The House on Garibaldi Street by Isser Harel

Author:Isser Harel [Harel, Isser]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780714643151
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2013-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

16

AS THE CRUCIAL day grew nearer, I became increasingly concious of the fact that far too many people were passing through Maoz. The apartment had already served far too long as the center for our undercover activities, and it was more and more difficult to conceal all the products of the technical workshop and documentation plant. We would be in a very tight spot if for some reason a search were sprung on us during any of the periods when the men were working or during planning sessions when maps and lists were strewn all about. Consequently, I decided to reduce the number of visits to a minimum and to move some of the activities to the other safe houses.

May 7 was a Saturday so there were no surveillances in the target area that day. In the evening I called a meeting at Maoz and announced that it was essential for the men to avoid meeting there except when matters concerning documentation and equipment compelled them to appear in person. In every other instance, I said, requests and uncompleted orders would henceforth be passed on by a special liaison man who would be appointed for the purpose. All operational discussion and exercises, I said, would in future take place at Down. Zev Keren would continue to work at Maoz for the time being but would move into Down with Ezra. Only two people would stay on at Maoz: the ‘tenants,’ Efraim Ilani and Shalom Dani.

At that same meeting we resolved that the capture would be carried out on May 10.

From then on we met at various cafés and restaurants. For me this meant a lot of wandering around in the central areas of the city, looking for suitable meeting places. I made lists of the names and addresses of each of my stops for all those who might need to know where I was at any hour of the day.

I would spend the first half of every hour in one of the cafés and use the second half to walk to the next one. If a meeting lasted longer than half an hour I would take a taxi. At restaurants I would spend a full hour and then proceed to the next place by taxi. I tried to work it out for each rendezvous point to be a half-hour walk from the previous one, to allow me time to determine that I wasn’t being shadowed, and to make sure that I wouldn’t be seen for too long in any one neighborhood. With very few exceptions, each meeting place was used only once.

In Argentina the café is something of an institution. Every neighborhood has its own café, with a drinks counter and a large mirror on the wall behind it, and usually old-fashioned, dark-brown furnishings. Many Argentineans love to sit for hours, sipping hot aromatic drinks and chatting with family and friends. It was thus unlikely that our meetings would attract attention, even if a large group of us were to gather around one table.

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