by Neal Bascomb
"Shall I go with you?" Klein asked.
"No, wait. I'll do it alone."
Shaul entered the tower, unsure of who or what awaited him, only that if he did not return to the plane within a few minutes, the Britannia would depart without him, leaving him in the center of a firestorm. The thirty-year-old father of two slowly climbed the stairs like a man approaching a hangman's noose.
"What is the problem?" he asked the controller in English, looking around for any sign of the police. There was none.
"There's a signature missing," the controller said, holding the flight plan up in his hand. "And what is your en route alternate?"
Shaul composed himself. It was a simple mix-up. "Porto Alegre," he responded before adding the detail to the plan and signing the document. Then he rushed back down the steps and outside.
"Everything's okay. Something was missing on the flight plan," Shaul said to Klein, not stopping on his way back to the plane.
The relief in the cockpit was palpable as Shaul recounted 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 accelerated down the runway and lifted off.
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 to the flight and asked him to intercept the plane when it landed—exactly the threat that the nonstop flight to Dakar aimed to counter.
All that remained between Eichmann and Israel was a transatlantic flight that had never before been attempted in a Britannia—a flight with only the slimmest margin for error.
26
WHEN THE BRITANNIA cleared Argentine airspace a few minutes into their journey, there was an uproar of excitement in the cabin. The "El Al crew" in the first-class cabin rose from their seats to embrace one another and to cheer their success. Wedeles and a few of the other real crew members who knew the special passenger's identity also joined in the celebration. The spontaneous outburst surprised Harel, and although he hesitated to inform everyone else on the flight, secrecy was now pointless. He gave Adi Peleg the honor.
The El Al security chief brought the crew together and declared, "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."
The announcement sent a shock wave of excitement through the crew. The stewardess sitting next to Eichmann felt her heart drop in her chest. She could not believe that this skinny, helpless man who was nervously drawing on a cigarette, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down in fright, could be Eichmann. In disgust, she stood up and moved away from him, while the others continued with their celebration. Aharoni sat back in his seat and drank a double whiskey. He knew exactly who the prisoner was and the feat it had taken to seize him.
In the cockpit, the mood was much more sober. The plane gained altitude, and Tohar steered due northeast across Uruguay and out over the Atlantic, following the course that Shaul had set out which gave them the best chance of reaching Dakar. The flight engineer and navigator checked each calculation, which was then rechecked by their alternates.
The chief pilot, both navigators, and Shimon Blanc had supervised the Britannia's proving flight between New York and Tel Aviv in late 1957. The nonstop journey had covered a distance of 5,760 miles in fifteen hours, but in a plane stripped of its seats, its galleys, and anything else deemed unnecessary—including passengers. They had also had the benefit of a strong tailwind of roughly 65 miles per hour. For that flight, they figured the maximum still-air range of the plane to be around 4,700 miles.
Buenos Aires to Dakar was a 4,650-mile flight. They were expecting the plane to fly near the performance ceiling for the aircraft, along a route where the forecasts predicted they could expect tailwinds. But they were carrying some four tons of additional weight, which compelled the aircraft to fly 2,000 to 3,000 feet lower than on the proving flight, consequently consuming roughly 5 percent more fuel per hour. And 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 aware that anything could happen. They might lose an engine, which would force them to fly lower and to use more fuel. The forecasts had predicted 40-mile-per-hour winds, but they might actually be half that. This particular Britannia, the 4X-AGD, also might burn fuel at a faster rate than the performance charts indicated. Over a thirteen- to fourteen-hour flight, slight deviations could add up to create big problems. At best, they might have to divert to another airport, perhaps in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. At worst, they might run out of fuel over the Atlantic. Margins for error were always built into flight plans for safety's sake, but those margins had been considerably reduced for this operation.
Hour after hour passed as they flew over the blank expanse of the Atlantic, heading first toward the small volcanic island of Trinidad, 680 miles east of Brazil, then almost due north toward Dakar. Periodically, the radio operators called in for revised weather forecasts, the navigators adjusted the route, and Harel popped his head into the cockpit to ask if everything was on track.
In the first-class cabin, Eichmann remained as docile as he had been in the safe house. The doctor had stopped administering the sedative once they had boarded the plane, but he allowed Eichmann only small meals in case he needed to inject the prisoner again. Harel also instructed his guards to stay vigilant, even though Eichmann was handcuffed and goggled, 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 El Al crew kept their distance from him. There was only one confrontation that exposed their underlying emotions toward the Nazi war criminal. On first hearing that he was on board, the head mechanic, Arye Friedman, was too overwhelmed to do anything but weep. In Poland, his six-year-old brother, Zadok, had been dragged away and killed by a German soldier, and Arye had endured many more nightmares in ghettos and concentration camps throughout the war. During the flight, Friedman confronted one of the guards with Eichmann, yelling, "You give him cigarettes! He gave us the gas!" Eichmann said nothing, looking in Friedman's direction but unable to see him because of the goggles. The mechanic took a seat opposite the prisoner and stared into his face, seeing only Zadok and his mother as he relived the past. Then he stood and walked out of the cabin.
