Hunting Eichmann

by Neal Bascomb

  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.

  "Are you absolutely certain?" Juan asked, not wanting to return to Aharoni with any doubts.

  The carpenter nodded. He had done work at the house, and the German still owed him some money. Then Juan asked him about Dito, explaining that he had said he was the son of Klement but that he had never delivered the package. The carpenter thought that Klement had only a young son, no more than eight years old, but that he lived with Dito's mother, who had three sons from her first marriage.

  Juan thanked the carpenter and walked over to the mechanic's shop. Dito came out into the yard, recognizing him. "And what do you want this time?" he said.

  Juan told his story again, how his friend was potentially facing a fine of 500 pesos.

  Dito grew hostile. "How come? If she wanted to send it to my brother, why did she not write down my brother's correct name? There is no Nick Klement. It's Nick Eichmann."

  At a café near the Israeli embassy later that night, Aharoni waited nervously for Juan. He knew that sending the young Argentine back to the house was a desperate move, potentially disastrous, but he did not feel that he had any other choice. When Juan appeared, he was stripped of his usual smile and looking worn down.

  "What happened?" Aharoni asked worriedly.

  Juan explained that he now had specific directio
ns to the family's new house. Aharoni could not understand how this would depress him, since that was what they had been searching for over the past week, without success. Juan then admitted, "We followed the wrong person. The name's not Klement. It's Eichmann."

  Aharoni could have leapt from his seat onto the table, but he restrained himself. "Ah. Never mind. Don't worry about it," he said.

  Juan also explained that on asking where Mr. Klement was, Dito had said that he was in Tucumán on business. Aharoni thanked Juan for his fine work and urged him never to speak to another soul about their investigation. In parting, Aharoni reassured him, "We'll find the right man."

  13

  AHARONI CRAWLED ALONG Route 202 in his rented station wagon, past a kiosk on the corner to his left. It was late afternoon on March 12, but the sun was still high enough in the sky for him to get a good look at the house. The directions the carpenter had given Juan had played out perfectly so far, and Aharoni had passed several stops on the route of bus 203 from the center of San Fernando. Boosting his confidence that he was on the right track, he remembered coming to this same kiosk a few days before while following the moped.

  A railway embankment crossed the road 150 yards ahead, but otherwise the area was level and almost completely featureless. It was a poor, sparsely populated section of San Fernando, without telephone or electrical lines. Fifty yards before the short tunnel that passed underneath the railway, a street turned to the left. On this, Aharoni spotted a one-story brick house with a large wooden door and tiny windows. The masonry was unrendered and the roof flat—just as the carpenter had described. This was the house; Aharoni was sure of it. Apart from a cottage twenty yards up the street, there was not another place within a couple of hundred yards. The house looked more like a provincial jail than a home, an impression reinforced by the barred windows and the low brick wall and chicken wire fence surrounding the property. A wooden shed in the corner of the barren yard could have been an isolation cell.

  Driving past, Aharoni saw a woman in a faded sundress sitting on the edge of the porch. A young boy in his underwear, no older than six, played at her feet. The woman was short and thick-bodied, with slightly graying black hair—probably in her fifties. Aharoni suspected that he might be looking at Vera Eichmann and her fourth son, who must have been born after she arrived in Argentina. He continued underneath the railway bridge, stunned at the poverty in which the family was living—worse even than the Olivos house.

  Later that night, Aharoni parked fifteen minutes' walk away from the house. It was almost pitch-black, the moon and stars hidden behind clouds. He followed a street that ran parallel to Route 202. Dogs barked in the distance, and as he neared the house, he grew worried that he might run across one of them. But the barking was from somewhere else and had carried across the plain. He was close enough to see the dim light from a kerosene lamp through one of the windows. There was no sign of the supposed stepfather, Mr. Klement, but Aharoni did not expect to see him, since Dieter Eichmann had told Juan that he was in Tucumán.

  If Adolf Eichmann lived in the house, he would very likely be back for his silver wedding anniversary a week later, on March 21. Before then, however, Aharoni hoped to confirm that Klement was indeed Eichmann. He needed proof.

  In Tel Aviv, Harel excitedly read Aharoni's latest coded message. Although his agent was moving aggressively, chancing his exposure, he was also proving to be more than effective. The Eichmann family had been identified, and Aharoni knew where they lived. In a short while, Harel suspected, Aharoni would confirm whether the man living with the family was Adolf Eichmann himself. Until certain, Harel hesitated to assemble a team for the capture operation.

  He drafted a cable to Gat that he cease his actions in Austria. Since they had located Vera Eichmann and her sons, further inquiries might scare the extended family into alerting them. Harel also telephoned Haim Cohen. On the orders of Ben-Gurion, they were to sit down together to finalize the legal justification for the Israelis to capture a German citizen on foreign soil and bring him to trial in an Israeli court. Harel knew that Cohen remained convinced that there was more legal standing for the West Germans to try Eichmann, but they both understood that this was largely a nonissue because their prime minister wanted justice to be served on behalf of the victims of Eichmann's actions.

