The Chameleon Conspiracy dg-3

by Haggai Harmon

  Unannounced, I went to his office. The door was open. I didn’t see any staff, and the office was in complete disarray. Empty files and papers were strewn on the floor. Drawers were half open. Not such a clean job by our men, I supposed. With no one to stop me, I went directly through the reception area to McHanna’s private office. He was standing looking helplessly at the mess.

  “Hello, Mr. McHanna.”

  “Hi,” he said, a bit startled to see me.

  “Remember me?”

  He nodded hesitantly, looking down at the papers on the floor.

  “I need to know only one thing. Where is Albert Ward?” Going straight to the jugular wasn’t a friendly approach, but it was justified under the circumstances. McHanna had already lost his “virginity”-the FBI had already raided his office, and there was no time or cause for sweet talk.

  “I already told the FBI. I don’t know who that is.” He nervously walked toward his desk. As he sat down in his chair I heard the familiar hissing sound of a bullet. If I still remembered its unique shoosh, it was a 7.62 millimeter. It smashed the window and went just over McHanna’s head, hitting the opposite wall. I thought of Dave, my Mossad Academy guns instructor, who’d said with half a smile, “Remember, if the enemy is within range, so are you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I dove to the floor and yelled at McHanna, “Get down, get down!” He fell on the carpet and crawled under his desk. I edged to the window to peep outside. I saw a gunman on the roof of the adjacent building aiming at our window with his scope-mounted gun.

  “Don’t get up,” I said. “There’s a sniper on the roof of the next building.”

  “Some crazy guy,” said McHanna. “This never happens in South Dakota. But then again, South Dakota is much smaller.”

  What was wrong with him? Somebody shoots at him, and his immediate reaction is a statistical comparison?

  “Do you know why he’s trying to kill you?” I asked, still lying on the carpet wondering what the sniper would do next.

  McHanna didn’t answer. He’d just broken the rule I learned during my military service: don’t draw fire-it irritates the people around you. I was clearly in the shooter’s range, and could take a bullet if I got up.

  “Stay where you are,” I said. “There could be additional snipers.” I crawled toward the entrance door. Another bullet hit the door just inches above my head.

  Son of a bitch. I had no gun, no backup, and no idea how many shooters there were. I saw one, but there could have been more. I couldn’t risk exiting through the door because it’d put me directly in the line of fire.

  I dialed Hodson’s office from my mobile phone. After two rings I heard Hodson’s secretary announce, “Mr. Hodson’s office.”

  As I responded, “Julie, this is Dan Gordon,” she said, “Hold on,” and put me on hold. I anxiously looked at the battery bars on my phone. I was left with only a few more minutes of power. I couldn’t take the risk. I disconnected and dialed 911. The operator came on.

  “What is your emergency?”

  “Shots fired at me by a sniper,” I said, but realized I was talking to myself. The phone was dead. Battery empty. I crawled toward the desk and tried to reach the telephone. Another shot shattered the mirrored display cabinet next to the desk, covering me and the floor around me with broken glass. I pulled down the telephone cord and grabbed the receiver. There was no dial tone.

  “McHanna,” I said. “Do I need to dial 9 or something to get an outside line?”

  “No, just press any button on the right.”

  I pulled the phone to the carpet and tried them all, but the phone was dead. I checked the cord. It was still hooked to the wall, but the phone was still dead.

  “We should leave immediately,” I said. “Is there another exit?”

  “You mean from my office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only the door you came in through.”

  “How about your office suite? Does it have a back door?”

  “Just the one front door.”

  I crawled back toward the windows, groping for the curtain cords. I managed to close the heavy curtains on two of the three windows. Another bullet went through one of the curtains and into the opposite wall.

  Damn. The shooter had time and ammunition, just the things I was hoping he’d be short of. If I identified correctly based on my military training, the sniper was using a U.S.-made USMC-series gun, which has a magazine capacity of five rounds and an effective range of one thousand yards. We were only fifty to seventy-five yards away. He had already used four rounds. I tried to push the heavy desk toward the window to block some of the shooter’s view, but even with McHanna pushing from underneath, we couldn’t move it. The desk was too heavy.

  Rays of sunlight emerged through the one window with open curtains. That gave me an idea. I crawled to the wall on the shattered glass, cutting my arm and knee, and found a largish piece of a mirror, which had fallen from the wall unit. I pushed a guest chair around to face the window and quickly mounted the mirror on its cushion, leaning it against the chair’s back. The mirror captured the sun’s rays and reflected them in the general direction of the shooter. As I heard the next shot breaking the mirror I jumped to my feet and ran through the door. I tried the phone on the receptionist’s desk. It was dead as well.

  I needed something to protect myself if I encountered any opposition face-to-face, but the only thing I could find was a metal letter opener on her desk. I cautiously checked the outside door. The hallway was empty. I ran to the emergency exit next to the elevator door and down the stairs to the floor below McHanna’s office.

  The first office was a dentist’s clinic, and the receptionist and two waiting patients were startled as I barged in. I was breathing hard and bleeding from my hand, and my pants had blood stains in the knee area.

