The Chameleon Conspiracy dg-3

by Haggai Harmon

  “You’re on your own,” said David.

  “I know that.” It’s the same old gambit: official refusal and a silent nod. It had worked fine thus far, because I’d been careful not to break Swiss law, laid low, and limited my activities to brain power. And I never broke the eleventh commandment of the trade: Though Shalt Not Get Caught.

  The flight to Zurich was uneventful, except for the nosy and noisy lady beside me who insisted I meet her niece, who she swore had lost weight since the photo she flashed had been taken.

  I checked into the Canton Park hotel, a cozy three-star hotel in the center of town. On the following morning I went to Tempelhof Bank near Bahnhofplatz in the heart of Zurich. The street-level entrance was palatial, framed by marble columns and lions. The inside was just as majestic, laid with Persian rugs, antique furniture, and a seven-foot flower arrangement. A uniformed blonde lady approached me.

  “Gruezi,” she said. She switched to English, seeing the puzzled look on my face. “Welcome, how can I help?”

  “I need some information concerning investment in foreign currencies.”

  “Certainly,” she said. “Please be seated. I’ll have a specialist help you.”

  A moment later, we were joined by a slim young man with rimless glasses.

  “Hello, I’m Manfred von Wilhelm,” he said, and we shook hands.

  “I’m Peter Wooten, an attorney from the United States,” I told him. Two out of three accurate pieces of information wasn’t bad. Peter Wooten was my frequent alias. The name, though, is an alias I use when I need to hide my identity from the opposition, and sometimes even from a foreign government as well.

  “I’m exploring for my client-a major private U.S. investor-the option of investing in foreign currencies.”

  “You came to the right place,” said Wilhelm. “Currency transactions have been our forte for many years. Swiss integrity, professionalism, and absolute discretion in protecting our customers are our bywords. May I ask who recommended us?”

  “My client talked about Harrington T. Whitney-Davis, a consultant who had assisted a friend of his with satisfactory results.”

  “Many consultants recommend our services, and I’m sure Mr. Harrington T. Whitney-Davis did the right thing when he mentioned our name.”

  “Good, I hope to be associated with Mr. Whitney-Davis as well. Can you arrange that?”

  He hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

  “Maybe I came to the wrong bank,” I said cautiously. “I want to make sure about Mr. Harrington T. Whitney-Davis; I don’t think it should be confidential. I’m asking about a business association, not about your bank’s clients.”

  Slightly annoyed, he picked up his phone and dialed a three-digit number. He exchanged a few sentences in Swiss German, which I found difficult to follow, but the name Harrington T. Whitney-Davis was mentioned twice.

  He hung up. “Well, my colleague just told me that years ago, Mr. Harrington T. Whitney-Davis was suggesting our services to his clients, as an outside consultant. I’m sorry I wasn’t aware of it, since I came to work for the bank only last year. What is your client interested in? Speculative trading? Hedging against currency fluctuations to guarantee proceeds from an export transaction, or to safeguard against currency-exchange-rate hikes if he’s importing goods?”

  Forget about the transactions, I wanted to say, let’s talk about Whitney-Davis. But recognizing that any additional reference to him would arouse suspicion, I reluctantly moved on. I could revisit the issue after Wilhelm invested more time and effort in trying to sell me on the bank’s services. The more time he invested, the more effort he’d make not to alienate me.

  “He wants to speculate,” I said. “$10 to $20 million, for starters.”

  This didn’t seem to impress Wilhelm. If he hadn’t dealt with bigger fish, he certainly wanted to give that impression. Perhaps I should have mentioned a bigger amount.

  “Would your client be giving the instructions? Or would he want us to trade for him?”

  “Due to time differences, I think he’d prefer your experts to do it. Tell me how’s it done.”

  He spent the next fifteen minutes explaining the investment mechanism. I gave him a gracious smile and a nod.

  “Earlier you mentioned confidentiality. This is something that my client insists upon.”

  “Swiss law and our bank’s rules assure that,” he said.

