Haggai Harmon - The Chameleon Conspiracy

When we arrived at the hotel, I checked in, threw my luggage on the floor, and ran out the door. I was dog tired, but I hadn’t come to Sydney to rest. I had to see Albert C. Ward III right away.

Manhattan, New York, September 11, 2004

Crushed by the fact that I had been wrong about Ward, I had to find a new bearing. I paced through the hallway outside my office. If the man in the hospital bed wasn’t Albert Ward, then who was he? His denials didn’t impress me. I’d seen con men in action, and wasn’t about to be convinced by this guy. On the other hand, there was firm scientific proof that he wasn’t Ward. Had I picked on an innocent person? I still had no idea of what the missing link could be. What about Otis’s faxed letter connecting Ward with Goldman? Why wasn’t that enough? But until the FBI and the Australian Federal Police cleared this matter up, I needed to move on. The solution had to be in the file. But where?

I sat down at my desk and opened the file for the umpteenth time. First, I read my notes taken during my conversation with the high school principal. Ward had wanted to be a photographer for National Geographic Magazine. Maybe I should see if he had ever made good on that dream.

“It’d take time to search the archives dating back to 1980,” said a very polite woman when I called National Geographic. “Not all our freelance photographers are included in our computer database. If the person you’re looking for sold us a photograph many years back, a manual search would have to be performed.”

“Thanks, but can you please look to see whether his name appears on your computer database?” I asked. It was an absurdly long shot-lots of kids have dreams-but I had nothing to lose, and I could get lucky.

“Let me see. You said his name was Albert Ward?”

“Yes, the third. Albert C. Ward III.”

I heard her clicking on her computer keyboard. “Yes,” she said. “I think I found something. There’s a series of photographs taken by a person with that name during a safari in South Africa in 1981.”

“That’s great. Is there an address listed for him?”

“Yes, we sent him a check to Comfort Student Hostel, Sandton Square, P.O. Box 97848, Johannesburg, South Africa.”

Finally I was moving up in time, although just one year. At least I had an address overseas. “Thank you so much. Can you transfer me to accounting please?”

“Accounting, Lisa speaking,” said a woman cordially.

“I would like to know how a freelance photographer named Albert C. Ward III cashed a check paid to him by your magazine in 1981.”

“And you are?”

“Dan Gordon, U.S. Department of Justice.”

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to subpoena these records. I hope you understand,” she said. “We must protect the privacy of our vendors.”

“No problem,” I said. “I’ll get you a subpoena.”

Two days later I sent her a subpoena, and a week later I had my response. Albert C. Ward III was paid $315 with a check. A copy of the check’s front and back was attached. I looked at the back of the check. The check was deposited into account number AZ334465 at the First African Bank, Sandton Square, Johannesburg, South Africa.

The next step was to get my hands on that bank’s records. But a U.S. subpoena would do no good in South Africa; I’d need a South African court order for that. Just the thought of going through the necessary bureaucratic maze made me dizzy. But first, I had to check if the account was still active. I called our accounting department and asked them to issue a check in the amount of $75 made out to Albert C. Ward III, drawn on “Department B’s” bank account. That was our code name for the bank account of a limited liability company we had incorporated in Wyoming, whose shareholders or directors couldn’t be traced.

In an accompanying letter printed on our dummy corporation’s letterhead and addressed to the bank, I wrote, “Please deposit the attached royalty payment check into account AZ334465 of Mr. Albert C. Ward III. We’ve syndicated onetime reprint rights for Mr. Ward’s photographs, which we acquired years ago, to a U.S.-based publishing company for use in a wildlife calendar. Our letter to Mr. Ward was returned by mail. We discovered this bank account through the details on the check we initially paid Mr. Ward. We trust this payment shall be promptly deposited into Mr. Ward’s account.” I scribbled a signature, put the check in an envelope, put a stamp on it instead of using our office postage machine, and sent it to the bank in South Africa.

Ten days later, I checked with accounting. Our check had just cleared. Accounting obtained a copy of both sides of our check. The stamp on the back of the check read, “Deposit to account,” and a handwritten number was added: AZ334465.

I called the First African Bank branch manager in South Africa. “I’m the photography editor of Wild Nature and Adventure magazine, based in Denver, Colorado,” I said. “A while ago we purchased several photographs from your customer, Mr. Albert C. Ward III, but we lost contact with him. We now have an important job assignment for him. Would you kindly let me have his address, or even better ask him to get in touch with us?”

Maybe banking secrecy laws didn’t travel all the way to South Africa, I hoped.

“Let me look,” he said. “We don’t seem to have a current address either. I see that our statements were returned by the postal service.”

“I have Comfort Student Hostel, Sandton Square, P.O. Box 97848, Johannesburg, South Africa,” I said, trying to inject more credibility into my cover story.

“That’s the address we also have,” said the manager. “Well, it’s a hostel. Obviously people don’t stay there too long.”

“Maybe you can help me in another way,” I said, stretching his courtesy. “Maybe you can see if he continued to use his account by drawing checks or making deposits. We really love his work, and the job offer I’m about to make is very lucrative. I know he’d appreciate any help you could offer.”

“Glad to help,” said the manager. After a moment he said, “We have recent activity in the form of a check in a small amount that came from the U.S.” That was our check.

“Anything other than that?”

“Well, nothing, in the account, but we did receive an inquiry from the Peninsula Bank branch in Islamabad, Pakistan, asking to authenticate Mr. Ward’s signature.”

He gave me the branch’s address.

Although the lead was promising, I wasn’t elated. It was almost twenty years old, and searching a nation of over 160 million for a tourist who had last visited it two decades ago was hardly a plausible proposal. Still, I had to try.

I knew how to hunt, but this prey’s footsteps in Pakistan were long washed away by time. There had to be a way. I was hungry for the kill, but where could I start? I couldn’t fail again. Usually the last place you look for something is where it was the whole time. I called my boss and took a deep breath. “David, on a strong hunch and a thin lead, I’m taking my investigation to Pakistan.”

“How thin is the lead?”

“Like sliced salami, but it’s the only thing I have. Nonetheless, maybe I can develop it further from there.”

“You know the routine,” said David, intuitively trusting my instincts, even after I’d told him how paper-thin my lead was. “Travel authorizations. The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan and the Pakistani government have to give you the go ahead.”

Under the federal “Chief of Mission” statute, federal government employees could operate in a foreign country only with the U.S. ambassador’s consent. Therefore, the U.S. Embassy could assign an embassy control officer to be present during all my activities. Normally an embassy chaperone for my contacts with locals irritated me to no end-sources could be as silent as a house-trained husband in the presence of a foreign diplomat-but the deterioration of security in Pakistan made me less resistant.