The Chameleon Conspiracy dg-3

by Haggai Harmon

  Casey was the first to react. “He may have slipped away from Australia, and he isn’t stupid enough to return to the U.S. So where the hell is the slippery bastard?” I noticed he had a habit of clenching his jaw tightly when he was thinking intently about something.

  “He could be back in Iran. Or the clue to where he is is there,” I suggested.

  “Hold on,” said Nicole, breaking her silence. “There’s an important item in the Chameleon’s resume. He graduated from the American School in Tehran.”

  “And why is it that significant?” asked Bauer, clearly engrossed in the affair.

  “Because Iranian intelligence uses only ethnic Iranians who strictly adhere to the Ayatollah’s interpretation of Islam. That means studying in their religious schools and undergoing the necessary indoctrination to guarantee blind loyalty. And here we see an agent who spent twelve years in the educational institute of the Great Satan, and still he was recruited for a sensitive assignment.”

  “So you could conclude that he was recruited not in spite of his American education, but probably because of it,” I said. “After all he was assigned to perpetrate fraud in the U.S.”

  “We don’t know that his mission was limited to defrauding banks,” said Casey.

  “I’m willing to bet those SOBs would be more ambitious than that.”

  “I wonder whether there could be additional graduates of the Tehran American School in Department 81,” said Bob Holliday, touching his mustache.

  “Well, first we discover that Rashtian recruited a team of agents to be infiltrated into the U.S.,” said Casey. “Then at the same time we’ve got a shitload of unsolved cases of stolen identities of young Americans, and at least one of them ended up with a strong Iranian connection. Next we hear from NSA that Kourosh Alireza Farhadi, who was one of Rashtian’s team, was a graduate of the American School in Tehran.” He shook his head. “There’s too much of a coincidence here. We’ve got to investigate if all other members of Rashtian’s team were also graduates of that school.”

  “I need to set up another meeting with Benny Friedman,” concluded Casey Bauer. “It may be time to talk shop.” Casey knew when we’d gone as far as we could with our resources and was decisive when it came to taking additional action. He wasn’t the type to second-guess himself.

  As they both left, leaving me and Nicole to clean up the mess, she asked, “How do we find out if additional ethnic Iranians, graduates of the American School, were also recruited?”

  “I have an idea that I need to check first.” I locked myself in my room with my notebook computer. I emerged two hours later. Nicole was stretched on the couch reading a newspaper.

  “Tell me what you think about this. I focused first on how to discover the individuals Iran sent to the U.S. Once we do that, we can move on to identifying their mission.”

  “Go on,” she said, putting the paper down.

  “If we follow the theory that Iran has planted a sleeper cell in the United States, then let’s assume that what Casey Bauer suggested is true: Department 81 enlisted a whole bunch of young Iranian men who had two things in common-they were all ethnic Iranians, and they were graduates of the Tehran American School.”

  “OK.”

  “I did some research. Between 1950 and 1979 the American population in Tehran grew with the influx of many American companies to Iran, mostly connected to aeronautical, engineering, and oil businesses. Bear in mind that during that period Iran was a pleasant and hospitable place for Westerners to live, so the foreign employees brought along their families. The Tehran American School had almost two thousand students and was one of the largest American schools outside the United States. About a third of the school’s students were Iranians whose families wanted them to have an American education and perfect command of English-families that could afford the hefty tuition.”

  “So if you were to follow that theory, the single most important common denominator of all of the ethnic-Iranian graduates was their perfect command of American English,” said Nicole.

  “Exactly. After spending twelve, and sometimes fifteen years, if you count preschool classes, speaking and studying in English from American teachers, and with all your friends speaking American English to you, there’s no wonder that all graduates spoke English at the same level as first-generation American students in Chicago or in San Diego do.”

  “Sounds right,” said Nicole. “That characteristic must have proven to be invaluable for the Iranians. But why stop at stealing money from U.S. banks and investors? Is money all they cared about? What about old-fashioned espionage or modern-era terrorism?”

  “I’m wondering about that too,” I conceded. “It’s more likely that if the Iranians picked up that idea, as the NSA report and Casey suggested, these young men were sent to the United States as Iranian undercover sleeper agents also to gather information or engage in sabotage when the order came from Tehran.”

  “Now I see how it all falls into place,” said Nicole. “We may have two different cases here. We’ve got the case of the Chameleon and company, the money thieves as part of the Iranian government’s strategic decision to siphon money from the United States. And we may have a case of Iranian sleeper cells in the U.S. waiting for an order to sabotage, or what have you. These two separate issues may or may not be related.”

  “Think about that,” I said. “This is more than just a theory, if we adopt the idea that the Chameleon wasn’t the sole perpetrator of the fraud, and that there were others, as the NSA report suggested. That theory, if substantiated, will deal another blow to the FBI’s sole-perpetrator theory.”

  “We have no proof yet, just a presumption. And ours is as good as the FBI’s,” said Nicole, cooling off my enthusiasm. “We know that Kourosh Alireza Farhadi, a graduate of the American School, was a member of Department 81. But we don’t know that other members of that department were also graduates of that school.”

