The Locket

by Evans, Mike

  “Anyway, if we get him here by whatever means necessary, we can smooth out the political problems later. Israeli courts will not order him sent to any other venue.”

  “We just have to be ready for the backlash from other nations.” “Right,” I conceded. “If the world wants to discuss the manner in which we have done this,” I added, “they will have to discuss the manner in which they have done nothing. I don’t think they want that discussion, even if most of them still hate us.”

  “Good.” He put the memo in a folder and tossed it into the basket at the corner of his desk. Then he looked up with a curious smile. “Your timing is remarkable.”

  “How so?”

  “I just received this.” He reached across the desk and gave me a note. On it was a simple handwritten statement that said, “Cleared air space.” I looked over at him, and he smiled. “They just left Argentina.”

  My mouth dropped open. “We have him?” “Yes,” he nodded. “We have him.”

  An excited grin spread across my face. “How did we do it?” “Took him off the street near his home.”

  “But how did we get him out of the country?” “An official delegation.”

  “You’re kidding,” I laughed. “Really? A delegation to what?”

  “Not long after you and I discussed it, the prime minister’s office received an invitation to attend a ceremony commemorating Argentina’s independence. They flew down, attended the ceremonies, and returned with a few extra people.”

  “God was on our side.”

  “God,” Metzger added, “has always been on our side.”

  * * *

  Two days later, David Ben-Gurion announced Eichmann’s capture. I listened to the announcement on the radio at the coffee shop with Eli, Yohai, Chana, and a café full of customers. We were all very proud of the work Mossad and other agencies did to make Eichmann’s capture a success. When the telecast ended, Yohai came to me and put his arm on my shoulder. “You did it.”

  “We did it,” I said, making sure not to take all the credit. Then he leaned closer to my ear. “I was wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “About you. About law school. About many things. You are as capable as anyone, more so, and I am glad for the success that is coming your way.” I hugged him, knowing how difficult it was for him to say that.

  * * *

  In the days following Eichmann’s arrest, we redoubled our effort to prepare for trial. Everyone expected the case would take about a year to move through the court system, but we didn’t want to waste the time we’d been given. Unforeseen issues were bound to arise and if we prepared early, we would be able to address them without undue difficulty. No one wanted to give the appearance that we were rushing Eichmann to the gallows, either, though I think everyone knew from the start that was where he was headed.

  Over the next several days after his arrest, I continued to think about Eichmann and how he’d come to be where he was, locked in a jail cell at a secure facility in Israel. I wondered what he thought of the way his life turned out and whether he would ever know that I had a small part in determining his fate. I was sure he had not thought of me since the day in Linz when he ordered the soldiers to take me away. But if he did think of me, I know he never would have considered that I might have contributed to his final undoing. As time passed, I felt the growing need to see him for myself, to know for certain that it really was Adolf Eichmann sitting in that cell, to see the kind of man he’d turned out to be, and to reconcile in my mind the person I knew as a young girl with the man I feared as an adult.

  After several days of debating with myself, I approached Metzger and asked if I could have a look at him. The request caught Metzger totally off guard. He stared at me a moment with the strangest look before asking, “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” I explained. “And I don’t want him to see me or even know that I am there. I just want to have a look at him.” Metzger was silent for a moment and as I watched, the look on his face softened from that of a reluctant trial attorney to an understanding mentor. “Well, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. I’ll see what I can do.”

  The following day, Metzger came to me in my office and without any preparation said, “Are you ready to go?”

  I was working through the testimony of a survivor witness, and his appearance at my door was rather distracting. “Go where?” I asked without looking up.

  “I thought you wanted to see Eichmann.”

  I had assumed my request would take weeks for approval, if at all, and that ultimately I would be turned down. The offer to see him now, less than twenty-four hours later, found me totally unprepared, but I knew this was probably my only chance to see Eichmann before he appeared in court. “Yes,” I said courageously, and I followed him downstairs to the building lobby.

  From there we rode across town to a detention center. After clearing several security checkpoints, we were escorted into a room. A large steel door stood along the opposite wall. Metzger pointed to it and spoke in a low voice. “He is just through that door.” A peephole was located in the center of the door and he gestured to it with his hand. “You may slide back the cover from the hole and have a look.”

  “Can he see me?” “No.”

  “Will he know someone is watching?”

  “Perhaps. But if you are quiet you may go undetected.”

  I crossed the room, slid aside the cover from the peephole, and leaned forward, pressing my eyebrow against the opening. Although the hole was small, with my eye close against it I could view the entire room. Eichmann was seated at a table with his back to the door. I watched him a few minutes, taking in the whole of him without intending to focus on any single aspect, but as I watched, my attention was drawn to the smallest gestures—the way he held the pen in his hand, the tilt of his head while he read, one shoulder slightly lower than the other, and a hand always propped on his thigh. Like archaeological remains, they were traces from the past, remnants of the teenaged Adolf I knew when we lived in Linz.

