Hunting Eichmann (20 page)

When Bloch returned, he told Gat about a chat he had had at the café. According to the postman, Vera and her three sons had stayed in the town in the early 1950s and then one day had disappeared. No letters had ever come from her, and nothing had been seen or heard of her since. It was the kind of thing a postman in a small town noticed, yet another sliver of information casting doubt on the story that Vera had remarried and moved away, which was the only story her family had offered over the years.

Gat and Bloch took a train to Vienna and, as soon as they arrived, sent their report to Harel. As always, Gat included the facts they had learned. His boss did not want interpretation.

The two also had arranged to meet Simon Wiesenthal, who had something to show them. The independent Nazi-hunter was working for a Jewish organization that offered vocational training to immigrants to ease their assimilation. Gat had contacted Wiesenthal at the beginning of the investigation, knowing of his interest in Eichmann. Gat had sworn Wiesenthal to secrecy, but he had kept quiet about the Argentine operation all the same, explaining only that they were following up leads on the Nazi's family. Wiesenthal had offered his help, mentioning that the previous April, he had seen an obituary for Eichmann's stepmother and that the names listed in the obituary had included a Vera Eichmann. This seemed strange, because a woman who remarried usually took her new husband's name. Wiesenthal had helped Gat and Bloch track down several Eichmann family members and had attempted to find out more about the passports given to Vera and her sons in 1952. The passport file had disappeared from the German consulate in Graz, however, raising more suspicions. Like Tuviah Friedman, Wiesenthal had urged the Israeli government to offer a sizable reward for any information on Eichmann's whereabouts.

At his apartment, Wiesenthal spread out five photographs on the table in front of him and invited the two Israelis to examine them. One was the picture of Eichmann taken in the late 1930s that Diamant had found in Maria Mösenbacher's possession. The other four were of his brothers. A few weeks before, Wiesenthal had arranged to have their photos taken at the funeral of their father in Linz. "This must be how he looks now," Wiesenthal said, knowing that Gat wanted to get his hands on a recent photograph of Eichmann. "Probably closest to his brother Otto. All the brothers have the same facial expression. Look at the mouth, the corners of the mouth, the chin, the form of the skull."

"Fantastic," Bloch said, nodding his head.

Gat asked if they might take the photos with them. Wiesenthal gladly gave them copies.

It was clear to Gat and Bloch that Vera and her sons had left Austria without a hint of their destination and that eight years later, they still wanted nobody to know where they were. Unless she had remarried some other war criminal, Vera must be with Eichmann.

Gat wanted to cut off contact with Wiesenthal, despite his ongoing desire to be of help. Through a source, Gat had learned that Wiesenthal had indiscreetly mentioned in conversation that the Israelis were eager to find Eichmann. Furthermore, Gat was weary of Wiesenthal's questions about payment for his assistance in the investigation. No doubt this would not have been an issue had Wiesenthal known that the Israelis were not just fishing for information but had already dispatched an Israeli agent to Buenos Aires to find him.

On March 4, "Juan," a cherubic eighteen-year-old Argentine who had a permanent smile, entered the gate at 4261 Chacabuco Street. In his hand, he carried an exquisitely wrapped box containing an expensive cigarette lighter. It was addressed to Nikolas Klement, Vicente López, 4261 Chacabuco. Slipped under the ribbon was a note written in flowery script by an embassy secretary: "For my friend Nicki, in friendship, on his birthday."

Juan had instructions from a Mr. Rodan, whom he had just met, to go to the Vicente López address to find out where "Nick Klement" had moved. His cover was that he had a gift to deliver. If asked where the gift came from, Juan was to say that his friend worked as a bellboy at an upscale Buenos Aires hotel, and a young lady had given him a sizable tip to deliver this package. Since his friend was busy, Juan was doing him a favor. Under no circumstances, Mr. Rodan stressed, was Juan to go to the new address. If he got into any trouble, a "friend" would be waiting four blocks away. Then Mr. Rodan wished him good luck.

Unable to find a bell at the gate, Juan shouted out for Nick Klement. The doors and windows to the house were wide open. When nobody answered, he ventured into the yard and around to the back of the house, where a man and a woman were emptying out a brick shack.

