a cup of coffee back we walked through that front door.

'They gave my father this place after the Nazis were cleared out. My father was a Genosse, you understand?'

Yes, we say. He was a comrade.

'He told us many stories about his secret KPD activities before the war. How he had to go underground. He had to join the Nazi Party but he hated them.' He pauses and sends his wife upstairs. She returns with a large photograph in a white wooden frame. It shows an elderly man wearing a black beret, a proud man in a park on a winter's day. You can see his breath forming as it hits the cold air.

'Gerhard passed away in 1984,' she says. 'He would have been delighted to have more visitors from Russia!'

So the doctor is dead.

'It was snowing the day he left in 1949, like today.' Stephan rocks the photo of his father gently on his knees. 'My mother was so worried. She said he would never come back. You have to understand, we were a little afraid of the Russians.' Stephan smiles at us. 'Perhaps the word is unsure. Unfamiliar.' He tries to encapsulate the feelings of the time. 'Well, the Red Army had taken away so many people. After six weeks my mother was frantic. She picked up courage and went to Karlshorst. Don't worry, they said. The weather was bad on the Baltic Coast. Father's plane was delayed. She was told to go home and wait.

'My father came home in the middle of January. He wouldn't talk much about what had happened. He mentioned that he had tried to find his parents' house in Mohrungen but had been prevented. And that he had helped in the search for the Amber Room. He felt it was his personal responsibility to find it and return it to Leningrad. Later, he became obsessed. It was a constant topic of conversation at the dinner table. On the phone. It was not good. It made him ill. Odd people kept calling. Russians, Poles, even West Germans. One called George Stein invited himself over for dinner, yes, George Stein. Have you heard of him?' Stephan sees us writing down the name and dries up again.

Why does he think his father was of such interest to the Soviets, we ask?