The Chameleon Conspiracy dg-3

by Haggai Harmon

  “Yes, your help with Iran. Can you run the name Bahman Hossein Rashtian and see what you can find in your database?”

  “Is that all?” Benny knew me too well.

  “Nope.”

  “Is the next request off the record?”

  “Off the record, for now.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just checking things, and haven’t got clearance for the idea yet. I’m developing a conviction that to crack this case we need to employ human intelligence, and I’ve got some ideas on that.”

  “And you say that you haven’t asked the Agency about it yet?”

  “Not yet, but I will very soon. They’ll never answer anything without a gazillion procedures. Anyway, you heard during our conference a hint that they had lost their permanent station in Iran.”

  “How will human intelligence in that particular case help?” asked Benny. “And where?”

  “I had some talks with the NSA. Even with all their gadgets and sophistication, their help is potentially limited. Remember what Alex, our Mossad Academy instructor, said about recruiting human sources. ‘Basically there are three ways to recruit an “asset”-a human source. Do it when your source is outside your target country, and you have a very limited selection to choose from, or you can travel to the lion’s den and pick your prey. The third category are people who travel out for brief periods, to conferences, for example. They are often desirable targets.’ In our case, the people with access to the information we want don’t travel. We have to go to them. It’s the logical thing to do. Computer surveillance and hacking are good, but nothing can substitute for personal presence.”

  Benny didn’t answer at once. He just looked at me pensively, and said, “I think so too, hence my presentation at the conference. I think you should be ready to answer questions regarding the intelligence rationale of doing it. Show a raw plan, the risks, the probabilities, and the potential hunting field to recruit sources. Let’s say that we have our respective agencies’ consent to go ahead. Then what? Even after careful planning and logistics, we must have a head start while we are still here.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that the first task will be to identify potential local sources before commencing with recruiting efforts. That takes time. But sending an agent cold turkey to Iran without preparatory groundwork will not only take much more time, it’s significantly riskier.”

  “Granted,” I said. “So we’ve identified potential targets of recruitment. Now we need to move in. Debriefing exiled Iranians in Europe is good, but your selection is limited, and you never know who you’re talking to and what the guy’s doing in Europe to begin with. Could be dangerous. Maybe he’s after you to bilk you, or worse, to entrap you.”

  “Dan, bear in mind that with the kind of Iranian police supervision on every citizen and certainly on visiting foreigners, it’s going to be difficult to return in one piece, even if we succeed in the intelligence-gathering effort. Unless there’s a risk-free, maverick plan that will yield immediate results, I think we should concentrate on sources outside Iran.”

  “I agree,” I said. “But doing nothing will get no results as well. I’m raising the issue so we can brainstorm the option and start looking for potential direction and resources. That’s what I mean when I say penetration is unavoidable. Obviously, we need to jump through many hoops to get initial approvals and then do substantial preparatory work.”

  “Still, it’s a suicide mission,” said Benny. “If we’re pressed for time.”

  I knew Benny wasn’t hyping things, but I thought of the half-full glass. “The fact that twenty years have passed could, in an odd way, make it easier in some security aspects. The time passed makes it less risky.”

  “Dan, these people suspect even their own shadows. I hear that the diet in the Iranian prisons isn’t something you would ask for a second serving of, even if you’re very hungry. I don’t even mention the Iranian treatment of spies or the thickness of the noose.”

  “Benny, if you don’t want to go hunting, don’t complain if we eat the catch without even offering you a dry bone. It’s not as if we’re gonna board a plane tomorrow or cross the border on a camel or a mule. If action is planned for next year, today is the time to talk about it.”

  “Dan, talk to me when you have something on your plate other than the urge to succeed.”

  He had been tough, but not unreasonable, and he hadn’t dismissed my ideas out of hand.

  I returned to the safe apartment. Nicole gave me that look reserved for a husband coming in late at night with a lipstick stain on his collar. “Where have you been?”

  I shrugged. The days I’d had to report to anyone but my boss about my movements had passed the minute the judge signed the divorce decree. That was a long time ago, but sometimes it felt as though it were just last week.

  “We’ve got results from Dr. Feldman at the NSA. He received the Agency’s formal request for assistance, and here are the initial results.”

  Nicole held a one-page document. “We may be on to something,” she said cautiously, and read from the document: Bahman Hossein Rashtian, forty-four, is a senior officer of Department 81, an ultrasecret unit of Iranian security services in Tehran. He’s a Shiite Muslim and a fanatic follower of Ayatollah Khomeini’s doctrines. Soon after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the Iranian ayatollah in charge of state security started Department 81 for several covert purposes, including training and sending agents to infiltrate the United States. Further information shall be provided as additional search is refined.

  “So is Department 81 the enigmatic Atashbon?” I wondered.

  “Could be,” said Nicole. “Or maybe Department 81 was a provisional name indicating the year it was started? But no, not if it was started soon after the ’79 Revolution. It’s all guesswork.”

  I called Casey Bauer on the secure phone and reported the finding. “I’ve also asked Benny Friedman to run a check on that name. Can I share the information I’ve just received on Rashtian with Benny?”

