company run by Atashbon members. The sad thing is that Americans trained the Iranians to use these high-end printing presses.”
“You mean we trained them to print dollars?” asked Bob Holliday.
“Of course not,” said Hodson. “In the early 1970s the Shah of Iran asked the U.S. to help solve counterfeiting problems that threatened to undermine Iran’s currency. So we sent technical people from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to Tehran to improve the safety of the Iranian currency.”
“The balls on them!” said Casey Bauer. “We trained them. Now we discover that they had an incredible audacity. Years later these motherfuckers were intending to collapse the U.S. economy.”
“Good thing the hundred-dollar bill was redesigned,” I said.
“There are three types of forged dollars,” explained Hodson. “Two are rather primitive and easy to detect, but the third is a real piece of art. Common forgers use offset lithography, which prints dollars that lack the feel of real currency because the ink is flat, unlike the raised ink of genuine bills. Digital forgeries are very common because anyone with a scanner and high-quality printer or a copier can become a forger. But again, unless you use the fabric of genuine dollars, the notes printed are in fact Monopoly money, particularly when they all have the same serial number. But the Iranians managed to produce high-quality notes, using the same intaglio printing presses that the Bureau of Engraving does.”
“What’s intaglio?” asked Bob.
“A press that creates miniscule ridges on cotton-linen paper by forcing it at high pressure into the ink-filled grooves of an engraved plate. Now the outcome looks-and better yet, feels-like real currency,” answered Hodson, looking at his notes.
“How did they get over the biggest obstacle, the material used for U.S. currency?” asked Holliday.
“It’s difficult but not impossible,” said Hodson. “Currency paper is composed of 25 percent linen and 75 percent cotton. Red and blue synthetic fibers of various lengths are distributed evenly throughout the paper. Governments can buy it freely, and we assume Iran had no problem acquiring it. We think they decided to print the currency in the U.S. because it’d be much easier to smuggle the fabric into the U.S. than the final product-bales of billions of forged U.S. dollars. Nonetheless, the Secret Ser vice is still investigating how the fabric entered the U.S. for the Iranians’ local printing needs.”
“The printing operation here was seized, and that’s what’s important,” concluded Casey.
Hodson nodded. “I must concede that we knew about the Iranian effort, but never made the connection to the Chameleon cases until we cracked them. As early as 1996 the General Accounting Office reported that a foreign government was sponsoring production of the ‘Superdollar’-a high-quality bill.”
“How did they distribute that volume?” asked Holliday. “You can get away with a few millions, not billions.”
“The operative word is slowly. We have evidence that bills printed in the U.S. were introduced into the circulation through their bogus charities and using criminal enterprises that usually launder drug money, to launder much bigger amounts. Some of the money printed in Iran was given to Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad to finance their operations, and they distributed it from Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Soon enough, the money turned up in Hong Kong, Macao, South Korea, Russia, and Latin America.”
“Has anyone assessed the actual or potential damage to the U.S. economy?” I asked.
“There are only estimates,” said Hodson. “We have no numbers to mea sure the impact, but this counterfeiting is a clear form of economic warfare that could cause serious inflation in the U.S., and undermine the world market’s confidence in U.S. currency. Now we put the lid on it.”
I was curious to hear more about the ploy we used to infiltrate me into Iran. “Did the alumni hold the reunion after all?”
“Yes, we sent Erikka back to complete the arrangements. If the reunion plans were scrapped, a suspicion could arise about whether the plan was just a cover for your activities. We wanted to keep that part of your mission clean.”
Why would we care? I thought, although I knew the answer. The reunion helped recruit new assets.
“Was the event successful?”
“From our perspective, yes. We had to close the circle.” He’d tacitly confirmed my assumption.
“Any progress in the investigation regarding my Bern hotel-room search? Do you know whodunit?” I touched my head. I’d had enough of unpleasant encounters with strangers in European hotel rooms. Couldn’t my rivals just for once send somebody nice? How come in the thriller movies there’s an attractive woman who is gently confronting the good guy, while in reality I collide with burly men with body odors?
“We have incomplete results.”
I sensed that Casey wasn’t telling me everything, but CIA guys tend to be like that.
“We didn’t clean up the world from all sorts of bad guys, but we’re trying,” he said. “The job at your hotel was carried out by people working for the Iranian security services. We think they were local burglars hired for that onetime job. The Swiss police already have a suspect. Our assumption is that they wanted to know what you found out at the bank. When we realized that, we asked Benny Friedman to find a way to alert Tempelhof Bank to increase security at its ware house. They could attempt to destroy the evidence.”
I paused. “I hate to dwell on this, but how did they find out I was coming to Switzerland and where I was staying?”
“Benny has investigated it from the direction of the bank personnel. The Mossad found a bad apple in the bank’s staff, whose duty was to alert Iran whenever there was any outside interest in their clandestine financial activities passing through the bank. That was a very smart move on the Iranians’ part, installing security on both sides of the money-laundering ring.”
“How did Benny catch the mole, without having any official or formal connection to the bank?”
“Benny never said it in so many words, but I think he pulled out an old trick for smoking out your enemy. He spread a rumor at the bank that on that very day the Swiss police were about to raid the bank seeking evidence of ‘private’ deposits made at the bank by members of the current Iranian regime. One employee was monitored leaving the bank in haste during office hours and was photographed making a call from a pay phone just outside the bank. Benny had anticipated it and bugged all public phones in the area.”
“Shrewd move,” I said in appreciation.
Just as I thought we were done, Hodson gave me a folder.
“Pack your bags, you are going to Australia to get the Chameleon.”
“Again? Why? Hasn’t the telephone number in McHanna’s address book been decoded? The Australian Federal Police can find him easily.” I just didn’t feel like leaving again.
“It was decoded. It belongs to an Australian woman. She told the police that Norman McAllister has rented a small apartment from her but took off just about the same time you gave us the number. He still owes her two months’ rent. So far, the Australian Federal Police have no clue. Since you know what the Chameleon looks like and you have the most ‘Chameleon hours,’ we thought that your presence there could help.”
“Did you try to trace the Chameleon through the $3,000 wire transfer McHanna said he made?” I asked. Maybe not all bases were covered, and I’d be spared that long haul.
“It was just another lie. There was no such transfer to anyone by that name in the past month. McHanna was bullshitting you.”
I thought it was strange. McHanna didn’t lie regarding the Chameleon’s phone number, but lied on the money transfer. I wondered why. But said nothing.
“When am I leaving?” I asked, accepting the travel folder. “To night.”
Two days later I landed at Sydney’s airport and Peter Maxwell, the curly-haired Australian federal agent, picked me up.
“Any news?” I asked anxiously as he escorted me through immigration.
“Nothing yet,” he said. “We searched his rented apartment, but nothing was found. His landlady said he was a quiet tenant and had no visitors, but he was always behind on his rent. She said he left a few short days ago without any luggage, together with two men who came with a late-model Japanese car.”
“Any more details?”
“Nothing, she just saw them from the back. All she could say was that the car was white.”
“Did you get his phone records?” I was hoping for a clue there.
“He never used the apartment’s phone for outgoing calls, only incoming. She said he had a cell phone, but
