Hunting Eichmann (32 page)

Everyone, including Aharoni, saw the advantages of this plan, but they could see a major vulnerability as well. What if Eichmann panicked upon seeing a car he did not recognize parked yards from his house at night? He might race across the field toward his house or dash back toward the bus stop and kiosk. Malkin argued that this was unlikely. It would be up to Harel to settle the debate.

The team then turned the discussion to another issue, and this time everyone agreed without question: they must switch safe houses. The gardener was on the premises too often and could not be persuaded to stay away. He needed only to mention the strange activities at the house to the wrong person, and the whole operation would be compromised.

With the capture date rapidly approaching, every detail of the plan was scrutinized and scrutinized again. Any mistake could cost the agents their freedom, but worse in their minds, it might allow Eichmann to keep his.

19

ON MAY
9,
RAFI EITAN
drove to San Fernando on reconnaissance. He turned onto Route 202, near Garibaldi Street, and suddenly found himself at the scene of an accident. A car had collided with a motorcycle, and the police were on hand. Before Eitan could turn around, a policeman, supporting a bloodied motorcyclist, appeared at the driver's window.

"Hospital," the policeman said.

Eitan watched dumbfounded as his back door was opened and the motorcyclist deposited in his car.

"Hospital," the policeman repeated.

There was nothing for Eitan to do but to nod enthusiastically and drive off with the man to get him medical treatment. Eitan had doubted that the team would be ready for the capture the next day, particularly since they were moving safe houses, but now he had another reason to hesitate: he did not want to risk being seen by the police in the area two days in a row.

Later that morning at the Café Molino, one of the city's grandest coffeehouses, he sat down with Harel. Aharoni and Malkin also were present. With his voice lost in the constant hum of conversation from the surrounding tables, Eitan detailed why they should postpone the capture by a day. Harel was reluctant. Once he set a plan in motion, he did not like to change it. In this case, he was especially worried that Eichmann might take flight. But Eitan was absolutely clear that the team needed more time, and Harel assented. He had to admit that his men looked harried and exhausted. They could have said the same of their chief, who had dark half-moons under his bloodshot eyes. Then the conversation turned to the capture plan. Eitan related their stalemate from the night before, pointing out Malkin's insistence that a car be parked on Garibaldi Street, hood up, for the snatch.

Malkin felt Harel's eyes boring into him as Eitan was speaking, but the chief acknowledged that it was important that Malkin be at ease with the plan, since he was the one charged with grabbing Eichmann. He asked pointedly what would occur if Eichmann became unnerved by the car: "What if he leaves the road and cuts through the field to reach his house?"

"He will continue straight ahead," Malkin stated firmly. The only reason, he explained, for going with the first plan—keeping both cars on Route 202—was to avoid making Eichmann suspicious, but this did not seem worth the risk of not being able to get a car to Tabor and him after they had seized Eichmann.

Harel and Aharoni looked unconvinced.

"Look, imagine you're Eichmann ... You see a car with its hood up. It's maybe thirty yards to your house. What do you do?" Malkin paused for effect. "You're a proud man, a former SS officer, a creature of habit and routine. A little dialogue goes on in your head. You're a little ashamed of yourself even to be feeling such fears. After all, it has been fifteen years. You can't run away from every single suggestion of the unknown ... You continue on."

Again Harel said that he might easily cross the field to get home.

"I've seen plenty of Nazis in shiny boots," Malkin said. "They will not walk through the mud unless they absolutely have to."

The Mossad chief contemplated Malkin's explanation. Then he stood up from the table, directing his hard gray-blue eyes at Malkin. "All right. I agree. But, Peter, it's on your head."

The three agents left the café. Even with the one-day reprieve, they barely had time to fini sh their preparations, including transferring everything from Doron to Tira, constructing a room in which to hide Eichmann, overhauling one of the capture cars again, surveying the roads, verifying that Eichmann maintained his routine, and practicing the snatch. They also needed to check out of their hotels, move into their assigned safe houses, and assume completely different identities. There was to be a complete break with who they had been since first arriving in Argentina. If they had to run, the authorities would not have a trail to follow.

