When we’d finished our well-deserved dinner, we returned to the safe apartment. Nicole went to the communication room and minutes later handed me a memo from the State Department. It read, “We have cross-referenced all student names without listed SSNs against other databases. The number of individuals matching the criteria you set brought down the number of students whose whereabouts are unknown to thirty-four.” The list was attached.
I quickly ran my eyes down the list. “We got him,” I said slowly and decisively. Number twenty-one on the list was Kourosh Alireza Farhadi, an ethnic Iranian born in Tabriz, in northern Iran, on August 19, 1960. The short bio included additional background information. There were also passport-type photos of all but three men included in the list.
With mounting excitement, I inspected the photos. I didn’t waste any time. In a photo marked as Kourosh Alireza Farhadi, I saw the Chameleon looking at me. I pulled out the photo of Albert C. Ward that I had received from his school’s principal, and compared the two. Both showed their subject at eighteen. But there was no doubt that they were of two different people. I didn’t have a photo of Kourosh Alireza Farhadi from when he assumed Ward’s identity, or later, when he impersonated Herbert Goldman. But I was already convinced that Farhadi was Goldman too. I had identified the Chameleon.
“Nicole!” I cried, startling her. “We found him. Here’s the bastard. We’ve got the evidence.”
Nicole looked at the pictures. “Which one is he?” “That’s the one.” I pointed at Farhadi’s photo. “I can identify him anywhere. He’s in my dreams.”
Nicole wasn’t budging until she saw some hard evidence. “We need a positive ID. Do you want to repeat the humiliation in Sydney?”
“What humiliation?” I responded. “I was right and they were wrong. Now the FBI owes me an apology. Big-time.”
Nicole only raised an eyebrow.
Ice must run through icy liquid in her veins, I thought.
She inspected the photo, read the State Department’s note, and said, “Why don’t we e-mail the photo to Peter Maxwell in Sydney? He also met Goldman. Let’s see what he thinks.”
“Fine by me,” I said. Her obsession with double-checking everything was starting to get to me, but there was little I could do. I waited as she went to her laptop and e-mailed the photo to Sydney.
An hour later, as I skimmed the bits of information the State Department file had on the graduates of the American School in Tehran, Nicole walked in from the communication room. “We’ve got an answer from Peter Maxwell,” she said. “He cautiously believes the person they arrested and later hospitalized is the same person shown in the photo taken many years earlier of Kourosh Alireza Farhadi.”
“What a surprise,” I said drily.
Later, near midnight, a buzz at the apartment intercom heralded the unexpected arrival of Bob Holliday and Casey Bauer.
“Evening,” said Bob. “We’ve got a few more questions.”
“Before I answer you, let me bring you up to speed on the recent developments,” I said, showing them the State Department report and Maxwell’s e-mail.
Bob barely kept his composure when he exclaimed, “Hot damn, that’s fantastic! Do you think Kourosh is still in Australia?”
“I’d be surprised if he was,” said Nicole. “We now know he wasn’t operating alone or independently, so we can safely assume that he has help outside and inside many countries.”
“Australia may have become too hot for him,” I agreed. “The Australian Federal Police told your office that there are no records showing that either Herbert Goldman or Albert Ward III, or any individual with any of the aliases we knew, had left the country. If we rule out swimming, then Kourosh must have used travel documents using another alias to leave Australia. Nicole has asked the Australian Federal Police for a computerized list of the names of all males leaving Australia during the five-day period after he was released from detention at the hospital.
“We expect to get the list in a few days, but the Australians have already cautioned us that the list would exceed fifty thousand names,” I continued. “We’ll provide the NSA with an electronic copy and ask them to match the names on the list against their various databases. We’ll ask the FBI and the CIA to do the same. I don’t have high hopes in that direction, but we must try. Kourosh knew that the U.S. government was after him. So he isn’t likely to have used a passport that could be on somebody’s watch list.”
We all knew what that meant-a stolen passport, one whose theft would have been reported to Interpol, which would have notified police in all 177 or so member countries. Soon enough, border control in almost every country would have its details.
“So by what means do you think Kourosh has left Australia?” asked Casey.
“I tend to think that if he has indeed left, he used a freshly forged passport, one that had never been used,” I said. “When you’re exiting a country, passport inspection is rather lax. At most, the officer checks if your name appears on a wanted list, or more likely, if you overstayed your visit. So exiting is less of a problem. However, if you use a forged passport to travel, safe entry is the main problem. Therefore, your destination should be a country which you can easily enter, either because the ability of that country’s passport control officers to detect forgery is limited, or because Iran can pull strings and get her agents to enter quickly with no questions asked.”
