‘Then go to the PX, Ami. I got kids to feed.’

Collingham took out his wallet and slapped down a five-dollar bill. ‘You drive a hard bargain, sister. Take it or leave it.’

The woman shrugged, pulled out a single pack of Senior Service from her concealed stash behind the table, tore open the seal and removed eight cigarettes. ‘Twelve zigaretten for five dollars. A bargain, yes?’

The American laughed and accepted her offer; he could no longer do the arithmetic. He shoved the pack of twelve into his shirt pocket.

The woman touched the medal, then the dagger. ‘You like souvenir, Ami? Perhaps you like Nazi guns? I got a Luger, full working order with bullets – only twenty-five to you.’

‘Not today, lady.’ He walked back to the car, climbed in and pulled the door shut. ‘Come on, Mr Harper, let’s go and catch ourselves a retired dictator.’

*

There was a lot of blood on the road. A boy in leather shorts was kneeling beside a girl in a dirndl, her body splayed awkwardly. Two bikes, one of them twisted and broken, lay a few feet away on the verge. Collingham’s eyes were fixed on the girl. She wasn’t moving. Even from two hundred yards away he feared she was dead.

‘Stop the car, Mr Harper.’

‘Are you sure, sir?’

‘Of course, I’m sure.’

They had only gone two miles since haggling for cigarettes. The road was clear of traffic. Apart from the occasional wreckage of tanks and other vehicles, this region south of Munich was largely undamaged by the mass bombing in the last weeks of the war, and so there was little to detract from the beauty of the countryside. Randy Collingham wound down the window and tossed out the stub of his cigarette. He was in a hurry, but not so much that he wouldn’t stop to help an injured child. As a father of three, how could he do otherwise?

Agent Denis Harper pulled the big black Opel Käpitan to a halt. The boy in the lederhosen rose to his feet and the two men in the car could see the horror in the lad’s face. That and something else – relief, perhaps, that assistance had at last arrived.

The boy was running to them, begging for help. ‘Hilf mir bitte. Hilf mir.’ His tanned chest was bare beneath the straps that held up his leather shorts. ‘Meine Zwillingsschwester ist verletzt.’ My twin sister is injured.

Collingham tried to comfort him, told him they would do what they could, then he pushed forward and knelt beside the girl. Her head was roughly bandaged by the boy’s white shirt, now red with blood. She was covered in blood, on her arms, legs and face. Her fair, braided hair was thick with gore. He couldn’t see what injuries she had. Her chest was moving, but her eyes remained closed and she seemed to be unconscious. Touching her throat with the back of his hand, he felt a pulse. He turned to the boy and spoke in fluent German. ‘What happened?’