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Wiesenthal claims to have pieced together new and fuller details about Mengele's life in Paraguay. The old doctor spends much of his time in a military zone that is off limits to all outsiders. Besides his villa in San Antonio, Mengele has a home in Puerto Stroessner, a town situated at the confluence of the Parana and Iguagu rivers.
Within the hinterland of Paraguay, which contains many large German-owned farms, Mengele moves about a great deal. No matter how safe their sanctuary may seem to be, old Nazis live in constant anxiety. Says Wiesenthal: "That is a part of their punishment." Mengele travels in a black Mercedes 2805L, escorted by four armed guards. Even before entering the home of a German acquaintance, two guards approach it first and make sure it is safe before signaling an all clear on their walkie-talkies to the guards who remain with Mengele.
In the past few months, Mengele has been seen at the German club in Asunción. Risking discovery, Mengele sometimes drinks too much; one evening, he drunkenly pulled out a pistol and waved it about. Another time he chatted with a visiting West German professor. Each time someone entered the bar, Mengele, who wears sunglasses as a partial disguise on his Asunción excursions, would quicky put them back on. Then, after he recognized the newcomer, he would take them off. Finally, he became so annoyed with putting on and taking off his glasses that he slammed them on the table, shattering a lens.
Mengele is an active member of a surviving network of former Nazi bigwigs known as Die Spinne (The Spider). In addition to being a mutual protection society, this organization specializes in extortion and smuggling in South America. Mengele is also working on a book that supposedly will justify his experiments as valid scientific undertakings.
The ugliest speculation about Mengele is that once again he may be involved in the destruction of a people—though on a much smaller scale. Despite Paraguayan denials, TIME's sources believe that he serves as an adviser to the Paraguayan police and frequently travels to the remote Chaco region where the Aché Indians are being hunted down or reduced to slave labor through techniques that are chillingly reminiscent of those of the German work camps. A high Paraguayan police official boasted to a visiting investigator that his government uses "German methods" in dealing with the Indians.
Seated in his book-lined office in Vienna, Wiesenthal, who is ailing with a heart condition, despairs of ever bringing his old quarry to justice. Two years ago, his Jewish Documentation Center suffered a severe setback; most of its funds were deposited in a Vienna bank that failed. His only real hope for bringing Mengele to justice would be Israeli intelligence, but the Israelis find the operation too risky. They have sent several teams to Paraguay to study a possible Mengele snatch. After losing at least one agent on a reconnaissance mission, they concluded that the potential losses involved in taking Mengele from his jungle hideaway were prohibitively high.