“Other than Iran, which countries meet that requirement?” asked Bob.
“Syria,” said Casey. “North Korea. A few more.”
“Bear in mind that in many countries, particularly in the Third World, a $20 bill can go a long way,” I added.
Bob smiled. “I hope you’re not doing it.” He was thinking about my work for DOJ, while I meant operating outside the rules, any rules.
“There could be a twist here,” Nicole suggested. “For example. Kourosh could hold a ticket from Sydney to Italy with a stopover in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Cairo, Egypt. He could leave Australia using a forged passport and be met by an Iranian agent while in transit at the Jakarta airport. The agent would give him another passport to enter Italy, or a new airline ticket from Jakarta directly to Iran. So if an electronic monitoring of his movements is made, the airline computer will show he ended his trip in Jakarta, and searchers will focus their efforts on Indonesia, while in fact he continued his trip to another location such as Iran using a passport with a different name.”
“I agree,” I said. “I’ve been down that road myself to avoid FOE-forces of evil. There’s no reason why a trained top Iranian agent who’s been successfully avoiding the law for more than two decades wouldn’t be capable of pulling it off.” I shook my head. “I wish I could put my hands on him now!” I clenched my fists in rage.
“Dan, calm down,” said Casey. “We want to preserve his ability to talk.”
Was he referring to rough encounters I’d had with a few of my targets, who had required a convalescence period before they could be interrogated again? I decided not to raise the issue.
“Of course you do,” I said, matter-of-factly, and quickly moved on to change the subject. “He seems to steal money to provide off-the-books slush financing, probably for Iran’s web of terror. That makes him a prime target for us. When he’s caught, we’ll have to wrap him up in cotton wool to make sure he doesn’t catch cold, get sick, or anything, so that he talks and lives through a lengthy prison term.”
Casey and Bob were getting ready to leave. Bauer turned to us. “Dan and Nicole, we need your full written report, including case summary covering all events that took place before you received the case.” He looked at me. “Start from the fraud perpetrated against that South Dakota savings bank in 1985, through your discovery in Australia, your visit to Pakistan, the most recent matching of the prints, and the NSA findings. End it with your recommendations, including suggested cooperation with the Israeli Mossad. Let me see it by Monday, then we’ll talk.”
“What do you think?” I asked Nicole as soon as Bob and Casey had left.
“I think Casey and Bob like the recent developments. It finally confines our case to a location. I have no idea how NSA got that information, and therefore we can’t weigh its credibility.”
“Recent developments?” I said. “Are you kidding? This is a major breakthrough. And you really don’t know how NSA got it? Come on. Computer hacking perpetrated by a private individual sends him to jail. But when an NSA technician does it, he gets an award. We now have four different sources, with varying credibility, that are in de pen dent of one another. They all put the spotlight on Iran.”
“Four?”
“Yes, my Pakistani source, Benny’s information, the FBI fingerprints report, the State Department’s file, and Maxwell’s confirmation.”
“That’s five,” said Nicole. “OK, let’s see what value these clues carry.”
We went back to the drawing board and reviewed most of what we had already learned. “The first clue came when I’d gone to Pakistan and bought information from that sleazy lawyer in Islamabad, Ahmed Khan. He’d told me that Ward was lured into coming to Iran with a promise to pay him $500 a month for three months. In 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 visible.
When we entered the meeting room, a large one with high ceilings, there were several other people already waiting. I recognized Casey, Arnold Kyle, and Benny. Four other men and one woman looked unfamiliar. In the center of the room was a big nineteenth-century-style dining table. We sat around it. I counted the participants. We were ten in all.
Arnold started. “The work of all the teams ended sooner than expected. That’s a good sign. We’re here today to review the various options following the recent developments in the Chameleon case, which now seems more than ever to be connected to Iran’s terror financing.”
“Chameleon?” I muttered to Benny, who sat next to me. “Since when is he using that name?”
“Dan, you’re a lawyer. You know as well as anyone that you haven’t secured trademark protection for that name,” he said, grinning.
“The purpose of this meeting is to explore whether a recommendation should be made to our respective governments to take additional measures. But before we begin, Jack Randolph, our security officer, will say a few words.”
A man in his late fifties with a shaven head and dressed in a blue blazer addressed us. “Good intelligence is the best weapon in the battle against international terrorism. However, gathering intelligence about the identities, intentions, capabilities, and vulnerabilities of terrorists is extremely difficult. On top of that, we’ve realized that leaks of intelligence and law-enforcement information, some due to negligence and carelessness, but some intentionally stolen-or worse, secretly and illegally transferred- have endangered sources, alienated friendly nations, and inhibited their cooperation, thereby jeopardizing the U.S. government’s ability to obtain further information. Therefore, I insist that each and every one of you understand the gravity of this issue. Particular security measures are undertaken concerning this meeting and the operation planned. Please respect these limitations, and protect all information received and treat it as top secret. I’ll go over the security instructions before the conclusion of this session. Thank you.”