  “What about communication? How does he contact you?”

  “On the phone, unless there’s a problem for him in America,” he said smoothly, looking at my face through his rimless glasses. “Or he could fax or e-mail us. We can also hold his mail until he comes to Switzerland to collect it.”

  “Do you have a U.S.-based correspondent bank? My client may want to use that link, rather than go through international communication lines.”

  “I understand, sir. In fact, we can use McHanna Associates in New York. They aren’t a bank, but rather a service company, and I’m told they’re very experienced.”

  “That sounds good,” I said.

  “With your client’s written authorization, they could handle all matters for your client without any problem.”

  “Including receiving mail, like your monthly statements?” “Of course.”

  “By the way,” I said casually. “Where can I find Whitney-Davis? My client was so impressed with his professional abilities.”

  He frowned and dialed his phone again and exchanged a few sentences.

  “We aren’t sure,” he said. “You may want to contact McHanna Associates in New York. They may know more about him.”

  Ah, but McHanna had already told me that he couldn’t remember whether he’d heard from Whitney-Davis since his South Dakota scam in the mid 1980s.

  I returned to my hotel with a briefcase full of glossy brochures and application forms. Discovering a current business relationship between the former manager of a savings bank victimized by Whitney-Davis and a Swiss bank that appeared to run a legitimate business was peculiar but not earthshaking. There were, however, two very interesting findings. First, McHanna hadn’t only lied to me. He didn’t seem to hold a grudge against Whitney-Davis and now, in fact, could be in contact with him. I was puzzled by that finding. I had just heard that Whitney-Davis continued to use that name years after the scam. But the FBI had told us that the name had disappeared from all credit-reporting agencies. And now it had surfaced again? It was highly unusual.

  Second, McHanna Associates was apparently helping U.S. residents avoid the prying eyes of the U.S. government by accepting and keeping their Swiss banking correspondence. That could be considered aiding and abetting money laundering, if the proceeds deposited by the client were the fruit of a crime. But at that moment I was too frustrated, tired, and hungry to follow up on these promising leads or think about the resurrection of Whitney-Davis’s name. The idea that man could live on bread alone turned out to be all wet. I was hungry and needed a beer. Unfortunately, the meal I ended up getting consisted of a tuna sandwich and a local beer that tasted as if it had gone through a horse first.

  I hooked up my laptop to my room’s high-speed Internet connection and sent Esther the efficient office admin an encrypted e-mail: Please check with the New York State Banking Department whether McHanna Associates need a license to act as a liaison for a Swiss bank in currency transactions for U.S. citizens. If such a license is necessary, please see if one was issued to McHanna. Also, ask the FBI field office in Manhattan whether there’s an ongoing investigation regarding that company’s possible involvement in money laundering. Finally, check if McHanna ever filed any tax returns listing Harrington T. Whitney-Davis as an employee, or engaged him as an in de pen dent contractor.

  The latter two questions were legitimate, but the chances that the FBI would discuss the first question, even though we were both agencies of the U.S. government, were slim to none. As to the tax returns, the IRS could not, under federal law, share that information without a court order. Nei
ther the FBI nor the IRS were the bad guys in this bureaucratic nightmare. They had to maintain a stringent procedure for information exchange. But maybe Esther, with her quiet demeanor, could achieve what I couldn’t with my big mouth and aggressive attitude.

  I had a free evening. But Zurich at night is as exciting as having a warm beer with an overly talkative blind date you agreed to meet during a temporary moment of insanity. Swiss TV isn’t any better. I called my children and went to sleep.

  In the morning, I had barely shaken myself awake when I turned on my laptop computer. There was an incoming encrypted e-mail from Esther: There’s no need for a license from the New York State Banking Department if the company isn’t doing any banking activities in New York, such as taking deposits or making loans to the public. Providing liaison services alone requires no license. As for the FBI, I received an evasive answer regarding any investigation of McHanna Associates. The IRS says officially that they can’t help us, but unofficially I was led to understand that Harrington T. Whitney-Davis’s name never appeared on McHanna Associates’ tax filings, although it’s possible that an alias was used. Please let me know if you need anything else. Esther.

