Eichmann in My Hands by Peter Z. Malkin

Author:Peter Z. Malkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2018-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

Buenos Aires

The scene would probably have struck most people as wildly incongruous, but for us it was just business as usual. There the four of us sat, Uzi, Aharon, Meir, and me, in the elegant living room of a sumptuous apartment on one of the most fashionable streets on earth, Paris’s Avenue Wagram, hunched over a street map of a drab working-class district half a world away.

By now, we knew the map of San Fernando almost by heart. The Klement house on Calle Garibaldi was marked with a black X; the 80 yards Ricardo Klement walked each morning and evening to and from the bus stop around the corner on Route 202 was denoted by a broken blue line; the route traveled by the bus was in green; streets leading in and out of the area were red. Various observation posts, notably a railway embankment overlooking the house, were also prominently indicated.

The discussion at hand concerned the logistics of the capture. At what point, precisely, should we grab him? Where should the getaway car be stationed? What about the backup car?

Each of us had an opinion about everything, based on something or other in his own experience.

But we also all realized that at this point the talk would lead nowhere. No final decision on how to proceed could be reached until we had examined the target area at close hand, gotten a sense of its traffic and pedestrian patterns, the sight lines from key buildings and street corners, the attitude of the locals toward outsiders.

In brief, we were in that curious netherworld that precedes many operations. The planning phase behind us, we were primed for action, but still on hold.

“C’mon,” said Uzi suddenly, rising to his feet, “let’s have a little fun.”

That, after all, was part of the point of our being in Paris, with its beautiful surroundings, great food, and freedom from worry. Once we were in Argentina, our lives would no longer be our own. The pressure would be relentless, sometimes second to second. Unable to trust anyone but ourselves, the most innocuous slipup would jeopardize the entire mission.

Heading out into the glorious early May afternoon, we picked up a couple of bottles of wine, some French bread, and an assortment of cheeses and charcuterie, and drove out to the leafy Bois de Boulogne in our rented Citroen.

But soon, locating a reasonably secure patch of ground, we were once again laying preparation for the capture, steeling ourselves, among other things, for the possibility of being sighted in mid-act. Meir, to his consternation, was called upon to play Attila. He emerged from a cluster of trees on a narrow path and walked slowly in my direction. I glanced around, alert to passersby. There were none. Now face-to-face, I saw him flinch and then jumped him. I caught him in a half nelson, hoisted him onto my back, and dragged him toward the Citroën. Putting up only token resistance, he was dead weight. Aharon leapt out, grabbed his legs, and together we stuffed him inside, moved in after him, and slammed the door shut.

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