The Nazi Hunters

by Neal Bascomb

  Dr. Elian rolled up Eichmann’s right sleeve and wiped his arm using a cloth soaked with alcohol. Eichmann drew his arm away. “It isn’t necessary to give me an injection,” he said. “I won’t utter a sound … I promise.”

  “Don’t worry,” the doctor said. “It’s nothing, just something to control your excitement.” He moved to insert the needle.

  “No, no … I’m not excited at all,” Eichmann insisted.

  “Please,” Malkin said. “We have to do this. We have orders.”

  The hypodermic needle used by Yonah Elian to sedate Eichmann before the El Al flight.

  Eichmann gave in and laid his arm in his lap. The doctor slid the needle into a vein and attached a tube. Then he delivered the sedative. Eichmann soon faded, mumbling, “No, no. I don’t need it.”

  “We’re ready to travel,” the doctor said, checking Eichmann’s pulse.

  Yaakov Gat and Rafi Eitan grasped Eichmann under the arms and carried him into the garage. He was conscious but barely able to speak. Looking drowsily at the others, all in their El Al uniforms, he said, “I don’t look right. I have to put on a jacket.” They had not given him one because it would have restricted access to his arm, but it was a good sign that he seemed to actually want to help. Maybe he would not resist at all while getting on the plane.

  Gat climbed into the backseat of the limousine and drew Eichmann down beside him. Dr. Elian also sat in the back, ready to inject more sedative if needed. Yoel Goren took the passenger’s seat, and Aharoni started the engine. Malkin pulled open the gate — he was staying behind at Tira in case there was trouble at the airport and the team needed to retreat to the house. Eitan and Tabor were to follow in another car. The limousine rolled out of the driveway and turned the corner.

  At the same time, in a quiet corner of the Hotel Internacional lobby, Captain Wedeles assembled the El Al crew members who had yet to be informed of the true reason for the flight. The seven individuals included the radio operators, pursers, and flight attendants, all of whom had spent the past twenty-four hours enjoying Buenos Aires. They grew curious on seeing Yosef Klein and Adi Peleg standing beside Wedeles, and worried on seeing how serious the captain looked.

  “We’re advancing the return departure,” Wedeles said. “Please be downstairs in an hour. No shopping. No nothing. After that, you’re to stick with me. If I get up, you get up with me. If I sit down, you sit down, because I want you all around me at all times.”

  “You’re participating in a great event,” Peleg said. “Don’t ask me what it is, but we’re taking a very important person back to Israel with us. I will tell you his identity later on.”

  “We’ll be boarding the plane in three cars at the maintenance area,” Wedeles continued. “In one of the cars will be that man.”

  Aharoni took a long, circuitous route to the airport in order to avoid the checkpoints on the major roads. Eichmann was still and silent in the back — almost too still, too silent. They feared that he might be acting more drowsy than he actually was in order to fool them. Then, when his chance came — perhaps even while boarding the plane — he might scream out for help and jeopardize the operation.

  At the airport’s main entrance, the guards waved the car through without inspection because of its diplomatic plates. In the parking lot, they met Peleg and a minibus carrying the crew. Shalom was there as well. It was almost 11:00 P.M. Someone ran to alert Harel, and he came hurrying out of the terminal.

  He glanced into the limousine. Eichmann appeared to be asleep. Dr. Elian assured Harel that he was able to see and hear, though not alert enough to know what was going on around him. Harel gave the order to move out to the plane.

  Peleg took over the escort car that Eitan had driven to the airport. Shalom sat by his side in the passenger’s seat. Both of them had gone in and out of the airport often enough to know the guards by their first names. They would lead the convoy through the gates into the maintenance area. Behind them was the limousine, driven by Aharoni, and last was the minibus with the plane’s crew.

  The line of vehicles approached the gate to the Aerolíneas Argentinas hangar, where the El Al plane waited. An armed sentry walked up to the first car and recognized Peleg and Shalom sitting inside. He raised the barrier and waved them forward, pleasantly shouting, “Hi, Israel!” The limousine and minibus rolled by slowly to give the guard a chance to look inside and see that everyone was wearing an El Al uniform.