  I returned to New York. Unenthusiastically, I pulled out the files again. I checked the names of the perpetrators in the remaining eight cases. By now, what I found didn’t surprise me; it was all so obvious that I almost expected it. All eight men had left the U.S. in 1980 or 1981. Their respective names had resurfaced briefly, one with each of the banking or other scams perpetrated. Then each had vanished again. Since I discovered that the name of Whitney-Davis resurfaced, I ran a check on all other names to see if we had a wholesale revival. But the answer came as expected. No. No resurgence of any other name.

  I had a hunch that the suspected perpetrators’ disappearances weren’t coincidental. There was a clear pattern. Since none of the men had any meaningful criminal record, or a troubled past, I didn’t suspect that they had cooperated with the thefts of their identities, although I couldn’t rule that out altogether. I had to decide on a direction. But I had no idea which way to turn.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  There were additional questions I wanted to ask McHanna about his contacts with Whitney-Davis, but I decided against it. The information I had received in Switzerland was, at best, just raw intelligence, and confronting McHanna before I had hard evidence could be damaging.

  I called David Stone. He had always been a good sounding board for my queries. David’s physical appearance as a typical absentminded university professor with profuse white hair and eyeglasses slipping to the tip of his nose was misleading. Although nearing retirement, he was very alert, and all brain. He was always the first to come to the office and the last to leave, the exact opposite of a lot of guys in his position, who are just there to mark time until their pension kicks in. I tried to imagine what David would do in retirement, but it seemed so out of character for him that no clear picture materialized in my mind’s eye.

  “Let me put you on speaker,” he said. “Bob Holliday is also here, and I want him to get involved.”

  “OK, I’m facing an interesting question. Who would know that a bunch of apparently unrelated young American men in their early twenties left the United States at about the same time, leaving no trace behind them?”

  “There are many young men, Americans and other nationals, who take off and never return to their homelands. That’s no news,” David answered.

  “I think there’s at least one common denominator to all these cases,” I continued, “but the FBI takes it even a step further. They think all the scams were perpetrated by the same person.”

  “I saw that. Their conclusion is based on paper-thin evidence. You know that from a false premise, any conclusion can be drawn. I tend to think that the FBI found itself in a cul-de-sac, or it wouldn’t have off-loaded the file on us.” David sounded tired. “I didn’t get back to you on this because I had no answers either. So maybe you shouldn’t follow their way of thinking, or you’ll end up where they ended-facing a brick wall.”

  “This is strange, now that you mention it, David,” I said. “Because it goes along with my line of thinking. If what I’ve discovered so far checks out, then the entire theoretical structure the FBI is working from will collapse. They had just one chink in the armor. Maybe we don’t have Albert C. Ward III assuming eleven aliases. Maybe we’ve got ourselves a Mr. Anonymous with twelve aliases, including one as Albert C. Ward III.”

  “I hear you,” said David, digesting my words. “Anything to support it?”

  “Ward had a pronounced stutter. None of the imposters is described in the files as having that disability. On the contrary. The suspect in each of the eleven indicted cases actually has been pretty articulate,” I said, gaining confidence with my theory.

  “Go on,” said David, sounding interested.

  I picked up speed. “Let’s establish, just for the sake of our little discussion here, that twenty-year-olds couldn’t have pulled off the scams, because they weren’t sophisticated enough, and because the little evidence we’ve gathered shows the perpetrators appeared to be much older. Therefore, let’s suppose that whoever assumed the identity of four, and maybe even all twelve, young American men made a hit on a bank or on un-suspecting investors and ran with the money. Now, I don’t even have this con artist’s picture, if Ward’s identity was also stolen. The yearbook picture and the photos that Donald Peterson, the retired school principal, sent me were definitely of Ward. But apparently the FBI never asked any of the victims whether the scam artist’s photo was in a photo array that included that year-book photo of Ward. If my target wasn’t Ward after all, then whom was I chasing? I’m back to square one, hunting a single ghost or a cemetery’s worth.”

