by Isser Harel
I was in a dilemma. Nobody in the world but Zvi knew what flight I was taking to Buenos Aires, and it was inconceivable that if Zvi wanted to send me an urgent message he would try to get hold of me so publicly. There could be only one explanation: something had happened to make conspiracy unnecessary.
With great unwillingness, but with no alternative, I started walking toward the information desk. I was one step from the counter when a man pushed in front of me and breathlessly introduced himself by the name that appeared on my passport. I waited another few seconds at the desk, until it was clear beyond doubt that the call was for him, not for me. Then I heaved a sigh of relief. The strangest part about this incident was that the name had been picked purely at random. Fate seemed to be playing a practical joke on me, putting a man with the same name on the same plane.
The flight was long and tiring, with many landings on the way, and seemingly endless waits and delays. But after the great strain I had been under lately and the arrears of sleep I had accumulated, the journey was sheer luxury to me. Most of the time I slept.
13
ONE OF THE first essentials the advance party in Buenos Aires had to think about was finding safe houses. We needed places to hold the prisoner until he could be taken out of Argentina, and also for operational purposes such as lodgings for the task force, storage of equipment, and so on. Although the renting of housing had actually been assigned to Yitzhak Nesher, the others in the advance party decided it was so important that they would give it all their spare time in the mornings since surveillances in the target area were maintained mostly in the afternoons and evenings.
They went to real-estate agents and accumulated lists of houses and buildings in the area between Buenos Aires and San Fernando. And they scrutinized the newspaper advertisements every day, especially in the English and German papers, figuring that anybody who wanted to rent a house would look for potential tenants among foreign visitors.
Yitzhak Nesher started his search on April 27, the day after his arrival, and he spent all his time at it. He started off going from place to place by taxi, but when he realized how much time was lost this way he asked for a rented car.
The same day, April 27, Avrum, Kenet, and Ilani went to see a house about ninety-five miles from the capital; according to the agent’s description, it seemed eminently suitable for keeping Klement in custody, but they found they had been misled and the place was unsuitable. Yitzhak’s search that day also came to nothing. If he found a house that seemed to conform with their requirements, it usually turned out that the owner wanted to sell not rent it and the prices were inordinately high; the vast majority of places being offered for rent were unsuitable. Another drawback was that most of the houses which were to let for a short period included one or more servants -a gardener and nightwatchman, or a caretaker – and any suggestion to dispense with them was received with displeasure and even excited a certain amount of suspicion.
Before many days had passed the group realized that this problem, to which nobody had given much thought, might turn out to be one of the most difficult of the whole operation.
As for surveillance and shadowing, the results were better. On the evening of April 27, at six forty-five, Kenet and Ezra went to the target area to find observation posts from which it would be possible to watch the Klement house and its surroundings without being discovered. They left the car a long way from the house to avoid arousing the curiosity of the neighborhood residents. They found that the best place was on the railway embankment, about seventy-five yards from the Klements’ house. The embankment stood about fifteen feet above the level of the surroundings, and the railroad track crossed the main road by an overpass. Parallel to the track, separating it from the house, ran a stream, a tributary of the Reconquista river. The road crossed the stream over a bridge. There were two sets of tracks on the embankment, and at peak hours trains went by in both directions as frequently as every two or three minutes.
They sat on the embankment and focused their binoculars on the road, with the object of checking if Klement always came home at the same time, and if he usually came alone or with other people. They also wanted to find out if there was much pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the section Klement traversed on foot, between the kiosk on Route 202 and his house.
At seven-forty they saw Klement alight from bus number 203, which came from San Fernando and continued toward Bancalari. He got off at the kiosk, about two hundred yards from the house, and started walking along Route 202, on the same side of the road as his house, holding a flashlight which cast a white beam in front and a red beam at the back. They noticed that he switched on the light whenever a car came along. He left the main road at Garibaldi Street. When he got to his house he didn’t go straight in but first walked all around the house, and only after that did he open the door.
The watchers thought that his tour of the grounds was a precautionary measure, to make sure nobody was lying in wait for him inside. But they found out after the operation that all he was doing was examining the plants in the yard.
This surveillance consolidated the team’s opinion that Klement was in the habit of returning from work every day at the same time and on the same route from the kiosk on Route 202 to his house.
It was becoming obvious that to operate effectively in a city the size of Buenos Aires they each had to have more private transport, so on April 28 Avrum, Ezra, and Yitzhak went to rent cars. One of them was to be Yitzhak’s exclusively, for his house hunting.
Avrum, Kenet, and Ezra bought overalls and set out on a reconnaissance of Buenos Aires harbor. They knew that the intention was to take Eichmann out of Argentina by plane, but I had warned them not to rely on this entirely and to examine operational possibilities at the port, especially with regard to transferring a person to a boat waiting outside the harbor. They had to be satisfied with only one superficial reconnaissance that day, and its only result was to persuade them that many more examinations would be required if it became necessary to transport Eichmann by sea.