"Excuse me please," Juan said. "But do you know whether Mr. Klement lives here?"

"You mean the Germans?" the man asked.

"I don't know."

"Do you mean the one with the three grown sons and the little boy?"

"I don't know," Juan said innocently. Truly, he had no idea.

"Those people used to live here, but now they have moved. Maybe fifteen to twenty days ago." The man suggested that Juan speak to one of the men working in the house and led him inside.

Juan spotted a carpenter in his early fifties and showed him the card and gift. "Can you tell me where I can find him?" Juan asked. "I have to deliver it personally."

The carpenter, who spoke Spanish with a thick European accent, mentioned that the family had moved to a neighborhood called San Fernando, but he did not know exactly where. Helpfully, he offered to take Juan to where one of Klement's sons worked, just a block away. As they approached an automobile mechanic's garage on the next corner, the carpenter pointed out a Motoneta moped that he said belonged to Klement's son. Juan got a good look at the vehicle. Then the carpenter called out, "Dito!" A young man of about nineteen, wearing oil-stained overalls, came over.

"This guy would like to speak to your father," the carpenter told the young man.

Juan did not know whether he was looking for the father or the son, only Nick Klement. He explained the purpose of his visit and that he had just learned that Klement had moved. Dito confirmed this curtly.

"Where have you moved?" Juan asked.

"To Don Torcuato."

Juan hesitatingly offered to give Dito the package to pass on to his father, Mr. Klement, saying that he was doing a favor for his bellboy friend.

"I'd like to know from whom you got that," Dito said.

Juan explained that he did not know the name or anything else about the young lady who had given his friend the package to deliver. Then he asked if he could just have Mr. Klement's address in order to deliver the package himself. Dito refused, saying the area had no street addresses. At last Dito agreed to take the package. Sensing that he had pressed enough, Juan left the garage.

Listening to Juan's report, Aharoni grew excited and thanked him for a job well done. Not only was the trail not dead; they might even have found one of the fugitive Nazi's sons. He was also personally encouraged that his gambit to deliver the lighter had worked. He had reckoned that people would be more forthcoming with information if they thought they were doing Nick a favor. Aharoni had learned from the file that Nick's birthday was March 3. Now he knew for certain that a German family named Klement had lived at the Chacabuco address until only a few weeks ago. They had four sons, one of whom was roughly the same age and had a similar-sounding name to Dieter Eichmann, born March 29, 1942.

Aharoni unfolded his map to locate the two neighborhoods to which Juan had been told the family had moved. Don Torcuato and San Fernando were more than three miles apart. Given this discrepancy, as well as the facts that the family did not leave a forwarding address and Dito had refused to give his, Aharoni concluded that the Klements had something to hide—another indication that they might be the Eichmanns.

Hoping that he was on the right track, Aharoni decided to try the workers at the house again to see if they knew where the family had moved. Later that day, he brought "Lorenzo," a different
sayan,
to the house to pose as a salesman. The thirty-five-year-old had the looks, suit, and smoothness to play the role. Two visits on the same day was incautious, and the second achieved nothing more than to confirm that Ricardo Klement had lived there. Still, Aharoni was confident enough in what he had learned to cable Harel.

That night, he sent a coded message from the embassy to Mossad headquarters:
THE DRIVER IS RED
(Klement is likely Eichmann). He also detailed that their target had recently moved and that he was attempting to locate him. Once he sent the code
THE DRIVER IS BLACK,
Harel would know definitively that Eichmann had been found, and the operation to capture him could begin.

Aharoni and Juan sat in the Fiat on Monteagudo Street, keeping watch on the early-evening traffic. It was March 8. Anybody leaving Dito's shop would have to drive by them to reach the neighborhoods of San Fernando or Don Torcuato to the north. Aharoni felt that they would not draw any undue attention to themselves. Even though in most countries, loitering in a car would be suspicious, in Argentina, he had noticed, it was perfectly normal to sit in a car for long stretches of time, smoking a cigarette, reading a newspaper, eating lunch, or engaged in conversation with a friend. So they waited, hoping to follow Dito home.

