The Chameleon Conspiracy

by Haggai Carmon

  I called security. The same “fireman” came over. He must have been their jack-of-all-trades. “Mein Gott,” he exclaimed when he saw the mess. “Is anything missing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I was still holding my laptop computer and the stack of documents. “Please check to see if other guests were victimized as well,” I said. If I was the only one, then the conclusion would be clear: I’d been singled out. Someone wanted something I had. And the only things I had were the papers and my laptop. It wasn’t my fashionable attire.

  “I need another room,” I told him. “I can’t stay here.”

  He went to the night table and used the phone. A few minutes later a chambermaid came and gave me a room key for a room on a different floor. I quickly packed and moved there. I left my luggage in my new room and went to the twenty-four-hour business center, still carrying my laptop computer and the documents. I faxed the documents to my New York office and shredded the copies I had, taking the confetti-like pieces with me.

  Whoever had broken into my room was either interested in the documents because he didn’t have the information they contained, or he wanted to see how much I’d found. I could have been wrong, of course, but so far there was nothing to contradict me. The alarming conclusion was that someone knew to expect me in Switzerland, knew where I had gone that day, knew where I was staying, and had used the alarm-bell button to get me out of my room. Had my talents for identifying followers rusted? I hadn’t noticed anything unusual. Frankly, though, I hadn’t been paying much attention. For once I’d arrived in Switzerland for something that was so aboveboard that I was relieved to not have to constantly look behind me. And of all my cases, this visit—the perfectly clean one—had to be marred by a hostile entry? I threw the confetti into the fireplace in the lobby and waited to see it blaze.

  I called Casey Bauer to report. He was more alarmed than I had been. “Dan, leave the hotel immediately. Cancel tomorrow’s meeting at the ware house. You may have to return to the U.S., but not just yet. We need to arrange security before you can return to the ware house.”

  I called Lufthansa Airlines using my room telephone, asking the switchboard operator to connect me. I spoke with the airline representative and bought a one-way ticket to Frankfurt. I asked the desk to prepare my bill and send up a bellman, although all I had was one small suitcase. I told the bellman I was going to Frankfurt and asked him to get me a taxi. I paid the hotel bill and mentioned I needed to fly urgently to Frankfurt.

  At the airport, when I’d made sure I wasn’t observed, I took the elevator down to the arrival hall, pressing all the buttons to make the elevator stop on every floor. I was alone in the elevator, but anyone looking at the lit numbers above the elevator door wouldn’t see on which floor I’d exited. I went to the taxi line and took a taxi to Zürich, where I checked into the Hilton hotel using my Anthony P. Blackthorn documents.

  I called Casey Bauer, reported my new location, and fell asleep in front of the television. I was angry and surprised that I’d been spotted. Field security was lax somewhere. Next time the consequences could be more serious.

  Two hours before my scheduled meeting with Heinrich Andrist, my chaperon at Tempelhof Bank’s ware house, I called with my cell phone to apologize. “I had to fly unexpectedly to Frankfurt to meet another client. I’m sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused you.”

  “Will you be back?”

  Now he misses me? “In a few days. I’ll call ahead.”

  Casey Bauer called my cell phone. “There’s no question there was a security leak,” he said. “Did you tell anyone where you were going?”

  Sometimes I feel like kicking the bureaucrats who ask stupid questions. But Casey didn’t qualify—he was a trained CIA officer covering all bases. “Nobody in New York but my office administrator.”

  “Weren’t you involved with the courts in New York and in Switzerland?”

  “Yes, but they didn’t know if and when I was coming to Switzerland. My contacts at the bank didn’t know where I was staying. That leaves only Dr. Liechtenstein, the Swiss attorney I hired to help me get the Swiss court order. He knew when I was arriving, and knew where I was staying.”

  Casey sighed. “Let me check on him,” he said grimly. “But it seems whoever it was wanted something from your room, and not you personally. Otherwise they’d have been waiting for you inside your room.”