  “Dan, it’s Bob. Didn’t you just tell us that you think the FBI was wrong, and even the person calling himself Ward was an imposter who assumed Ward’s identity, and not Ward himself? So if the FBI was wrong on that, why wouldn’t they be wrong on the entire concept? Take your idea even further.”

  “How?”

  “How do we know that the twelve cases are connected? Maybe just two or three or none at all,” said Bob.

  “The FBI said so.”

  “They could be wrong, you know. You’ve just suggested it,” added David.

  “Anyway, the FBI’s conclusion isn’t proof, but assumption,” concluded Bob.

  “OK,” I said. “Although we’ve enough doubts concerning the FBI’s conclusion, we also must make assumptions that could turn out to be just as baseless.”

  “Like what?” asked Bob.

  “Like the one that seems most logical at this time, and take it from there.”

  “Fine,” said David. “How about that? Assuming that all of the cases are connected, who could mastermind such an operation?”

  “If it went beyond the one-person-crime-spree pattern we see in the usual identity thefts, I’d see a criminal organization with international activities, or some other structured body.”

  “Any basis for that?” Bob asked, more in curiosity than as a challenge.

  “No proof, just my hunch.”

  “Why?” Clearly, like David, he wasn’t the kind of guy who would settle for easy answers.

  “Because it involves young American men, none of whom apparently knew any of the others, who first left the country at about the same time, each for reasons of his own. Only after they left the country did the common denominator kick in: their identities were stolen. The first step of the conspiracy didn’t start here. It started somewhere, anywhere, wherever these guys lost their passports. Take Ward. He was traveling in Africa and Asia without known incident until he stopped writing his friends here. Since we don’t know where the others went, it could have happened anywhere. But the fact remains-their passports were also taken. Therefore, my conclusion is that an organization that operates in more than one location could be behind it. Besides, why limit ourselves to thinking it was a criminal enterprise?
Maybe there’s a foreign power or a terrorist organization behind this.”

  “Any basis for that?” asked David.

  “Not at this time, but need I remind you that we lost our innocence on nine eleven? Things that weren’t plausible earlier are a reality now.” I didn’t want to elaborate, but in my mind was my Mossad training concerning planting sleeper agents in target countries. Those passports could now be used by foreign agents operating in any country that welcomes U.S. citizens. These could be used for far more dangerous purposes than money siphoning. I had no proof, just a hunch that I registered in my mind to develop later.

  David brought me back to reality, which he was very good at. In fact, I sometimes felt as if he were my anchor, always keeping me tethered only to the facts at hand. Yet one more thing I was going to miss when he was gone. “Maybe the passports were taken in just one location by a sophisticated scam artist?”

  “Sure,” I agreed. “That’s also a possibility.” But I suspected that David’s new theory was more farfetched than mine.

  Bob developed the idea further. “Have you thought of the possibility that these young men simply sold their passports to finance their trips, claimed they were lost, and applied for new ones?”

  “I did, and so did the FBI. The State Department told the Bureau that none of these men applied for a replacement passport. Besides, if all they did was sell their passport, why have they disappeared for good?”

  “Did you investigate whether these guys had more than one citizenship? They could be selling their U.S. passports and continuing to travel with their foreign passports.” Bob’s tone was per sis tent. He seemed unwilling to consider my speculations unless I could prove that I’d considered every possibility. I realized he was only doing his job, and so far it hadn’t reached the point where I found it to be irritating.

  “No go. If any of them had a foreign passport, his entry into the U.S. with that passport would have been recorded, and it wasn’t. Therefore, the genuine Ward left the U.S. only once and never returned. His passport and identity were given to someone already in the U.S., or who had initially entered the U.S. with a different passport under a different name, and then took Ward’s identity. It is possible that either all the additional passports were delivered to that someone while he was already in the U.S., or they were brought into the U.S. with him. That is, if all these cases are connected.”