  Then he pushed back from the table and stood. He turned in my direction, providing a full view of his face. The sight of him made me gasp and I was afraid he heard me, but he made no sound and gave no response. I watched a moment longer, then backed away from the door, suddenly lightheaded and faint. Metzger replaced the covering over the peephole.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “It’s him,” I answered as I leaned against the wall and struggled to regain my composure.

  “No doubt?” “No doubt.”

  “Good.” Metzger opened the door to the hallway and glanced back at me with a look of concern. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I’m fine.” I walked with my head down, trying to shut out images from the past that crowded my mind. We were still deep inside the facility when someone called to me. I looked up to see the voice was that of Tobin Halutz.

  Metzger was surprised. “You two know each other?”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “Tobin used to come to my father-in-law’s coffee shop.” I looked over at Tobin with a curious frown. “Why are you here?” The question seemed to catch him by surprise and he appeared awkward, an uncharacteristic reaction for him. Metzger spoke up. “Tobin was on the team that brought Eichmann from Argentina.”

  “Oh,” I said with surprise. “That must have been harrowing.”

  “Not too much, until right at the end. One of the Buenos Aires detectives became suspicious, and we had a little trouble getting our flight plan approved. Things got a little touchy. But we worked it out. What brings you out here?”

  “I work with Mr. Metzger.” “Oh?”

  “Sarah is an attorney with our office,” Metzger explained. Halutz’s face brightened. “You went to law school?”

  “Yes. You seem surprised.”

  “I thought you’d be working in that coffee shop the rest of your life. Are you still…”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “I’m very much married to Eli.
He’s the reason I’m here.”

  “Oh.” Halutz’s countenance dropped. “I see.”

  We reached the security checkpoint and Tobin went on his way. Metzger and I left the building and walked to the car. “Tobin is a good man,” he offered as we reached the car.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “He is. Fought valiantly in the war for independence.” “I’m surprised he let you get away.”

  “Just now?”

  “No,” he chuckled. “When he first met you.”

  “He tried,” I grinned, “but Eli is the love of my life.”

  Several months after Eichmann’s arrest, I received a package in the mail from Simon Wiesenthal. In it was an advance copy of Life magazine with an article written by Willem Sassen. The article contained excerpts of an interview with Eichmann. Apparently, Sassen conducted the interview over a rather lengthy period of time and intended to use it as the basis for a book. The Life article was meant to attract publishers to the project. I read it and was fascinated by the way Eichmann reinterpreted and, in many ways, reconstructed events of the past to portray himself not only in an appealing light but as a man tolerant of Jews and sympathetic with our situation in Europe during the Nazi era. When I finished reading it, I made a copy of the article for myself and took the magazine to Metzger. He scanned it quickly and asked the question we would hear from many others. “Is it really an interview with him?” “I think so.”

  “You read it?” “Yes.”

  “And what did you think?”

  “I think it’s him. It sounds like him.”

  “Just the same,” Metzger insisted, “we’ll have someone authenticate it.” He laid it aside and looked up at me. “What did you think of it?”

  “I think that article is the outline of his defense. He is going to claim he never ordered the death of anyone. Only that he arranged their transportation. Did his best to get as many out of the country as possible, never mind that he stole everything they had in the process. And never mind the fact that only a few people were ever issued the promised travel documents.”

  “You got that from the article?” “Yes. Why?”

  “Because that is precisely what he is saying to our interrogators.” “But it’s not true.”

  “I know it’s not true, and you know it’s not true, but I think he has convinced himself that it is.”

  “Incredible!”

  “It’s infuriating,” Metzger added, “but I’ve learned over the years that defendants always have a story, a version of events that shows how they couldn’t possibly be guilty of a crime everyone knows they committed. You’re much better off letting them have their say and getting them committed to a version of the facts, no matter how outlandish that version may be. Once you’ve done that, it’s rather easy to pick their story apart with the facts. But we have to have the facts, the details, to pin him down with.”

  “We have hundreds of witnesses who can place him at the camps. Some who can put him there during gruesome executions and later at the gas chambers.”

  “But,” Metzger pointed out, “we have no one who can say he actually gave the order for even a single execution. What we need is someone who can show the other side. The inside.”

  I felt my heart rate quicken. “We have one witness like that,” I suggested.

  “Who?” he asked in disbelief. “You know this person?” “Yes, I do. And you do, too.”

  “Who do we have?” Metzger picked up a witness list from his desk and tossed it toward me. “Who on that list can tell us about what happened on the inside?”

  I didn’t bother to look at the list, I just looked at him and said, “I am that witness.”

  “You?” He looked at me like I was crazy.

  “Yes,” I answered, unmoved by his reaction. “Me.”

  “You can do that? You can tell us what Adolf Eichmann did during the war.”

  “Yes.” “How?”

  “I was there. I’ve known him my entire life. When I was a little girl, our families lived three houses apart in Linz.”

  “I understand you knew him as a child.” Metzger waved me off with a dismissive gesture. “But that is not what we need.”

