“Hey, I didn’t say work for me,” he said defensively. “I said work together.”
“Like I said, I need to get permission.”
“You’ll get it.” He sounded alarmingly sure of himself. “What are you saying? That you already made a request through the proper channels?” His face confirmed that I was right. “Thanks for asking my opinion first,” I grumbled.
“Don’t give me that act, Dan. We both know that when we worked together the last couple of times, things worked out as they should have.”
“You could have at least asked me.”
“I was protecting you,” he said. “An official request by the Mossad to the U.S. government to cooperate is standard procedure. Talking to you first before asking your government would have complicated things. You’ve just confirmed that.”
I left it at that. “So what did my bosses have to say?” How odd that a foreign intelligence service would know about my forthcoming instructions before me. But pressing him further was not going to be fruitful; it would only make him dig in his heels that much more.
“We’re still waiting. American bureaucracy, you know.”
“Right. Well, let me see what my boss tells me. We’ve got a conference scheduled.”
Later that day, after Benny and I had parted, I got a call from the U.S. Embassy. “A cable came in for you.”
I was sure it was one of those routine memos circulated that the ever-helpful Esther kept sending me even when I was away.
“Can you deliver it to my hotel?” I had already taken off my shoes, stretched on the couch, and started reading the newspaper. The last thing I wanted to do was head to the embassy.
“Sorry, no. This is classified material that cannot leave this room.”
Why would I get that sort of document? I was investigating money launderers and white-collar criminals. Communications about them are sensitive, but not secret. They’re frequently called “sensitive but unclassified” (SBU), containing data that isn’t related to national security, but where their disclosure to the public could cause damage. My curiosity exceeded my laziness.
“I’ll be right over.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I left my hotel room and walked a few blocks to the embassy on 71 Hayarkon Street, right on Tel Aviv’s shoreline on the Mediterranean Sea. I went directly to Pat, the secretary of COS-chief of station-CIA in Israel, who handed me an envelope. It contained a one-page document. I began reading immediately: Central Intelligence Agency
Directorate of Operations
Washington, DC 20505
Memorandum
To: Dan Gordon, OFARML/DOJ
CC: David Stone, OFARML/DOJ
From: Pamela H. Grace
Date: October 7, 2004
Priority: Urgent
Classification: Secret
Subject: TDY The Department of Justice has put you on a TDY to a CIA-led special task force on terrorist financing. A plenary meeting and briefing will be held for two days in France commencing on October 11, 2004. Travel arrangements have been made by the Tel Aviv embassy. Please confirm attendance. The scheduled meeting, its location, and its topic, as well as this memo, must be treated as secret.
An attached note informed me that I’d be met at the Paris airport by Matt Kilburn, an Agency representative. I returned the cable to Pat and signed a receipt that I’d read its contents. TDY meant temporary duty assignment. I was being put on an interagency transfer for a specific intelligence assignment.
Help was on the way from an unlikely source. The CIA had seldom been helpful in my efforts to retrieve money fraudulently obtained from criminal activities, which the U.S. government had to pursue under a federal statute. Usually the flow of information was unidirectional: from me to them. Maybe it would change now and, with their help, I could get moving on the Chameleon’s case. I was surprised, though, that I hadn’t received direct instructions from David or Bob telling me I was assigned to a CIA task force.
I went to the embassy’s travel office on the second floor. Guy, a skinny staffer, gave me an envelope with an El Al ticket to Paris, departing Ben Gurion Airport on October 10. I used the secure phone to call David Stone.
After the initial pleasantries, David got to the point. “Have you met your friend Benny yet?”
“Yes, I always meet him while I’m in Israel. He’s an old friend.”
“While you were still in Pakistan a request from the Mossad came through channels suggesting cooperation in discovering the Chameleon.”
“Did they say what their interest is?”
“They just said that we had a mutual interest, but didn’t specify.”
“Benny told me yesterday about their request. Israel has no direct connection, but he still wants to cooperate with us.”
“What? Did he elaborate?” David sounded surprised.
“He told me that the Chameleon is an Iranian agent stealing money in the U.S. for a slush fund that finances terrorist organizations. The Mossad intercepted communications between Tehran and someone working for them in Pakistan mentioning Ward’s names, and also mine. So this guy, whoever he is, is on the Mossad’s radar as a terror financier. That made him a Mossad target.”
“Be careful, Dan,” said David in a fatherly tone. “One of these days questions could be raised. Just be careful.”
“I am,” I said. “I think my informal contact with the Mossad through Benny is invaluable for us. It has always been.”
“I’m sure of that. But for the sake of transparency, why don’t you make a written record of each of your meetings, and send me a copy for the file.”
“David, would you have me fill out a report every time I meet up with a buddy? What is this, East Germany circa 1980?”
“Dan, don’t take it to an extreme. You aren’t meeting with your buddy. You’re meeting with a high-ranking executive of a foreign-intelligence service. Although the Israelis are our close allies, still, any contact between a federal employee and foreign agents must be reported. These are the rules. Besides, believe me, it’s also for your own good.” I knew he was right, of course, and in the past, each time a meeting with Benny was more than just friendly and touched sensitive issues, I’d always written a memo to the file.
I asked David about my TDY to the CIA. I didn’t even know whether the task force would be an internal CIA ad hoc group, or a multiagency group that included representatives from other government agencies. The distinction was critical, because in the latter case, each representative ranked equally with the others and took instructions from his or her own agency. However, in an internal CIA working group, I’d be subject to their directives, and David would remain in the background.
“You won’t be working for me. It’s for the CIA, as in the previous cases.”
“You mean Eric Henderson again?” My tone must have revealed my reservations. Eric and I were never cuddle buddies; in fact our relationship was sulfurous at best.
“No. There’s another guy, Casey Bauer. Try to be nice to him, for a change.”
“I’m always nice!”
David laughed.
I returned to my hotel. Benny called me a few minutes after I entered my room. “Hi Dan. Any news?”
I felt a bit uncomfortable. Benny was always one step ahead of me. Or was it more than one? For a moment