Toward evening the three of them returned to the target area. Avrum and Kenet settled themselves at their observation post on the railway embankment while Ezra waited for them in the car at the Bancalari railway station. An unoccupied car, they reasoned, not only attracts attention but also runs the risk of being stolen.
Sitting on the embankment was a severe strain. Trains kept rushing by with a deafening clatter as if venting their fury on the two peculiar characters who had picked this sooty, uncomfortable, dangerous place to spend their evenings. The trains had glaring headlights, and during the hours of darkness they were switched fully on; the men feared that if they weren’t run over one night they’d eventually be discovered by the local residents – who included the Klement family.
Just before seven-forty, bus number 203 arrived and stopped at the kiosk. They both breathed a sigh of relief when once again Klement alighted and started walking along the left side of the road, flashlight in hand. As on both previous occasions, Klement again left the main road and turned into Garibaldi Street, entered the yard, did a preliminary tour of the house, and then went inside. Avrum and Kenet left their uncomfortable perch on the embankment, and Ezra came to pick them up in the car at the prearranged spot.
It was now clear that Eichmann came home from work every day at the same time, but they still didn’t know what his work was. They traced the route of the number 203 bus and found that it started from the San Fernando railway station. The most likely deduction was that Eichmann got to the station by train, and from there continued by bus. But where did he come from? They decided that the following day they must try to find out.
Worn-out and filthy, but pleased with the day’s achievements, they returned to Buenos Aires. Yitzhak reported that his day’s search had yielded a few houses worth considering. They agreed to inspect them the following morning.
Avrum and Yitzhak went to see two houses in the San Fernando area which might have been suitable –
if not for the fact that the owners were demanding excessive rentals and refusing to lease them for less than a year. They tried in vain to bargain with them, or at least to reduce the period of the lease. Eventually they went away, leaving the way open for further negotiation.
Nor did Kenet and Ezra, busy on a parallel search, manage to find what they wanted. After seeing many houses, they found two that seemed suitable, but they were both for sale only. They tried to persuade the owners that rather than be stuck with the houses it would be worth their while to rent the properties for a few months to people like themselves, who were in Argentina on business and didn’t want to stay in hotels. But it was useless – both owners were prepared to negotiate sales but were not ‘nterested in renting.
Kenet, Avrum and Ezra gave up house hunting at four in the afternoon to get ready for their daily surveillance of the target area. This time they were going to attempt to find out what Klement did before he boarded bus number 203. They left Kenet at the San Fernando railway station, next to the bus terminal, and drove on to their usual observation post. A few minutes after seven-thirty Kenet saw a man who looked like Klement sitting in bus 203. He wasn’t quite sure that it was Klement and didn’t want to take a chance on boarding. He was a little surprised that he hadn’t noticed the man getting on, but they found out later that they had made a mistake in assuming that the bus started at the railway station. Klement must have boarded at a previous stop.
Luck was not with Avrum and Ezra either. No sooner had they sat down on the embankment than two men came along and looked at them with curiosity. They had no choice but to leave their observation post. They hurried to the car they’d left standing at the side of the road facing Bancalari and drove back along Route 202, toward San Fernando. When they reached the corner of Garibaldi Street they saw Klement turning off the main road into the street where he lived. They checked the time – it was exactly seven-forty.
They went back to San Fernando and picked up Kenet at the railway station. When they heard his story they went to try again to find the starting point of bus 203. They finally found it outside another railway station, the one at Carupa, and they decided that at the earliest opportunity they would keep an eye on this station to see if this was where Klement boarded the bus.
April 30 fell on a Saturday, and the advance party took the whole morning off. They needed rest badly. From the day of arrival in Buenos Aires, after a tiring flight, each had been devoting most of the day to incessant running around looking for houses and the nights to surveillance – under extremely trying conditions. They had sat for hours clinging to the slope of the embankment, and the smart well-pressed tourist clothes they wore on their vigils usually became limp crumpled rags -it was the rainy season – by the time they returned to their lodgings. And then their day generally ended with a recapitulation meeting to draw their conclusions on the day’s achievements and plan the morrow’s activities.
On Saturday afternoon they were going on a reconnaissance of the roads, to familiarize themselves with the entire area and to look for detours through side streets in order to avoid the heavy traffic of the main roads and the numerous railway crossings with their barriers.
They arranged to meet at a certain spot in Avenida Nueve de Julio, but Avrum, who was the first to arrive, discovered that it wasn’t the best place. He had been pacing up and down for a few minutes when a policeman came up to him and asked to see his papers. It seemed they’d chosen to meet in front of the German Embassy – unintentionally of course. As soon as he saw Kenet and Ezra approaching Avrum hurried to meet them and tell them what a mistake they’d made.
Later they reconnoitered the roads for many hours, in the target area itself, between the target area and the center of the city, and similarly between the target area and the areas where they were looking for safe houses. On this and subsequent trips they found quite a few suburban byways where the traffic was light and where police or security agents would be unlikely to search if the hunt was on.