  “I knew him as an adult, too.”

  “As an adult?” He had a mocking sneer. “Look, I know you want to participate and I’ll see if I can get you on the trial team for a couple of days. This is going to be a long trial and we’ll need to swap people out so no one gets overloaded. But not as a witness.” He sat up straight. “I think maybe we should both forget we had this conversation.”

  “They came to the ghetto and moved us to the freight yard to load us on a train and sent us to the camp. We were all there in line and they were shoving everyone into the railcars. Then, at the last minute, someone shouted my name. I was on a list. They took me out and drove me to Eichmann’s office. There were several of us from the ghetto who were taken in the same way, but they put the others in the warehouse sorting through clothes and belongings taken from the prisoners. Eichmann put me to work in his office. He asked for me personally.”

  Metzger seemed to take me more seriously. “So you saw what happened in the office?”

  “In the Vienna office. I typed the reports.” “What kind of reports?”

  “Population censuses from the camp. Reports on the living and the dead. Inventories of property taken from people who were brought there. And I typed letters.”

  “What kind of letters?”

  “All kinds. Glad-to-see-you letters. Letters about trouble with the rail schedule. The need for better facilities.”

  “Better facilities?”

  “Most of the documents I saw dealt with the camp at Mauthausen. There were letters and memos about the need for a new crematorium. Expansion of the facilities. They had trouble disposing of the bodies. They could kill them faster than they could get rid of the remains.”

  Metzger sat quietly, a stricken look on his face. Finally he asked softly, “Any idea what happened to those documents?”

  “I don’t know what happened to the official version, but many of the reports were prepared from handwritten information, lists, notes and things like that. For some of the ones I typed I made extra carbon copies. I might be able to get them for you.”

  A puzzled frown wrinkled his forehead. “What are you saying? You have those documents?”

  “Eichmann thought I could pass for a German. My hair was shorter then and I was much younger. From the way things ended between us, I’m sure he had a romantic interest in me. He gave me papers under the name of Ellen Krupp, and I lived in a boardinghouse a few blocks from the office. While I worked there I took as many documents as I could to my room and hid them in the wall.”

  “The wall?”

  “It was already damaged. There was a hole near the ceiling. I dropped the papers through it to hide them.”

  “Think they’re still there?”

  “I don’t know. Can you get me to Vienna?”

  “Yes. But you’ll need to move fast. The trial will begin soon and we still have a lot to do.”

  “I can go at once. Do we need to locate the—”

  He cut me off with a wave of his hand. “I don’t want to hear the details. I’ll send someone with you. Someone from our office who knows how to handle situations like this.”

  “From Mossad or the Attorney General’s office?”

  “Mossad.” He paused a moment and glanced at me. “I would send Tobin Halutz, but is that going to cause a problem?” “Not if Eli can come with me.”

  “I don’t know,” Metzger grimaced. “He’s a good guy but…he’s a civilian. There might be a problem.”

  “I need him. And if I travel with only Tobin, it will look suspicious— a married woman with an unmarried man. If Eli goes with me, we are a couple in the company of an old friend.”

  “Very well,” he conceded. “I’ll arrange it. Pack your bags.”

  * * *

  That night, when I told Eli about the trip to Vienna,
he was less than enthusiastic. “You want to go back there?” he asked with an unusually skeptical tone.

  “I have to retrieve something I left behind.”

  “Nothing you can find there will bring you peace,” he cautioned.

  “I know. But this is different. This is for the trial. The outcome of our case against Eichmann may depend on it.”

  “I don’t like it. I love you, I support you, but I just don’t think it’s good for you to keep going over and over these same incidents.”

  “You’re worried the nightmares will return?”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Well, I’m not.” I smiled at him playfully. “And one reason I’m not worried is you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You brought me out of the darkness, and I know if it returns, you can get me out again.” I leaned over and kissed him. “But I have to do this.”

  “Okay,” he said resolutely. “But if you have to go, I have to go with you.”

  “Good,” I grinned. “I was going to ask you to come with me.” “They’ll let me?”

  “It’s already approved. Mr. Metzger said it was okay. There is just one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tobin Halutz works for Mossad now. Mr. Metzger is sending him with us.”

  “Okay,” Eli nodded.

  “You’re all right with that?”

  “Sure. Tobin is a good man. I haven’t seen him for a while. Used to come in the shop all the time. I wonder why he stopped coming around.” And that’s when I realized no one ever told him about Chana and what she’d said to me during the war when Eli was missing. If he didn’t know, I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up. I just nuzzled my head against his chest and sighed, “I’m sure he had a reason.”

  * * *

  Two days later, we left David with Chana and Yohai early in the morning and drove to the airport. Tobin was waiting for us when we arrived. We boarded the plane and traveled together to Vienna, arriving there in the afternoon. After wandering around in a taxi for half an hour, we retreated to the river and located the bridge that led to the site where the ghetto once stood.