Hunting Eichmann (37 page)

Nesiahu arrived at the house with Medad, who had already warned her about the "besieged" atmosphere. Her primary role was to prevent the neighbors or any other visitors from growing suspicious of their activities by making sure that she was seen enjoying the garden and taking leisurely walks with Medad, but her presence promised to break the monotony of the male-dominated atmosphere. The team was also hoping that she might be able to help with the cooking, since they had shown themselves to be inept at making anything more complicated than eggs.

Eitan and Malkin both knew Nesiahu, and they greeted her warmly before introducing her to the other operatives as well as to the doctor. She was excited to be involved in the operation, having learned from a short meeting with Harel only hours before that they had captured Adolf Eichmann. For a brief spell, her enthusiasm lightened the mood. But once she saw the prisoner later that night, and how he lay motionless on the mattress apart from the involuntary clenching of his face, she regretted her earlier enthusiasm. "The thought of cooking or washing up for him makes me sick to my stomach," she admitted to the others. "I shudder even to think of touching anything that he's touched." Thus the oppressive mood returned to the house.

In the early hours of May 13, Peter Malkin, who was on watch, decided that he could not bear to be idle, merely staring at the sleeping Eichmann. He dashed down the hall and retrieved some colored sketch pencils from his disguise kit and the only paper he could find,
The South American Handbook,
a guidebook he had bought in Paris.

Gripping a brown pencil, Malkin opened the book to a map of Argentina. With an intensity born of contempt and unwelcome idleness, he began to sketch the sleeping figure on top of the map. The emerging portrait was of a man with dead eyes looming under spectacles, narrow bloodless lips, and the cheekbones of a cadaver. Malkin moved from that rushed portrait to another, of Eichmann in his SS uniform, a swastika on his armband. This time he painted Eichmann as he imagined the Nazi during the war, his bearing stiff, his eyes inflamed and all-seeing.

On another page, Malkin drew Eichmann carrying a machine gun, depicting it pointed at Poland and Hungary. He also drew almost comical portraits of Hitler and Mussolini facing each other on opposite pages. Eichmann continued to sleep, Malkin keeping an ear out for footsteps in the hall. He did not want the others to know what he was doing. Still he drew, now moving to a pastel portrait of his parents side by side, hands touching. Their eyes looked downward, as if they were watching him. And last, he sketched his sister Fruma from his youthful memory of her: big eyes, deep with concern and love. For a moment, Malkin eluded the depression that hung over the house. Then he was relieved from his watch and went to try to sleep.

May 13 began much as the day before. They woke Eichmann up, fed him breakfast, and shaved him. Downstairs, they had the radio on, and during the breaks in the tango music and soap operas, they listened intently for any mention of Klement or Eichmann that might reveal that his capture had gained the notice of the police. Nothing. They also scoured the morning newspapers, which Medad had gone out to buy. There were details of an insurrection plan by Peronists, which had been disrupted, weapons and propaganda seized. There was another long article on the massive upcoming anniversary parade featuring 10,000 soldiers, 160 tanks, and more than 100 planes flying overhead. Ella Fitzgerald was going to make her debut in the city that night. No mention of Eichmann. This offered little relief. The police or security services might not post notice of Eichmann's disappearance so as not to tip their hand.

None of the Mossad team at Tira expected that the risk of discovery or the strain of living with Eichmann would ease in the days ahead. Their only aim was to be rid of the Nazi war criminal by sending him to Israel.

Back in Israel, Yaakov Caroz, a Mossad department head, had just received the cable from Buenos Aires. He set off through the streets of Tel Aviv to inform the country's top leaders of the capture.

A stop at the prime minister's office revealed that Ben-Gurion was away at his retreat at the Sde Boker kibbutz. Unless a meeting was absolutely necessary, his secretary told Caroz, it would be better to meet with him on Sunday. Caroz agreed and hurried over to the office of the foreign minister, Golda Meir. She delayed an appointment and asked him to join her on the balcony of her office. As soon as they were alone, the slight, spirited foreign minister, with her dark gray hair bound tightly in a bun, asked him why he had come.

