He backed out of the doorway as I came toward him. I was praying for some kind of external distraction that might make him take his eyes off me for half a second. But he knew that, of course. And would be ready for it, if or when it came.

“I’m going to lock you up somewhere nice and warm,” he said, herding me along the corridor. “Open that door and go downstairs.”

I continued to do exactly what I was told. I could feel the aim of that thirty-eight squarely between my shoulder blades. From three or four feet, the bullet of a thirty-eight would have gone straight through me, leaving a hole the size of an Austrian two-shilling piece.

“And when you’re locked up,” he said, coming downstairs behind me and switching on the light as we went, “I’m going to telephone some people I know in Linz. Some friends of mine. One of them used to be CIA. But now he’s Israeli intelligence. That’s how they like to think of themselves anyway. Assassins. That’s what I call them. And that’s how I use them.”

“I suppose they’re the ones who killed the real Frau Warzok,” I said.

“I wouldn’t shed any tears for her, Gunther,” he said. “After what she did? She had it coming.”

“And Gruen’s old girlfriend, Vera Messmann?” I asked. “Did they kill her, too?”

“Sure.”

“But she wasn’t a criminal,” I said. “What did you tell them about her?”