Haggai Harmon - The Chameleon Conspiracy

“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.