He could see her reluctance. These people were all strangers to her and the high-Bavarian clothes his mother had laid out for her were not at all the style she was used to. He smiled encouragingly and gestured again for her to come and join him.

Tentatively, she stepped from the doorway onto the road. His mother followed her and took her arm, firmly guiding her between the gauntlet of curious villagers.

They gazed at the Frenchwoman in awe. Her beauty in itself was remarkable and would turn heads anywhere in the world, but the fact that she had been chosen by Julius Boden made her something more, a princess or a goddess.

Boden felt a surge of pride as he looked at her and gazed on the assembled people he had known all his life, and the loyal cohort of men and boys in uniform who had concealed themselves and their uniforms and weapons here in Schwarzenkirche and other nearby villages and mountain refuges.

To an outsider or to one who had been at Nuremberg in the glory days, this might not seem much. But these men and women were the embers of a fire that still burned, deep in the ashes.

All that such embers needed was fuel and a gentle breeze to grow into a raging fire once more. He, Julius Boden, would provide that fuel. No one, the Führer had said, would ever extinguish the German flame.

It was the Führer himself who had chosen him for this role. ‘They have all betrayed me,’ he had said, clutching Boden’s arm. ‘Himmler, Goering, the generals . . . cowards and traitors every one. And so it must fall to a younger man to finish what I have started. I know you share my commitment and vision, Boden. Take the baton from me and carry it to glory. Do this for your Führer and for greater Germany.’

‘Mein Führer, I am unworthy.’

Hitler’s watery blue eyes had penetrated deep into Boden’s soul. ‘I am not asking you to do this, Standartenführer, I am commanding you. You have never once disobeyed a Führer order even though enemy fire rained down on you in the inferno of battle, so I know you will obey this. You are the chosen one, Boden.’

Boden had clicked his heels and bowed. ‘Jawohl, mein Führer.’

*

From his hiding place, Heck watched the two women – mother and putative daughter-in-law – gliding along the little road, past the ancient chalets that had probably been here for centuries, all of them repaired and renovated by each generation. The women wore smart Bavarian jackets and skirts and the younger one looked extremely nervous as the eyes of the little crowd devoured her.

Boden was preparing to greet them, his arms wide. Lilly hesitated but Frau Boden urged her forward with the palm of a hand on the younger woman’s lower back.