Kyle proceeded to provide us with a brief history of the battle against terror financing. Then we went into specific cases, and finally, when I was about to lose interest, he discussed our case, mostly using the report Nicole and I had submitted earlier. “This report is an early-stage operational road map. I say early stage, because there’s a lot of work to be done here. For starters, I need your input on two points: risk/benefit analysis of such an operation, and whether, how, and where to enter Iran-and once entered, the ways and means of achieving our ultimate goals.”
He paused. “We’re here to look at operational aspects. Any suggestions?”
“Dan, any ideas?” nudged Benny.
I spoke up. “If we want to crack the mystery of Atashbon or Department 81-if they are in fact separate entities-we just can’t exclusively rely on ELINT/SIGINT. We must have HUMINT. We need someone with a pulse, an informer, or for one of us to get it independently.”
“Not that I disagree with you,” said Kyle, “but look at the results that NSA has brought. It’s all ELINT based. They’ve just been intercepting electronic transmissions.”
“Sure, but did they tell us where the Chameleon is? Did they tell us whether there are other sleeper cells in the U.S.? They just brought us the ladder. Now we need a person to climb it,” I said. “We must have the human touch to bring in the smoking gun. If we can do it by remote control, then I’m all for it. But if we can’t-and I do believe that to be the case here-then we should do the job ourselves, even if that means penetration into Iran.” I was sounding more decisive than I actually was. I hoped I wasn’t going too far.
“You do realize that such a mission could get you killed,” said Bob Holliday. It was more of a statement than a question. “Is it worth it just to get even with someone who stole money?”
Though I was initially surprised, I realized with a quick flash of eye contact that he was handing me the ball to score. Maybe working for this guy wasn’t going to be so stiff after all.
“It started as a case of stolen money,” I said. “No longer. This is a case that concerns U.S. national security. For the first time we’ve got evidence to suggest that there could be Iranian sleeper cells in the U.S. If the suspicion is established as fact, do you think their hibernation will continue forever? We tentatively concluded that the Chameleon was assigned by his controllers to steal money. We know from the physical description of the other perpetrators of the banking fraud in the U.S. that there are probably other members of Department 81 in the U.S., because they didn’t look like the Chameleon. Do we know, in case there are additional sleeper cells in the U.S., what their missions are? Do we even know that they were in fact asleep during the past twenty years? Maybe some of the unsolved mysteries during those two decades were connected to one or more of them. Remember, the U.S. is called the Great Satan by the Iranian ayatollahs, while Israel is the Small Satan. The Iranian message is, don’t play with Satan-kill him.”
“So you’re suggesting we get the still-missing information regarding their identity directly in Iran,” said Arnold.
I nodded. “Yes. But I want to make clear that my support for the recommendation for penetration is contingent upon identifying and finding a potential source, or a plan that could provide us with the necessary information or be a conduit to others who could give us that. I’m not suggesting we enter first and then start looking around. I hope you give me credit for not being that unprofessional and careless. We suggested a preliminary plan in our team’s report.”
“Have you also done a risk assessment?” asked Casey.
“No. I was asked to deal with finding the Chameleon. Another team made the assessment. But since you asked, I agree that there are significant risks involved in penetration, even under our proposed plan, and I understand them. If caught, whoever goes there has little or no chance of walking away from it alive. But a more accurate risk assessment must be made once a plan is in place. And we don’t have an approved plan yet.”
I took a deep breath. “But if there’s a good plan, I’m willing to volunteer to be a singleton for that mission.” I knew that I’d fare better as a lone wolf in an operation designed for a single operative. During my military service I’d realized that many would volunteer for a mission until it was time to go. But not here; I was willing.
Benny, who sat next to me, said quietly in Hebrew, “Dan, you’re crazy.”
Everyone else just silently stared at me. We continued discussing various options for three more hours until Kyle said, looking at his watch, “OK, I think we’ve accomplished something today. I ask for your summary operational suggestions by the end of the week. I’m going back to the U.S., and we’ll review the options there. Benny, any suggestions?”
“Not at this time,” said Benny. “I need to talk to the director of the Mossad before we continue. In general, I’ve got his blessing, but when concrete plans are drawn that assume our participation, we must revisit the entire matter.”