  Once stretched on the sofa in my spacious room I was finally able to analyze the documents I had retrieved from the bank’s ware house. I turned on my laptop and logged into my New York office. In less than one minute I was connected, passing through four sets of different username and password screens. I opened the data files and read the documents I had faxed my office computer earlier.

  The conclusion was unavoidable. In 1988 Reza Nazeri, aka Christopher Gonda, aka Philip Montreau, had moved millions of dollars between Switzerland and the U.S., and back. During that time money-laundering laws had been reserved for drug lords and corporate frauds, and the phrase terror financing hadn’t been coined yet or thought of. Most of the transfers had gone through Al Taqwa in Lugano and Tempelhof Bank in Zürich, and in all of them the name used was Gonda, not the two other names, Nazeri and Montreau. But although I found 1988 records, he’d had an account with Tempelhof Bank at least as early as 1981. Was there an explanation?

  Perhaps the answer was simple. Since he’d used the stolen identity of Christopher Gonda to open the account, and Gonda disappeared at about the same time, I assumed that 1981 was in fact the year the account was opened. Why had Nazeri/Gonda needed the account before the banking scams had begun? Since my first quick review of the earlier files at the ware house didn’t reveal anything suspicious, I went on to the next year. I was locked into an assumption connecting Nazeri/Gonda to McHanna. Therefore, I may have overlooked Gonda’s activities before his account was used to launder money transferred between McHanna and Al Taqwa. I’d have to go back to the ware house to look again in the files, including those I’d already reviewed, but definitely those of the years subsequent to 1988.

  Casey called me again. “There’s no point in your hanging around in Switzerland until we resolve the security issue. We can’t get you much protection without drawing unnecessary attention.”

  I was really eager to return to the ware house and solve the puzzle, but as instructed, I returned to New York the following morning. I went straight to the office, where Bob Holliday was waiting for an update.

  “Did you have a good flight?” he asked, wryly avoiding the crisis at hand.

  “Excellent,” I replied. I gave him a quick summary of my findings, and the need for more work.

  “We have a meeting tomorrow morning with Robert Hodson, assistant director in charge of the FBI field office in New York,” he told me.

  When I entered Hodson’s office, Casey Bauer and Bob Holliday were sitting on the leather sofa opposite Hodson’s huge desk. I joined them as Hodson dragged a chair over to sit next to us.

  Holliday started. “I went through the documents that Dan brought from Switzerland, and I tend to believe that Reza Nazeri was a member of Atashbon. We don’t know exactly what role he played until 1988, but there’s no question that in 1988, and perhaps in later years, he moved millions of dollars between the U.S. and Switzerland, mostly through the notorious Al Taqwa, a known terrorist-financing institution.”

  “I saw the documents and I concur with Holliday,” said Casey. “Here’s what I think we should do next: send Dan back to Switzerland to get more documents from later years. We also need to look at the transfer of documents from the other end—Al Taqwa, later named Nada Management.” He looked at Hodson. “We’ll need your staff to help us on that. We must also develop additional information as to what was done with money, or from whom it was received. We’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg.”

  “That depends on the Swiss government’s willingness to cooperate. Just moving money isn’t a crime per se, but under the circumstanc
es, it reeks of money laundering,” said Bob.

  We continued analyzing the options for how to proceed, when Hodson got up.

  “Well,” he said. “My legal department just told me that the documents Dan has obtained give us probable cause to seek a search warrant at McHanna Associates. That prick McHanna is in New York, so we don’t need to go far. Are we done?”

  “Sit down, Bob,” suggested Casey in a soft tone. “There are a few more issues we need to cover.” Hodson sat down, visibly reluctant.

  “There’s also a small matter of security leaks,” I added. “I had to leave Vienna in a rush because Casey warned me that the safe apartment used for my Iran briefings was compromised. Then the whole operation was put on hold because a Mossad agent wasn’t paying attention, and Parviz Morad, the Iranian refugee whom Benny was so proud of getting out of an Iraqi prison, managed to make an unauthorized phone call. Then after I returned from Iran, my room at a Bern hotel was searched.”