  “I need to use the phone,” I said, and when I saw their hesitation-a small wonder given my bloody and messed-up appearance- I added, “I’m a federal agent.”

  “Let me take care of that,” said a man in a white doctor’s gown who emerged from an inside room hearing the commotion. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m OK, thanks, but I really need the phone,” I said. Looking uneasy, the receptionist handed me the receiver. Moments later I heard sirens and the building was flooded by SWAT, the Special Weapons Assault Team, wearing black protective gear and carrying high-power guns. A neighbor must have called the police after hearing the shots. One SWAT member entered the dentist’s office and approached me.

  I flashed my DOJ ID. “There’s a shooter on the roof of the next building. There could be more than one.”

  “Were you the target?” he asked.

  “I may have been, but more likely they wanted to get Timothy McHanna. He’s on the twelfth floor, in McHanna Associates. Don’t let him out of your sight. He’s the subject of a federal investigation.”

  He radioed to his team, and we ran to the twelfth floor. McHanna was still cowering under his desk. But police were already everywhere, and no one was shooting. The officer answered his radio. “Got you.”

  “OK,” he said. “There was just one shooter, and he got away, leaving empty shells behind him.”

  “I’m getting the hell out of here,” said McHanna as he emerged from under the desk.

  “I think we need to talk first,” I said.

  “I have nothing to tell you,” he said dismissively.

  “Who wanted to kill you? He may try again.”

  “How do you know I was the target? Could have been for you. From what I hear, you’ve got your own enemies.”

  He had a point, but I wasn’t about to concede it.

  “I’ll look into the list of people who want me dead. But I suggest you do the same. I suspect the bullets were meant for you.”

  “Why?” he asked faintly, although I suspected he knew the answer already.

  “Because nobody knew I was coming to see you.”

  “Not even in your own offic
e?”

  “No. I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d pay a visit to an old friend. Just a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

  “Mr. Gordon, I hardly think this is funny. My life is in danger.”

  Now he was admitting it. That’s some progress, I thought. “Were any threats made against you?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me, who wants you dead?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Obviously the shooter knows, but he’s currently unavailable. I don’t have his e-mail or phone number, so I can’t ask him. That leaves only you to answer my question. Who wants you dead?”

  “I said I don’t know.”

  “Why are your phones dead?”

  “Dead? All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a power failure.”

  “Where is your staff? I didn’t see anyone when I came in.” “I told them not to come in for now. We can’t operate our business when all our files and computers are gone.”

  “Do you have any new employees?”

  “No, they’ve all been with me for quite some time.”

  “So nobody came in today?”

  “Just the receptionist. She came in this morning as usual, but I sent her home.”

  “Did she leave immediately?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Did she say anything about the mess in the office?”

  “No. She was here yesterday during the search.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Saida Rhaman.”

  “What’s her address and phone number?”

  “I only have a number. She told me she recently moved to a new apartment, and I don’t have the address.” He removed an address book from his inside jacket pocket. “Her number is 718-555-9878.”

  I told the SWAT agent quietly, “Don’t let him out of your sight.”

  I went outside and called Hodson from a pay phone. “I think the attempted hit is directly connected to our search yesterday,” I told him. “Somebody is trying to silence McHanna. It’s also possible that the sniper was just sending him a warning. A shooter with a sniper’s rifle with a scope doesn’t miss from such a short distance unless he’s totally clumsy.”

  “That means that, whoever they are, they don’t trust McHanna to keep quiet voluntarily,” said Hodson. “Maybe it’s time. I’ll send agents to pick him up for questioning.”

  “I thought you’d do that, so I asked the SWAT team’s commander to keep an eye on McHanna.”

  I called the duty FBI agent. “I need to locate Saida Rhaman, telephone 718-555-9878.”

  “Hold on.”

  “The last known address we have is on Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.” He gave me the house number.

  “What’s the cross street?”

  “Third Avenue.”

  “Did you check the phone listing?”

  “Yes, it’s listed under Nikoukar Jafarzadeh.”

  “Please run a check on that person,” I requested.

  “OK. Call me in an hour.”

  “Sure, and once you’re done with him, I need background on Saida Rhaman, a receptionist at McHanna Associates. Her boss gave me the number listed as Jafarzadeh’s.”

  The name Jafarzadeh sounded Iranian, and Saida Rhaman sounded Arabic. But maybe it was a coincidence. Or not. An hour later I called the agent again.

  “Nikoukar Jafarzadeh, a male born in Tehran, Iran, in 1970, applied for a student visa in 1988 sponsored by a language-learning institute in Virginia. An F-1 student visa was issued on 2/88. The visa expired on 2/90 and there’s no record of his leaving the country. On 7 November 1992 he was stopped in Arlington, Virginia, on a minor traffic violation. He carried a Virginia driver’s license, number 099889004334. Virginia’s DMV records show his address as 1528 North 16th Road, Arlington, Virginia 22209. There’s no telephone listing for that address. No connection to Saida Rhaman was found. Additional information is forthcoming.”

  “Do I understand from the immigration info you’ve just mentioned that he’s an illegal alien?”

