a long-serving SD officer trusted by Walter Schellenberg. Lieutenant Klop was given the name of Captain Coppens by Best and Stevens to pass him off as a British officer. Capture of British agents Early on 9 November 1939, Schellenberg received orders from Himmler to abduct the British SIS agents, Best and Stevens. SS-Sonderkommandos under the operations command of SD man Alfred Naujocks, carried out the orders. Best drove his car into the car park at the Cafe Backus for the meeting planned for 16:00 with Schellenberg. Stevens was sitting beside him while Dirk Klop and his driver, Jan Lemmens, sat in the back seat. Before Best had time to get out of the car, Naujock's SD men arrived. In a brief shootout, Klop was mortally wounded. After being handcuffed and stood against a wall, Best and Stevens, together with Jan Lemmens, were bundled into the SD car. Klop was put into Best's car and both cars were driven off over the border into Germany. Best recalls a full body search was performed on him when they reached Düsseldorf en route to Berlin. At Düsseldorf, one of the men who had taken part in the kidnapping told Best the reason for the action was to catch some Germans plotting against the Führer, who were responsible for the attempt on his life the night earlier. Klop was admitted to the Protestant Hospital in Düsseldorf. A doctor on duty recalled years later Klop was unconscious when he was admitted and died the same day from a gun wound to the head. On 29 December 1939 Klop was embalmed under a false name of Thomas Kremp, a communist; his remains were cremated and buried under a false name in the Düsseldorf cemetery in a unknown grave. Georg Elser connection Prior to the assassination attempt at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich on 8 November, Naujocks and his squad had been sent to Düsseldorf to support Schellenberg. Even before his private train had returned from Munich to Berlin, Hitler ordered the British SIS officers in the Netherlands be brought to Berlin for questioning. Himmler issued the order to Schellenberg early in the morning on 9 November. Though Georg Elser, a suspect being interrogated in Munich by the Gestapo, insisted he had acted alone, Hitler recognized the propaganda value of the assassination attempt as a means to incite German public resentment against Britain. On 21 November, Hitler declared