  I wasn’t deterred. “I agree. But let’s move on in developing our theory. Let’s assume for the moment that ethnic Iranians drafted by Rashtian to Department 81 were graduates of the American School intended for surreptitious operations within the U.S. We know that it was very difficult or actually impossible after 1979 to get U.S. visas on Iranian passports. Once the U.S. was declared an enemy, Iran needed an easy way to infiltrate them by getting agents into the U.S. The Iranians had to give their agents travel documents to make their stay in the U.S. look legal, so just sneaking them across the border was probably not an option.”

  Nicole contemplated this. “Of course, they could have used the visa stamps they captured at the embassy in Tehran, but in all likelihood these stamps were kept as souvenirs by the mob, or just thrown into the fire.”

  “Nicole, if what NSA tells us about Department 81 checks out, then it’s quite possible that to this day there are Iranian sleeper cells in the U.S. waiting for an order to ‘wake up.’ That could come with instructions to sabotage American industry, shopping centers, power plants, airlines, trains. There could be orders to plant hazardous chemicals in areas likely to create panic and uncertainty-whatever you can imagine.”

  “I just said that,” she said.

  “But on the other hand, let’s not forget we’re building theories here, so let’s get to work. We need facts to support them.” Now it was the lawyer in me speaking. “We’re looking for a group of Iranian graduates of the American School in Tehran. The school was shut down in January 1979 immediately after the Islamic Revolution, when the embassy finally admitted that something unusual was going on. The dependents were evacuated in early December just before Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar. So the youngest of the graduates must have been born around 1961. If we identify the Iranian graduates, we’ll have something to start working on.”

  “If they graduated at eighteen,” Nicole said, once again as meticulous as possible. “The upper perimeter is too thin. We should assume that some graduated at sixteen or seventeen; therefore their dates
of birth could be 1962 or 1963. They would now be in their early forties. We should also look at the possibility that older alumni were used, a few years after their graduation. Let’s put the mark on 1950 as year of birth and 1968 as year of graduation.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But bear in mind that we’ve just increased the number of the potential members of the target group.” I got up to open the window shade. “It’s too dark in here.”

  “OK, since we’ve got a pool of fifty to one hundred graduates each year and a twelve-year range, that means that we’ve got to identify a group of twelve hundred to twenty-four hundred people,” Nicole said.

  “No, only about half, or perhaps a little more,” I said. “The school was coed. I’d suspect that all the perpetrators were males.”

  “I suppose we can assume that,” she said. “OK. Then we are left with approximately six to twelve hundred people, possibly all men. How do we identify them? The American School in Tehran no longer exists, but I’m sure there are records somewhere with a list of the students.” Nicole paused for a moment and continued. “We can check that with the Office of Overseas Schools at the State Department. I’ll place an inquiry.”

  A day later, Nicole logged into a remote site and downloaded an encrypted file.

  “Here it is,” she said. “The complete list of students who attended the school in the years 1960 through 1979. They didn’t have records of students enrolled from 1954, the year the school was started, through 1959. But I think we’ve got more than what we currently need.”

  She projected the computer-screen image onto the opposite wall. It was a database sorted alphabetically, with 6,015 records. Each line included the student’s first and last names, name of father or legal guardian, date of birth, sex, Social Security or other national identification number, address, year enrolled, and year left or graduated.

  “That’s fantastic,” I said. “We could sort out the Iranian ethnics.”

  “How?” Nicole gave me a confused look.

  “Iranians don’t usually have American Social Security numbers.”

  “Nor would most other non-American students,” she said. “There were many other foreigners in the school, children of non-American expats working for American and European companies such as Westing house, Phillips, or Standard Oil, or at their country’s embassy.”

  I wasn’t deterred. “I know that. But the lack of a Social Security number almost certainly flags out a non-American. That’d eliminate many from the list.”

  “I agree,” she said. “Although there could be instances where an ethnic Iranian had an SSN because he was born in the U.S., say, or lived in the U.S. while his parents were diplomats or working there, if his parents applied for one.”

  “True,” I conceded. “We’ll simply have to work one by one.”

  With a few clicks on her laptop computer Nicole isolated all names that didn’t specify an American SSN. From that shorter list, she eliminated all females. “OK,” she said. “We now have 978 names of males who don’t have SSNs listed.”

  I quickly looked at the list. Approximately a third had typical European names, as did their fathers. “Let’s get them off the list too, just for now,” I suggested. An hour later we had narrowed down the list to 294 names.

  “What do you suggest we do now?” Nicole asked. “We’re done with the easy part. Now how do we isolate from the list ethnic Iranians to be investigated, twenty years after they were recruited, without going to Iran?”

  “Then go to Iran,” I said. “Or better yet, ask your people in Iran to help us out. After all, this isn’t guarded military or nuclear information. We’re talking about a bunch of Iranian civilians.”

  “Too risky,” said Nicole. “Some of the graduates are now potential suspects under our new theory, but we don’t know which ones. We can make benign-sounding inquiries and hit on some of them. That will immediately trigger the attention of the Iranian security agencies, who’ll wonder why people are asking questions about these men.”

