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'During the last two years of the war my father was assigned to the airraid protection forces in Konigsberg. I suppose he must have been responsible for the safety of the Amber Room, that's why the Russians were so interested in him. His boss was called Andrei. No, not Andrei but . . .'

His wife interrupts: 'Alfred, darling, Alfred Rohde.'

The director of Konigsberg Castle Museum.

Stephan studies us with his iced water eyes and volunteers that he has an attic full of material belonging to his father, diaries and semi-official documents. He is a polite man who wants to be helpful. Can we see them, we ask?

He sees the excitement in our eyes and pauses. I have looked at them before. But not properly. I should study his papers first. Maybe if you come back. In a few weeks.' For as suddenly as he has blurted out about his father's private archive he wishes that he hadn't. He appears panicked. We can see his train of thought. Brown Shirt, card-carrying Nazi or loyal Genosse acting on the Communist Party's orders? And even if only a Genosse, what had Gerhard Strauss done for the regime?After so much time only the papers remain and Dr Gerhard Strauss's real motivations might be blurred.

We sense that Stephan is grappling with the conundrum faced by everyone reunited after a conflict. How should a family deal with the multiple histories that coexist in one life: by exposing them all or by concealing the unpalatable ones? Should one carry on oblivious, loving the person one ate with and slept with or strolled to the park with? Post-war Europe was a kaleidoscope of multi-coloured truths.

I have my own life to live. Our own lives to live. One cannot live one's father's life although I love my father. Can I drop you somewhere?' Stephan asks, standing up. He has to leave for a meeting in town. He is a landscape architect employed by the municipal authorities to help rebuild Berlin. He leads us out to his Volvo and we sit in silence as the engine warms.

The Volvo settles and Stephan drives through wisps of freezing fog into a darkening Berlin, past Daniel Liebeskind's Jewish Museum with its Holocaust Tower. And we notice out of the corner of an eye an Arab boy on a mountain bike frantically pedalling to reach the queue for the museum before it disappears behind the armed security perimeter. Then, as he nears, he pulls a gun from his tracksuit. He has a pistol in his hand and before we can shout out he has pulled the trigger, again and again, waving the firearm wildly. But no one seems to see, apart from us trapped in the traffic behind fogged windows, boxed in on the other side of the street. However, no one is falling, crying or bleeding. The weapon must be a replica, although his hatred is real enough. We may have been the only people this day to have seen his drive-by fantasy.

Stephan pulls over at Alexanderplatz and leans across to open the passenger door. 'There are things I don't want to read and I hope you will not write them. Do you understand?' If we do come back, there will be documents in the attic that Stephan Strauss will not want us to print.

We cannot promise to censor our research to leave his father's reputation intact. With Alfred Rohde dead, finding Dr Gerhard Strauss, one of his assistants, must have been a critical moment for Anatoly Kuchumov. And it is for us too.

We'll call, we say, before diving into the hushed darkness of the westbound U2, while Stephan Strauss drives off to his meeting in the east. Even though our paths have crossed, we have not really met at all. We have been prevented from understanding each other, our true characters and emotions blacked out, obscured (on our part) by self-interest and on his by a fear of history.

We have felt a clammy-handed excitement as the mystery of the Amber Room unravels but so far all of it has been from a distance - the story told through reports, diaries, letters and memories. Today the Amber Room has lifted off the page and into the lives of those around us, casting doubt and fear.

Two weeks later, we return to our Berlin hotel to find another couriered