  Casey thought for a moment. “Yes, you may, but need I mention that you shouldn’t disclose who provided us with the information?”

  “No need. I know the rules.”

  I called Benny. “Are you still in Paris?”

  “Yes, what’s up?” Judging from his tone, he was no longer in a bad mood.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Meet me in one hour at Cafe Rosebud, 11 rue Delambre, in the 14th arrondissement.”

  “Another fancy place?”

  “Not at all. In fact, it’s where Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre escaped to for private conversations.”

  As I walked into the cafe, Benny was sipping coffee. We sat in the corner. “Anything new on Rashtian?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I was about to call you about that.” “Then tell me,” I suggested.

  “Bahman Hossein Rashtian is an Iranian security-services officer. We’ve information showing he was orchestrating penetration of his agents into the U.S. by using false identities stolen from young American tourists.”

  “Department 81,” I muttered.

  “So you already know,” said Benny.

  “I know very little about that,” I conceded. “This is a big hunch based on small intelligence.”

  “Go ahead,” said Benny eagerly.

  “I believe that unsuspecting Americans were either lured into Tehran or were visiting neighboring states when their passports and other identification documents were taken.”

  “Right,” said Benny, picking up the information flow. “And then they were videotaped by Bahman Hossein Rashtian’s interrogators telling their life stories and giving minute details about their families, friends, places of study, and work. Thereafter, they were probably executed and buried in unmarked graves.”

  “So you support my speculation?” I asked curiously. Benny nodded.

  “That son of a bitch,” I mumbled. “I know you’ll never answer me in a million
years, but just in case, how did you establish that?”

  “Refugee interrogation,” said Benny curtly. He didn’t add other information, and I knew I shouldn’t press the issue. He had told me what he could. Obviously, I wanted to know if he had any information on Rashtian’s trained agents, and whether they were in fact successful in infiltrating the U.S., and why they were planted there in the first place. But knowing Benny, I was certain that if he had that information, he’d trade it with the CIA in exchange for information that Israel needed. The information was vital. Sleeper cells tend to wake up at one point and carry out a mission. It could be financial fraud, but more likely something more ominous and heinous than just stealing money. These days the writing was on the wall, and it said terror. When, where, and how? I had no clue, but I felt the urgency to find out.

  I returned to the safe apartment and sent an encrypted message to Casey Bauer. Hours later a response came through the system: “Dan, I’m arriving in Paris tomorrow afternoon with Casey Bauer. Bob Holliday.”

  “Before they come, I think we need something more solid than the hunches and rumors we have,” said Nicole.

  “Like what?”

  “Like stronger evidence on the identity of the Chameleon.” I stopped myself from asking her if she was nuts. The U.S. had been trying to find him for over twenty years, and now she wanted to solve the mystery in a day? Instead, I kept silent for a few minutes.

  Then I stood up, grabbed my head with both hands, and exclaimed, “Of course. I think we can try that avenue.”

  “What avenue?

  “We’ve got the Chameleon’s fingerprints. I lifted them off his cup in Australia.”

  “No, you have the prints of one Herbert Goldman,” she said defiantly.

  “We already went over this,” I said, without losing my temper. “The guy in Australia is the Chameleon. I have it on authority from Benny, and we’ve got his prints.”

  “And you’re going to match them against what?” asked Nicole. I was at first defensive, but it was a valid question.

  “I take it that the FBI had determined that the Chameleon wasn’t Albert Ward, because they couldn’t establish a match of the prints I lifted at the hospital with any prints in their database, including Ward’s. So I suspect there’s no point in asking them the same question again.”

  “And we suspect he isn’t Herbert Goldman either, because his wife told that to the FBI,” said Nicole.

  “Right. I tend to believe her because she was the one to expose him in the first place. Why would she lie here?” I asked.

  “So we’re back at square one. Against what database are you going to match the prints you lifted?” Nicole demanded.

  “The Iranians’,” I snapped, without having any reason or basis to support what I’d said, nor any feasible plan on how to achieve it.

  “Well,” said Nicole. “We can ask NSA to do that.” If she was joking, it didn’t sound like she was. And when no cynical smile followed, I became convinced that I wasn’t the only daydreamer in the room. There were officially two of us.

  I called Dr. Ted Feldman in Menwith Hill, using the secure phone.

  “Can you match fingerprints against the Iranian security service’s database?”

  His response was noncommittal. “Send me what you have. Make sure we receive it through your agency’s liaison office, and we’ll see what we can do.”

  “I’ll ask the FBI to send you the samples I gave them. That, together with samples the Australian Federal Police took and sent separately.”

  “That’s even better.”

  The following evening, Casey Bauer walked into the safe apartment with Bob Holliday.

  “Any answer on the prints yet?” I asked Nicole, hoping to give my new boss a welcome gift.

  “Let me check,” said Nicole and went to the adjacent communication room. Ten minutes later she returned with a computer printout. “It’s from the FBI,” she said. “The encrypted message just came in.”

