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“Actually, ‘son of a whore’ is grammatically correct German.” Cronley’s mouth ran away with him. “But for all we know, that jämmerlich Missgeburt’s mother could be as pure as the driven snow.”
“Despicable monster?” Wangermann said. “I agree, but hearing that from you, Captain Strasbourger, is a little surprising.”
“Because I’m young? We Americans are quick learners, Herr Wiener Schnitzel.”
“I like him!” Wangermann exclaimed. “I’m very surprised, but I like him.”
“Jim is a very surprising fellow,” Wasserman said. “Jim, why don’t you show Chief Inspector Wangermann your credentials?”
Wangermann examined them carefully.
“Very impressive,” he said. “But what do they mean?”
“They mean when Jim comes to Vienna to see me and asks for something, I am under orders from General Greene to give him everything he asks for. And everything includes calling in all favors you owe to me.”
“Carl, you know how much I would love to see von Dietelburg hanging from a noose,” Wangermann said. “But I don’t have a clue where the bastard is.”
“Jim may have found him, Walter,” Wasserman said.
“Here? Now that’s really surprising. Is that what this is about?”
“That’s what this is about.”
“We don’t have much,” Cronley said, “but we’re clutching at all straws. This straw is that Otto remembered that when he knew von Dietelburg here he had a girlfriend—”
“You were in the SS with von Dietelburg?” Wangermann interrupted.
“I was a Wehrmacht officer assigned to Abwehr Ost.”
“Under Reinhard Gehlen?”
Niedermeyer nodded.
“I knew him. Good man. I was pleased when he didn’t show up at Flossenbürg with Admiral Canaris.”
“What were you doing at Flossenbürg?”
“The SS decided I wasn’t doing enough to round up the Jews they were looking for. Fortunately, they didn’t know I was working with Gehlen, so I didn’t wind up hanging from the gallows beside Canaris. I was surprised when I got a list from Wasserman of the people you’ve got in Nuremberg, that Gehlen and his deputy—Mannberg? Yeah, Ludwig Mannberg, another nice guy—weren’t on it.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Niedermeyer said. “General Gehlen and Ludwig Mannberg are alive and well, running the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation.”
“So Abwehr Ost by another name is alive and well? And you still work for it?”
“I used to. General Gehlen sent me to Argentina to work with the OSS. When DCI came along, I was asked to join, and I did.”
“Wasserman, you sonofabitch, you never told me anything about this.”
“You didn’t have what we Americans call ‘the Need to Know.’”
“And now I do?”
“Now you do.”
“If you expect me to say Danke schön, don’t hold your breath,” Wangermann said, and then turned to Cronley. “Okay, so Niedermeyer knew von Dietelburg had a girlfriend. Pick it up from there.”
“Otto couldn’t remember her name, but he remembered the villa where von Dietelburg stashed his ballerina. Not the address, just somewhere on Cobenzlgasse.”
“So you came here on the strength of that?”