Yosef Klein concluded his business in Buenos Aires the morning after the flight left. He paid any outstanding bills for services rendered to El Al and then caught a flight with Aerolineas Argentinas back to New York. There was no time for that sightseeing trip in Brazil he had planned on his journey out. Klein's reward had been seeing the taillights of the Britannia disappear into the night with Adolf Eichmann on board.
On his flight back to the United States, Klein sat next to a reporter from the Daily Express (London) who was hammering away at his Hermes typewriter on a story about the honeymoon of Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth's sister. It was a "big exclusive," the reporter told Klein, explaining that he had chartered a plane to fly over her beachside villa. Klein smiled knowingly, wanting to say, "If you only knew what exclusive is sitting right here beside you."
Early on May 21, Eitan, Malkin, Shalom, Dani, and Nesiahu awakened at Tira, heartened that Eichmann was no longer their responsibility and that their mission had gone so well. They had a few loose ends to tie up: They erased all vestiges of their presence in the various safe houses. They burned or disposed of any material they did not plan on taking with them. And they returned the last of their cars. There was no mention of Eichmann in the papers or on the radio, and Ilani assured them that the embassy had not heard anything about any government-driven search for any Nazi war criminals.
The last tas
k remaining for the operatives was to get out of the country. Dani and Nesiahu were booked on flights the next day, but with the anniversary celebrations in full flow, no flights were available for Eitan, Malkin, and Shalom. So, late that morning, they bought three tickets for an overnight train that would take them to Mendoza, on the border between Argentina and Chile. There they would take another train through the Andes to Santiago. Harel had assured them that the announcement about the capture would not be made until they were safely back in Israel.
Red lights flashed in the Britannia cockpit as Tohar descended toward Dakar.
They had flown for close to thirteen hours and far beyond the 4,650 miles projected. Shaul had adjusted their flight path and altitude during their Atlantic crossing to find more favorable winds. The time for jokes, as when the captain had gone through the cabin asking if anybody had a lighter because they needed all the fuel they could use, had passed. They had long since crossed the point of no return, and they would either reach the coastline where the Dakar airport was located or they would not. The gauges indicated that the plane was dangerously low on fuel.
The cockpit was silent, everyone focused. Tohar stared out the window, looking for land. The lights continued to flash. This would be close, very close. The flight engineers and navigators knew this without looking at the gauges. If there was a problem in Dakar, if the runways were shut down for any reason, they would not have enough fuel to fly around the airport to wait to be cleared for landing or to divert to another airport. And that would be if they even made it to the coastline. Nevertheless, the cockpit crew remained certain that they would, even though there was only a few minutes' worth of fuel left in the tanks.
The landing wheels had already been lowered by the time they sighted land, and they had alerted the airport control tower long before of their arrival. Tohar steadily decreased their altitude and finally, after thirteen hours and ten minutes of flying, made a smooth landing on the Dakar runway. He killed two of the engines as soon as the plane had slowed down sufficiently, unsure that they had enough fuel to taxi to the terminal.
Harel congratulated the cockpit crew on the successful flight, but he was worried that the Argentine authorities had contacted Dakar in the meantime, advising them that the El Al plane might be carrying a suspicious passenger. If this was the case, a thorough search of the plane was guaranteed. So before the steward opened the plane's door, Dr. Kaplan injected Eichmann with more sedative, and Gat sat down next to him. Once again, the curtain was drawn across the first-class cabin, and the lights were extinguished.
While an airport services crew refueled the Britannia, one of the El Al crew rushed into the cabin to alert Gat that two Senegalese health inspectors were coming. Gat heard someone speaking in French approaching. He placed Eichmann's head on his shoulder and pretended to be sleeping himself. The inspectors gave the cabin only a cursory look. The rest of the stopover went smoothly. The crew loaded more food onto the plane, and Shaul and Hassin filed their flight plan to Rome, even though they were going straight to Tel Aviv.
Before they took off, Harel warned the captain that the Senegalese were not the last threat. He did not want to fly anywhere near the North African coastline, fearing that the Egyptians might either force the Britannia to land in their country or shoot it out of the sky if they found out that the plane was being used to bring Eichmann to Israel. Nobody in the cockpit needed to be reminded of this possibility. Only five years before, an El Al Constellation that had skirted Bulgarian airspace had been shot down by a MiG 15, killing all fifty-one passengers and seven crew members on board.
Shaul and Hassin had already plotted out a 4,500-mile, eleven-hour route that would keep them far from Egyptian airspace. They both knew that the tailwinds over the Mediterranean were much stronger than those in the South Atlantic, meaning that the journey would not test the plane's limits in terms of fuel in quite the same way as the journey to Dakar had done. Still, the flight would take three hours longer than the direct path.