"Adolf Eichmann has been found."

"Where is he?"

"All I know at this point is that Eichmann has been captured and identified."

Meir caught her breath and placed the palm of her hand squarely on her chest. Such was her emotion that she had to lean on Caroz to keep from falling. A few moments later, she said, "Please, I beg of you, if you hear anything more, will you come and tell me?"

Caroz left Meir to deliver the message to the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, who offered his congratulations; he also wanted to know more. But Caroz had only the spare coded cable from Buenos Aires.
THE TYPEWRITER IS OKAY
offered little room for elaboration.

It would be two more days before Caroz made the car journey several hours south of Tel Aviv to Sde Boker, in the Negev desert. Bodyguards led him to a cottage, where Ben-Gurion welcomed him into his small, book-lined study.

"I've come to inform you that Eichmann has been found and his identity established beyond doubt."

Ben-Gurion took a second to digest the news, then asked, "When will Isser be back? I need him."

"In a week, I would say. I couldn't say precisely."

Later, Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary, "This morning I met a messenger from Isser, who told me that Eichmann has been identified and captured and will be flown here next week (if they manage to get him onto the plane). Isser will return later. If it does not turn out to be a case of mistaken identity, this operation is an important and successful one."

Like his Mossad chief, Ben-Gurion allowed himself only a modicum of excitement. The mission was not yet complete.

23

AT THE HOUSE
of Willem Sassen, on Liberty Street in the quiet, leafy neighborhood of Florida, mayhem reigned. It was May 13, two days since their father had disappeared, and Nick and Dieter Eichmann were still frantically trying to put together a search party. They had arrived in the middle of the night, pounding on the door. Sassen's wife and daughters had retreated to a bedroom, not sure what was happening but fearing some kind of violence. The youngest daughter, Saskia, thought the two boys, with guns tucked in their belts like outlaws, were crazy. Downstairs in the living room, voices raised, the men argued over who could have taken Eichmann and what they were going to do about it.

Eventually, Sassen took the two brothers in his car to see if they could discover any trace that might lead them to him. Some of his associates thought that he might have fallen down drunk on his way home from a bar and hurt himself. But the boys had their father's smashed glasses to prove this was not the case. Their inquiries around San Fernando had not come up with anything either. Nobody had seen anything on the night of May 11.

The boys knew that they needed more help than Sassen could provide, not only to find their father but also to protect their mother and younger brother in case the same individuals who had taken their father came to take them as hostages. Nick and Dieter had hawked some gold rings and watches for three guns—a .22-caliber pistol, a .38, and a .45—at a pawnshop. Already it was becoming clear to them that they could not depend on the German community for help. Besides Fuldner and Sassen, most of their father's associates wanted nothing to do with them. They were more worried about protecting themselves. As for the police, the two brothers could not get their help without revealing their father's true identity, which might place him in even more danger than he was already in. Instead, they decided to turn to their connections in an organization called Tacuara.

Tacuara was a radical nationalist organization founded a few years before by a group of young, mostly bourgeois high school and university students, who had first mobilized to protest against the secularization of the education system. The name was taken from the makeshift weapon that had been used by gauchos in the fight for Argentine independence—essentially a knife tied to the end of a stalk of sugar cane. Fiercely Catholic, Tacuara had been modeled on the Spanish Falange, led by José Antonio Primo de Rivera. It was militant, fascist, and anti-Semitic. Its members favored violence to achieve their ends, which included freeing Argentina from liberal democracy, capitalism, and the Jewish influence. New members swore an oath of allegiance in a graveyard, cut their hair short, trained in militant camps, wore gray shirts and armbands stitched with the Maltese cross, addressed one another as "comrade," idolized Hitler and Mussolini, used the Nazi salute, and spread anti-Semitic and nationalist propaganda. They were often seen roaming the city on motorcycles.

Though not Tacuara members themselves, Nick and Dieter shared similar political views and had friends in the organization. The idea of a group of Jews, potentially Israelis, operating illegally inside Argentina was anathema to Tacuara, and some of its members rallied to find Eichmann, to protect his family, and to hunt down his abductors.