  “You mean you don’t know what caused the security breach?” asked Bauer.

  “Know what?” I asked, although I did know the cause for at least one security breach. Casey Bauer must have forgotten bringing me up to speed in Turkey after my escape from Iran, giving me details about how Hasan Lotfi had known who I really was.

  Casey explained. “Parviz Morad called his uncle, Morteza Mughnia, whom he claimed he believed to be an Iranian dissident. But in fact the uncle was an Iranian agent posing as a dissident. The uncle was regularly reporting to Iran on the dissidents’ activities in Europe. Some of them were killed. Morteza Mughnia, who knew about Parviz Morad’s escape from the Iraqi prison from letters Parviz sent his family from Israel, asked him where he would be later on that evening, so he could come and see him. Parviz gave his uncle the address of his hotel. Morteza Mughnia suspected that the Israelis would take his nephew out of Israel only if it were an important intelligence matter, and alerted the local operatives of the Iranian security service.

  “They staked out the hotel and followed Parviz to the safe house. Our security team in the building opposite the safe apartment took photos of the scouts the uncle had sent. One of the scouts was identified as a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards working in the Iranian Embassy as a ‘cultural attaché.’ Since he had diplomatic immunity, we notified the Austrians, and he was cordially asked to pack and leave.”

  “Just because of that?” I asked.

  “No way. There was a whole file on him concerning undiplomatic activities.”

  “So this is how I was exposed,” I said, letting the information sink in.

  “Probably. They must have taken your photograph as you entered the building. Then you went to the Iranian embassy to obtain a visa and were captured by video when you entered the building, and also attached your photo to your application. The counselor, who is no doubt an intelligence officer, made the connection.”

  “That means I entered Iran already exposed.”

  Hodson nodded.

  “Then why didn’t they arrest me immediately?”

  “Either because they wanted to know whom you’d be contacting locally or because the information stopped at Hasan Lotfi’s desk.”

  “So, if my identity was known to others in the security services, when Lotfi met me at the hotel and then for lunch, he doomed himself, because he was already under surveillance.”

  “Exactly. But he was on the alert for a while. When he suspected that he came under suspicion he took off after contacting us, even before we concluded a deal.”

  “That means I contaminated everyone else I met,” I said. “In a way, but only those that couldn’t explain. We believe that the school alumni came clean when they gave a true account of the circumstances leading to their meeting with you. Your Kurdish friends escaped to the Kurdish enclave in the north, where no Iranian policemen dare set a foot, unless they are suicidal.”

  “One thing isn’t solved, though,” said Holliday. I knew what he was going to ask, and I had no answer. “Where the hell is the Chameleon? Let me remind you that he’s our prime target, and is expected to lead us to the other Atashbon members.”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said candidly, “but I’m getting closer. I hope the search of McHanna’s records will tell us more. I’m not easing up the chase. Positive identification of Nazeri as Atashbon will probably bring us closer to the Chameleon and his comrades.”

  I went back to my office and wrote Erikka a personal letter telling her that my publisher had put the book project on hold, and therefore her services were currently no longer needed. I attached a check drawn on a Canadian bank to cover the remainder of the period for which I’d agreed to retain her. I added a $500 bonus.

  “It was a plea sure to have worked with you,” I wrote. “I hope I can complete the book project one day.” I put the letter and the check in an envelope and sent it to her through a mail-forwarding service in Toronto. I didn’t include a return address.

  My phone buzzed. It was Bob. “A federal magistrate judge signed a search warrant for McHanna Associates; FBI teams are on the scene as we speak. Meet me to night at Hodson’s office.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I arrived at the federal building in downtown Manhattan at eight P.M., but Hodson’s office was still empty. Over an hour later, at nine twenty P.M., as my nerves jangled, five FBI agents finally walked in with Hodson and Casey. Bob Holliday arrived a minute later.