That day and the next, Sunday, May 1, no surveillance was set up at Klement’s usual homecoming time. Instead, a reconnaissance of the target area was arranged for Sunday morning, one of its main purposes being to find observation posts other than the one on the railway embankment, which was uncomfortable and unsafe. The results were not encouraging. A few alternatives did present themselves, but in each case conditions were even less favorable than on the embankment.
At about eleven-thirty on Sunday they passed Klement’s house and saw him working in his garden. To avoid making him suspicious, they drove past at high speed and were thus unable to form a clear impression of him.
That Sunday was the day I arrived in Buenos Aires. The sun had almost set when the plane approached Ezeiza, the international airport, and in the afterglow I could see the delta mouth of the mighty Río de la Plata and its two large tributaries, Paraná and Uruguay, each a couple of miles wide at the estuary. Looking out over the vast city girded by the waters of the sea and the two giant rivers which are themselves like seas, it was easy to understand why they say Buenos Aires is a composite of the sparkle of Paris and Vienna and the hubbub of New York and Chicago. Not for nothing is she called Puerto de Santa Maria del Buen Aire. It must have seemed an earthly paradise to the Spanish sailors of bygone centuries.
But I had very little time to spend on the glorious gardens and beautiful boulevards of Buenos Aires, its splendid mansions housing the government offices, or the huge harbor area with its quaysides and anchorages adorned with derricks and silos. After passing through immigration and customs, I approached the bus for the city. As I left the airport building I saw Avrum waiting amid the throng of welcomers, but neither of us gave any hint of recognition. Our rendezvous had been prearranged for the following day, but Avrum’s presence at the airport indicated that he wanted to make it earlier. I left the initiative to him, and sure enough I saw him climb onto the same bus I was traveling in.
When the bus arrived at the hotel where I was staying, Avrum and I found an opportunity to exchange a few words and arrange for a meeting. I registered at the desk and went up to my room, and Avrum followed me a little later. He reported briefly on the situation with regard to Klement, the safe houses, and all the other activities of the advance party. We fixed a later meeting at a café near my hotel, and I used the interval to bathe and change.
From the café we went straight to the only safe house we had at the moment, Maoz. Kenet, Ezra, Ilani and Yitzhak were waiting there, and I listened to their detailed report on the surveillances they had maintained for four consecutive days. I concluded that we could now regard as fact our hypothesis that Klement was regularly employed, apparently in Buenos Aires, and returned home every evening at the same hour. I considered the conditions in the vicinity of his home favorable for carrying out the capture silently and safely.
I was given further particulars of the efforts to find houses and the negative results. I decided that this vital issue must be given top priority and that we couldn’t afford to be too choosy about the location or interior of the places offered to us nor be put off by the high prices. It was only where security requirements were at stake that we dared no compromise.
The advance party was also experiencing a great deal of difficulty renting cars. Argentina seemed to lag behind European and North American countries in this respect. The prices of passenger cars were extremely high; an American car cost as much as fifteen thousand dollars; and to rent one required a deposit of five thousand dollars. But the worst part of it all was that the engine and bodywork were generally dilapidated, the tires so worn that it was impossible to rely on them, the batteries old and liable to run down at crucial moments, and even the doors did not close properly. The choice of models was extremely limited, thus creating serious problems since we were unwilling to be seen too often in the same places in the same car. Nevertheless, I was confident we could overcome all these difficulties, even if it meant devoting a greater effort to them than we had take
n into account in our initial planning.
I told the others about the preparations we had made in Israel after their departure and explained that all the members of the task force were either on their way to Argentina or about to set out within the next few days. Another thing I was able to tell them was that I had completed the final arrangements for the flight. The tentative date for its departure from Israel continued to be May 11. Consequently, I said, we would have to make the capture on May 10 at the very latest, as the plane would be taking off on its return flight on May 13 or 14 and we would have to give ourselves a few days’ leeway in case of unavoidable delay or unforeseen difficulties. I told them about the special operational equipment I had ordered for embarking Klement, and said that if it was all ready in time it would be coming on that very plane.
At the end of our talk we planned our future work and means of communication. Ilani was assigned the task of maintaining liaison between me and the rest of the men.
14
WHEN YOSEF KLEIN received the Telex message to leave for Buenos Aires and to meet Shimoni there, he was sure there had been a misunderstanding – he had never handled South American matters for the airline. He asked for the message to be repeated – there must be some mistake. A second Telex confirmed that Buenos Aires was indeed to be his destination, and he was even given the number of the Swissair flight on which Shimoni would be traveling. Accordingly, he flew to Sao Paulo, and was already waiting in Rio when Shimoni’s flight arrived.
Shimoni left Israel on May 1,1960. He flew to Zurich, where he changed to a Swissair plane bound for Argentina. At the first stop, Geneva, he saw Rafi Eitan and Eli Yuval, but they gave no sign that they recognized him. At Rio he was surprised to find Klein waiting, agitated and anxious for an explanation.