  “Even with a perfect legend?” I asked.

  “Making inquiries about one suspected individual could be a coincidence, but asking about two or three?”

  “I agree that if we limit our inquiries to the suspected group, it will arouse suspicion. But we can broaden the inquiries to include women as well. That might lessen the suspicions.” I paused for a moment and continued. “You’ve just given me an idea. We should have one of the alumni do the inquiries, ideally unwittingly. The end result will be a list of names of the ethnic-Iranian graduates provided by an innocent alumnus or alumna who, even if interrogated, will not be able to show any hidden agenda for the inquiries, just a ‘legitimate’ one. That person can be remotely controlled by your people in Tehran.”

  Nicole was quiet for a minute. “I think it’s a good idea, but I’m afraid it can’t be managed by our people in Iran.”

  “What does that mean? How can something so simple be beyond the reach of the omnipotent CIA?”

  She hesitated. “We’re a little short of assets in Iran these days, as I’m sure you heard during the Giverny conference. It’s all been since the debacle of-” She stopped abruptly.

  I raised my head. “What are you talking about?”

  “A disaster,” she said.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Well, the Iranians know, so I guess there shouldn’t be any reason for you not to know. An officer at Langley mistakenly sent an encrypted secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in the CIA’s foreign-asset network directly to his high-speed personal communications device. The Iranian who received the download was a double agent. He immediately turned the data over to his handler at VEVAK-the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the feared security police-and in no time most of our network in Iran collapsed. Several of our Iranian assets were arrested and jailed, and we still don’t know what happened to some of the others. That left us virtually blind in Iran.”

  “My god,” I said.

  She nodded grimly. “Since then, and until we regroup, Iran is regarded as ‘denied’ territory for us. We’ve got no official station inside Iran and, insofar as human intelligence is concerned, until we redeploy and recruit new assets, we depend on sources outside that country.”

  “What about SDLure?” I asked. “I remember hearing from my Mossad buddies, years after I left, about the CIA successfully recruiting top Iranian government officials.”

  “Gone with the revolution. The mob discovered their names at the U.S. Embassy. SDLure/1 was Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the first post-Islamic Revolution president. He fled the country. Another former prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan, was executed. And now this.”

  “On the bright side, for now we don’t have to limit our search to Iran. Some of our sources could also be in the U.S.,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we’re communicating with alums. The American Overseas Schools in China, Iran, and elsewhere created a special bond and affinity among their students, because they weren’t just places of study, but also cultural and social centers for the children and their families. I’m sure if we interview the American alumni, we can cross-reference everybody in each of the classes. That will do, at least in the beginning.”

  “Do they have alumni associations?”

  “I found several links. They keep photos, yearbooks, and other material that will make our job less tedious than we think. We’d still need to interview hundreds,” I said, but she had already accepted the task.

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find information on more than one student from one alumnus or alumna.”

  We attached the list of all students without listed Social Security numbers to an encrypted file and sent it back to the State Department, asking them to locate any available information on the individuals on the list.

  “So we’re done,” Nicole said breezily. “What should we do now?” There still wasn’t a hint of what do you suggest we do for the rest of the evening? Thu
s far she hadn’t used anything but coolly professional talk in our interactions. This was the most casual she’d been.

  “Dinner?” asked Nicole, looking at me curiously. All of a sudden there was a personal tone to her question. Did that blonde iceberg have a personal life? Maybe there was lava brewing underneath the cold facade. I wasn’t going to explore it, at least not yet. We went out to a nearby corner bistro to have dinner.

  Still at the restaurant an hour later, I had a glass of 1990 Chateau Petrus Merlot in my hand and was feeling pensive. “We shouldn’t rule out the possibility that new aliases have been substituted for the ones adopted twenty-five years ago.”

  Nicole frowned. “Do I understand you correctly? Instead of looking for the Chameleon in a group of a few hundred graduates of the American School in Tehran, we’ll be looking for an unknown number of people in a U.S. population of nearly three hundred million where, on an average day, more than one million people enter the United States legally and thousands more enter illegally?”

  “I understand where you’re coming from,” I said, keeping calm. “But it’s not our job to look for them in the U.S. We’ve got an assignment to find the Chameleon and whoever his comrades are. Now, I hope we get to solve the mystery of whether there are additional members of Department 81 in the U.S., but it’s the FBI counterintelligence and counterterrorism sections’ problem, not ours.” I was starting to realize that maybe Nicole enjoyed being the sounding board for my crazy ideas. Her challenging questions were actually stimulants in what had become our mutual brainstorming.

  As they placed our platters in front of us-juicy steak frites for me, buttered mussels for her-my mobile phone vibrated.

  I glanced at its display. “There’s a communication waiting for us at the apartment.”

  “It can wait,” said Nicole, and I couldn’t have agreed more.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When we’d finished our well-deserved dinner, we returned to the safe apartment. Nicole went to the communication room and minutes later handed me a memo from the State Department. It read, “We have cross-referenced all student names without listed SSNs against other databases. The number of individuals matching the criteria you set brought down the number of students whose whereabouts are unknown to thirty-four.” The list was attached.