  “Be absolutely silent,” Gat warned Eichmann as they neared the Britannia. “We’re about to go onto the plane.”

  Eichmann remained listless, as if he didn’t even hear the warning. The limousine stopped at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the plane. Captain Tohar opened the back door. Gat lifted Eichmann out. His legs had almost no strength, so Yoel Goren supported him from the other side.

  The crew filed out of the minibus. “Form a circle around us and follow us,” Eitan instructed them.

  Gat and Goren hauled Eichmann up the stairs. His feet dangled limply, hitting each step in turn. An airport searchlight illuminated the gangway. Everyone was crowded closely together, making Eichmann all but indistinguishable in the mass of El Al uniforms.

  The fake air crew ID card for “Zeev Zichroni,” created by Shalom Dani.

  Once on board, Gat and Goren led Eichmann to the back of the plane and placed him in a window seat in the first-class cabin. Gat sat down across the aisle, and Dr. Elian took the seat directly behind. A flight attendant covered Eichmann with a blanket.

  “Pretend to sleep,” Gat told everybody.

  A purser lowered the overhead lights and drew a curtain across the first-class cabin entrance. If customs officers or the police searched the plane before takeoff, they would be told that the relief crew was getting some rest before the long flight.

  At 11:15 P.M., the doors were locked closed, and Tohar fired the engines. Then he taxied to the terminal to pick up their remaining passengers.

  In the terminal restaurant, Isser Harel felt the reverberations from the Britannia’s engines against the window. He knew Eichmann was on board. Once the crew had gotten through customs and the Mossad agents who were returning on the flight had boarded as well, they would depart. Harel was eager for that moment to come. He still feared the police or a group of Nazis would rush into the airport at the last minute to stop the flight.

  Harel left his restaurant headquarters and met up with Yosef Klein, who assured him that everything was ready. He then headed outside the terminal, where Eitan and Shalom had just arrived by car from the hangar. They reported that the transfer of Eichmann onto the plane had gone flawlessly. They were staying behind with Malkin to return the cars and clean up. Harel shook hands with each of them in turn, and the men wished one another luck on their journeys back to Israel.

  Then Harel hurried into the passenger lounge, where he was joined by Aharoni and Tabor. Medad finally appeared, his car having broken down on the way to the airport. The agents all had piles of luggage with them.

  Klein came up to Harel, his face stricken with worry. “You surprise me with this crowd!”

  “They’re all my people. Don’t worry,” Harel said.

  At 11:30 P.M., Klein received word that the plane was ready for takeoff. However, there was still no sign of the customs and passport-control officers who were to check their papers and allow them to board. Since there were no other flights leaving at that late hour, it was unlikely that the officials were busy.

  As midnight approached, Harel and Aharoni paced back and forth in the passenger lounge. Had someone seen them bringing Eichmann onto the plane? Had the airport been tipped off that there was something suspicious about the El Al flight? Harel considered sending word to Tohar to leave without him and the rest of the passengers, but then he calmed himself and gave it a few more minutes.

  At last Klein found a customs official. The tall, heavily bearded officer walked into the lounge and apologized for the delay. From his sheepish grin, they knew it had mer
ely been an oversight. The officer stamped everyone’s passports, wishing each of them a hearty “Bon viaje!”

  As Harel boarded the Britannia, he spotted a man in a suit running out of the terminal from another exit and speaking urgently with an airport official. The Mossad chief had a sinking feeling that something was wrong, but the plane doors shut behind him.

  In the cockpit, Tohar finished the preflight checklist with his crew. After Harel sat down in the cockpit jump seat, Tohar ordered the flight engineer to start the engines. Following procedure, he radioed the control tower. “El Al is ready to taxi. Request clearance to Recife.” Then he gave them the checkpoints and altitude that Shaul had provided for their false flight plan to Brazil.

  The tower answered, “El Al, proceed to runway. Hold for takeoff clearance en route to Recife.”

