[3][4][5][6] By July 25, GEIN agents managed to set up a surveillance post in front of the house suspected of being Abimael Guzmán's refuge.

The house they set up was the home of a colonel of the now-defunct Peruvian Investigative Police (PIP), whom Jiménez asked for his collaboration, telling him that they were after an international gang linked to drug trafficking[7].

The area around the house of Germán Sipión Távara, alias "El Zorro" and national coordinator of Sendero Luminoso, was designated as "Cancha 2".

Meanwhile, GEIN agents, in anticipation of other intelligence agencies interfering in their work, implemented their own security measures, including changing their nicknames, designating Jiménez as the "Chemist", Marco Miyashiro as the "Physicist" and Luis Valencia as the "Engineer" for Operation Victoria.

[11] In the first days of surveillance of "El Castillo", it was learned that the place gave dance classes under the direction of "Lola" (Maritza Garrido Lecca, partner of Carlos Incháustegui Degola, "Lolo")[12].

26 days after the recovery of the list of medications, a manuscript was found in a garbage bag left by "Lola" that said: "Meeting of the BP (Buró Político).

The absence of a date on the manuscript did not allow GEIN agents to determine whether it was recent and whether it referred to members of the Sendero leadership who were alive at the time, since one of them, Hugo Deodato Juárez Cruzzat, had died during Operation Mudanza 1 and was expected to be replaced by Margie Clavo Peralta.

However, they concluded that this was possible due to Maritza Garrido Lecca's affiliation with Nelly Evans Risco, in charge of Guzmán's security and captured in Operation Caballero.

On September 8, after a power outage due to a terrorist attack, GEIN agents discovered, by the light of a candle in "El Castillo", the silhouette of a man who resembled the Guzmán shown in the video of "Zorba, the Greek".

After a few moments, an older woman dressed in dark clothing appeared, which confirmed that there were other people in the place so they prepared to enter the property.

When they asked their names, one of them said he was José Palomino Sánchez, but was identified as Marciano Valerio Gonzáles Toribio, alias "Camarada Enrique".

Vidal asked angrily about who had given the order to start without his knowledge, to which Jiménez replied that "I have made the decision to strike and I answer in the end for my actions, now I require tranquility to think about the next step."

In addition to this, Vidal did not inform the higher command about the operation since he preferred to keep the secret to avoid it being leaked, relying on what he learned in the KGB.