But at least they agreed on the plan for the capture. Now they needed only to execute it.

In West Germany, Fritz Bauer had no idea how close the Israelis were to seizing Eichmann. As far as he knew, the investigations might have fizzled again, and he was growing increasingly impatient over the long silence. He had risked too much by handing over the intelligence on Eichmann for nothing to come of it. Less than a week earlier, he had written a note to Haim Cohen, demanding to know what was happening and threatening to pursue other avenues as previously outlined.

On May 10, Bauer received his reply from Cohen. "I assure you this matter is being attended to intensely," Cohen wrote. "We expect to be able to report exact details shortly. Until then, we, and that includes you, have to be patient, and in the interest of the matter, I implore you to calmly wait for further information." The message was clear: Bauer was to hold tight.

Tuviah Friedman was also in a state of suspense. He had not made any further announcements about Eichmann after receiving letters from Erwin Schüle stating that any action might jeopardize the ongoing investigations. From what Friedman understood, the follow-up investigations by the World Jewish Congress proved that the information Lothar Hermann had provided was yet another false clue in the hunt for Adolf Eichmann.

As for Simon Wiesenthal, his brief flurry of activity with the Mossad had contributed nothing other than adding several more pages to his file on Eichmann. Contact had been abruptly cut off and no explanation given to Wiesenthal. In spite of his obsessive efforts to find Eichmann over the fifteen years since the Nazi's disappearance in the postwar chaos, Wiesenthal was resigned to the fact that the fugitive would elude justice for many more years to come.

As Eichmann was returning to his house on Garibaldi Street after work on May 10, a black sedan pulled up beside him. The driver rolled down his window and asked in Spanish how to get back to Buenos Aires. Eichmann gave him directions, very ill at ease with how closely the four men in the car seemed to be watching him. Before the sedan disappeared into the night, Eichmann noticed that its license plates were from the city. Why, then, would they need directions? Could this somehow be related to the two men who had approached his daughter-in-law Margarita six weeks before?

As soon as he got home, he told his wife about the black sedan. He brushed it off as nothing—at worst, the secret police doing a routine check in the area—but Vera was worried. Eichmann ate his dinner and smoked one cigarette after another, but he did not play his violin as he usually did. Lately, he had been practicing a piece by Andreas Hofer, "My Love, Do Not Forget Me," a break from his favorites, Mozart and Haydn. That evening, he was too tired. In bed that night, his wife slept uneasily next to him, dreaming about her husband in a white shirt that suddenly turned crimson.

Neither of them had anything to fear from that black sedan—the Mossad team had no reason to approach him so obviously. But now Eichmann was wary.

"We're planning for the operation to take place tomorrow," Harel told Yosef Klein earlier that evening. "So, just be aware of that. Suppose we get discovered—the police might get hold of the story somehow. I just want you to be aware."

Klein got the message. If he felt threatened or heard that the operation had been compromised, he was to go straight to the embassy for protection. Harel also advised him to make himself as visible as possible at the airport throughout the next day. That way, he could not be implicated in the capture.

Once they had discussed these preventive measures, their meeting followed the usual format. Klein had drawn a picture of the airport—its every entrance, building, runway, and guard position, as well as the locations of some windows and doors. He had also outlined the routine movements into and out of the airport, as well as staff shift changes. He had learned how Harel liked to do things. For each and every aspect of the flight—servicing and stationing the plane, moving the crew into the airport, boarding passengers, and many other details—Harel had wanted to know every alternative and possibility. Then he had tested each against the other, dismissing some, recommending others. After this review, he had ranked the scenarios in order of preference and determined the possibility of switching between them in case the unexpected occurred.

Klein told Harel that one such unexpected situation had developed already. Earlier that day, when he had gone to TransAer's maintenance area, he had found soldiers and police everywhere. He was still not sure why this was the case, but he had heard that the Americans were using one of their hangars for military aircraft. Whatever the reason, El Al could no longer use this spot. They needed a new location. Their second alternative had already been selected: the facilities of Aerolineas Argentinas. Although these facilities were closer to the main terminal than TransAer's, the area was poorly lit at night and guarded by only a few soldiers. What was more, it could be accessed without passing through the entrance to the main terminal.