  “Probably, since we presume he’s still in the U.S. There’s no Social Security number attached to his name, nor an INS ‘A’ number indicating he received permanent residence, a green card, or that one is pending.”

  I called Hodson and reported. “Let our people in Virginia handle this,” said Hodson when he heard my suspicions. I was entering his turf.

  Mel, the analyst, called me. “You’d better come down here,” he said. “We found something interesting.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  As I walked into the analysts’ room, Mel gave me a document and exclaimed, “Look at this!” It was a one-page form. “This is a money-transfer order of $7,900 to Niarchos Alexander Papadimitriou, International Bank of Hellas, Athens, Greece, account GF 8873554.”

  I gave him a wondering look. “And?”

  “We also found this,” he said and flashed a red-cover Greek passport. I opened the bio page and saw our dear friend Timothy McHanna’s picture. The name on the passport was Niarchos Alexander Papadimitriou, nationality Hellenic, valid for five years. I leafed through the pages. There were a few entry and exit stamps, all from European countries.

  So multiple identities weren’t the Chameleon’s exclusive domain. I returned to the office and ran a check on Niarchos Alexander Papadimitriou. Nothing came out. I quickly sent a query to Interpol, U.S. National Central Bureau to seek Greek police assistance in identifying Niarchos Alexander Papadimitriou, and to ask whether the passport was genuine. I attached a copy. I didn’t have much hope from that end. I suspected that the genuine-looking passport was homemade.

  Although the passport appeared to have been used for travel outside the U.S., I assumed McHanna used it for additional purposes. The money-transfer order, though in the modest amount of $7,900, could indicate that McHanna didn’t trust the pension plan the true owners of his company had prepared for him and was building his own nest, padded with somebody else’s money. If there was one transfer, there could be more.

  “I suggest you ask your team to keep looking. I think the strategy should be to look for all money transfers to individuals.”

  “That’s easy,” said Mel. “We have their computers up and running.”

  Within moments the printer spewed out a report of all outgoing money transfers during the preceding seven years, sorted and grouped by recipient.

  “That’s fantastic,” I said. “Can we sort the data by date? That way we can see when money went out and to whom. Next we should do the same with incoming transfers, and finally do the same when the sending or receiving party was a corporation or a trust.” I had just brought upon myself weeks of tedious paperwork. Next, we’d compare the accounting with the records I’d brought from Switzerland.

  Within an hour we started to see a clear pattern. McHanna was moving small amounts, usually $2,000 or $3,000 at a time, to his Niarchos Alexander Papadimitriou bank account in Greece. In just one year the transfers totaled $215,080. I searched the files for the name Nikoukar Jafarzadeh-just a wild guess-but there was nothing for that name.

  The FBI duty agent called. He’d contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and learned that Nikoukar Jafarzadeh’s name had come up following a query on his name at the National Tracing Center, Crime Gun Analysis Branch. It brought up his gun purchases: two sniper rifles and a handgun from one dealer at a gun show in Virginia. The dealer had filled out a form for ATF. That information, combined with the other evidence we already had, was too strong to ignore. First McHanna said that he’d told the receptionist not to come to work on the day following the FBI search, but she had. Next, the phones weren’t working and the receptionist had disappeared. Then came the discovery that her home phone was actually listed under Nikoukar Jafarzadeh, a man with a fondness for sniper guns.

  I called Hodson. “I may have a direction for you,” I said. “The shooter may have had inside help.” I
gave him the details. “I’ll be back in the office tomorrow,” I said. “Is McHanna there already?”

  “Yes, we are working on him now.”

  When I returned to the federal building on the next day, I saw Hodson with his aides. “Made progress with McHanna?”

  “No. He isn’t talking,” said Hodson. “A dead fish is more talkative.”

  “First-degree interrogation?” I asked, thinking how aggressive FBI interrogators can be.

  “Second, as well,” he said. “He’s been under interrogation for the past twenty hours, but he isn’t saying anything meaningful.”

  I entered the interrogation room. McHanna was rattled when he saw me. He looked bad, really bad, with black circles under his eyes, which were shifting from one side to the other.

  “Can I be alone with him?” I asked.

  The FBI agent left the room.

  “McHanna, look at me. I’m your chance to live through this.”

  He raised his head with a contemptuous look that said it all.

  “I know what you did during the past two decades, or for an even longer period. No question you’re looking at a prison term. But we can pretend there’s nothing against you and let you walk right now.”

  “You mean I can go?”

  “There’s some paperwork to complete, but yes, I’ll recommend letting you go.”

  “What’s the catch?” he asked suspiciously.

  “No trick. You refuse to cooperate. It will be a while until all the documents seized in your office will be analyzed. We may not have a probable cause to hold you any longer, so I think you’re about to leave this place soon. We have patience, though, and I’m sure you’ll be back.”

  He gave me a doubtful look.

  “Of course, your employers will not be so patient. Do you know why?”

  He looked at me, waiting for me to continue.

  “Because they’ll understand you talked. Of course, an inadvertent leak from a ‘knowledgeable government source that spoke on condition of anonymity’ could appear in the media saying that you’re cooperating, and therefore were released on your own recognizance.”