‘We were cycling home. A lorry clipped her. It didn’t stop. Perhaps he didn’t know what he’d done.’

‘Well, she’s alive, but we’re not medics. We’ll take her to hospital.’

‘Yes, please, sir, her head is bad.’

Special Agent Collingham was weighing his options – Third Army HQ at Bad Tölz or the CIC medical centre at Garmisch? Maybe the latter; it was closer. ‘Come on, help us carry her to the car. Gently.’

The conflict in Europe had been over for almost four months. The blackouts were gone and the lights were on. It had been a good war for Special Agent Randy Collingham, but he had lost friends. Parachuted behind enemy lines in late 1943, his language skills had served him well. So had his expertise in sabotage. He had evaded the Gestapo, but good comrades had not been so fortunate and he had scores to settle. This mission, to find the most wanted man in the world, could go a long way to getting even. And then he’d go home to North Carolina and hope that Jill and the kids recognised him.

In the meantime, there had to be a place for compassion and humanity, otherwise what had the fight been about? Whatever the reluctant Harper might have to say on the matter, Collingham was not a man to walk on by. Harper was a colder fish; he had no one back in the States and would happily carry on here. But the slaughter had stopped. Life had to start again – the sort of life where neighbour helped neighbour and men didn’t ignore the suffering of those less fortunate.

‘Agent Harper, help us.’

The two men and the boy raised the girl’s limp body and eased her into the rear seat of the big car. Collingham’s head told him they had to get to the hospital at speed; his heart told him he should be trying to administer some aid, clean up her wounds to see what injuries she had sustained. His head won. Time was crucial. Both for the girl – and for their mission.

‘Drive, Mr Harper.’

They were in the front passenger seat. The children – probably aged twelve or thirteen – were on the bench seat behind them. Collingham tore his white shirt into strips and handed them to the boy to use as more bandages to staunch the bleeding.

‘Danke sehr.’

They were the last words Randy Collingham heard. A single bullet drove a hole into the back of his skull, deep into his brain. A second bullet came a split second later, entering Denis Harper’s head at an almost identical angle. The two men slumped forward in their seats. The horn was blaring, the car sliding right onto the verge, just past the bicycles.

The girl in the dirndl was sitting up now, grinning as she wiped the coagulating pig’s blood from her pretty face and fair hair. ‘We did it, Siggy.’

‘It was easy, Hildy. You were wonderful. Come, let’s get our bikes. Time to go.’