Haggai Harmon - The Chameleon Conspiracy

“I’ll know more if you agree to pay the $300, and the $250 for me.”

“OK,” I said in feigned surrender. “Fine. Ward is really a great photographer.”

“I’ll come to night for the money,” he said.

“Well, you’ll have to bring the information as well. It’s not my personal money, it’s the magazine’s, and I must account for it.”

At six thirty Ahmed appeared, unannounced. He was excited. “I think something strange has happened,” he said.

“What?”

“Albert Ward arrived in Tehran on an invitation of Professor Manfred Krieger, who headed a German archaeological team for its excavation work in Tal-e Malyan. There were rumors of buried golden treasures of the Parthians and the Sasanians.” He went on and on. A class in history is usually interesting, but not at that moment. However, it was no time to demonstrate my impatience.

“How long did he work for them?”

“They signed him up for three months and paid his first month’s salary of $500 in advance.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know,” he said candidly, and it was the first time I believed a sentence he said. “This was shortly after the Islamic Revolution, and as an American he was probably afraid to go there, or at least to go and not be paid. So maybe this is how they made him come.”

Again, it seemed to me that Ahmed’s information had come from the same source: Peninsula Bank, and Rashid, its manager. I smelled a rat.

He brought his head closer to me, as if telling me a secret. “I think he was lured to Tehran for an entirely different reason.”

“Oh?”

“The money he received from the German archaeologists didn’t come from Germany.”

“So? Why is it important?” I said casually. “They could have paid him from their account in Tehran.”

“They could have. But the money came from Lugano, Switzerland.”

“This is too much detective work,” I said waving my hand in dismissal. “I’m just trying to help my magazine. Maybe I should let this thing go.”

“As you wish,” he said, clearly disappointed. “But if I were you, I’d look deeper into it. There might be a story behind it, although not for a magazine about wildlife, but for a news magazine. You could investigate it and end up with an interesting story.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that after Ward left Islamabad, there were three attempts by the transferring bank in Switzerland to reverse the money transfer and get the money back, claiming that the transfer was made by mistake.”

“Did the bank in Islamabad ever return the money?”

“No. Since it was already in Ward’s account, there was no way of doing it without Ward’s consent or a court order. And neither was obtained.”

“I see,” I said, trying to figure out how these bits of information fit into any of my theories. When I didn’t respond, Ahmed tried to ignite further interest in me. “Do you know who the bank that made the transfer was?”

“No. How would I know?”

“Al Taqwa Management, a Lugano-based financial institution.”

“Who are they?” I asked, although the name rang a bell.

“All I know is that they have ties to terrorist organizations.” “Oh,” I said. “I should stay away from this matter then.” Ahmed gave me a long look. “OK, then can I have my money?”

I gave him $300. “Please sign a receipt,”

He quickly wrote down a receipt on a blank piece of paper. “I’m giving you only $300 because you didn’t give me a current address, but still it’s more than the $250 I promised you.”

Obviously he didn’t like that, but I threw in an incentive. “If you find him, I’ll still be thankful. Anyway, we should talk about the main reason I came here, the incorporation of a company to publish our magazine. I’ll call you this week.”

Time to go back to the embassy. This matter was getting into areas outside my original assignment. I called Ned Applebee.

“Abdullah will come to your hotel to bring you over in thirty minutes,” promised Ned.

Abdullah was as good as Ned’s word. I was in Applebee’s office in less than an hour.

“Any success?” he asked, though somehow he didn’t sound too interested.

“The person I’m looking for left Pakistan twenty years ago with more than $500-probably around $2,000-deposited in his bank account, and never returned. Before leaving he bought $200 in Iranian currency. A source told me he was allegedly invited to Iran by a German archaeological team, which paid him $500 in advance for one month of photography work, and he vanished. Several years later, a bank attempted to reverse the transfer, saying that it had discovered during an audit that a predecessor bank made the transfer as a result of fraud and wanted the money back. The Pakistani bank refused.”

“Interesting,” he said, looking out his window. He couldn’t have been less interested.

“I’m told that the institution that wanted the money back is located in Lugano, Switzerland.”

“The fact that it’s in Switzerland doesn’t by itself guarantee integrity. Crooks are everywhere.”

“I agree, but these guys are big-time.”

“Who?”

“Al Taqwa.”

Applebee sat up in his chair. At last I had his attention. “Nada Management? Are you sure?”

“No, I said Al Taqwa.”

“I know that. But they’ve been known as Nada Management since 2001.”

“I’m sure I heard my man say Al Taqwa Management, but remember, it came from a single source, uncorroborated, and I didn’t see any documents. Why? Do you know them?”

“They’re backing terror organizations. If you missed reading the intelligence reports about their role, you may have read about them in newspapers.”

Now I remembered where I’d heard the name.

“I need to get the Agency involved,” he said, meaning the CIA. “The information you get here can be important.”

I had been there before. When my findings had touched on matters of national security and I’d brought it to the attention of the CIA, they’d taken control over my case immediately, making my own job assignment secondary. I didn’t mind, except it was time-consuming, and interfered with my own case. However, my job performance at the Department of Justice is measured by results; any distraction means fewer or delayed favorable results. Due to the ultrasecret nature of my time-consuming involvement with the CIA, it isn’t reflected in my personnel file, which is brought up for periodic evaluation at the Department of Justice, so I risked looking like I was under-performing. But I had no choice. The result is that I appear to be performing less effectively than others in my department. Obviously, David Stone knew about my occasional side activities, and authorized them. A cautious man, David knew we both played for the same team, and therefore he was covering for me. But he was about to retire, so what was next? I’d have to explain to the new director. His name had already been announced-Robert Holliday, who had served as David’s deputy for the past six months.

Half an hour later, a man in his early fifties came into Ned’s office. He was of medium build, balding, with a goatee and piercing, ice blue eyes. “Hi, I’m Phil Boyd. Tell me what you have.”

I repeated my story and Boyd took notes. “Are you planning to do anything with that information?” he asked.

“Well, I need to find Ward and the $300 million and change it looks like he stole. Seems like he had a string of aliases and stole from government-insured banks and private investors. Am I stepping on something?”

“Maybe. Nada Management, or Al Taqwa, is on the watch list of every intelligence service in the West.”

“Why?”

“Terror financing. These guys were catering mostly to Muslim clients, and were known for their hawala exchange system. Small amounts, from $500 to $1,000, are transferred to other hawala in different locations.”