suspect that identifying the targets and supplying the logistics was made by Atashbon members who were instructed by Tehran to ‘wake up’ from their dormant status.”
“What did Lotfi have to say about that? Wasn’t this the bait he was dangling?”
“So far he has confirmed the basics that led us to the Messengers of the Faith. But we’ve got a long way to go with Lotfi. He isn’t an easy client. His double-talk is driving our interrogators crazy. Even when it’s information that assures his ticket to freedom and safety, you can never get a straight answer from him. We must clear a few other things first. Atashbon waited twenty years; we can wait a few more days, or even weeks.” I wasn’t comfortable with the latter part of that answer, but said nothing.
“Did you identify additional Atashbon members through the reunion?” I was curious if our visit to Tehran was worth it.
“At least one, but we are working on additional names as well.”
“Who is the one?”
“Remember the Farshad Shahab you met, the guy who studied at the University of Nebraska? Erikka told us all about the meetings.”
“So she knew?”
“No, she thought we were a marketing company working for the bank in connection with the bank’s effort to get Iranian business. Well, he was an Atashbon, and was actually arrested in the U.S., but he managed to get away.”
“Arrested as an Iranian agent and was let go?” I asked in disbelief.
“No,” he sounded apologetic. “We didn’t know his true identity then. He assumed the identity of Alec Simmons, a smart and brave young American. When Simmons was captured by Iranian agents, he was interviewed and filmed. Apparently he understood why the personal details were so important to his interrogators. So he changed some of his personal information, hoping that anyone using his identity would be caught. He misspelled the names of his parents and gave his captors a wrong Social Security number.”
“And we missed it?”
“Almost. When Farshad enrolled at the university, he had the nerve to ask for a student loan, and gave what he thought were Alec’s parents’ names and his Social Security number. A routine cross-referencing flagged a problem. He was arrested but released on $2,000 bail. Everybody thought it was just a simple fraud matter. Farshad jumped bail and took off. He soon assumed a different identity and lived in the U.S. for five more years.”
“So he never graduated from the University of Nebraska?” “Of course not. He couldn’t even return to Lincoln. Finally, before returning to Iran he pulled off the final scam when he bought an engineer’s diploma from one of those diploma mills where the only thing between you and a degree is $5,000 and the week it takes to print and deliver the impressive but bogus certificate.”
“Come to think of it, when we met, I was quite amazed to hear bold criticism from him of the Islamic regime. He probably did it to provoke me to say something incriminating, or hint at a recruiting possibility, which would make him a double agent.”
“I have no doubt of that,” said Casey.
“I suspected him at the time,” I said, knowing I sounded like a Monday-morning quarterback. “No Iranian would dare be so critical of his government to a complete stranger. I intended to check him out later. But it didn’t occur to me he was dangling bait to make me attempt to recruit him.”
“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty,” said Casey matter-of-factly.
I tried to think of other people I’d met, but my excitement was impairing my focus.
Two days later I was in New York. After three days of debriefing, spending time with my children, and getting used to civilization again, which included taking three hot showers every day, I felt I had to complete my mission. As if on cue, Benny called.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“In New York,” he answered.
“Good,” I said. “I need help on the case.” I was back in business.
“Is that a way to speak to an old friend? You don’t say hello, how are you, and more specifically you don’t tell me how it was?”
Jewish guilt games again? Well, he had a point. I hadn’t even thanked Benny yet for his role in saving my life.
“Sorry, you’re right. First and foremost, thank you for your role in getting me out. I know it was your men who whisked me out.”
“A small contribution to the case,” he said. “That’s nothing among friends.”
“Not so small, given the other stuff. Let’s have lunch.”
I made reservations at a kosher restaurant right off 47th Street in Manhattan that caters to the heavily Jewish Diamond District, and met him there. We spoke for a few minutes on the case. The Chameleon was very much on my mind, and the time I’d spent in the stinking hole underneath the textile factory did help in cracking the mystery to its end. We lapsed into quiet as the waiter placed a plate on the table loaded with cold cuts, rolls, and deli mustard.
Benny smiled. “Let me guess, you’ll have a double helping of everything.”
I was eager to dig in, but first I said, “Well, it takes quite a bit of this kosher food to fill me up.”
“You’ll survive,” said Benny drily.
“The way I see it,” I replied, “I don’t smoke, do drugs, gamble…so food is my one concession to vice.” I got back to business. “Benny, I need your help.” I’d had a lot of time to plan my next move while idling in hiding.
“What is it this time?” he said, pretending, just pretending, to be annoyed.
“I need access to Tempelhof Bank’s records.”
“Access?”
“Yes, I need to look up the bank’s contacts with McHanna Associates.”
“Who are McHanna Associates?”
“I already mentioned them to you. A New York-based financial corporation run by McHanna, who was the Chameleon’s victim in South Dakota.”
“What do you expect to find out?”
“I want to see the level of cooperation between McHanna Associates and Tempelhof Bank.” I decided not to broaden Benny’s horizons yet, nor complicate the request any further by telling him I also wanted to see whether the bank played a role as intermediary between McHanna and Al Taqwa. When I saw Benny’s expression I asked, “Is there a problem? You own the bank!”
“Dan. We own it, but management doesn’t know it, and obviously the Swiss government doesn’t either. I can’t just go there and start snooping.”
“Then how do you control the bank?”
“Through nominee directors. Distinguished businessmen. Even the instructions concerning the bank’s marketing efforts in Iran through the reunion were suggested to management by one of our nominee directors.”
“So management doesn’t know who they really work for?”
“You got it,” said Benny. “They believe oil billionaires from the Gulf States own the bank.”
“How did you manage to do that and survive the Swiss regulators’ scrutiny?” I asked curiously.
“Don’t ask,” said Benny. “But it works fine. Now you can understand my difficulty, not to say inability, to let you have access to the bank’s records.”
“I don’t need current records,” I said. “I need to go back to 1980 or 1981 through, say, 1995.”
“It’s possible that the records for the earlier years are archived or even shredded. But that I can find out.”
Later on in the afternoon Benny called. “These guys are so meticulous, they never destroy anything. The documents are stored in”-he paused, and I heard pages turning-“Manheim Document Storage, in Bern. Does that help you?”
“In a way. I’d either need to break in or get a court order.” “Get a court order under some pretext,” suggested Benny. “We don’t need the media attention if a break-in is discovered.”
I returned to my office and found in the day’s mail Mrs. Nazeri’s power of attorney that I had had sent to her