  “What’s in the crates I saw you carrying?” I asked the agent standing next to me.

  “The last of the stuff we seized at McHanna Associates. The bulk of it was brought over a few hours ago.”

  Hodson, sensing my impatience, said, “Our analysts are already starting to examine the first few cartons. I’m afraid it will take time until we have a hit.”

  “Can I participate in the analysis of these documents? I know a few things about white-collar crime and money laundering.”

  Hodson and Holliday exchanged looks and Holliday nodded.

  “OK,” said Hodson. “Be here tomorrow at nine a.m.”

  “Tomorrow? I’m not waiting until tomorrow. I want to do it right now.”

  Hodson smiled and used the intercom to call his assistant. “Tom, let Dan Gordon join our analysts in cracking the material we seized from McHanna Associates.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and before leaving I asked, “Was McHanna taken in?”

  “No. Give me a probable cause, and he will be. So far we’ve got nothing to support an arrest warrant.”

  I went two floors down. In a big room were six young men and women buried under massive stacks of paper. Open cartons were everywhere.

  “It’s slow going, but it’s going,” grunted Mel, a clean-shaven young analyst, when I’d introduced myself.

  “Why? Because of the volume?”

  “No. We only started three hours ago, but from what we see already, the documents reflect years’ worth of international banking activities. Now add the fact that I already counted four or five foreign languages that were used, and you’ve got a complex audit on your plate.”

  “Any computer files?” I asked.

  “Yes, we seized McHanna’s computers. We’re waiting for the tech people to hook them up so we can quickly search files electronically.”

  “Can I take a look at some of the files?” I asked.

  “Help yourself,” he said, and quickly explained their Organization system so that I wouldn’t disrupt it.

  I went to the mountain of stacked crates and pulled out the top box. I put it on an empty desk. The label was marked 1990. After going through several hundreds of pages I saw nothing that immediately showed any relevance to our case. I took another box, marked 1993. A few hours later, I felt a creeping frustration. There was nothing there that could be important to my investigation. I looked around the room at the other analysts; their faces were patient, but unenthused. I decided to change course. Instead of looking for a smoking gun, I decided to understand the business logic of McHanna
. How were they transacting business, what was their profit center, and how were they actually making money? That is, if they were making money. And if they weren’t, who paid for McHanna’s fancy office, and why?

  I realized it’d take me more time, but that was a commodity I had. Bob Holliday agreed to ease my caseload, and I immersed myself in my new project: McHanna Associates.

  Three days later I began to see a pattern. McHanna Associates was in fact a clearing house for charitable donations. Money in small amounts was collected in certain Islamic centers throughout the United States for various charitable causes and brought or transferred to McHanna Associates. Next, McHanna transferred the funds in batches smaller than $10,000 through a New York bank to banks in several foreign countries, some in Europe and some in the Middle East. One or two days later, the receiving banks would wire similarly sized amounts to McHanna’s bank account in New York.

  Why were they doing it? I wondered. Why send the money back here? And if there was a reason, why couldn’t they simply offset the incoming and outgoing amounts? The back-and-forth transfers made no business sense, other than to the transferring banks, which made hefty commissions off the transfers. And while I understood the reason for transferring amounts to the Middle East to support charities, I couldn’t understand why there were incoming money transfers to the United States.

  I decided to take it yet another step forward and see what happened to the money received by McHanna from the European banks. It was routed to charities in various states throughout the United States. Several names of the U.S. receiving institutions surfaced repeatedly. There were two in Texas, three in Michigan, five in Brooklyn, and four in Florida. One common denominator of all receiving institutions was that they were Islamic charities. They also had something else in common. The checks made out to them weren’t endorsed.

  That was a finding that bewildered me. I checked the entire contents of the box. There were many bank statements, but among the attached checks made out to the charities, I couldn’t find even one that was endorsed.