  She read the summary at the top of the page: “The prints received from Dan Gordon, as well as those received directly from the Australian Police, matched the prints received yesterday from NSA marked as taken from Kourosh Alireza Farhadi, DOB August 19, 1960. All three sets of prints match each other. They were all taken from the same person.”

  “That’s great!” said Casey, in an unexpected burst of joy. “Read out the whole thing!”

  “That part of the report came from NSA through Langley,” said Nicole, and read the text. “Top Secret/Eyes Only/Sensitive Compartmented Information.” She raised her eyes and said, “Before any of you read this report, you must sign a Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, a Standard Form 312.” She handed us copies.

  I read the form. In it I acknowledged that I was aware that the unauthorized disclosure of classified information by me could cause irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation, and that I would never divulge classified information to an unauthorized person. I further acknowledged that I would never divulge classified information unless I had officially verified that the recipient was authorized by the United States to receive it. Additionally, I agreed that, were I to be uncertain about the classification status of information, I needed to confirm from an authorized official that the information was unclassified before I could disclose it.

  I signed. So did the others.

  Nicole continued reading it. “This report is based on documents contained in Farhadi’s file, including a limited number of recently dated reports he had submitted.”

  Farhadi’s file? Did NSA experts hack the Iranian security service’s computer? My level of appreciation for Dr. Feldman and his team skyrocketed.

  Nicole continued reading. “Please note that the most recent report Farhadi filed in Tehran was on December 13, 2003.”

  “Guys, look at the date,” I intervened. “I saw the Chameleon in a Sydney hospital bed on August 17, 2004. Based on what we just heard, and provided that all the reports were kept in one place and intercepted by NSA, it could mean that the Chameleon was either infrequent in his reports to Tehran, or that he simply decided he had done enough for Tehran, and now it was time to take care of himself. I guess from now on I’ll have to use his real name of Farhadi,” I said in feigned sorrow.

  “Not so fast,” said Holliday, making sure he retained command. “This isn’t the end of it. He might have used additional identities, so for now, let’s stick to the name Chameleon. Let Nicole read out the entire report, so we can all have it at the same time,” he added, realizing how eager we all were. “Maybe there’s an answer to that in the narrative.”

  Nicole read on: Kourosh Alireza Farhadi, an ethnic Iranian, was born in Tabriz, in northern Iran, on August 9, 1953. His father, Ghorbanali, was a successful businessman in the rug trade; Kourosh Alireza Farhadi’s mother, Fariba, was a homemaker. Kourosh had two siblings, Vahraz and Rad, born 1957 and 1959, respectively. In September 1959 Kourosh was sent to live with his paternal grandparents in Tehran so that he could study at the American School. One year after his graduation in 1978, Kourosh was drafted to join Department 81.

  Nicole folded the paper and shredded it, but held on to the three additional pages of the report.

  “Aha, we’re getting closer to him,” I said, realizing that this was in de pen dent confirmation of the info Benny had given me.

  “And how exactly do you find Farhadi?” asked Bauer.

  It was time to reclaim my lost face and my smeared reputation.

  “At the time, I reported from Australia that I had found the Chameleon in a hospital bed. But I was called on the carpet by David when he got an FBI report refuting my finding. The truth of the matter is that I didn’t make a mistake in identifying the Chameleon in the first place. I had found the right guy. The person I saw in Australia was the Chameleon,” I said, and picked up the pages. “Now, now we have his name-Kourosh Alireza Farhadi. The FBI must have compared the fingerprints they had in their
database of the genuine Albert Ward with the prints of the guy in the hospital bed.”

  “You mean the FBI’s lab goofed?” asked Casey. “I’m lost here. And you still say you got the right Albert C. Ward III?” Casey was a very straightforward guy. He’d been in this business too long to be embarrassed when he didn’t understand something. He wasn’t the kind of man who saw asking questions as a sign of weakness, and I liked that about him.

  “No, the FBI lab was right. The prints didn’t match, because they were taken from two different people. When you steal the identity of a person, you can take almost everything he has, but not his fingerprints. The perpetrator of the eleven fraud cases was never Albert C. Ward III to begin with. That’s why the prints didn’t match-because they were compared with the prints of Albert C. Ward, an innocent young American. The fundamental reason that the FBI failed to make the connection is simple. He was an unremarkable young man who had no family to complain when he went missing, and unfortunately, there are an awful lot out there like him. The Iranian imposter apparently didn’t use the Ward alias in committing any of the banking scams. The Iranian devised a double-tier buffer. First, steal the identity of Albert C. Ward. Then assume another alias to carry out the scam. That way, there’s no reason for the FBI to know about him in the first place. But based on what we just heard, the identity of Albert C. Ward III was stolen and adopted by an imposter who conned banks using one or more stolen identities. The real Albert C. Ward III is still missing, probably dead in Iran, and so are the other individuals whose passports and identities were stolen by that imposter, or else by someone associated with him.” I paused. “We should also leave the door open to the possibility that there could be a few imposters.” There was silence in the room.

  I continued. “This report confirms that I actually saw the Chameleon in Sydney. So instead of faded pictures from the late 1970s of people who aren’t the Chameleon, we’ve got a positive identification and a recent location for him.”