  Two days later, on March 14, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, the leaders of West Germany and Israel were meeting for the first time, an occasion of historic and symbolic importance. Ben-Gurion needed to secure a good relationship with Adenauer: this would help tamp down any tensions that might arise were Eichmann caught, although there were decidedly more important issues at stake. In his suite, Adenauer warmly greeted the Israeli prime minister, and the two sat down for a long private conversation. Ben-Gurion hoped to obtain half a billion dollars in economic aid and to further the ongoing illegal arms transfers from West Germany to Israel. Adenauer was looking to bolster his alliance with Israel, a relationship with its own secret military and intelligence advantages for his country. Also critical at that moment was the chancellor's desire to show his people and the international community that the recent outbreak of anti-Semitic attacks was a false representation of the new Germany. He had to exorcise the ghosts of the past.

  After the two statesmen concluded their warm meeting, they went to speak to the press. Adenauer expressed how deeply moved he had been by Ben-Gurion and how certain he was that continued reparations served both countries. Ben-Gurion added how pleased he was to have met the West German chancellor, then concluded by saying, "I belong to a nation which cannot forget its past. We do not remember the past in order to brood over it, but in order that we may go on in the certainty that it will not repeat itself. Last summer I said in the Israeli Parliament that the Germany of today is not the Germany of yesterday. Having now met Adenauer, I am convinced that the observation was right." Throughout the meeting, no mention had been made of Eichmann. If Eichmann were captured and were to mention Globke and other ranking members of the Adenauer government, it would be potentially disastrous for the German chancellor. Even so, Ben-Gurion was willing to risk straining relations between the two countries by capturing Eichmann and putting him on trial before an Israeli court.

  Back in his Frankfurt office, Fritz Bauer reflected on the meeting between the two statesmen, wondering what impact these discussions would have on the Eichmann manhunt. Despite his ultimatum to the Israelis, they were still moving far too slowly, and he had not had any report of progress since passing his intelligence to Zvi Aharoni several weeks before. No longer willing to depend solely on the Israelis, Bauer had asked the American consul whether the United States would assist in extraditing Nazi war criminals from foreign countries. He was waiting for a response that the Americans would never send. The consul forwarded the request to Washington, but the assistant legal adviser for Europe decided that it was not worth responding to. Although Bauer did not know it, the Israelis were his only hope.

  On March 16, Aharoni walked into the San Fernando civil administration headquarters with "Michael," an architect who had emigrated from Israel several years before. After spending a few fruitless days looking into the activities of the Fuldner Company in Tucumán, Aharoni was looking for the proof he needed in the local land records. One did not buy land and build a house without leaving a paper trail.

  Using false names and a cover story—that they were interested in purchasing a significant parcel of land for a factory in San Fernando—they requested the names of the people inhabiting the area around where the rail line intersected Route 202. The clerk guaranteed an answer the next day.

  Later, as they drove toward the Klement home, Aharoni instructed Michael on their next task. Using a similar cover story—they worked for an American company that was interested in purchasing property in the neighborhood to build a sewing factory—Aharoni hoped to photograph the woman he had seen on the porch to compare with pictures he had of Vera Eichmann.

  They parked in f
ront of a cottage adjacent to the Klement house. Michael carried a clipboard, and Aharoni had a briefcase with a camera hidden inside. The lens pointed out of a hole in one side, and a small button by the handle released the shutter. A middle-aged woman appeared from around the side of the cottage. Michael called out a greeting in Spanish and asked her the name of her street. The woman replied that probably none of these dirt side roads had names. Michael explained the reason for his visit, and the woman eagerly offered to sell her house. Inquiries as to who lived next door were less successful. She knew only that they were German and had recently built the house.

  While they were speaking, a black-haired woman in her early twenties came toward them from the Klement house. By her looks and accent, she was a native Argentine, and her tone and body language made it clear that she did not like their intrusion on the street. Repeating his cover story, Michael eased her anger, but she was clear that her mother-in-law had no intention of selling the house, nor did she know the name of the street. While Michael was talking to the young woman, Aharoni snapped a couple of pictures. He saw her face turn stern again as she responded that her mother-in-law did not speak Spanish well and could not come out.

  When Michael relayed this to Aharoni in English, the woman interrupted him with a nearly flawless command of the language. Aharoni instantly grew nervous, sure that she would notice that he did not have an American accent. She was sharp.

  "What's the name of your employer?" she demanded. "What sort of factory were you planning?"

  Aharoni wanted to get out of there straightaway. She did not believe them, and if she alerted her husband, he might tell his father about the conversation. This could prove catastrophic.

  As Michael began to explain about their sewing factory, she cut him off, wondering why they would want to build in an area without electricity or water. Surely, they were a disreputable company, she declared.