fact, it was a kept promise, because he had actually received that money. When I’d first heard about that amount of money, it had flagged an ulterior motive immediately. Nobody pays a twenty-year-old photo-grapher $500 a month in 1980 dollars for taking some pictures during an archaeological excavation, when most others volunteer their work. Dr. Fischer and Professor Krieger had told us that most of the diggers were either volunteer students working for food and university credits, or two-to-three-dollar-a-day Iranian peasants doing the actual digging,” I said.
“And you don’t know that the information Khan sold you actually came from Iran. Right?” Nicole pressed. “You said the lawyer was sleazy.”
“Right. In fact, all the information he gave me might have come from his associate or relative, Rashid Khan, the bank manager. Ahmed Khan told me that Ward bought Iranian currency, and that there was a deposit exceeding $500 into his bank account, most of it still there. He also said that a successor in interest of the transferring bank, which we know was a center for distributing terror money, later tried to reverse the transfer. So the logical conclusion is that Ahmed Khan, the lawyer, was simply a conduit that Rashid Khan, the corrupt bank manager, used to sell me information, without compromising himself as breaching banking-secrecy law. I tend to cautiously believe it, except the part about the attempted reversal of the deposit at a later stage. That seems bogus.” I thought Nicole would be satisfied with that.
“So why do you consider that an in de pen dent source of information?”
“Because it doesn’t have to come from Iran to be genuine. These events took place before, or immediately after, Ward had left Pakistan. What supports the credibility of these pieces of information is that we learned about bits of them from different and in de pen dent sources. Then there’s the attempted attack on me in Islamabad, when I was driven in an embassy car just outside the embassy’s compound. Benny hinted it was connected to my search for the Chameleon. I’ve got no way of proving it, but I can’t disprove it either.”
“The other source of information is the FBI fingerprints report we saw today, with the State Department’s photo that Maxwell confirmed to be of Herbert Goldman, formerly known as Kourosh Alireza Farhadi, who at a certain time assumed the identity of Albert Ward-and who is the Chameleon.” She seemed to get closer to my way of thinking.
“We don’t know if it was an NSA or an FBI work product,” I said.
“More likely a combined effort,” said Nicole.
“Right. But what ever it is, in some points it matches perfectly with the other sources we have.”
“Such as the existence of Department 81,” agreed Nicole. “I tend to give the NSA/FBI report a much higher degree of credibility,” I said.
“Why, because it’s one of our own?” Her blue eyes were full of skepticism. “Don’t fall into that pit. Always question the value and credibility of information.” She sounded like some of my instructors at the Mossad Academy, although she was by far more attractive.
“No,” I said. “Because of the fingerprint match. Remember, I lifted a set of prints from the Chameleon’s cup next to his hospital bed.” When I saw Nicole’s brows rise again, I quickly added, “I know I’m not a qualified lab technician and might accidentally have contaminated the evidence. But apparently I didn’t, because these prints matched the prints the Australian police later obtained independently. Now comes a U.S. intelligence agency, and, through means they don’t tell us, it obtains another set of prints that match the two previous sets of prints. You can’t get better than that.”
“I agree,” said Nicole. “Provided NSA got it from some files in Iran. If we can make a case for that, then I’m convinced.”
“If you think NSA will tell you that they hacked into an Iranian government database and downloaded the personnel file of Farhadi, then good luck with this one. NSA didn’t even confirm its own existence until a few years ago. You know what people used to say that NSA stood for- no such agency. If you believe that they’ll tell us about their means and methods of gathering specific information, then there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.”
I was certain that NSA did talk about it with someone outside its walls of secrecy. Namely, the FISA-Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act-court, while they were seeking a court order approving the use of “electronic surveillance” against foreign powers or their agents. I did have a hunch how NSA broke into the Iranian computers. Before the Islamic Revolution, some Iranian government agencies had used tailor-made software written by American companies. They’d left a trap door to allow them to service the computers from a remote location. Now, that concealed method of access could be used to hack into the computer without leaving a trace.
“Dan, there’s no need to be sarcastic. We need to generate a report that is acceptable to both of us. Therefore, before I put my name on any such report I want to make sure I can live with the facts it describes. What good will our recommendations do, if some guy with average common sense can punch a hole in the tower of facts we’re building?”
“Fine with me,” I said. “Other than the prints, we have no facts, only a bunch of leads and pieces of information. The case isn’t over. We aren’t writing an autopsy report. We’re summing up a case that has just gotten closer to breaking than at any time during the past twenty years. The report will set the path to go forward, not to bury a corpse.”
“And it has characteristics of national security, rather than just catching a successful serial thief,” she added. She’d finally jumped on the wagon of enthusiasm I had been single-handedly pushing uphill.
“By the way,” I said. “We’ve got some indication that there’s at least one sleeper agent in the U.S. other than the Chameleon.”
“What indication?”
“Loretta Otis. She was murdered a few days after she reported to a rabbi in Sydney that Goldman was in fact Ward. The rabbi confronted the Chameleon, asking for his explanation. When no satisfactory responses came, the rabbi refused to marry the Chameleon. Now, knowing that his new identity as Goldman was in jeopardy, the Chameleon sealed Loretta Otis’s fate. The Chameleon was still in Australia when Otis was killed. That means he must have arranged for her elimination in the U.S., either by calling Iran or directly calling another member of Department 81 in the U.S.”
“So he’s probably in trouble in Australia for that, and for the fraud.”
“The Australian Federal Police is looking for him as well.” “OK. I think we should spend some time in making recommendations concerning our next move.”
“We’ve a plenary meeting with the other working groups in a week. Do you think Casey set up Monday as our deadline to submit our report so that he could use our paper during the plenary meeting?” I asked.
“I think he’s doing the same with the other groups-asking them for their reports. Since Bauer is acting as liaison, not as a decision maker, I think the real evaluation and decision making will be done at Langley.”
“In Tel Aviv as well,” I added. “One working group consists of Mossad guys.”
Nicole yawned and stretched. “Right. Well, let’s adjourn until the morning. I’m exhausted.”
I looked at my watch. It was one thirty A.M. Based on my past experience, the bigger the operation, the shorter the time that management would give us to finish it. But at least because there were a few of us, we could always find someone to blame for any failure.
In the morning, it took four hours of debating and document review to write our report. The room was the worse for wear: empty beer cans, three half-empty bags of potato chips-a quarter of the chips on the floor and the rest in my stomach, giving me heartburn.
“Let’s clean up the mess,” said Nicole. “We can’t have cleaners here.” We spent the next hour sweeping the floor and removing garbage, not before making sure we didn’t accidentally throw away any pieces of paper. Nicole went to the communication room and returned twenty minutes later.
“There has been a change of plans. There’s a meeting in another safe apartment in northern Paris in two days. We should send our report immediately.”
On the day of the meeting, we took Nicole’s car from a nearby parking garage and drove to the outskirts of Paris, to a leafy residential area. More out of habit than as a result of any suspicion, I routinely checked our backs to make sure we had no unwanted company. I wondered whether there was any security backup. There was too much activity around our safe apartment, and if any of the visitors was unknowingly compromised to the opposition, they’d contaminate us as well. Opposition? I wondered who our opposition would be, here. There were too many contenders for the title. I decided to raise the issue with Casey. I was uncomfortable. We were too