An hour and twenty minutes after touching down, the Britannia left Dakar. It flew up the west coast of Africa, then northeast to Spain. The plane passed over the Strait of Gibraltar during the night, gathering speed from the tailwinds as it turned almost due east toward Italy. The flight deck informed air traffic control in Rome that they would be heading on to Athens. The Britannia then flew southeast across the Mediterranean before the radio operator alerted Athens that they would go straight to Tel Aviv. The Israelis crossed over southern Greece, skirting Turkey, before turning toward Israel. They avoided Egyptian airspace by more than one hundred miles, and the flight was flawless.
With the plane approaching Israel, Harel washed his face, shaved, and put on clean clothes, preparing for the rush of activity that was awaiting him on arrival. He informed his men of their duties on landing, then stared out the window, eager to see the Israeli coastline appear out of the steadily lightening sky.
At 6:55 A.M. on Sunday, May 22, Zvi Tohar spotted the sliver of land on the horizon. He lowered the landing gear, and fifteen minutes later, the Britannia's wheels touched down in Israel. There was no celebration as there had been when they had left Buenos Aires. The crew had been flying for almost twenty-four hours straight, and the operatives watching Eichmann had not rested either. Relief was the emotion that prevailed throughout the aircraft.
Tohar taxied the plane to the terminal so that most of the crew could disembark. Harel made sure to shake everyone's hand. The captain also praised the efforts of the crew, warmly thanking each of them as they stepped off the plane. Customs officials attempted to board, but they were informed that there would be no inspection of the cabin. The doors were closed, and Tohar taxied the plane to the El Al service hangars, far from the terminal.
Two cars awaited them. In the first was Mordechai Ben-Ari, the deputy head of El Al; in the other was Moshe Drori of the Mossad. Drori boarded the plane first, but his congratulations were soon forgotten when it became clear that he had not made preparations for the transport or detention of Eichmann. "I have been waiting for you and your instructions," Drori said weakly, his explanation doing little to placate Harel, who stormed off the plane.
Harel strode into one of the hangars and found a grease-smudged phone with which to ring Shin Bet headquarters. "The monster is in shackles," he told one of his lieutenants before ordering a van. A short while later, a windowless black van appeared beside the plane. Tabor and Gat escorted a trembling, blindfolded Eichmann down the steps and into the back of the van. Harel explained to Gat that he was to take Eichmann to the secret Shin Bet detention center located in an old Arab house on the edge of Jaffa. Gat nodded, suggesting that since most of the guards there were Holocaust survivors, they identify the prisoner as a high-priority spy. Revealing his true identity might provoke an attack. Harel agreed, and the van drove off.
The Mossad chief then hurried toward Jerusalem. He hoped to see Ben-Gurion before his standard ten o'clock cabinet meeting. He did not want to draw attention to himself by breaking into the meeting.
His longtime driver, Yaki, sped through the Judean Hills into the city. The wind rushing through the open window offered little relief from the scorching heat. They arrived a few minutes before the meeting. A secretary led Harel into the prime minister's office.
"I brought you a present," Harel said.
Ben-Gurion looked up from his paper-strewn desk, surprised to see Harel.
"I have brought Adolf Eichmann with me. For two hours now he has been on Israeli soil, and, if you authorize it, he will be handed over to the Israeli police," Harel continued.
Ben-Gurion was stirred by the news, and for a few moments, he was silent. "Are you positive it is Eichmann?"
It was not the response Harel expected, and he was slightly taken aback. "Of course, I am positive. He even admitted it himself."
"Did anyone who met him in the past identify him?"
"No," Harel said.
"If that's the case, you have to find some
one who knew him to go and inspect Eichmann in jail. Only after he has been officially identified will I be satisfied that this is the man."
Harel understood Ben-Gurion's reticence, knowing the implications of any announcement he made. Even so, there was not a shred of doubt in his own mind that they had their man. Only a few hours later, Moshe Agami, who had been a Jewish Agency representative during the war and had met with Eichmann in Vienna, was brought to the cell where the prisoner was being held. Within a few minutes, Agami had confirmed that this was the man who had made him stand at attention in his office in the Palais Rothschild in 1938 while he pleaded for permission for the Jews to immigrate to Palestine. After Agami left the cell, Benno Cohen, the former chairman of a Zionist organization in Germany in the mid-1930s, also identified Eichmann. Harel phoned the prime minister and delivered the news.
At last Ben-Gurion allowed himself to relish the operation's achievement. He wanted to announce the capture the next day. Harel asked him to wait; some of his operatives were still in South America.
"How many people know Eichmann is in Israel?" Ben-Gurion asked.
Already more than fifty, Harel admitted.
"In that case, no waiting. We're going to announce!"
Early the next morning, May 23—another blisteringly hot, cloudless day—Eichmann was brought in front of Judge Emanuel Halevi in Jaffa. When the judge asked for the prisoner's identity, he answered without hesitation, "I am Adolf Eichmann." With his voice cracking, Halevi charged him with crimes of genocide and issued his official arrest warrant.
Harel then cabled Haim Yitzhaki, his contact with Fritz Bauer in Cologne. Harel and Haim Cohen, now a justice on the Israeli Supreme Court, both thought the Hesse attorney general deserved to be told of the mission's success before it hit the news.
