15It took two precious days to set things up the way I wanted. Erika did her part swiftly. Within hours we knew that Reinhardt Krüger was willing to meet me on the southern outskirts of Berlin at an undisclosed location—I wouldn’t learn the specifics until after I’d begun traveling toward him.
Van Hoof and Bert left Antwerp immediately so they could work out of our new headquarters in Berlin. Erika and I remained in Belgium until Friday afternoon, hammering the last crucial nail into our carefully constructed plan.
Reinhardt Krüger was no amateur. He’d situated our meeting on his turf, building in safeguards along the way that gave him all the advantage. He expected deception and he was ready to expose it. Our negotiations had to be as real as I could make them. I had to have somebody wo
