‘Some of us have work to do.’

‘Of course. Locking up bloody Nazis, finding Bormann, finding Müller . . .’

‘Finding Hitler.’

‘Hitler Schmitler, he’s drinking schnapps with the Fräuleins down in Buenos Aires. Laughing at us.’

Wilde walked on. He was thinking that Comrade Minsky already owed him for the booze. Well, perhaps the lead in Nuremberg would pay off. His eyes scanned the moonlit street. This wasn’t as bad as most areas of the city centre. A few houses down, no glass in windows and roofs a rarity, but the rubble had been tidied up nicely by the trümmerfrauen with their buckets. Wilde stopped a moment, breathing in the cool air after the fug of the dance hall. He had his hand in his jacket pocket, gripping the handle of his automatic.

The jeep was open top. He climbed into the driver’s seat. Now his hand was off the pistol to take the wheel. At first he didn’t see the slender watcher from the cabaret, nor did he see the sniper prostrate on the roof, rifle poking down.

The watcher was a few paces up the road. He wasn’t big, but he looked as lithe as a dancer. He combed his palm through his hair, then identified Wilde by nodding in his direction. It was then that Wilde saw him, but he didn’t see the gunman.

A shot rang out, followed by a second one. Wilde fell sideways into the passenger seat.

*

Mozes Heck had almost no time to aim and the merest sliver of a target – nothing but a pair of eyes, a forehead and a shock of hair. His right arm went up, his left hand gripping his right wrist, and he fired without thought, as he had done so often in the heat of battle this past year. His aim was invariably better that way.

Don’t think, shoot. Thinking loses split seconds. The difference between life and death.

The head had disappeared from view but Heck’s pistol remained at arm’s length for a few moments, just in case he was wrong. Just in case he had missed. But if the sniper on the roof was still alive, he wasn’t showing himself. The little man was still there, though, and he was moving away down the street, running. He would recognise that smooth loping style anywhere; it was the man who had been following him yesterday, the one with the trilby.

Heck wanted to go after him, but first he had to help Wilde.

*

Wilde had felt the wind across his brow, then heard the metallic smack of the bullet carving a hole into the dashboard. Finally, he heard the crack of the shot, then another. As he threw himself down across the seats, he knew he was alive and almost certain that he hadn’t been hit.