Since arriving in Buenos Aires, Aharoni had also checked into other intelligence provided by Bauer. None of these inquiries had uncovered anything proving that Klement was Eichmann, nor was there any indication as to where the family had moved. Early that morning, Aharoni had sheltered from a torrential rain under the awning of a house on Avenida Cordoba, watching, for the second day, the doorway to the Fuldner Company across the street, looking for Eichmann on his way into work. Nearly three hours had passed without any sign of him.

Through a Jewish lawyer provided by Yossef, Aharoni had hired a private investigator to find evidence of the arrival of Vera Liebl and her sons in Argentina, as well as any information on the identities of the former tenants at 4261 Chacabuco Street. Again, nothing. There was some possibility of discovering a lead in Tucumán, but he felt that to be a long shot.

Now Aharoni was depending on Dito to lead him to Eichmann, and this was the third afternoon they had spent parked on Monteagudo Street. At 5:15
P.M.,
a dirt-spattered black moped whirred past the Fiat from the direction of the shop. Its driver, who was in his fifties, wore wide dark glasses, and clinging to him on the pillion was a young blond man wearing overalls. Juan pointed them out, almost certain this was Dito. The moped looked to be the same make as the one Juan had seen in the shop.

That was more than enough for Aharoni, who turned the key and shifted into gear. He followed the moped through traffic, trying not to be seen but also not to lose the moped. Ten minutes later, after a series of turns, the moped turned down a small alley by a railroad station in San Isidro, the neighborhood directly southeast of San Fernando. The young man dashed into a building, then came out two minutes later. Again, Aharoni and Juan followed the moped. When they reached the center of San Fernando, the bike temporarily disappeared among the cars and trucks jammed around the main square. Catching sight of it again, Aharoni turned off the square to follow and found himself abruptly halted by a funeral procession. He could do nothing but grip the steering wheel in frustration as the moped disappeared from view. On the drive back to Aharoni's hotel, the Fiat's electrical system shorted out, and it had to be towed back into the city.

Over the next few days, Aharoni attempted to trail Dito with two other teams of
sayanim.
On the first night, during a heavy downpour, the moped didn't show, but the couple who were watching the automobile shop from a café followed someone resembling Dito to a nearby bus station. On the second night, in a rented station wagon, Aharoni trailed the moped, again with two riders, back to San Fernando. There he switched cars with two of the young Argentines helping him. He almost lost the moped again around the square but managed to keep it in sight. When the bike reached Route 202, Aharoni drew back considerably, since there were only a few cars on the road to Don Torcuato. Just before a railway embankment, the moped stopped at a kiosk on the side of the road. There was only a scattering of houses and wooden huts in the barren, flat land. Aharoni slowed the car. The two riders looked to be staying there a while, prompting Aharoni to drive past and circle back toward San Fernando. Juan was certain that they were following the moped from the shop, but this time he was less sure that the passenger was Dito.

On the third night, Aharoni and Juan trailed a lone young man who left the shop on a moped. When he stopped and went into a house along the way to San Fernando, Aharoni sent Juan out to get a closer look. A few minutes later, he came back and said it was probably not Dito.

Aharoni felt anger well up inside him. A week had passed since he had first sent Juan into the Chacabuco house, and they had learned nothing more. Now they had followed the same individual several nights in a row, risking exposure, and they were still unsure whether they were shadowing the right person. This could not continue. They had to get either the address to which the Klement family had moved or confirmation that it was indeed Dito they were tailing.

"Go back to the garage tomorrow," Aharoni told Juan, trying to temper his frustration. "Tell them your friend is angry. He claims that you never delivered the present and he wants the money from you. Either you get the address where they live so you can speak to Mr. Klement, or at least make sure you have a good look at the boy. Don't tell me you're not sure ... I need a yes or no."

On March 11, as instructed, Juan returned to 4261 Chacabuco Street to see if any of the workers might tell him more than they had on his first visit before trying the garage again. The carpenter who had helped him before recognized him. After Juan told him the story about how the gift had never been delivered, he asked for Mr. Klement's new address. This time, the carpenter, feeling bad for him, explained that he did not know the street name, but he gave Juan exact directions to the house: go to the San Fernando station; take bus 203 to Avellaneda Street; ask at the corner kiosk for the German's house. If Juan wanted to find the house on his own, that was just as easy. It was an unfinished brick house with a flat roof only a few hundred yards from the kiosk.