When everyone was about to leave, Kyle asked Bob, Benny, Casey, Nicole, and me to stay behind.
“Let’s talk shop,” he said. “For the kind of detail I want to get into, we don’t need the whole assembly. Under what guise do you think an entry into Iran could succeed?”
“There are two ways,” I said. “The legal and the illegal. Well, both are illegal. What I call legal is an entry through the international airport of Tehran, with a cover story.”
“And the illegal entry?”
“Through one of the extremely long borders Iran has with its seven neighbors. Preferably penetration through Turkey, or from Turkmenistan.”
“If penetration isn’t through the international airport, whoever we send has to be physically fit,” said Nicole. “I’m sure you’re aware of the distances, the heights, the lack of transportation, and the rivalry between various factions living in these areas that don’t particularly like snooping strangers, regardless of their nationality.”
“I know that. We submitted a general plan, which may or may not be plausible,” I said. “But just two comments in that regard. One, we don’t have to dwell on that now, because it’s not our mandate to determine means of penetration. The operation departments of the CIA and Mossad are better qualified to recommend that. Also, the Mossad has an excellent long-term relationship with the Kurds, as we heard from Benny in Giverny, so maybe we could have a route here. But for the sake of our mock war game, and as suggested in our plan, let’s assume entry through Tehran’s airport. It has a lot of advantages.”
“Such as what?” asked Bob.
“Such as support for the legend. Let’s say, for example, that our men enter Iran posing as representatives of European companies selling pharmaceuticals to Iranian drug importers. Would their cover story make sense if they’re stopped en route from the Turkish border on the back of a mule, or in a beat-up bus that travels twelve hours, seated among peasants carrying their goats? On top of these problems we must bear in mind that the border areas in the north are infested with informers and part-time spies in numbers greater than those operating in Berlin during the Cold War.”
“I realize that illegal border crossing severely limits the options for a plausible legend,” agreed Kyle.
“OK. That leaves a ‘lawful’ entry as a preferred option. Next, let’s talk about a legend, just for the sake of our discussion, to see if we aren’t too optimistic in the evaluation of risks,” I said.
“Your report suggested several options, including posing as a European businessman. Why?” asked Bob.
“Because they’re preferred as business partners by the Iranians. The idea can fly, provided we can show real links on both sides. A real company in Europe that upon inquiry will confirm that our men actually work for it, and an Iranian company that will confirm prior business contacts and scheduled meetings to discuss some business-can we show that?”
“Based on our problem in Iran regarding lack of human assets, the answer is probably no,” said Kyle. “So we can’t build a legend that will require bidirectional verifiable contacts.”
“Or,” I said, “we build the relationship from scratch with a genuine Iranian company seeking to do business with Europe. But that will take time, since a relationship with an Iranian company that has little past and no track record could be suspicious if you scratch the surface.”
“How about another option we suggested?” said Nicole. “An in de pen dent German TV production company does a Roots -style program and sends a crew to Tehran, together with a European whose father, or rather grandfather, was born in Tehran and later emigrated. Now the son or the grandson looks for the roots of his heritage.”
“I guess you suggested a German company on purpose,” said Benny.
“Right, because of all the European countries, the Germans have a history of good relationships with the Iranians.”
Kyle intervened. “OK, we can work later on these aspects. Let’s assume our men are in Tehran. Then what? How do they find traces of Farhadi and his comrades twenty years after the fact?” He looked at Nicole.
Nicole said, “Ask Dan, I think he’s locked on one option.” “Dan?”
“We suspect that there could be additional graduates of the American School in Tehran who are members of Department 81. That’s the single most identifying common denominator. So why go far? Other than the security services of Iran, nobody knows of that connection. Also, they don’t know what we suspect. Twenty years went by, and we didn’t catch any of them. There are several groups in the U.S., and maybe elsewhere, of former students of the school who like to communicate and reminisce. Why don’t we build a legend around that?”
“You mean bring an American into Tehran to meet his classmates? It’d be tantamount to putting a small live animal in a snake pit,” said Kyle.
“No, not an American necessarily. There were many students who came from other countries while their fathers worked in Iran- Germans, Swiss, French, Italian. Look at the list of students we have. They came from plenty of nationalities. We can recruit a German or a Japanese former student, send him or her to Iran to organize a reunion. Under that pretext, he or she could compile a list of the current addresses of the graduates. And if we narrow the list to the particular age group of the Chameleon, say those born from 1960 to 1962, for example, then we’re likely to get current addresses of some. If we are still left with a group of unknowns, then we can compare that list to our existing list and come up with likely names of Department 81 members.” The more I talked about it, the more I became convinced it might actually work.
