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“Tell me the lay of the land around the Viktoria,” Cronley said.

“There’s an alley next to it. Valet parking. You drive in, get out of your car, and walk back to the entrance on Weihburggasse and go in the Viktoria. The valet then parks your car.”

“Where?” Winters asked.

“Various places. They don’t have a garage.”

“The valets drive further down the alley? What’s down there?”

“I don’t know. All I know is they drive further down the alley.”

“How do you get your car back?”

“They deliver it to the front of the Vik.”

“Do they bring it out of the alley, or does it show up on the street?”

“You sound as if you intend to go along with Cezar’s kidnapping scenario,” Winters said.

“I don’t think if we’re this close to von Dietelburg we can let him go,” Cronley said, and then asked, “How bad do we need him? How many people have been looking for him? For how long?”

“Point taken,” Winters said. “Points taken. Reluctantly.”

“I’m open to suggestion, Tom,” Cronley said.

Winters shrugged and threw up his hands in a gesture of helplessness and resignation.

“I think we should take a walk down Weihburggasse and see if we see what’s at the end of the alley.”

“We’re not going to look very innocent if I’m carrying a Thompson,” Spurgeon said.

“Then you better leave it here with Cezar.”

“You don’t want me to go?”

“Yours is a familiar face, Cezar. Don’t worry. Both Charley and I passed the Techniques of Surveillance course in Spy School.”

[THREE]

Near the Viktoria Palast

Weihburggasse, Vienna, Austria

2105 3 March 1946

A dark blue—almost black—1938 Mercedes-Benz 320B Cabriolet turned off Weihburggasse into the alley beside the Viktoria Palast.

“Nice,” Cezar Zielinski observed. “I wonder how long that was hidden in a haystack on some ex-Standartenführer’s farm?” And then he immediately added, as he saw a second Mercedes, this one slightly smaller than the first, come into the alley, “Shit, there’s another one!”

“I’ll take the second,” Cronley said, “you make sure von Dietelburg is in the first.”

The first convertible drove halfway down the alley and stopped. The second pulled in behind it.

Two men quickly appeared, one going to each car and opening its driver’s-side door.

“Hände hoch!” Cronley and Zielinski ordered just about simultaneously as they stepped away from the wall where they had concealed themselves. They held pistols in their hands, moving them from the faces of the men who had opened the doors, and those of the one man who had gotten out of his car, and the one still behind the wheel of the first.

“Guten Abend, Herr von Dietelburg,” Cronley said in German. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for some time.” He raised his voice. “I’ve got von Dietelburg!”