  They were so close to being away, thought Harel. The man he had seen leaving the terminal was not important. Still, he wished they had already left Argentina far behind them.

  Tohar released the brakes, and the Britannia moved forward to its takeoff position. The plane cleared the airport terminal. They were almost free.

  But then the tower radioed a new message. “El Al, hold your position. There is an irregularity in the flight plan.”

  Everyone in the cockpit went still. Harel was sure that they had been caught. Tohar did not respond to the tower. Instead, he stopped the plane and turned around in his seat to see what Harel wanted to do.

  “What happens if we ignore the tower’s command and take off for Dakar?” Harel asked.

  Tohar told him he could fly the Britannia low to the ground and evade the radar, head south instead of north to Recife, and throw any pursuers off for a while. He doubted that the Argentine air force was on standby, but if they took off without clearance, there was a chance that a fighter plane might be scrambled to force them down. Tohar was an Israeli air force reserve pilot, and he could do whatever needed to be done, but the risks were many.

  “There’s one more option,” he said. “Before having the Argentine air force put on our tail, we should check and see if they really know that Adolf Eichmann is on board. Let’s not create a problem that doesn’t exist.”

  Harel nodded, even though he knew the longer they waited on the tarmac, the more time the authorities would have to alert the air force and prevent the Britannia from taking off.

  Tohar turned to Shaul. “They are saying there’s an irregularity in the flight plan. So let’s send the guy who prepared it to the tower to find out what’s going on. If you don’t return in ten minutes, we’ll take off without you.”

  Yosef Klein paced the apron beside the airport terminal, confused as to why the plane had stopped. He had checked and rechecked everything. There was no reason the plane should not have departed, unless its secret passenger was known. Klein tried to make eye contact with someone in the cockpit, but nobody was moving, nor did they open a window to call out to him. After what felt like an age, he saw one of the pilots gesture for stairs to be brought to the plane’s side. Then the doors opened, and Shaul stepped out.

  Klein waited for him at the bottom of the steps. “What the hell is happening?”

  “The tower wants something to do with the flight plan,” Shaul said.

  Klein knew it was highly unusual for a plane to be stopped and the navigator summoned out. This might be a trap.

  “Shall I go with you?” Klein asked.

  “No, wait. I’ll do it alone.”

  Shaul hurried to the tower. He climbed the stairs slowly, like a man approaching the gallows.

  “What is the problem?” he asked the controller in English, looking around for any sign of the police.

  “There’s a signature missing,” the controller said, holding the flight plan up in his hand. “And what is your alternate route?”

  Shaul relaxed. “Porto Alegre,” he replied before adding the detail to the plan and signing the document. Then he rushed back down the steps. “Everything’s okay. Something was missing on the flight plan,” he said to Klein as he passed him.

  In the cockpit, everybody sighed with relief when Shaul reported what had happened. The doors closed again, and Tohar called the tower. “This is El Al. May we proceed?”

  “Affirmative.”

  At 12:05 A.M. on May 21, the plane rushed down the runway and lifted off. Once they had crossed out of Argentine airspace, excitement swept through the cabin. The “El Al crew” in first class rose from their seats, hugged one another, and cheered their success. Wedeles and the few other true crew members who already knew the special passenger’s identity joined in the celebrations. The spontaneous outburst surprised Harel, and although he had hesitated to inform everyone else on the flight of the circumstances, it was clear now that secrecy was pointless.

  Harel allowed Adi Peleg, the El Al security chief, to deliver the news: “You’ve been accorded a great privilege. You are taking part in an operation of supreme importance to the Jewish people. The man with us on the plane is Adolf Eichmann.”

  A shock wave of emotion followed his words. The flight attendant sitting next to Eichmann felt her heart sink. She stared in disbelief at this skinny, helpless man, nervously drawing on a cigarette, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in fright. In disgust, she stood up and moved away.

  In the cockpit, it was all business. The plane gained altitude, and Tohar steered due northeast across Uruguay and out over the Atlantic, following the course that Shaul had plotted to give them the best chance of reaching Dakar.