Without her knowledge, Luba Volk was providing camouflage for the escape. As part of her duties for the special El Al flight, the airline's headquarters had instructed her, on the advice of Isser Harel, to book private passengers for the return trip to Israel. They had sent Volk stacks of printed posters and flyers to help her promote the flight, which she had done over the past week through her contacts in the Buenos Aires travel industry. She had sold almost all the seats, but there was one stumbling block: the minister of aviation. She needed his permission to fly private passengers, but given that there was no reciprocal agreement between El Al and Aerolineas Argentinas, she doubted that he would approve her request. The tickets were sold with this proviso. Her superiors at El Al said that they understood this risk, but most unusually, she thought, they wanted her to forge ahead nonetheless.

On May 14, she received her answer from the Ministry of Aviation. Her request had been denied; the flight would have no private passengers. Disappointed, Volk wanted at least to do a good turn for an elderly Israeli woman who was sick and needed surgery and who hoped to return to Tel Aviv for the operation. Volk submitted a "stretcher case" application to the minister for permission to fly the woman to Israel, unwittingly exposing the flight to even more scrutiny by the Argentines.

Yosef Klein did not know of the request. Although he regretted being unable to reveal the flight's purpose to Volk, he was told to keep her in the dark. In any event, he had his hands full. The plane would arrive in five days. Klein had secured all the clearances and was finalizing the services (fuel, catering, cleaning) for the Britannia. He knew where the plane would be parked and had secured permission to taxi it under its own power from the maintenance area to the gate. He continued to befriend the airport staff, who now allowed him to walk unchallenged through security and around the airport. Klein had also introduced Shalom and the recently arrived El Al security chief, Adi Peleg, to the airport staff. Together, the three men reconnoitered the airport in order to plan the most discreet way to get Eichmann onto the plane.

Occasionally when they met, Harel would pointedly remind Klein of the "historic importance" of what they were doing. "Everything is going to work. Hang on, hang on," Harel would say. Klein always left these meetings with Harel not only with more confidence in his abilities but also slightly choked up at the thought of helping to bring Adolf Eichmann to justice. Harel's encouragement eased his worries over the operation's danger and his role in making sure it went off successfully.

Now that he was in charge of getting Eichmann safely out of Argentina, Avraham Shalom had no intention of leaving the operation solely in the hands of a civilian, even one as competent as Klein. Over the past two days, he had scouted out the harbor with Aharoni and Ilani. They were the only three members of the Mossad team apart from Harel not bound day and night to Tira. The southern quay was bustling with stevedores and customs inspectors overseeing the unloading and loading of cargo: too busy. The northern quay, where the cruise ships normally docked, offered more opportunities, particularly since it was winter in Buenos Aires. Still, Shalom was skeptical of any plan to smuggle Eichmann out by boat, mainly because of how long the journey to Israel would take and how exposed the ship would be at the various ports along the way. There had even been brief mention of getting a submarine to take Eichmann out of the country, but this had been abandoned as a wild fantasy. The El Al plane was still their best option, so that was the avenue on which Shalom concentrated his attention.

Most of his reconnaissance time was spent at the airport, where he posed as a diplomatic official helping to arrange the El Al flight. He promptly determined that the guards watching the side entrance to the maintenance area would be easy to deceive. They were more concerned about theft than other kinds of security breaches. With Eichmann dressed in an El Al uniform, perhaps sedated by the doctor, they should be able to get him through without difficulty. Smuggling their prisoner on board in a caterer's cart or a diplomatic crate would be too complicated. Shalom liked simple and straightforward. He planned on passing through security every few hours over the next five days so that the guards were as used to seeing him as they were to seeing Klein.

Next there was the question of how soon the plane could take off, who would give permission for it to leave, and what to do if there was a delay. Shalom thoroughly interrogated Klein and Peleg about every eventuality. The escape from Argentina had to be as meticulously planned as the capture itself.