With his usual barrage of questions, Harel zeroed in on the main weaknesses of using the national airline. With standard procedures, they would tow the plane to the terminal an hour before departure, which meant there would be too much activity around the plane when they wanted to get Eichmann on board. Klein suggested that they inform Aerolineas Argentinas that they wanted to use all their facilities except their towing equipment, which they were unaccustomed to using on Britannias and which might damage the plane. After fielding an interrogation from Harel as to whether the airline would grow suspicious at the El Al request to taxi to the terminal and then to the runway by itself, Klein had the go-ahead to set it up. With Shimoni scheduled to leave the next day to coordinate the plane's departure from Israel, Klein would be alone to handle all these matters.

They still needed to determine the best way to get Eichmann through security and onto the plane, but Harel had to go.

At Tira, Moshe Tabor rushed to prepare the safe house for the prisoner's arrival. He had chosen a ten-by-twelve-foot room on the house's second floor for the cell. First, he placed a bed with a cast-iron headboard in the room. Then, with one-inch nails, he secured heavy wool blankets over the two windows and the four walls to muffle any sound from Eichmann. He rigged a bell in the room that could be activated from the front gate or the living room if the house was about to be searched. He was in the middle of constructing two separate spaces to serve as hiding holes, both padded heavily with blankets. One was underneath the veranda, where there was a foot and a half of clearance between the wooden floor and the concrete foundation. The other was in a small storage space above the room.

In another part of the house, Aharoni was attempting to teach Malkin the few phrases in Spanish that he would say to Eichmann before grabbing him, something to put their target temporarily at ease. At first Aharoni tried "Can you tell me what time it is?" and then "Excuse me, please?" Malkin, who had unusual difficulty with Spanish, settled for a simple "
Un momentito, señor.
" Meanwhile, in the garage, other team members, including Shalom and Gat, were cleaning and polishing the two capture cars to make them look worthy of their diplomatic status. They also continued to practice changing the license plates and putting the prisoner in the hollow behind the back seat, using Tabor's hinged seat construction.

They interrupted all this activity for one final meeting with Isser Harel to go over the plan. In several cars, they drove to the center of Buenos Aires, to the safe house Ramim (heights), a collection of adjoining apartments in a tall new building. Those not at Tira also assembled there, including Shalom Dani and Ephraim Ilani. Ramim had been chosen so as to limit the number of people going in and out of Tira the night before the capture.

Harel stood before his men, and they went instantly silent. "You were chosen by destiny to guarantee that one of the worst criminals of all time, who for years has succeeded in evading justice, would be made to stand trial in Jerusalem," he began, saying each word deliberately, his voice firm, much as he had during the speech he had given before they had left Israel. "For the first time in history the Jews will judge their assassins, and for the first time the world will hear the full story of the edict of annihilation against an entire people. Everything depends on the action we are about to take."

It was a stirring beginning. Then the Mossad chief got down to business. He reviewed the capture plan and the responsibilities of each member. From the lead car, the one stationed on Garibaldi Street, Malkin would make the first move on Eichmann, and Tabor would follow. Aharoni was to drive, and Eitan was to remain out of sight, ready to lead the team and to assist where necessary. In the second car, parked on Route 202, Shalom would be the driver, Gat would act as lookout, and Dr. Kaplan would be on hand to administer any medical procedures required.

Then they talked contingencies.

What should they do if they were to learn that Ricardo Klement was not Eichmann? This was still a possibility, albeit a faint one, thanks to the investigations of Aharoni. Still, his identity was the first thing they needed to verify. If they discovered that they had made a mistake, Harel instructed Malkin and Tabor to drive Klement several hundred miles north of the city and drop him off with some money. Then they were to cross over the border into Brazil while the rest of the team got out of Argentina.