The Hotel Crillon is a luxury hotel in Buenos Aires where Manuel Arroyo Benítez uses the respectability of an upscale address and access to a public telephone to make a guarded call to London. Its polished routine becomes part of his cover: the hotel offers the appearance of ordinary travel while helping him manage the risks of communicating under an assumed identity.

Setting and Use

On 6 January 1949, an American calling himself Peter Louzán arrived at the reception desk shortly before eleven in the morning and asked for a room for one night. The hotel had been open for less than two years. He declined assistance with his luggage, preventing anyone from discovering that the small suitcase he had bought only ten minutes earlier was empty. The purchase was meant to disguise the suspicious look of a traveler arriving at a hotel without luggage; his briefcase held little more than newspapers and a book.

The performance continued through the day. Louzán read in his room until half past one, asked reception about the distance to two well-known restaurants, then took a taxi to a much cheaper place for coffee and walked back to pass the time. These small choices made his stay look unremarkable, even as they formed part of a deliberate effort to reach the hotel's telephone facilities.

The Call to London

A little after four, Louzán asked whether he could place a call to Europe from the booths in the lobby. He already knew the answer; the availability of a modern telephone booth was one reason he had chosen the hotel. When the receptionist told him that booth number three was free, he appeared pleased. The hotel thus supplied not only a room but a specific, usable point from which to make contact across the Atlantic.

The call connected him with Manuel Arroyo Benítez, who had returned to Madrid and had not spoken directly with the man he had worked for since before the Spanish Civil War. Arroyo had followed Pablo de Azcárate's professional travels through Meg Williams, who kept him informed after the United Nations appointed Azcárate deputy secretary-general of the Palestine Commission in May 1948. Azcárate's work had kept him in the Middle East, and Arroyo hoped that the Christmas holiday might have extended his absence from home.

A Place of Cover and Caution

Arroyo's choice of a public telephone reflected the danger he attached to the conversation. He believed Argentine intelligence was unlikely to monitor calls from public telephones, but could not rule out British surveillance of a multilateral diplomat involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, ostensibly for his protection. That uncertainty had led him to call from a luxury hotel where he had registered under a false name. The Crillon's public setting offered a practical balance: a plausible place for a traveler to stay, and a telephone booth from which a sensitive call could be made.

The hotel scene also establishes the care with which the false identity is maintained. The American passport offered an especially convincing answer to questions at a reception desk, while the newly bought empty suitcase supplied the outward appearance of a conventional guest. Inside that performance, the call was personal: Arroyo asked for Azcárate without identifying himself by name, and Azcárate answered without naming him in return. Their reunion began through restraint, with the hotel providing the space in which familiarity could be acknowledged without being exposed.