  There were no computers or calculators at this point in aviation history, so navigation depended on charts, pencils, compasses, dividers, rulers, and lots of math. Once over the ocean, the flight engineer and the navigator figured out their position using the stars and a sextant that projected through a hatch in the flight-deck ceiling. A large almanac held details of the stars’ positions throughout the year (and the sun and Venus for navigating by day) and enabled them to calculate their position in the sky every forty minutes. Once the calculations were complete, they were then rechecked by the other engineer and navigator. The calculations for each star shot meant they only had about five minutes’ break before starting the process again.

  Zvi Tohar, both of the navigators, and flight engineer Shimon Blanc had supervised the Britannia’s proving flight between New York and Tel Aviv in late 1957. That journey had covered 5,760 miles in fifteen hours — the longest flight ever taken by a commercial airliner at that time — in a plane stripped of its seats, its galleys, and anything else deemed unnecessary, including passengers. The lack of weight meant that their fuel went a lot further. They had also had the benefit of a strong tailwind of roughly sixty-five miles per hour. For that flight, they figured the maximum still-air (no wind) range of the plane to be around 4,700 miles. The distance from Buenos Aires to Dakar was 4,650 miles. While they could expect some tailwinds along the route, they were still carrying some four tons of additional weight, and this meant they had to fly 2,000 to 3,000 feet lower than on the proving flight, consuming roughly 5 percent more fuel per hour. There was no guarantee that the wind conditions would be to their advantage.

  Shaul and Tohar were confident that they would reach Dakar, but they were also conscious that anything might happen to interfere with their plans. Over a thirteen- to fourteen-hour flight, slight deviations could add up to create big problems. At best they might be able to divert to another African airport — perhaps Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. At worst, they might run out of fuel over the Atlantic.

  At half past midnight, Nick Eichmann learned from someone in his search party that an Israeli passenger plane had departed Buenos Aires for Recife. Nick was certain that his father was on board. With the help of a former SS man, he alerted a contact in the Brazilian secret service and asked him to intercept the plane when it landed in Recife — exactly the threat that the nonstop flight to Dakar aimed to counter.

  Hour after hour passed as the El Al plane crossed the wide expanse of the A
tlantic. It flew first toward the volcanic island of Trinidad, 680 miles east of Brazil, then north toward Dakar. Periodically, the radio operators listened in for new weather forecasts, the navigators made slight alterations in their route, and Harel popped his head into the cockpit to ask if everything was on track.

  In his seat in the back of the plane, Adolf Eichmann continued to be as compliant as he had been in the safe house. The doctor had stopped giving him the sedative once they had boarded the plane, and he was still handcuffed and goggled, but Harel ordered Eichmann’s guards to stay ready, fearing that he might attempt to kill himself. The prisoner smoked heavily and fidgeted constantly in his seat. Now that they were in flight, most of the crew kept their distance from him.

  The morning after the Britannia departed, Yosef Klein wrapped up his El Al business in Buenos Aires and boarded a flight back to New York. There was no time for the sightseeing trip in Brazil he had planned on his journey out. His reward had been to see the taillights of the plane disappear into the night with Adolf Eichmann on board.

  That same morning, Rafi Eitan, Peter Malkin, Avraham Shalom, and Shalom Dani woke up at Tira, relaxed for the first time in months. Their mission had gone well, and Eichmann was no longer their responsibility. Still, there were a few loose ends to tie up: They erased all trace of their presence in the various safe houses, burned or disposed of any material they did not plan on taking with them, and returned the last of their cars. The final task on the list was to get out of the country.

  Dani was booked on a flight out of Argentina the next day, but, with the anniversary celebrations in full flow, there had been no flights available for Eitan, Malkin, or Shalom. They bought three tickets for an overnight train to Mendoza, on the Chilean border. From there they would take another train through the Andes to Santiago. Isser Harel had assured them that the announcement of Eichmann’s capture would not be made until they were all safely back in Israel.