“OK,” said Bob. “Suppose you found 60 percent, or even 80 percent of the graduates. Then what?” As always, there was an edge of skepticism in his voice, but I now understood that this only meant he wanted me to talk him into agreeing with what I was saying.
“We get their pictures and vital statistics and ask the victims to identify them. Once we lock on an identified individual as a possible member of Department 81, we look for him in the U.S. We also put him on Interpol’s alert list in case he ever travels outside Iran. Next comes the list of people who, according to their friends or family, no longer live in Iran. That list will be a hot list. If we get addresses from their families, we verify them. It’s absolutely possible that these people emigrated to other countries and are law-abiding citizens. But at the end of the day, we’ll end up with a list of unknowns, graduates of the school whose friends don’t know where they are. That small and exclusive list will be our target for intensified and individualized search. At least we’ll have twenty people on that list, not thousands. The State Department already gave us a short list of unknowns, but beyond that, we have no way of unveiling any other Atashbon members.”
“So what do you suggest we do next?” asked Bob. I realized he took the initiative to ask leading questions to emphasize the initiative of his office in this matter-undoubtedly his first.
I took the bait. “As a first stage, I’d start the process while still in Europe and recruit a graduate of the school to be our unwitting spearhead. Then after a preparatory period, we send him or her for a visit to Tehran to prepare a successful reunion.”
“OK,” said Kyle. “We’ll be in touch.”
I returned to the U.S. two days later and went on vacation with my children for a week in the Ca rib be an islands. Especially since we don’t get to spend as much time together as we’d like to, we crammed a lot of activity into that one week: scuba diving, sailing, swimming, and some great food. During one of several walks on the beach, my mind wandered back to my past. As I looked at my son Tom, nineteen years old, tall and strong, walking beside me, in my mind’s eye I could see myself walking with my own father, long since deceased, on the warm beaches of Tel Aviv. I was a small child of maybe four or five, doing my best to put my tiny feet into his big footprints in the sand, because I looked up to that man as if he were a giant who could do no wrong. I wondered what my own kids thought of me. Were they proud? Had I been a good father to them? Maybe every father has these thoughts now and then. As for me, I rarely have enough time to dwell on such things as I spend my days chasing bad guys across the globe.
Back in my office with a suntan, I immersed myself in my routine work on other cases. The Chameleon had almost slipped out of my mind.
A year went by, and I was sure the plan was shelved, maybe to allow the next generations of moths to consume what was left of the twenty-plus-year-old case. I went to Panama on a routine assignment, and when I traveled to Washington, DC, to attend an office meeting, Esther welcomed me with her warm smile.
“I hope you won’t mind traveling some more,” she said. “Why’s that?”
“I guess you’ll have to. This has just come in.” She handed me a memo. Top Secret. Interim decision has been made. Please report within four days to Apartment 6B, Margaretenstrasse 153A, Vienna, A-1050 Austria, for training. Be prepared to be away from the U.S. for at least thirty days. Casey Bauer.
Esther gave me a travel folder with a passport. “You’re leaving in three days.”
I opened the bio page. My new name was Anton Spitzer.
So, they hadn’t given the moths or the maggots a chance. But what exactly was “training”? And for what? Had someone forgotten to copy me on the memo for some operation? I couldn’t ask Bob-he was out of the country. I called Casey’s secretary.
“I can’t discuss it,” she said cryptically. “Mr. Bauer has asked that you be there. Once you’re TDY’ed to us for an assignment, I believe you’re expected to take instructions from Mr. Bauer.”
Formally she was right, but I wanted to be informal. What was going on? With imposed confidentiality, and with no one to call, I answered, “Please ask Mr. Bauer to call me. I need to make arrangements for my children and my dog. I also have pending matters in my office that need to be assigned to others while I’m gone.”
The next day I received Bob Holliday’s note, dictated over the phone to Esther. “Dan, please follow your instructions. It’ll be clearer once you’re out there. Bob.”
I packed my bags and flew to London as originally scheduled. At the airport an Agency representative took my Anton Spitzer passport and gave me an airline ticket to Vienna and a Canadian passport carrying the name Ian Pour Laval. I opened the passport to look at Ian’s photo. I saw some similarities between us, but I definitely didn’t look exactly like him. I boarded an Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna. Was the lack of communication with me a result of bureaucratic apathy? Or maybe the nature of the assignment was so secretive that it couldn’t be discussed over the phone, even the secure phone? On second thought, I concluded that both reasons were probably valid and could coexist. Nonetheless, from a simple human-relations point of view, this was an excellent way to alienate someone.